Channel Zero RETURNS!!

After a long covid driven hiatus, Channel Zero Resurfaces This Friday Night at 8pm @ at the Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) for an epic screening of: COMRADE DON CAMILLO (1965) The incomparable Fernandel stars as the wily Italian Village Priest who blackmails his way onto a goodwill tour of the Russia all to wreak merry mayhem on the USSR, it's a cold war comedy like no other! We thought long and hard about this one, we decided our audience craved reassurance, a hero as it were. Since no one is giving us the screening rights to Superman, we decided to go with a comical Italian Priest and his one man war on Communism both Italian AND Russian! And when you get down to it, Superman, Don Camillo...it's really the same thing right??

The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday October 8th 2021 (Yeah We're BACK!!)
 8pm (sharp!)
 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma
 617 625 5700 Admission: $7.50 (

cash only, CHEAP!) TELL YOUR FRIENDS! NOTHING IS OVER! CHANNEL ZERO IS BIDDING ON NOTHING LESS THAN CULTURAL HEGEMONY IN DAVIS SQUARE!!! :) We've Got Fernandel, WHO CAN PREVAIL AGAINST US?? PLEASE NOTE: Per The Somerville Theatre "All theatre patrons are required to show proof of vaccination, or a 72-hour negative test. The town of Somerville also currently has a mask mandate, where patrons are required to wear masks while indoors unless seated and actively eating or drinking."

Socrates Returns (sort of...)

Channel Zero Proudly Presents: "Socrates" (1971) directed by Roberto Rossellini Western Civilization's First "Free Speech Case" as the Famed Philosopher is put on Trial in Ancient Athens for "Impiety" & "Misleading Youth". Has a Matter of Philosophy has now become a Capital Offense? Directed by Italian Neorealist Pioneer Roberto Rossellini and starring Jean Sylvere as Socrates! (in Italian, Subtitled in English) The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square, Somerville Ma. Friday, February 28th 8pm (Sharp!) Admission: $7.50 (cash only) 617-625-5700 Join Us for Our 25th Year of Relentless Obscurity! Keep an eye on this space for details on upcoming program, we plan on having a lot of fun this year!!

Bill Shatner is Indestructible....

CHANNEL ZERO BOSTON’S MOST NOTORIOUS ENTERTAINMENT FRANCHISE PROUDLY PRESENTS: "William Shatner: Pre-Trek!" Celebrating the career of William Shatner as a journeyman actor on TV prior to his breakthrough as Star Trek's Captain Kirk! Including an episode of "For the People" a realistic 1965 drama starring Shatner as an embattled NYC Assistant DA Also on the bill a 1960 TV pilot :"Nero Wolfe" starring Kurt Kasznar as the eccentric detective & Bill Shatner as his two fisted assistant! The Somerville Theatre (Micro Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma Friday, November 1st 8pm (sharp!) Admission: $7.50 (cash only) 617-625-5700 www.channel0.blogspot.com

"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019)

I used to think Tarantino was being a drama queen when he mused about quitting directing after ten feature films. After seeing "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", I'm wondering if the wunderkinder is running out of ideas. On the surface, the story is "Can't Miss" the adventures of a past-his-prime TV star and his grinning semi deadly favorite stuntman hetero life partner in the story-dense lead up to the famous 1969 Manson Family/Sharon Tate Murders. Play it right, and Tarantino has his own personal "Nashville" going on, but alas this got played wrong and instead we get a glorious disjointed mess that somehow manages to accidentally sully the good name of the Late Bruce Lee in the Bargain (a cringeworthy sequence that just tells me more than anything, that Tarantino is slipping...). A perceptive friend of mine spoke well of all the performances, DiCaprio & Pitt are at the height of their form and charisma, but at two hours and forty minutes, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is devoid of the memorable monologues and snappy dialogue that is a hallmark of all Tarantino's prior works. Instead we get meticulous recreations of the backlot of western TV productions, dense period detail, clever celebrity impersonations, clouds of cigarette smoke and after that...precious little. Oh and Margot Robbie's Feet, those filthy soles seem to have replaced Uma Thurman's toes as Q.T. "Shoeless Muse". Oh don't get me wrong, Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate impersonation is flawless, but that only because Robbie is skilled at projecting vacuity as well as authenticity. The climax is particularly graphic and sadistic, even for Tarantino, he can get away with it, because its pure grievance driven mayhem unleashed on the Manson Family, a generation spanning source of hate and fear in the Tinseltown Zeitgeist. Indeed it's Charles Manson's homicidal spree that told Hollywood that the relationship with it's audience had developed fatal consequences...fractured and fatal. Frankly, the film is glorious horse shit, with Tarantino symbolically destroying Hollywood's darkest fear with...a flamethrower. Dunno, Q.T. not sure how you or anyone can top that...

