Shaolin Nailgun

We'll be bringing the heat to The Sunset once again this November 19th with a delectable selection of the tastiest cinemorsels one can find...

The Awful Hour - 6:00pm - Phill stirs the pot with some good olde fashioned VHS mystery trash scavenged from the waste bin of history

Shaolin Intruders - 7:00pm - Classic Shaw Brothers kung-fu weirdness from the 1980's will once again grace The Sunset screen. Featuring some of the best talent of the day, this film was directed by fight choreographer Tang Chia, so you know that the action is top notch. Wrapped around all this is a plot involving mysterious masked assassins and a tense, delicate imbalance between comedy and violence. 

Nail Gun Massacre - 8:30 - Straight from the heart of 1985 Texas comes one of our favorite low budget slashers of all time. One liners, violence, puns, grilled-cheese-sandwiches, nudity and Vietnam Veterans wearing Canadian Tuxedos are only part of the glory that is Nail Gun Massacre. I'm appalled that we haven't shown this one yet, but ecstatic that we get to do it now. They make horror so much bigger and badder down in Texas. Way badder.

See you at the Sunset, Monday November 19th!

Evening of Horrors Toast

Thanks for another great show y'all!

See you in November...

Evening of Horrors

Monday October 22nd 

Show starts at 6pm!

 

This October we difer our annual, zombie fest (good riddance to cliche) in favor of fun stuff we literally haven’t seen yet until the very night of the dang show.

Screened in succession for the first time before our collective eyeballs are:

Super Xuxa vs. Satan – Brazilian TV moguless takes on the forces of ‘evil’ in this innuendo steeped knockoff of The Labyrinth. No subtitles and no dubbing. Finest kind.

Spookies  – The box has pictures of cool rubber monsters and a nice painting on the front cover. You don’t see painted covers (or covers) much anymore, much less rubber monsters. (Or boxes we suppose.)

Killer Crocodile – The DVD that we found was a German import that proclaimed a lack of censorship and lots of bloody dismembered, partly-digested fun. The pictures on the back confirmed this in spades. We're convinced.

See you there...

Show starts at 6pm!

Monday October 22nd

At the Sunset; 5433 Ballard Ave.

Archer Deadbeat

 

Coming this September 17th at The Sunset is another round of cult and exploitation cinema you won't find anywhere else. Sure, you could go see The Goonies again at that hipster bar, but there wouldn't be any surprises and you might fall asleep.

The grindhouse STARTS AT 6:00:

The Awful Hour - VHS oddities salvaged from the used bin

Brave Archer and His Mate (1982) – While a bit of a mess plot-wise, this Chang Cheh directed kung-fu epic boasts an all star cast including Fu Sheng and a number of the Venoms. Multigenerational revenge, training sequences, frog-style kung fu and freaky dragon-women anchor this tale simultaneously in both the familiar and the absurd. 

Deadbeat at Dawn (1988) – This raw action film was written, directed, produced by Jim Van Bebber who also stars as the lead heavy ‘Goose.’ When his girlfriend tells him he either leaves the gangs or loses her, Goose is torn. But when she’s brutally murdered by a rival clique, there’s no choice left to make except all out revenge. A classic tale taken to bloody-knuckled extremes in this fiercely independent Dayton, Ohio masterwork. 

Always FREE and always different.

See you there.

Shadow Whip

It's time again for another round of fine dining at Kung Fu Grindhouse. This August 20th we offer up the following meal four your brain to digest:

6:00pm - The Awful Hour - An appetizer of found videos

7:00pm - The Shadow Whip (1971)- The first course consists of some classical Shaw Brothers fare starring the epic Pei-Pei Cheng as a whip-wielding orphan on the path of revenge! Then again, so are a mob of other character heavies, and extras and, well everybody seems to be looking for this "Shadow Whip" person. Or was it somebody else, who IS the guilty party!? That's what all the fighting is about I suppose, and there is a lot of it. Set during the winter snows in Northern China, Shadow Whip is a rather unique piece of cinema-fu and one of our recent favorites!

8:30 - Macabre (1980) - For the second course we're offering up some Italian, with extra red sauce! When her lover is killed in an auto accident Jane is committed to a psychiatric hospital. Emerging a year later she resumes her life, seemingly recovered from the traumatic experience. But nothing is as kosher as it seems in this grotesque monstrification of sexuality. It is always entertaining to see what length men will go to to make women into monsters and this early effort from legacy director Lamberto Bava spares nothing. Set in New Orleans, Macabre figuratively and literally drips with atmosphere.

