Wednesdays get weird when Late Shift at the Grindhouse hosts Ross Meyer, Joe Derderian, and Aaron Holmgren dig up low-budget b-movies, horror and gore-fests, and camp classics for your viewing pleasure. Buy your ticket and take a ride in our Time Machine! Punch in and earn a bonus! $3 Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboys and $3 small popcorn! PLUS -- special custom trash trailer reel curated by Ross with cheap swag and prize giveaways!
Teenage Tupelo (1995)
Directed by Mike McCarthy (The Sore Losers)
Featuring D'Lana Tunnell
What if the twin had lived?
Director Mike McCarthy joins us at FilmScene to celebrate the restoration of his classic film as well as the release of the hardcover book from Fantagraphics Underground.
"Elvis Presley and his stillborn twin Jesse influenced my underground comics and my low-budget, Exploitation filmmaking in the last decade of the twentieth century in Memphis, Tennessee. Frustrated at the lack of information regarding my true identity as the adopted child of an adopted child, I chose to make a semi-auto-bio-comedy-drama on Super 8 film for $12,000 called Teenage Tupelo. Using the tropes of Exploitation film, I asked the question, 'Wanna see some naked pictures of my mother?'" - Mike McCarthy, director
"What makes this film remarkable is how it utilizes the garish imagery of 60's sexploitation, complete with go-go girls shot from a low-angle, partial nudity, tight foundation garments, and playful kinky fantasy, to relate what is essentially the filmmaker's tender meditation on the mother he never knew." - Swank Magazine
"Standout color sequences include two 60s style nudie scenes (one is girls in chains) and a fun imitation Scopitone (music video) at a drive in." - Michael J. Weldon, Psychotronic Video
Follow D'Lana of East Tupelo, 1962 (Starlet D'Lana Tunnell) as she gets knocked up by Johnny Tu-Note, a washed up rockabilly singer returning from the Army. No one wants her to have the baby (except the adoption family). Lonely D'Lana attracts the wrong crowd: Capt. Crypt, a weird apparition who lives in a school bus in the woods - and the Madd Madd Manhaters, a girl gang who worships a Memphis starlet named "Topsy Turvy" - who looks just like D'Lana. Will D'Lana keep the baby or give it away? Capt. Crypt wants an answer. Watch D'Lana reveal her body, but not her mind.