Our Next Thrilling Chapter..."Jungle Gold"

Y'know, for years we've had this internal debate here at Channel Zero about the mechanics of screening a classic movie serial for a modern moviegoing audience. "Binge watching" the sumbitch is right out, a twelve or fifteen episode chapter play clocks in at over three hundred minutes. Just booking the venue for such a long program is nigh impossible and will a paying audience sit there in one go for material loaded with filler for such a long time? Doubtful. The Harvard Film Archive did it once back in the 1990's, dedicating an entire Saturday Afternoon to "Flash Gordon" (1936) in a marathon screening, it played to an audience of three as I recall (but it remains solid boasting rights on my part at least). The Brattle Theatre, in the summer of 1994 screened Victor Jory starring as "The Shadow" (1940) in five episode clumps over successive Monday evenings. Its worked but the Alec Baldwin "Shadow" was out that summer (more boasting rights, I saw it at the Drive In) and attendance certainly lagged that third Monday night. We love the serial format, even the misbegotten chapter plays like "Brick Bradford" (which features aggressive extraterrestrial moon-men in tee shirts and bermuda shorts, the sheer energy and violence of the better examples stand up even today against today's blockbusters. It should be noted that the first all-up comic book adaptations were serials notably "The Adventures of Captain Marvel" (1941) a CLASSIC Republic Serial full of that studios signature quality stunts and action. The irony is, that back in 1914 or so, at the outset of the silent chapter plays all the heroes in the early serials were all women! Pearl White in the "Perils of Pauline" had all sorts of agency, she operated locomotives, indulged in gun fights with bad guys and demonstrated all sorts of self rescuing independence before she ever had the right to vote! And no, she was never once tied to the railroad tracks! Republic Pictures with its spate of jungle girl chapter plays in the 1940's was merely hearkening back to the estrogen-laden heroics of early days of serials. Some of cinemas first male versus female fistfights, where the woman carried the day, are in serials. Linda Stirling, in particular has a robust judo toss in her repertoire. So after much debate, Channel Zero has decided to screen "Jungle Gold" (1944) a complete feature length film edited out of Republic's classic jungle girl serial "The Tiger Woman". Linda Stirling stars as a Jungle Queen defending her own personal lost tribe in the Brazilian Jungle from oil wildcatters. This film is literally "highlight reel" of Republic Studios stunts, action and general lightning paced mayhem! The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday, July 26th 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square, Somerville Ma Admission: $7.50 (cash only) 617-625-5700

Why Sadko (1952)?

It is sad to say, but Classic Soviet Films are rarely screened on the local repertory circuit, save for certain "sure fire" titles (exp "Battleship Potemkin" "Alexander Nevsky" the art-house propaganda titles in other words), this is a shame because even a colossal totalitarian system can produce genre films of rare sophistication & beauty. "Sadko" was the product of a testing time in Soviet History, Stalin had purged the arts (chiefly of any "Jewish Influence") and now set out to illustrate the intensification of class conflict by decreeing that All Soviet Films must be artistic masterpieces. So of course, film production in the USSR plunged during this period, no one dared approve a script that might result in a film that wasn't a Masterpiece. Director Alexandr Ptushko though, had two things going in his favor as he prepared to shoot "Sadko" one, Soviet Film Censors were pretty lax about approving films set in the distant past reasoning that the modern class conflict dynamic didn't exist per se in the Dark Ages, so filmmakers were absolved of the need to make The Vanguard Party of the Workers look good. Secondly, "Sadko" is a famous Russian Folk tale about a 10th Century troubadour who travels to strange magic realms in a brave search of a mythic Bird of Happiness by which to revive his beleaguered home town. This "Bylina" (a traditional slavic oral folk tale) had already been adapted by Rimsky-Korsakov into a Opera that was a mainstay of Russian Theatre throughout the Stalinist Era. So Ptushko had the right setting and the right property, he also had a profound epic visual sense and a straining desire to burst the limits of cinema in his time. And what the hell he succeeded. A Bright Colorful Poignant Fantasia that could easily be considered the USSR's Answer to "The Wizard of Oz"directed a man who could easily go toe-to-toe with Walt Disney. And in 1952, in the USSR that meant something, specifically because of the rigid application of Stalin's demand for film masterpieces, "Sadko", is one of exactly five Russian Language Movies produced under Soviet Auspices in 1952, the fact that it got made, and made so well, is nothing short of miraculous. So Hell to the Yeah, Channel Zero is screening Sadko, bold colors, state of the art special effects, folksongs and all! The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Friday, May 17th 8pm (sharp!) 55 Davis Square, Somerville Ma Admission: $7.50 (cash only, please note tickets are on sale thirty minutes prior to showtime in front of the micro cinema) 617-625-5700 In Russian (folksongs and all) Subtitled into English!!

