Everything You Wanted to Ask About the Sci Fi Screening Room, But Were Afraid to Know...

January’s HULK Night! featured nearly every version of the animated Hulk (1966 - 1996), plus clips from the 1977 pilot movie and the climax of 1990’s Death of the Incredible Hulk. Our feature presentation was Metamorphosis, an amazing 1979 live-action episode packed with glam rock, death fantasies, an indictment of the music industry and an LSD freak-out (Banner hallucinates that his alter-ego is chasing him across the desert, only to morph into a stoned Hulk!) Live entertainment included Hulkus (Hulk haikus) and a Hulk piñata smashed by an actor as the Green Goliath.



Thanks everybody who came out to KISS NIGHT!
For March’s KISS Night! Kevin (and co-host Rob Gorden) donned face-paint to present the 1978 made-for-TV movieKISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. The screening included clips of Gene Simmons in the futuristic thriller Runaway (1984). Audience members were challenged to a beer-guzzling contest against Rob’s robot-clone. Kevin read KISS-ku (KISS haikus.) The after-party included KISS make-overs, a KISS tribute Band (Creatures of the Night), a costume contest and DJ Joey Nova.



In April, Kevin and co-host Raven Snook covered themselves in glitter for THE APPLE Night! The feature film, The Apple, is a flamboyant, dystopian Adam & Eve story set in a nightmarish future of 1994 (as imagined in 1980.) Raven led the crowd in a sing-a-long and gave an audience member a futuristic glam-rock make-over. After the screening DJ Joey Nova hosted a glam-rock party at Beauty Bar with apple-flavored drink specials, glitter manicures and lots of David Bowie music.








May welcomed BATMAN Night!, showcasing everything from the 1943 serial to 1998’s New Adventures of Batman (with an animated version of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight.) The feature presentation was a rare 1978 Challenge of the Superfriends episode where Batman and friends get turned into Hobbit-like trolls. Co-host Nick Nadel interviewed Batman Strikes writer Matthew K. Manning. Kevin shared poetry as he’d collected over 400 original Batman Haikus for the event. (He hopes to publish a Bat-ku page-a-day calendar.) There were Batman-themed trivia games and a dramatic reading of fan fiction. The after-party, at The Hangar Bar, served Batman-inspired cocktails.



Die hard fans turned out for June’s ROCK & RULE Night! when Kevin (and co-host Dekker Dryer) screened 1983’s Rock & Rule. The film was preceded by a retrospective on Nelvana animation (including the Boba Fett cartoon sequence in The Star Wars Holiday Special and clips from The Care Bears Movie.) Trivia prizes included CDs by artists from the movie, including Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. DJ Joey Nova kept the evening going with an all-night after-party at Beauty Bar.

DAMNATION ALLEY Night! was a September screening of the second-greatest fantasy film from 1977, Damnation Alley. The post-apocalyptic adventure paired Jan Michael Vincent with George Peppard and futuristic Winnebago known as The Landmaster. Clips included an episode of ARK II and the episode of Get a Life where Chris faces off against Paperboy 2000 (a paper-delivery robot played by the Landmaster.) The evening featured only one haiku (about George Peppard’s moustache) because Kevin had never seen the movie before.



October’s FRANKENSTEIN Night! was a 3-hour bonanza starting with a video cavalcade including clips from Frankenstein Vs. Baragon (1965) Blackenstein (1972) and Thomas Edison’s original 1910 Frankenstein. Tom Carrozza sang Mel Torme’s "Monsters Lead Such Interesting Lives" and Marian Brock read an epic poem about the Creature. Kevin showed a 1976 view-master reel and Maura Madden (author of Crafternoon) provided tips for Halloween crafts and costumes. The video show was followed by the Quicksilver Radio Theater Company’s 60-minute adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original novel.

November was BIGFOOT Night! a delightful evening which brought out skeptics and honest-to-God Bigfoot fans. Co-host M. Sweeney Lawless treated the crowd to eyewitness accounts, original folk art and M&Ms. We screened clips from Bigfoot: Man or Beast?, The Legend of Boggy Creek, Bigfoot & Wildboy and the episode of The Six Million Dollar Man featuing Andre the Giant as the Bionic Bigfoot. (This is widely regarded as the best episode in the series. No duh!) Our feature presentation was the award-winning short film Skunk Ape!? Special guests included lecturer Doug Skinner and Australian journalist Dan Ziffer. M. Sweeney Lawless put together a kick-ass booklet of bigfoot haikus, true stories and fun-facts. That alone was worth the price of admission (it was $7 for believers, $10 for non-believers.)

Watch this clip.

Upcoming Shows:

In December Raven Snook returns to co-host SCI FI MUSICALS Night! It’s a collection of songs and clips from Sci Fi Musicals ranging from Phantom of the Paradise (1974) to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog (2008). The evening will celebrate the best numbers from cult favorites like Forbidden Zone (1980) and Xanadu (1980) to lesser-known films like the Alan Arkin super-hero parody The Return of Captain Invincible (1983) and the Pia Zadora-Craig Sheffer oddity Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1987). Plus TV clips like the episode of Buck Rogers that featured space rockers Andromeda -- and the overlooked Donnie and Marie Star Wars Special.

