"I still wonder why film students babble on about Orson Welles … even the worst films of Russ Meyer are infinitely more interesting than Citizen Kane" (John Waters)

Russ Meyer was a former-war photographer who landed at Normandy, fought his way to Berlin, then forged an early career as a burlesque photographer and nudie-cutie film-maker. For b-movie freaks, his films are holy grails of trash featuring pneumatic violent women, sexually incompetent men, desert scenery, fist fights, motorbikes and sports cars.

The Russ Meyer season at the Star and Shadow concentrates on what many consider his finest period - the 'Southern Gothic' films of 1965-67.

All shows feature fifties newsreels and advertisements, juvenile-delinquency and child-kidnapping horror shorts from the San Francisco Police Dept, and we'll even be having an intermission for ice-cream.

The Star and Shadow's Russ Meyer season will be introduced by Brian Gordon, who has worked in the film festival world as the Golden Gate Awards Director at the San Francisco International Film Festival and Artistic Director at the Nashville Film Festival.

In 1979, Brian had the pleasure of spending three days showing Russ Meyer the town when he was in - Denver, Colorado - doing press interviews in conjunction with the opening of Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. 

The film screened at the cinema Gordon managed. 

Suffice it to say that Gordon – already a Russ Meyer fan at that point – became even more of a fan.

A year later his life changed when he attended a film festival and saw Mudhoney for the first time.

LISTING

MUDHONEY (1965)
MOTORPSYCHO (1965)
FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL (1965)
COMMON LAW CABIN (1967)

Tickets £4 members / £5 non-members (except Faster Pussycat - tickets £5 members / £6 non-members)