A Fistful of Spaghetti

For those in the Chicago area, the Music Box Theatre has been showing a different spaghetti western movie every weekend as part of their matinee series. Each film will be shown at 11:30am on Saturday and Sunday only. The Music Box is located at 3733 North Southport Avenue.  Here's the upcoming schedule for those who may be interested...

  

The Grand Duel (Il Grande Duello)
Starring: Lee Van Cleef & Horst Frank
Directed by: Giancarlo Santi
Music by: Luis Bacalov 
July 27 & 28
94 min - HDCAM
 

After their powerful father is brutally murdered, the Saxon Brothers hire a group of bounty hunters to bring suspected killer Philipp Wermeer to justice. But when grizzled Sheriff Clayton saves the fugitive Philipp’s life, the two team up and set out to confront the Saxons and reveal the shocking truth about who really killed The Patriarch. Newly transferred from the original Italian negative and fully restored!

    
   

The Mercenary (Il Mercenario)
Starring: Franco Nero & Jack Palance
Directed by: Sergio Corbucci
Music by: Ennio Morricone
August 3 & 4
110 min - 35mm
 

A group of Mexican revolutionaries hire a Polish gun-for-hire to assist their cause, but they meet stiff resistance by a well-dressed and brutal government agent (Jack Palance).  Features a fantastic score by Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai.  One of the seminal spaghetti westerns. Brand new 35mm print!

   
  

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
(Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef & Eli Wallach
Directed by: Sergio Leone
Music by: Ennio Morricone
August 10 & 11
179 min - DCP
 

Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach are the title triumvirate - double crossing rivals in a Civil War-era odyssey for a treasure in hidden gold. Encountering a group of dying soldiers, each of the desperadoes learns but one facet of the secret bounty, each man focusing his squinty eyes on the $200,000 bounty. Leone’s final chapter in his “Dollars” trilogy has been magnificently restored to its original Italian running time.

   
  

Sabata
(Ehi Amico... C'è Sabata, Hai Chiuso!)
Starring: Lee Van Cleef & William Berger
Directed by: Gianfranco Parolini
Music by: Marcello Giombini
August 17 & 18
111 min - 35mm
  

After an acrobatic bank robbery leaves a town without a safe, the mysterious Sabata lends his services in recovery of the vault.  Things quickly escalate into blackmail and gunplay, involving politically powerful criminal boss Stengel.  Aided by sting-playing Banjo, mute acrobat Alleycat, and alcoholic Civil War vet Carrincha, Sabata sets out with his comic book posse to extort Stengel for everything he's worth. Filled with wild stunts, quick zooms and whip pans, Sabata is one of the most energetic and entertaining spaghetti westerns around.

 

  

Duck You Sucker (Giu La Testa)

Starring: Rod Steiger & James Coburn

Directed by: Sergio Leone

Music by: Ennio Morricone

August 24 & 25

138 min - 35mm

 

The results are explosive when self-exiled IRA explosives specialist John Mallory teams up with a Mexican peasant-turned-revolutionary to knock over the Mesa Verde bank... with dynamite. What started out as a nice joint venture to get rich, quickly turns into an operation for the revolutionary cause, and the two are drawn into a fight against the Mexican army, bearing painful similarities to Mallory’s IRA past.

 

 

It's Alive!

Hello there,

  

I just wanted to drop a line to let you all know that Cinema Raiders is alive once again... and we have some very exciting things in the works. So stay tuned fellow nostalgia fans...

  

Frankenstein Double Feature

   

 

Just in time for Halloween, Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events are bringing us a double feature of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein on Wednesday, October 24th. 
 
Unlike the Indiana Jones or Dr. No screenings, which only had a single participating cinema in the entire city of Chicago, four cinemas will be having this double feature:

  

AMC River East 21		Roosevelt Collections
322 E Illinois ST		150 W Roosevelt RD
Showplace Webster Place 11		City North Showplace 14
171 W Webster AVE		2600 N Western AVE

  
The movies start at 7:00pm and tickets are available now for $12.50 plus any additional convenience fees, taxes, shipping & handling, import duties, etc. Click here for more details.

    

Dr. No in Chicago

      

Ladies and Gentlemen, this just in. Dr. No, the first James Bond film adventure, is back on the big screen for one showing only. Monday, September 24th at 7:00 pm, Dr. No will be showing at the AMC River East 21 in downtown Chicago. The screening is priced at $7.00 and includes a full-size commemorative poster (while supplies last). Click here for more details.