2009 will include:
VIDEO-GAME MOVIE Night! and GODZILLA Night! and SUPER-HERO Night!

KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park

Super-heroes Super-Styles

Actors we love to love: Brad Dourif

Dark City

X-Files FAQ

BLOBFEST 2008

I encourage everyone to go to Blobfest. Next year marks BLOBFEST 10 (or maybe BLOBFEST X) -- book your hotel room now.

Creepy Clown Cinema

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (at the Bronx Zoo)

SCI FI SCREENING ROOM: ROCK & RULE

Thanks to everyone who came out for BATMAN NIGHT, next at the the Sci Fi Screening Room we're showing 1983's ROCK & RULE.

Co-hosted by Kevin Maher and Dekker Dryer (founder of Illusion TV)

We'll have sci-fi shorts, trivia, drinking games, prizes and cheap beer.

After the show, the evening continues with a glam-rock party at Beauty Bar (231 East 14th Street btw 2nd and 3rd Aves). DJ Joey Nova is playing more from the artists of ROCK & RULE -- Stooges, Velvet Underground, Blondie and more! Makeup artists offer glam makeovers and glitter manicures to get you feeling like a futuristic glam-pop super-star.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 2nd @ 7 PM

WHERE: UNDER St. Mark's
94 St. Mark’s Place, btw 1st Ave and Avenue A
L-train to 1st Ave, F/V to 2nd Ave, R-train to 8th St, 6 to Astor Pl.

HOW MUCH: just seven bucks


THE SCI FI SCREENING ROOM has been an editor's pick in Time Out NY, Gothamist, Village Voice, The New York Post, and the New York Times' Urban Eye.

WALL-E and other E.T. rip-offs

The Toxic Avenger: and other Sci Fi Musicals

Visit these links to hear more music from: Spider Baby, The Toxic Avenger, The Last Starfighter

Sports of the Future

Join me during my visit to the Sport Museum of America, where I discuss Future Sports (without actually mentioning FUTURE SPORT, a made-for-TV-movie starring Dean Cain and Wesley Snipes. We cut that for time.)

F.A.Q.: King Kong (1976)

A tiger-bear sounds terrifying!

I was recently interviewed by a cool website called THE NEW ROOTS PROJECT.

Read the interview here. Finally, your chance to hear what I REALLY think about the relationship between the television industry and independent film.

If you check out the interview, you might notice an error -- it says "Tiger Bear called him Funny!" That's a typo. It's supposed to be Tiger BeaT. Not Tiger BeaR.

In the future, I think a better typo would be "Tiger Beat called him Funky!"

Thanks for BATMAN Night

Last Wednesday Nick Nadel and I screened an evening of BATMAN videos, starting with an episode of the Batman cartoon called "Legends of the Dark Knight" -- in the 1950's story Gary Owens voices Batman opposite Michael McKean's Joker.

After that we let the audience choose a clip from the 1966 Batman movie -- the overwhelming majority wanted to watch the "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb" sequence instead of the "Shark Repellant" scene. Good call audience! It got the biggest laughs of the night. The second biggest laugh came when I read a Batman haiku which was penned by my wife. (She's funnier than me.)

Then we showed some of the 1943 Batman Serial, which is historically significant for: a drab Batmobile, slow pacing, and racism (the bad kind.) Following the dramatic cliffhanger, Nick read titilating passages from
Dr. Fredrick Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent.

We lightened the mood by showing the 1978 WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERFRIENDS episode Lord of Middle Earth, which is like a Tolkien-ripoff by someone who hasn't read Lord of the Rings, but heard about it from an older cousin. This episode features many of the highlights seen in the show's opening credits. Then we took an intermission, giving people a chance to enjoy some BATMAN CEREAL (okay, it was Cap'n Crunch) and wash it down with beer.



Then it was back to the festivities with a staged reading of a pice of fan fiction entitled "BATMAN: Nemesis Fight". Actors -- you haven't lived until you've performed fan fiction before a live audience. It was a highlight of my career.

We kept the laughs coming with Will Carlough's short film "Robin's Big Date" where Sam Rockwell plays the Batman opposite Justin Long's Boy Wonder. We read some Batman haikus and then Nick interviewed Batman Strikes writer Matthew K. Manning, who shared the secrets of his Batman collectibles collection.

We switched gears into futuristic mutant cartoon mode, with an additional segment of "Legends of the Dark Knight" where the Frank Miller Batman battles mutants. Batman kicks much mutant ass.

Every show must come to an end, and ours ended with the conclusion of "Lord of Middle Earth" which had some amazing giant snails doing battle with spiders. (Spoiler alert! Snails win.)


After the show we hit the Hanger bar for some delicious Batman cocktails.

For more Batman haikus, you can email me to get a booklet mailed to you. Or check out Mike Whalen’s blog (scroll down). When I requested some Batman Haikus, Mike and slam poet David Hendlerchallenged each other to write 100 each. I also accepted the literary challenge and now we have close to 400 Batman Haikus. Can anyone recommend a good page-a-day-calendar publisher?