Next Lobotomy Room film club: Dead Ringer (1964) on Thursday 16 January 2025

 

For the first film club presentation of the New Year, Lobotomy Room comes screaming back (out of the gutter and into your arms!) with ultra-campy 1964 psychological thriller Dead Ringer (aka Who Is Buried in My Grave?)! Thursday 16 January at Fontaine’s! Starring volcanic grande dame of golden age Hollywood Miss Bette “Mother Goddamn” Davis in dual roles! (As Eric Henderson of Slant magazine puts it, “It features the compelling spectacle of Bette Davis competing for screen space with the only actress capable of upstaging her: Bette Davis”). 

Made between What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte, it sees Davis portraying long-estranged identical twin sisters (Margaret is now an affluent socialite, while Edith is impoverished, seething with resentment - and vengeful). Veteran Davis’ career was so long at this point she’d already made a variation of this film in the 1940s with A Stolen Life (1946)! Packed with juicy suspenseful twists and turns, Dead Ringer is a blast! And Davis in full blowtorch abrasive, gloriously self-parodic Medusa-like mode is simply magnificent. (This is precisely the incarnation of Davis that nightclub female impersonators like Charles Pierce and Craig Russell would seize on). 

Lobotomy Room is the FREE monthly film club devoted to Bad Movies for Bad People! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston. Numbers are limited, so reserve your seat via Fontaine’s website. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar. (Fontaine’s is closed until 10 January so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back until later in month). The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest. Facebook event page. 

And remember -- the only thing more fun than a movie starring Bette Davis – is a movie starring TWO Bette Davises!

Watch the trailer below:

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Macao (1952) on 16 February 2023

  

There is no place like it on earth. Macao in the China Seas across the bay from British Hong Kong. Where gambling is the heavy industry and smuggling and dope peddling come as naturally as eating. To this island of commercial sin comes Nick, a young grifter wanted back in the States – and Nora, a girl who never got the breaks. Both hard as nails, cynical, strangers. And on the same boat, posing as a salesman, comes a hard-boiled New York cop, sent out to capture a fugitive-racketeer is now the Frankie Costello of Macao …

Into this hotbed of espionage, intrigue and murder, three people take refuge! 

Robert Mitchum - living on velvet … loving the same way! 

Jane Russell - whose song belies … the fear in her heart! 

William Bendix - whose stock in trade … is danger! 

Yes, this is Macao – port of peril. Where boy meets girl too late! The risks they run …  the chances they take … fighting to remain together in a dangerous paradise!

On 16 February the Lobotomy Room film club (motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) whisks you away to the steamy Portuguese colony of Macao for this sordid noir thriller! Sure, the Times’ critic reportedly dismissed Macao as “melodramatic junk”, but I side with deviant queer film scholar Boyd McDonald, who concluded “Macao is, arguably, perfect.” 

Macao’s major selling point is the sullen dream duo of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, who effortlessly match other for tough wry humour and torpid impudence. As McDonald notes in his volume of essays Cruising the Movies (2015), “out of habit rather than anything in the script, the stars of Macao – and under their spell, the supporting players and extras – loiter about leering and sneering at each other, giving attitude. The attitude is one of contempt mixed with lust – an insolent craving, a concupiscent scorn … the players look as though they can’t stand the sight of each other, yet want to suck each other off … Russell, gifted with articulate nostrils and some slight imperfection in the nerves or muscles about her lips, is especially good at competitive sneering.” Seriously – how can you resist? 

Adding to the intrigue: temperamental veteran filmmaker Josef von Sternberg (the visionary behind all those great 1930s Marlene Dietrich films) was exhumed from semi-retirement to direct Macao but when preview audiences grumbled the film was too art-y and weird, an uncredited Nicholas Ray (of Johnny Guitar (1954) and Rebel without a Cause (1955) fame) was assigned to shoot additional scenes! Watch as well for delectable bad girl Gloria Grahame in a supporting role! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £6 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

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Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: This Woman is Dangerous (1952) on 19 January 2023

 

“Every inch a lady – until you look at the record! Part of her was Ritz – part of her was “racket” – all of her was exciting! Beth Austin – stylish dame with a stylish name who lived by jungle law in a big city and clawed her way to where the money was …”  

From the trailer:

 

“It’s that Austin woman!” 

