Okay, two big things are happening right now!!
First, it’s October, which means Scarecrow is running its annual Psychotronic Challenge, daring you to watch one fucked-up, low-budget, gritty movie every day. Unstreamable is getting in on the fun on Friday, October 20th, for “THE GREAT UNSTREAMABLE” part of that watchlist. The day’s assignment: “Search all night with all your might, it still ain’t found on any site. Bonus for desert/drought content.”
You can satisfy that challenge by joining us in person at SIFF Cinema Egyptian for a special screening of director Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 vampire movie, Near Dark, at 7 pm—Presented in 35mm! Reserve a seat here!
And then the second thing happening: Should you wish to see something a little less spooky, we’re focusing on documentaries this month. Get some sweet relief and dig into our two doc picks for the week, Moon Over Broadway and The Savage Eye.
Got a recommendation? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
United States, 1987, 97 minutes, Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
The vampires in Near Dark are far from the smooth, charming, sexy vampire trope most of us are familiar with. In fact, they couldn't be more opposite. The coven of bloodsuckers we meet in the film are grimy, gnash their teeth, and have a penchant for covering their car windows in tin foil. But, above all, they are violently bored. Immortality has a way of doing that to you.
The film is a gritty horror-meets-western, taking place on the dusty plains of Oklahoma and Texas. It follows recently-turned Caleb (Adrian Pasdar) as he rolls with a cantankerous and irksome group of vampires, avoiding sunlight and looking for blood. It's surprisingly graphic. The soundtrack is by Tangerine Dream, which adds a sort of Twin Peaks, synthy otherworldliness to all the bloodsucking. There's also an earnestness about the story and performances that makes it special. Interestingly, a remake of the film was announced in 2006, but then canceled in 2008 due to similarities to another little vampire movie coming out that year. JAS KEIMIG
Find it currently in the Halloween spotlight section. Or in person at SIFF Cinema Egyptian on Friday!!!!!
United States, 1997, 97 minutes, Dir. Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker
Google is slow to bring up the husband/wife directing duo D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus when you search for "best documentary directors" — he's like 23rd, she's not listed — but Pennebaker is treated better at Scarecrow, getting his own spot in the documentary directors section. Known for directing cornerstone docs like The War Room (the two worked mainly as a pair starting in the 1970s), and also for helping engineer and pioneer the direct cinema method in the US, and for their doc on Depeche Mode (101) inspiring MTV's Real World and Road Rules series, and for filming people like David Bowie and Little Richard and JFK, they make a watershed pair! Pennebaker's docs on '60s counterculture (Monterey Pop, Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back) get the most attention right now, but he filmed a lot of subjects, from Bill Clinton to pastry chefs, most of them stars or experts in their fields.
Maybe his attraction to top performers is what drew him to theater, where he filmed the well-loved (particularly by musical theater nerds) doc Company: Original Cast Album in 1970. (Its "Ladies Who Lunch" bits with Elaine Stritch are the ones people pull up on YouTube.) Released almost thirty years later, Moon Over Broadway captured a similar dynamic, but this time with Carol Burnett and the Broadway play Moon Over Buffalo. The doc is rich with tight, close-up, funny scenes — of Bob Mackie complaining about dressers who aren't living up to his standards, of Carol Burnett suggesting joke rewrites and not being heard (to the play's detriment). Broadway doesn't have an iconic scene like Company's Stritch bits, but it nails the anxiety of Broadway, focusing in on how years of playmaking might unravel with just one middling review from the New York Times. CHASE BURNS
Find it in the Documentary Directors section under D.A. Pennebaker. Rent it by mail here.
United States, 1959, 68 minutes, Dir. Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, Joseph Strick
Ok, I know we’re doing documentaries this month, but we need to talk about The Savage Eye. The movie is technically a drama—it’s centered around a fictional story of a woman named Judith (Barbara Bailey) who lands in Los Angeles after a divorce and explores the underbelly of the City of Angels. However, documentary clips are crucial to telling the story. Directors Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers, and Joseph Strick weave real-life, on-the-ground footage of ordinary Angelenos in the late 1950s living their lives on the streets, beautifying themselves in a salon, tantalizing audiences in a burlesque show, and hanging out in bars. Judith sometimes appears next to these ordinary people as she narrates her thoughts and actions with a disembodied voice (Gary Merrill) who calls himself her angel.
The Savage Eye is certainly strange in its approach to documentary, but is an early experimental twist on the burgeoning cinéma vérité movement of the time. It kind of reminds me of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians or the Real Housewives universe, where the setting and the people are real, but perhaps, the storylines and narrative structure are contrived. Of course, The Savage Eye is much more intentional with its study of what’s real and what’s fake, but, no doubt, Kim and the gang might find it interesting.
Despite it winning the best feature length documentary award at the BAFTAs in 1959, The Savage Eye remains in rights limbo. Missing Movies, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding the rights to lost films and making them more widely available, has designated the dramatized documentary as “missing.” Thank God we have a hardcopy at Scarecrow! JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Drama section. In store only.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. Yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