 

Indiana Jones and the Movie Marathon

For those with nothing to do on Saturday, AMC and Paramount Pictures are screening all four Indiana Jones movies (at select cinemas only). The $25 entry fee also includes a limited edition poster and lanyard. Will it be the Raiders in Imax poster with the incorrect title as shown above?  For those in Chicago, the River East 21 located downtown at 322 East Illinois Street will be hosting the movie marathon. Click here for more details.

Raiders of the Lost Ark also finishes its one week limited Imax run tomorrow, September 13th. Sadly, the Navy Pier Imax did not show the film...  Here's hoping they get Skyfall this November.

   

And don't forget, the Indiana Jones Blu-ray set will be released this coming Tuesday. There still has been no word of a US release of the UK Limited Edition Collector's Set. Although the set is region free, reports indicate that many of the special features are in standard definition PAL format. Which means people without region free players will be able to watch the movies, but not all of the special features. It might just be time to finally invest in that region free blu-ray player...

     

James Bond Screening

James Bond is back on the big screen in Chicago for a Father's Day/50th Anniversary celebration. The Music Box Theatre, located at 3733 North Southport Avenue, will be showing four 007 films this weekend; two starring Sean Connery and two with Roger Moore.

Friday, June 15th

2:30pm - Live and Let Die

5:00pm - Dr. No

Saturday, June 16th

5:30pm - Dr. No

Sunday, June 17th

1:45pm - Dr. No

4:15pm - From Russia With Love

6:50pm - Live and Let Die

9:15pm - Octopussy

The Music Box Theatre's website states that there will be two showings of From Russia With Love on Sunday, June 17th and both will start at 4:15pm. This is probably a typo. Here's hoping these will be shown on the main screen as the secondary one is laughably small.

 

Vincentennial!

While attending the screening of Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D at the Music Box today, I came across this flyer for the Vincentennial coming up on October 30th!

There will be a 100th Birthday and Halloween tribute to Vincent Price at the Portage Theater in Chicago. Victoria Price, Vincent Price's daughter, will be in attendance for autographs and picture taking and a Q&A session with never before seen photos and videos! She will also be selling special Vincent Price memorabilia which might include the book she wrote about her father, Vincent Price: A Daughter's Biography.

The schedule is as follows:

2:00pm - The House on Haunted Hill

3:30pm - Q&A with Victoria Price

5:00pm - The Last Man on Earth

Tickets can be pre-purchased for $13 by clicking here. They may also be purchased for $15 the day of the show - Sunday, October 30th. The Portage Theater is located at 4050 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, Illinois and is one of Chicago's oldest cinemas, having opened its doors in 1920.

Horror on the Big Screen

For those in the Chicago area, the Music Box Theatre will be showing twenty six horror flicks for the Halloween season. First off is the Music Box Massacre 7, a 24 hour film festival of horror movie madness with special guest Herschell Gordon Lewis and dealer tables in the lobby!

The massacre begins at Noon on Saturday, October 15th and runs until Noon on Sunday, October 16th. 

Schedule:
12:00pm – Waxworks (Silent with live organ music)

1:30pm – Burn Witch Burn

3:05pm – Hour of the Wolf

4:45pm – The Abominable Dr. Phibes 

6:30pm – Wizard of Gore (with Herschell Gordon Lewis in Person)
8:45pm – Halloween 

10:30pm – Poltergeist 

12:45am – Pumpkinhead

2:30am – Gates of Hell

4:15am – The Vampire Lovers
6:00am – Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things

7:45am – The Sentinel

9:20am – From Dusk ‘Til Dawn

Ticket Info: 

$34 from 9/16 – 10/14 only 200 available at this price

$38 day of show only 100 available at this price

 

Next up we have Universal Horror, thirteen classics from Universal Studios running from October 22nd through the 27th. Although the showtimes have not been published yet, the films and dates will be:

10/22 Murders in the Rue Morgue

10/22 Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D

10/23 It Came From Outer Space

10/23 The Invisible Man

10/23 The Invisible Man Returns

10/24 The Wolf Man

10/24 Captive Wild Women

10/25 Dracula

10/25 The Mummy

10/26 Frankenstein

10/26 The Bride of Frankenstein

10/27 The Black Cat

10/27 Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

All films in the Universal Horror and Music Box Massacre will be actual film prints, not DVD projections like the Monster Fests at the Portage Theater. Admission is $9.25 per showing, but you can save a little cash by purchasing the Music Box Discount Card of five admissions for $35.00.

