There are few movies more polymorphously perverse than The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Jim Sharman’s giddy, demented adaptation of Richard O’Brien’s stage musical is a celebration of all that’s queer and fabulous, and I mean that in the best possible way.
A Pride Week screening of Rocky Horror feels like the most natural thing in the world, and there it is at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, complete with Shadow Cast performers, tonight (Friday) at 11:30 pm.
But there’s an unexpected bonus: the Bloor has convinced director of photography Peter Suschitzky to stop by for a pre-screening discussion before the show starts. This makes the screening a genuine event the man shot The War Game, The Empire Strikes Back, Dead Ringers (and every David Cronenberg film since) and Mars Attacks!, for Christ’s sake. He’s a freaking legend. He will have stories.
If you find yourself in the Annex tonight, you owe it to yourself to pop in. I’ll give five whole dollars to the first person who asks him about working with M. Night Shyamalan on After Earth.
And if you find yourself looking for a Canada Day party on Sunday night – as you do – well, the Bloor has you covered there as well. The theatre’s hosting a Canada Day Campfire Party. At 8:30 pm, a “virtual bonfire” will be set ablaze and competitions will be held at 9:30 pm, everyone will be tucked into their seats for a screening of the definitive summer-camp comedy Meatballs. Admission is $20 ($17 for Bloor members), which includes two drink tickets. And no, there is no possible way this could deteriorate into a Lord Of The Flies situation.
Once the long weekend’s over, don’t think you have to shut yourself up inside forever. Toronto’s various outdoor screening series go into overdrive in July, with three weekly programs to choose from – as well as a number of pop-up movies later in the month.
Yonge-Dundas Square still has the exclusive on Tuesday nights their Cult Classics II program got underway last week and continues July 2 with Sam Raimi’s Army Of Darkness, the third film in the original Evil Dead trilogy. (It’s the one with the knights and the tiny Ash clones.) Show starts at 9 pm, weather permitting.
On Wednesday, I kick off this year’s Harbourfront Free Flicks series with a screening of the director’s cut of Little Shop Of Horrors. Yes, it was released on disc last year, but as far as I’ve been able to determine, this will be the first public presentation of Frank Oz’s original version to be held in Canada, with the spectacular Godzilla-inspired conclusion rejected by the studio as being kind of a downer. (The studio was right, but that’s hardly the point.) Don’t you want to see that with a crowd? We start at 9 pm. Wear something green.
If giant plants going all kaiju on the world aren’t your cup of tea, there’s always TIFF In The Park, just a few blocks north at David Pecaut Square. This year’s theme is A Summer Of Romance, and they’re opening Wednesday at 9:15 pm with a screening of Casablanca, which I cannot really argue against in any compelling way. Except to point out that you’ve almost certainly seen Casablanca before, and you probably haven’t caught the director’s cut of Little Shop Of Horrors. So there you go.
