For all the times you exited the theatre wondering, “What the hell were they thinking?”, you can ask them at the Toronto Underground Cinema this month.
At three performances in August alone, the recently-reopened movie theatre is trotting out directors and stars of the cult films it specializes in. In the coming weeks, the theatre will be hosting directors Kevin Smith, John Waters and actor Robert Englund (that’s Freddy Kreuger himself, minus the scissorhands).
Typically a move reserved for one-off events and festival season, the Underground’s founders have made bringing in directors and actors for Q&A sessions part of their mandate. Last year, the theatre staged a showing of the 1966 classic Batman: The Movie followed by a cozy post-film conversation with the original spandex-clad superhero, Adam West.
“An added layer is introduced to a film when an actor or director is present,” says Charlie Lawton, who, along with Nigel Agnew, Alex Woodside, reopened the reportory theatre in May 2010.
+ On August 15, The Toronto Underground will be showing Kevin Smith’s new thriller Red State followed by an in-person Q&A with Smith, best known for Clerks and its comedic successors. Questions might be expected: Red State is a departure from his mellower roots, involving American teens who encounter sinister fundamentalists.
+ On August 26, Robert Englund will be at The Toronto Underground for the showing and discussion of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Englund portrayed the disfigured, blade-gloved dream-stalker from 1984 until the 2010 remake.
+ On August 27, the cinema will be hosting a one-night-only performance of This Filthy World featuring the “Prince of Perversion” himself, John Waters, in his one-man vaudeville monologue about all things trashy. Waters is celebrated for his early 1970 transgressive cult films, his casting of real-life convicted criminals and his film-turned-multi-million-dollar Broadway musical Hairspray.
The theatre opened in 1977, as a Kung Fu movie joint, and been through a number of incarnations since. The cinema specializes in genre classics, B movie greats, indie art house, and the pick of best current Hollywood flicks, presenting “cinema the way it was meant to be, away from the glitz and glam of the multiplex.”
