Once upon a time I lived relatively close to the Irish Film Institute in Dublin. In a way, that was one of my favourite spots in the town, and it supplied many rainy late nights' worth of entertainment during those years, ranging from serious documentaries to B-scifi and horror. Their output was heaven sent when Cineworld etc. have succumbed to the same depressively repetitive format which also covers much of the mainstream radio, music channels and other media.
IFI is located at the edge of the Temple Bar disctrict, so analytical post-film pints were also close at hand, not to mention IFI's own restaurant and bar. It resembled me of the old Cinema du Parc in Montreal (which now apparently has reopened, good news for the locals..). I dont think that IFI would never go as risqué as CdP when it comes to lineup (mostly a good thing, I do remember a couple of incidents with half of the audience leaving in the middle of the show etc during some controversial horror, nauseous customers and so forth), but it did a wonderful job at getting much of the cool indie and documentary material on the silver screen. Its so much more fun to combine things, have dinner, good movie, and analytical pints afterwards. Very rewarding - mostly. Not everything was a success - I do remember suffering through some very bad ones, the The Night of the Lepus from the seventies maybe takes the first prize. Add a noisy audience 80% alternative nerds (there is some sort of crappy horrorthron festival ongoing that week) who have decided that every extremely bad movie is actually funny by default. Argh. Dont take you date to see this one..
This phenomenon may well be the reason for the existence of another terrifically bad movie that I saw a couple of years back. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is an American parody of the 50's cheap horror/scifi films with notoriously crappy special effects. In effect, the ingredients are: 1) very low budget, 2) turning colour footage to black/white in post production, 3) director demands as woody performances from the cast as they can humanly manage, 4) everything is explained to the audience by teh characters (like the scientist working, wearing a white coat surrounded by lab equipment "As I am doing my scientific work.." etc, 5) there is a supernatural skeleton and a space mutant involved. No need to describe the plot more than that.
The taglines tell it all:
From the company that brought you "Zombies of Mora Tau" and "Lawrence of Arabia."
This was the day the Earth was disemboweled in terror!
Supreme shock sensation of our time!
None Can Stand Its Mental Power!
It is very bad indeed, but for some reason I want to see the sequel "The Lost Skeleton Return Again". I dont know why. However, I seriously doubt that the Swedish Film Institute would be showing it anytime soon. Art house is serious business :)
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