The Music Box Theatre is located at 3733 North Southport Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. For those who are interested, the theatre was opened in 1929 as a counterpart to the movie palaces downtown. The main auditorium seats 800 and is the only one you want to watch movies in. The second screen was built in 1991 which converted a vacant storefront that was adjacent to the lobby. Some television sets aren't much smaller than the screen in there. The Music Box may also be haunted...

From the Music Box Theatre Website

Old theaters have ghosts and The Music Box is no exception. “Whitey”, as was his neighborhood nick-name, was the manager of The Music Box from opening night 1929 to November 24, 1977. His wife was the cashier and they raised their family two blocks away from the theater. According to one of Whitey’s daughters and his daughter-in-law, he spent most of his time at the theater. Young people who grew up in the neighborhood tell tales of working for Whitey, being tossed out by Whitey and accidentally-on-purpose skinning their knee to get a free piece of candy from Whitey. Parents speak of the embarrassment of having their child’s instamatic photo in the cashier’s station “rogues gallery” of children not allowed back in the theater for any of a myriad of offenses. On Thanksgiving eve, 1977, Whitey returned to close the theater. He fell asleep on the couch in the lobby and never woke up.

 

Whitey is a tireless protector of The Music Box Theatre. He helps solve problems and has been known to express his opinion of a bad organist by causing the drapery to drop in both organ chambers simultaneously. He is a positive contributor to the audience’s comfort and enjoyment of his theater. He is sometimes felt to be pacing Aisle 4 (protecting the alley doors where kids used to sneak in). If you see him, be sure to say hello and thank him for his 48 years of care and operation of The Music Box and his continued service to the patrons. He is the Manager Emeritus.
  

Chicago Comic Con

This past weekend, the Chicago Comic Con and Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors were both in town. As I could only attend one event, the choice became obvious after comparing the guest list; I would be attending the Chicago Comic Con.

The last con I attended was the 2009 Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, so I guess I had some unrealistic expectations for this show. I knew the actors would be in the vendor's room so I was prepared for the inevitable long lines. What I wasn't prepared for was the confusion on the part of the people running the show and the complete debacle of the guest panels. At all the other shows that I've been to, the guest panels have always been handled the same way. There was assigned seating up front for those who chose to purchase it and then, everything else was general admission. The room was open and you could come and go as you please. This was not the case here. 

 

I had everything planned out before I arrived at the show. I knew which panels I would go and see and which autographs I would get. The first panel I wanted to attend was Julie Benz at Noon, however I was still waiting in the autograph line when it started, so I missed out on that one. No big deal, at least I would get my movie poster signed. After getting the autographs I came to the show for, I decided to beat the rush and head upstairs to get an early seat to see Sir Patrick Stewart. I went up at 1:15 for the 2:00 start and here is where the trouble began. 

The DeLorean Time Machine

 

You see, the powers that be decided to clear the auditorium after each panel. At this time, the line for Patrick Stewart was already wrapped around the entire floor... twice. Now, there were multiple lines for multiple events and very few Comic Con Employees who knew which line was which and were it went - not many people in line knew the answer to those questions either. Needless to say, Patrick Stewart's panel started about fifteen minutes late, which made it run fifteen minutes longer, which left no time to find the second room to see LeVar Burton. They put him in a room about one fifth the size of the main auditorium. It was a sight to see everyone try to squeeze into this smaller room which was already full to begin with.

Lamont Cranston

 

After this panel concluded with news of a new Reading Rainbow being produced, it was time to find the line for Christopher Lloyd back in the main room. At this time, the line to see Bruce Campbell, which was immediately after the Christopher Lloyd panel, appeared to be just as long as Patrick Stewart's line was, and this was over an hour in advance. The panel started late, which was expected due to the mismanagement, but what wasn't expected was that they decided to cut Christopher Lloyd's panel short because they were so far behind schedule. At this time, they kicked us all out of the room once again and there looked to be little hope at getting back in to see Bruce Campbell, so I didn't even try. I just checked out the DeLorean, looked around the vendor's room and decided to call it a day.

But what I found to be most disappointing with whole event, wasn't all the waiting in lines or all the mismanagement. It was the "feel" of the whole show. I don't really know how to express this. The Star Trek show in Vegas had this unique feel, it was a type of camaraderie and good will that was nowhere to be found at the Comic Con. It was like we were all there for the same reason and we all were having a great time (I guess it didn't hurt that I was there for the whole four day event and it was a non-stop party). This feeling wasn't present at Comic Con. It was just hurry up and stand in line and then stand in the next line. I don't know, I probably wasn't able to get this down right; and I probably had unrealistic expectations. At least I got that movie poster signed...