The Harvard Film Archive’s “Psychedelic Cinema” series comes to a head this week – literally. The series closes Thursday night with a free 35 mm screening of “Head” (1968), the sole starring vehicle for bubblegum goofballs The Monkees. The Monkees, of course, are often dismissed by more “serious” rock cognoscenti, but their countercultural credentials ran surprisingly deep: Yes, they were prefabricated for a TV show, but they were the product of the same creative brain trust that would later give us some of the greatest maverick cinema of the 1960s and ’70s. “Head” was the directorial debut of Bob Rafelson (“Five Easy Pieces,” “The King of Marvin Gardens”), and co-written by none other than a young Jack Nicholson. It plunges its prefab four through a surreal pastiche of snide self-parody, proving that all involved were “in” on the joke. Along the way, the film enlists a truly head-spinning roster of cameo guest stars, from Annette Funicello and boxing great Sonny Liston to cult actor Timothy Carey and iconoclastic rocker Frank Zappa (a surprising friend and supporter of the band). To top it all off, “Head” features some of the Monkees’ best songs, even if the band’s actual musical involvement was minimal: The opener “Porpoise Song” is an aching, soaring slice of vintage psychedelia penned by the great Carole King and Gerry Goffin. (Oh, and if you’re wondering about the title: Rafelson and Nicholson reasoned that, if they got to make a sequel, they could advertise it as “From the people who gave you …”)
If you sense a darkness in the air, it might not just be the end of daylight savings. To cinephiles, the 11th month is colloquially known as Noirvember, a time to celebrate hardboiled tales of hard-living detectives, unscrupulous femmes fatales and hapless everyday people plunged into downward spirals of corruption and intrigue. To celebrate, The Brattle Theatre has merged its yearly Noirvember programming with an ongoing Columbia 100 series, presenting 10 of the legendary studio’s darkest yarns. The series kicks off Friday with a new 4K restoration of Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place” (1950), starring Humphrey Bogart as a down-and-out screenwriter falsely accused (or is he?) of a brutal murder. Other highlights include double features from two of the true masters of the form: Fritz Lang (“The Big Heat,” 1953, and “Human Desire,” 1954) and Samuel Fuller (“Underworld U.S.A,” 1961, and “The Crimson Kimono,” 1959, the latter screening from an archival 35 mm print). It’s enough to make you kill the lights, crack open a bottle of the hard stuff and wonder about that suspicious car parked outside your office.
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of legendary Boston punk venue the Rathskeller (better remembered as simply The Rat) and Harvard’s “Making a Scene” exhibition of artifacts from the Boston punk scene, the Harvard Film Archive on Friday will present “Boston Punk Rewound/Unbound: The Arthur Freedman Collection.” A denizen of the scene from his teenage years, Newton native Freedman was a compulsive chronicler of the bands that crossed the stage of The Rat and Boston’s other famous (and infamous) nightclubs, both on audio and video tape. Rewound/Unbound presents treasures from Freedman’s collection pertaining specifically to bands and artists who fell outside of the usual rock ’n’ roll demographic – that is to say, nonwhite, nonmale and/or nonstraight. In addition to remarks from Freedman himself, the night will include performances from Martha Swetzoff (of Bound & Gagged, T-Venus and Body) and Dangerous Birds alums Thalia Zedek, Margery Meadow and Karen Sekiguchi. (Note that, at press time, this show is sold out, but rush tickets may be available at the door).
Venturing a little further from home, the HFA will also this week begin a monthlong series titled “The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957-1988.” Though less heralded than the new waves of other European countries, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was home to a vibrant cinema, and the HFA will present more than 50 eclectic features and shorts from a wide range of artists. The series kicks off on Saturday with Želimir Žilnik’s crime dramedy “The Way Steel Was Tempered” (1988), followed by a program of short films from the mysterious Vlatko Gilić. On Sunday, you can catch a rare screening of “Siberian Lady Macbeth” (1962), one of a pair of films made in the SFRY by renowned Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda. One of the supreme pleasures of the HFA is its ability to shine a light on cinematic movements forgotten by mainstream retrospectives, and I look forward to familiarizing myself with Yugoslav cinema in the weeks to come.
In these tense times, one might be forgiven for looking for a little light entertainment at the movies; arthouse cinema is all well and good, but sometimes you just need to see a hard-partying orangutan. To that end, the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema will screen “Every Which Way But Loose” (1978) as part of its monthlong “Friendsgiving” series of buddy pictures. The buddies here are, of course, Clint Eastwood, debuting his role as prizefighting truck driver Philo Beddoe, and Clyde, the rambunctious ape he won in a bet. Few would call this classic cinema, but there is an undeniable charm in watching one of our greatest movie tough guys in such an amiable shaggy dog (shaggy ape?) comedy. And if you tell me that you’re above watching an orangutan doing silly pratfalls and mugging for the camera, then I’m sorry, but I simply do not believe you.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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