John Waters will introduce camp classic at Anthology Film Archives on February 4
KITTEN WITH A WHIP (Douglas Heyes, 1964)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Friday, February 4, 7:30
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
Anthology Film Archives might spend most of its time showing the serious side of the history of cinema, focusing on underground, avant-garde, and fiercely independent international programming, but every once in a while it lets its pants down, and when it does, it does so in a big way. As part of its continuing fortieth anniversary celebration, Anthology will be showing Douglas Heyes’s 1964 camp classic KITTEN WITH A WHIP, starring Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Peter Brown, Patricia Barry, and Richard Anderson. Based on the pulp novel, the low-budget hoot, which has been playfully hammered by the folks over at Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and the Golden Raspberry Awards, will be introduced by John Waters, who should have some delicious things to say about this sordid tale of sex, juvenile delinquency, S&M, jailbait, and other wonderfully seedy delights. Anthology Film Archives was founded in 1969 by Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage as “an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video”; among the other films being presented this month are F. W. Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927), Jean Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), Abbas Kiarostami’s CLOSE-UP (1990), Vsevolod I. Pudovkin’s MOTHER (1926), and Yasujiro Ozu’s THERE WAS A FATHER (1942), so KITTEN WITH A WHIP should feel right at home.