Tons of movie options for Saturday, include “Deathwatch” and “Mommie Dearest”.

Yes, we know it’s actually rather springy today, but there are also a lot of great film options for this Saturday, April 16. Enjoy the slightly balmy air then go check out a flick…there’s a couple of doozies to choose from.

Little Tina is SOOOO going to get even with that bitch...

First up, in a matter of hours in fact, is a special screening of the camp, cult classic 1981’s Mommie Dearest, the notorious film based on the notorious memoir by Christina Crawford which alerted the world that her mother, film icon Joan Crawford was not likely to ever win a “Mother of the Year” Award. Starring Faye Dunaway as Joan, in a bravura/bizarro performance that may or may not have derailed her acting career, the film includes more beloved lines than a glass coffee table at a WeHo cocktail party, including “Tina, bring me the axe!” and “I’m not mad at YOU, I”m mad at the dirt!” The film is screening today at 4pm at The Lobby Bar and for the most charming of reasons. Let Lobby Bar co-owner Paul Villa explain it in his own words:

A dear friend of mine can’t get his gay card until he completes his Mommie Dearest badge (imagine that, a 32 y.o. gay man that has never seen Mommie Dearest).

I offered to watch it with him at my house, but then I decided to open it up to anyone who hasn’t seen it and hold it at a bigger venue. Plus, it’s more fun watching it with a group of budding gays.

I’ll be showing it on Saturday, 4/16, at 4:00 p.m. Late enough so you can recover from your Friday night, but early enough that you can still go out.

Feel free to invite your friends. The more the merrier.

It’s a very informal event…pop in and relive the insanity, even if it’s “not your first time at the rodeo”….

Leonard Nimoy and Michael Forest as prisoners in “Deathwatch” (1966) screening at NWFF, Saturday, April 16.

Even more provocative, but unlikely to be a film that most cinephiles have seen, is 1966’s rarely screened Deathwatch based on the play by French writer/activist Jean Genet and screening as part of Three Dollar Bill Cinema’s spring film series, “Outlaw: Jean Genet on Film”. The original “Bizarre Love, er, LUST Triangle”, Deathwatch takes place in a prison and concerns the battle over the new young stud in the pen between two of the inmates, the overtly gay Maurice, played by actor/director Paul Mazursky and a thief, LeFranc played by a young, pre Star Trek Leonard Nimoy who also co-produced this indie film which was directed by the actor Vic Morrow, who later died during the filming of The Twilight Zone: The Movie. This was a tiny, tiny, indie film with few extant copies and NOT available on home video and Mr. Nimoy was pivotal in aiding Three Dollar Bill Cinema to obtain a print to screen for this series. (Yet another reason to adore the multi-hyphenate actor/director/writer/photographer/awesome guy.) Deathwatch screens Saturday night at 7pm at Northwest Film Forum and it’s well worth checking out…especially for folks who’ve enjoyed all those “slash” fiction stories featuring Spock and Kirk…here’s your chance to see “Spock”, aka, Mr. Nimoy, get all homoerotic on some poor jailbird’s ass!