We'll see you on August 20th for a full meal of vintage genre cinema at the Sunset!

Invasion USA

Here we go again.... It's been way too long since we celebrated this fine feathered nation of ours, and an election year seems like as good a time as any. So, this July 16 we're going out in style with:

Awful Hour: 6:00pm - What sort of fun have we found in the used bin this month?

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior: 7:00pm - The title alone sends shivers up my spine and the movie only gets better. A woman with a fetus in a jar braves a dystopian urban wasteland to deliver the human-larva to the safety of a ship waiting just off shore. With the help of a Fabio-esque cyborg she must avoid the menacing evil of a very Rob Halford-esque cyborg bent on the destruction of all reproductive life. Personally, despite a dearth of titilation I think this lost gem of 90’s STV trash is literally swimming in sex metaphors a-la-robot. But don't take my word for it!

Invasion USA: 8:30pm -  Chuck Norris fends off the wily Commies (led by the late Richard Lynch) with only a couple of uzis and a pickup-truck (okay, okay a special pickup-truck.) No surprises there, but oh what fun it is to ride in a cocaine fueled nightmare of Cold-War patriotism! No more need be said about this film.

See you Dog-fearing Americanos at The Sunset/Kung Fu Grindhouse on July 16th!

Like that shit on Facebook.

Bloody Fists of Justice

Thanks for making this another great show! We'll be back in July for some some good old fashioned jingoistic patriotism!

If you haven't already, go LIKE US over at Facebook!

See you 6:00pm, July 16th at the Sunset!

The Bloody Fists

Coming this June 18th to a Sunset Tavern near you:

The Awful Hour - 6 to 7pm: Rusurected VHS trash from the heyday of the magnetic format.

Steele Justice - 7:00 : In the 1980's Americans needed somebody to blame for the Vietnam War, someone to hold responsible for all the death, misery and wasted time. Lord knows there were lots of options; politicians, generals, big-business, the Soviets. John Steele (Martin Kove, the evil teacher in Karate Kid) has another idea though, why not blame the Vietnamese!? It's the perfect opportunity for the embittered, maladjusted Vet to fight the war all over again (in much lower budget) at home. Hey Mr., Put Rambo back in your pants!

The Bloody Fists - 8:30 : The eternal enemy of China returns once again to menace the motherland in the harrowing tale of Japanese Karate ruffians (played by Chinese) versus stoic Chinese Kung Fu defenders of justice. Heaps of violence ensue as the bandits repeatedly batter the inhabitants of a small village in an effort to take control of all the 'Dragon Herb". Some say that it cures the plague, some say that it changes your perspective. But everybody agrees that it worth killing the shit out of each other for, and when Jang Wu-dip shows up to defend the imperiled villagers, the Herb is sure to hit the fan.

Kung Fu Grindhouse provides the visuals for FREE, The Sunset provides the drinks and food for cheap, Dragon Herb is not included. We'll see you there!

Until then, go LIKE us on Facebook.

Hard Ticket Toast

Thanks again for making this month a success, we'll be back on June 18 for more award-winning cinema refry!

See you then and friend us HERE.

Tough & Deadly

Check it out folks, this here is the rundown for the New Kung Fu Grindhouse on Monday May 21st:

The Awful Hour - 6:00pm - We have a plethora of new garbage to parade before your eager eye-holes.

Tough and Deadly - 7:00pm - Straight from the hands of goDs comes this bromantic tale of Elmo Freech (Roddy Piper) and John Portland (Billy Blanks) two rippling man-beasts with a vendetta to settle. When Portland is beaten into amnesia and left for dead it falls to his new-found pal Elmo to help him rediscover his identity (and it aint Puget Sound!) and exact punitive damages on the perpetrators. Through a series of heartwarming workout sequences, sweaty bear-hugs and cranial rearrangement scenes our two brotagonists beat the odds and bad guys just in time for the end credits. All the action satisfaction you can get in one FREE movie!

Hard Ticket to Hawaii - 8:30pm - From the incredibly imaginative mind of Andy Sidaris comes this harrowing tale of washed up Playmates working as drug enforcement agents on Molokai. Teaming up with some severely hunky man-meat, our lady-heroes tackle a heavy case that's sure to require a topless strategy session or two before cutting loose with the big guns. Arrayed against them are the forces of doobie-smoking evil and a big-ass rubber snake, but once you buy the ticket, you're bound to take the ride with these ladies. Pure existential lunacy in this razor-edged frisbee of a FREE film!

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7 Year Anniversary

It's true, after 84 straight months we're celebrating our seventh anniversary with some of our favorite movies of the last few years.