David Kleiler, RIP...

Let the record show, that Channel Zero had some three attempts to collaborate with the departed local film maven, David Kleiler (former GM of the Coolidge Corner, Curator of the Boston Underground Film Festival, Programmer of the Woods Hole Film Festival, that boy got around yo!), all of them ended in disaster. Nonetheless we had no regrets things went wrong for reasons unrelated to David or Us, and our little film franchise gained always in wisdom and experience, something Kleiler freely gave away every day of his life. He died last week after all long illness, and the local film scene is the poorer for it by far. The First time, was likely in the summer of 1996, we were negotiating with the Coolidge Corner's then Marketing Director, the incomparable Robert Deutsch for a coveted repertory film screening slot, in prime time no less! As General Manager, Kleiler had literally saved said venue from the wrecking ball and was now outreaching to us, Channel Zero with an opportunity to reach a Boston Audience. At this time, we were doing screenings on VHS for free in the now defunct Liberty Cafe in Central Square, this was a very big thing on offer indeed. Alas it was not to be, Kleiler and Deutsch were both shown the door almost as soon as we passed in our proposal (for the record it was "The Evil Dead Part II", so sue us, we wanted a pre sold audience...and we'd never worked with celluloid before!). Two years later, in the Summer of 1998, and David Kleiler was doing his own private repertory screenings at "Bill's Bar" in the Fenway, he invited Channel Zero to come in and "sublet" for a night when the Red Sox were out of season. This Time we went with one of our dependable programs "Custer Lives" a screening of the misbegotten 1967-1968 western series starring Wayne Maunder as the doomed Colonel Custer riding the prairie like Captain Kirk on Horseback. We'd done quite well in Central Square with a similar program (tarted up with a reading of bad "Custer Elegy" poetry that in turn inspired the infamous "Bad Poets Society") and dutifully began flogging the event thru our column in "Editorial Humor" and with our now ubiquitous flyers. And wouldn't you know it, one week before showtime, Kleiler and his ad-hoc repertory series gets shown the door. We were livid, he was philosophical.... And then...in 2000, when David Kleiler was ensconced at the top his own film festival, the Boston Underground Film Festival no less, he offered Channel Zero a precious screening opportunity at the Revolving Museum in South Boston. We were ecstatic, at last validation! And this time, we had the title, Peter Watkins'controversial nuclear war "documentary "The War Game"...we were just about to secure the screening rights to said film when the Harvard Film Archive swooped down and announced a retrospective of Peter Watkins' films, two weeks before our screening including of course, "The War Game". Kleiler, counseled steadfastness (we should have listened to him), but we had catastrophic visions of an empty theatre with crickets chirping on the soundtrack, we canceled "The War Game" and in sheer desperation opted for High Camp, in this case, "Hercules Unchained" (1960) starring Steve Reeves. Our reasoning was "classic psychotronic titles" hadn't made a big inroad yet on the local midnight movie circuit so we were reasonable free of the fear of pre-emption. This would prove to be a rare example of Channel Zero misjudging its audience, never ever try to sell camp escapism to a Boho Audience of rising Cineastes....they never get the joke, I guess they shouldn't have to, either. They were faking heart attacks to get out of that bunker like room in South Boston, we couldn't have chosen a worse movie for the crowd at hand, it was indeed "Our Waterloo". If you'd like you can watch the whole thing on Youtube its a long way from a 16mm rental indeed....but what the hell David gave us the agency to triumph or screw up all by ourselves. Alas we never again collaborated with David Kleiler sad to say, the man was unflappable in this movie market, you have to be, he did grace us by attending some of our more recent screenings at the Somerville Theatre, he was relaxed, wise as truly one who had seen it all, if he bought one of our tickets it a virtual endorsement that we had the most interesting screening in town. Back in 2015, when Channel Zero hit a bad patch with unique programming that inspired nothing but empty seats David Kleiler counseled patience and resilience, "not quitting was the best path to triumph" was his sage advice. I'd see him sometimes at the Harvard Film Archive, lately he was clearly sick but still cogent and wise, it was always a pleasure to talk with him, I will miss him, the local film scene will have to wait a long time before it grows another conscience and institutional memory like David Kleiler.