Movie Watch: Father's Day at the movies

Father's Day -- next Sunday, June 21 -- is your once-a-year chance to show Dad how you really feel.

by Ken

When I shared the Museum of the Moving Image's horrific Mother's Day film lineup, I promised to return with the grisly details for the second half of the museum's celebration, "Horror Mother's Day and Father's Day." Unless you're lucky enough not to have e-mail, by now your e-mailbox should be choked with offers to take care of your celebratory needs. So you'll be glad to know that the museum has an equally, er, uplifting triple bill scheduled to honor Dad, the poor sonofabitch.

Horror Father's Day

June 21

The primal bond between parent and child is undeniable, and is at the heart of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, which are observed on Sundays in May and June as though they are national holidays. For anyone looking for an alternative to Hallmark sentimentality, or for those parents -- or non-parents -- with great taste in movies and an appetite for horror, here are six classic movies to mark the occasions.

The deal again is that each film is is $12 ($9 for senior citizens and students; free for members at the Film Lover level and above). Museum admission for the day is included with the ticket. Advance reservation (for members) or purchase (for nonmembers) is not only possible but recommended.

And again, those of you who aren't within striking distance of the museum may wish to avail yourselves of your usual film sources to re-create all or part of this lineup in the none-too-comforting privacy of your own home.


SO WHAT'S IN STORE TO CELEBRATE DEAR OLD DAD?

The Night of the Hunter


"A never-more-menacing" Robert Mitchum as "creepy preacher Harry Powell"

Sunday, June 21, 2pm

Dir. Charles Laughton. 1955, 92 mins. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by The Film Foundation. With Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish.

Acting legend Charles Laughton’s sole screen directorial credit is perhaps cinema’s most remarkable one-off. Creepy preacher Harry Powell (a never-more-menacing Mitchum) offers naive widow Willa Harper (Winters) a fresh start, but her kids rightly worry his intentions are less than pure. Part horror film, part fairy tale, The Night of the Hunter is an idiosyncratic, dazzlingly shot cinematic wonder.

Order tickets online.

Eyes Without a Face


Georges Franju's "classic example of the poetry of terror"

Sunday, June 21, 4:30pm

Dir. Georges Franju. 1960, 88 mins. 35mm. With Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob.

Working in his secluded French chateau, a brilliant but mad doctor tries radical plastic surgery to restore his beautiful daughter’s face, which was disfigured by a car accident that he caused. This “classic example of the poetry of terror” (Dave Kehr) is at once horrifying and filled with stunningly beautiful images.

Order tickets online.

The Shining


From Stanley Kubrick, a "primal Freudian drama played out in a haunted hotel"

Sunday, June 21, 6:30pm

Dir. Stanley Kubrick. 1980, 144 mins. 35mm. With Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd.

“Here’s Johnny!” All work and no play makes Jack a monstrous dad in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s tale of a caretaker driven mad in a cavernous hotel during an isolated Colorado winter. A visionary child is pitted against a murderous father, as the primal Freudian drama is played out in a haunted hotel.

Order tickets online.

And if you're celebrating without Dad being physically present, well, he doesn't have to know how you're celebrating, does he?

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