3 Classic Horror Films at Loew's Jersey Theater - Oct. 23-24, 2009 October 23, 2009

Get In The Mood For Halloween
With
Landmark Horror
On the BIG Screen
At The
Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre
54 Journal Square, Jersey City, NJ 07306
Tel: (201) 798-6055 Fax: (201) 798-4020 Email: loewsjersey@gmail.com Web: www.loewsjersey.org
A Not-For-Profit Arts Center In A Historic Movie Palace

Friday, October 23 at 8PM
“Carrie” Starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving. Directed by Brian De Palma. (1976, 98 mins., Color)
Shy, unpopular high school girl Carrie White can only take so much humiliation from her peers before she strikes back. Stephen King’s unforgettable story, De Palma’s thrilling direction, and the lead’s moving and chilling performance make this one of the best of New Hollywood’s horror films.

Saturday, October 24 at 4PM
"The Wolf Man” Starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Bela Lugosi. Directed by George Waggner. (1941, 70 mins. B&W)
Larry Talbot suffers the curse of the werewolf and is transformed into a killer by the light of the full moon in this tragic, atmospheric, and spooky classic from Universal, one of the studio's last great monster movies.

Saturday, October 24 at 7:30PM
“Rosemary’s Baby” -- Directed by Roman Polanski. Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon. (1968, 136 mins., Color)
Expectant young mother Rosemary begins to suspect a plot against her and her unborn child. In his first American film, Polanski deftly mingled the supernatural with the mundane to create incredible suspense and unforgettable horror without gore or gimmicks. Polanski's groundbreaking film ushered in a new generation of horror films, rescuing the genre from B picture status and setting the stage for later blockbusters such as "The Exorcist", "The Omen" and "Carrie".
Separate Admission for each screening is just $6 for adults, $4 for seniors (65+), children (12 & younger) and students with ID.

OR -- Combo Discounts available for multiple screenings over the weekend.

See FILM NOTES below for more info about the films.

The Loew's Is Easy To Get To: The Loew's Jersey Theatre, at 54 Journal Square, Jersey City, NJ, is directly across JFK Boulevard from the JSQ PATH Center with trains to and from Lower and Midtown Manhattan and Newark's Penn Station, is minutes from the NJ Turnpike & easily reached by car or mass transit from throughout the Metro Area.

Discount off-street parking is available in Square Ramp Garage adjoining the Loew's. Patrons must validate their parking ticket before leaving the Loew's.

What's Special About Seeing A Movie At The Loew's? The Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre is one of America's grandest surviving Movie Palaces. We show movies the way they were meant to be seen: in a grandly ornate setting -- on our BIG 50 ft wide screen! The Loew's runs reel-to-reel, not platter, projection, which often allows us to screen an archival or studio vault print that is the best available copy of a movie title.

The Loew's Jersey is managed by Friends of the Loew's, Inc. as a non-profit, multi-discipline performing arts center.

For directions or more information: Call (201) 798-6055 or visit www.loewsjersey.org.

Classic Film Weekends are presented by Friends of the Loew's, Inc.

FILM NOTES

"Carrie"
Starring Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, and John Travolta
Directed by Brian De Palma
(98 minutes, 1976, Color, United Artists)

Stephen King’s first novel was a gripping, unforgettable story of a shy high school wallflower, emotionally beaten down by her classmates as well as her overbearing and irrational mother, who gets pushed to the breaking point and strikes back. Brian De Palma’s film adaptation – which was also the first adaptation of a Stephen King work – tells the story intelligently with well-paced and surprisingly subtle direction. Carrie’s world is presented as an all-too believable snake pit where all the “in” females have fangs. The cast is superb, starting with Spacek who brings her character’s misery to painfully vivid life, personifying every high school kid who didn’t fit in. Piper Laurie won an Academy Award for her unsettling and unsympathetic portrayal of Carrie’s mother. De Palma’s visual style adds to the picture’s impact. The direction, acting, cinematography and editing all come together in the climactic prom scene to form one of the most heart-stopping scenes in American cinema. All of this made ‘Carrie’ a watershed of mainstream horror. But it is also one of the truest and most painfully perceptive depictions ever filmed of the high school caste system, especially of the brand of cruelty unique to teenage girls. This film is classic King, flavored by Hitchcock and with an extra shot of vivid color and photography to create a striking and tragic supernatural thriller. (Compiled from various sources.)