“She’s front-page dynamite!” 

“How does she get away with it?” 

“Yes, they talked about this woman whose name was in the social register – and the police blotter. This lady who graced a millionaire’s mansion one night and a mobster’s hideout the next. Living dangerously, loving dangerously, she used each new romance to claw her way from the rackets to the Ritz. Into the careers of many men – into the hearts of two. One who saved life. One who took life. And she made them both pay the price of her reckless ambition.”

“A rancid melodrama” is how Joan Crawford’s biographer Bob Thomas disparages this low-rent 1952 noir crime thriller. "I must have been awfully hungry,” La Crawford herself bemoaned. “The kids were in school, the house had a mortgage. And so, I did this awful picture that had a shoddy story, a cliché script and no direction to speak of. The thing just blundered along. I suppose I could have made it better, but it was one of those times when I was so disgusted with everything that I just shrugged and went along with it. It was the worst picture I ever made." And remember - she’s including Trog (1970) in that assessment! 

In Woman, Crawford is Beth Austin, ersatz high society matron and mastermind of a criminal hold-up gang. (I love the idea of Crawford as a decorous “lady mobster” wearing little gloves and fur stoles, whose brooch matches her earrings). Oh, and did I mention Beth is wracked by headaches, at risk of going blind and urgently requires vision-saving experimental surgery? Seriously, she has a LOT on her plate! 

Is This Woman is Dangerous the worst film Crawford ever made? And what if you (like me) like “rancid melodramas?” Judge for yourself when the Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) presents This Woman is Dangerous on Thursday 19 January in the glittering Art Deco environs of Fontaine’s cocktail lounge in Dalston! 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page.

Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Bell, Book and Candle (1958) on 15 December 2022

 

On Thursday 15 December the Lobotomy Room film club returns with a festive presentation – with an occult twist! 

I don’t know if anyone but me considers ultra-stylish 1958 romantic comedy Bell, Book and Candle a “Christmas movie”. It stars ethereal Kim Novak as a sultry barefoot beatnik witch who casts a love spell on her neighbour James Stewart – even though he’s engaged to another woman! (Yes – this represents the second onscreen pairing of Stewart and Novak. Earlier the same year they memorably starred together in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo!). But the action of Bell, Book and Candle opens on Christmas Eve, the first music we hear as the credits end is “Jingle Bells”, and the film premiered in New York on Christmas day 1958! 

The supporting cast includes Jack Lemmon and Elsa Lanchester (yes – the Bride of Frankenstein). And for connoisseurs of chic fifties fashion and décor, Bell, Book and Candle is a dream! In short: it’s the perfect seasonal choice for our last film club of 2022! (If this selection elicits a sense of “déjà vu all over again” – we tried to show it in 2020 but cancelled due to lockdown. Then we scheduled it for Christmas 2021 but had to cancel when the Bamboo Lounge was reserved at the last minute for a private party. Hopefully the third attempt is the charm!). 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club devoted to cinematic perversity! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! Two drink minimum (inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu!). Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page. 

The Next Lobotomy Room Film Club: Passport to Shame (1958) on 28 July 2022

This month the Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) presents for your delectation tense, irresistibly trashy black-and-white British b-movie Passport to Shame (1958)! See the film described by Radio Times as “a cheap, tawdry and utterly fascinating piece of vintage sexploitation” that aims to expose the shame of London’s prostitution rings! As a bonus: Passport co-stars 26-year-old Diana Dors - British cinema’s reigning bad girl - at her pouting sex goddess zenith!  Thursday 28 July 2022 downstairs at the fabulous Fontaine’s bar in Dalston! (Note: the film club is normally third Thursday of every month - but this month it got bumped to the following Thursday! Don't get it twisted!). 

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the free monthly film club devoted to the cult, the kitsch and the queer! Third Thursday night of every month downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston's most unique nite spot)! Two drink minimum. Inquire about the special offer £5 cocktail menu! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential.  Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! (Any difficulties reserving, contact me on garusell1969@gmail.com). The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered in time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.

Facebook event page. 

/ Diana Dors in Passport to Shame (1958) /

/ Passport to Shame was released in North American markets as Room 43 / 

Read more here.