Awful Hour - Rescued VHS trash from the recycling bin of history resurfaces for sixty sweet minutes.

The Dirt Bike Kid - 7pm - Oedipal allegory and the kid from A Christmas Story combine into one hell of a Herbie the Love Bug knockoff.

Battle Wizard - 8:30 - The kung-fu laser beams begin in this film, a bizarre, no holds barred exception to the chop-socky rule. Giant snakes, a rubber gorilla and fire-breathing robotic chicken legs are only scratching the surface of this thing. It's amazing.

The Devil's Sword - 10:00 - The Indonesian film industry, while productive, has received little attention in the U.S. Fortunately this movie got a DVD release, and we thankfully return it to the screen at the Sunset. When the evil Alligator Queen kidnaps a village princess, it's up to Mandala to find The Devil's Sword and battle his way through a host of audacious monsters to rescue her. Horror, fantasy, kung-fu and laser-beams combine to make this one of the finest action films of all time.

Exciting changes are coming to Kung Fu Grindhouse, this April is going to be an awesome Anniversary show. We'll see you on the 23rd, and in the meantime, we've been holding out a long time for this but, LIKE US ON FACEBOOK.

Drink Specials of the Past

Brothers Five Toast

Hey folks, thanks for making it another successful Grindhouse!

We'll see you mothers on April 23rd for our seven year anniversary!

Brothers Five

Awful Hour - 6pm: You know the drill; salvaged educational/instructional/terrible VHS tapes make it to the big screen at last

The Deadly Mantis - 7pm: Natural disasters free a giant praying mantis from its icy arctic tomb just in time for dinner. Crossing the barren flavorless wastes of Canada it heads for the eastern seaboard where hordes of tender tasty morsels run screaming through the streets just begging to be masticated. A classic of the Giant-Insect-On-The-Lam era and easily one of the best.

Freaked - 8:30pm: Bill S. Preston Esquire stars in this harrowing tale of a spoiled child star looking for work in all the wrong places. Taking a job peddling toxic chemicals in South America he finds himself hideously mutated by Randy Quaid. At least he's in good company with Mr.T, Keanu Reeves and a host of other B-list stars in this gross-out surreal comedy.

Brothers Five - 10pm: After the brutal murder of their parents, five infant brothers are separated and grow to adulthood on their own. Years later each one separately tries to exact vengeance but finds that he's no match for the fighters of evil Teng Lung Manor. Cheng Pei-Pei stars as the woman working to reunite the brothers so that they can exact their prolonged bloody revenge. And it is. Brothers Five is one of the blood-geyseriest movies we've seen in a long while.

R.O.T.O.R.

This month of paunchy robots and embittered 'Nam vets actually begins with a blast from the alcoholic past. Witness as we begin our show with an early chapter in a popular superheroes otherwise unremarkable life...

Revenge of the Red Baron 7pm - Revenge of the Red Baron stars a young and troubled Tobey Maguire as "Jimmy", grandson of the World War 1 Ace who shot down the titular tyrant of the skies. For no apparent reason other than to provide "action" and a misleading title, the spirit of the Red Baron possesses a toy plane to kill Jimmy's Gramps, (Mickey Rooney) even though the guy's already dying of terminal oldness.

Ghetto Blaster 8:30pm - When Travis, a middle-aged recalcitrant Vietnam Vet, returns home to visit his parents, he soon finds that his old hood is teeming with the sort of criminal activity and gang warfare usually reserved for a lower class of people... Instead of taking it lying down he does what Nam Vets everywhere were doing in the 80's; uses his army training to clean up the streets at home! Ghetto Blaster!

R.O.T.O.R. 10pm - Robotic Officer Tactical Operation Research. A prototype robot intended for crime combat escapes from the development lab and goes on a killing rampage. Why is it that every time they build a crime fighting robot it does exactly the opposite of its intended use? Because that's what makes bad movies good! And in Texas, everything is bigger and badder!

We'll see you this February mother-cluckin' 13th at the Sunset!

Bells of Death

On January 16th we're ringing in the new year with Death! Come check out some classic kung-fu action and a selection of other fine cinema carcasses exhumed from the archives:

Awful Hour 6pm - VHS foundlings start the night off

Theodore Rex 7pm - Whoopi Goldberg stars as a bitter cop who teams up with a human sized talking dinosaur in this dystopian sci-fi kiddie flick

Society 8:30 - An adopted teenager finds out that affluence is rather more monstrous than he ever thought

Bells of Death 10pm - What else but revenge Wu Xui style!

See you January 16th!