"The Wolf Man"
Starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, and Bela Lugosi
Directed by George Waggner
(70 minutes, 1941, Black-and-White, Universal Pictures)

In 1931, with the releases of “Dracula” and “Frankenstein”, Universal Pictures began what, for the studio, would be a highly successful franchise of monster movies, creating a distinct, expressionistic image of what horror looked like in black and white on the big screen. Along the way, the studio gave birth to an impressive cast of monsters which still dominate our collective imagination, especially at Halloween. In 1941, Universal introduced the last of these iconic characters in what, arguably, was the last of its truly great horror films: The Wolf Man. Scripted by German emigre Curt Siodmak (a legendary author of horror films and novels throughout the 1940s and 1950s), the film is a literate and quite adult fairy tale of love, lust and redemption, with the story of the return of the prodigal son thrown in for good measure. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a man who dismisses the legend of the werewolf as childish nonsense not to be believed in the 20th century until he is bitten by a beast that turns out to be a werewolf and is himself cursed to suffer the torments of the damned whenever the moon is full. The film boasts an all star cast that includes Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Evelyn Ankers and Bela Lugosi (as the gypsy-turned-wolf who bites Chaney). As Dracula had done before it for centuries-old folktales about vampires, The Wolf Man drew together various ancient legends to create a single mythology and iconography for the werewolf that would become fixed in the modern mind forever: the gypsy curse, silver bullet, and bipedal half-wolf stalking the foggy soundstage. The iconic look of The Wolf Man was created by Universal’s make-up genius Jack Pierce, who had similarly created the now unmistakable looks of Frankenstein and The Mummy. (Compiled from various sources.)

"Rosemary’s Baby"
Starring Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, and Ruth Gordon
Directed by Roman Polanski
(136 minutes, 1968, Color, Paramount Pictures)

In his first American film, Roman Polanski re-invented the horror film, rescuing the genre from the schlocky, B-movie status to which it had fallen, and ushering in a new generation of horror films. Ironically, it was legendary schlock-master William Castle, creator of such gimmicky B horror flicks as “The Tingler” and “House on Haunted Hill”, who had purchased the rights to Ira Levin’s best-selling horror/thriller and hired the young, newly-immigrated Polanski to helm “Rosemary’s Baby”. Rosemary Woodhouse is a young wife, played with waif-like perfection by Mia Farrow, who moves into an old New York City apartment building with her struggling actor husband. At first little seems out of order, except that their elderly neighbors are a bit eccentric and a tad nosy. But gradually, a sense begins to build in Rosemary – and the audience – that something is wrong not just with her neighbors but also with her unborn child. Polanski’s greatest strength is his subtlety; his pacing and sense of mood are masterful without calling attention to themselves. He avoids the gimmicks and gore that had been conventions of the horror genre, but instead employs Alfred Hitchcock’s propensity to find horror in the utterly mundane. The horror of the film’s underlying supernatural premise sinks its claws in so slowly and unobtrusively that the audience doesn’t notice until too late the enveloping sense of dread and despair. The film is also full of memorable performances, from small roles for iconic 1940s stars like Ralph Bellamy and Elisha Cook, Jr. to the Academy Award-winning performance by Ruth Gordon as the meddling neighbor, to Farrow’s haunting performance. (Compiled from various sources.)

Though it was his first American film, "Rosemary's Baby" is quintessential Polanski -- a brooding, apocalyptic view with hints of dark comedy, that finds menace in the ordinary. The film put Polanski in the top rank of directors.