Mormonsploitation!
Pioneer Theater
East Village / Lower East Side, NYC
December 2005

A quick overview of some of the Mormons' crazy and dangerous ideas, as well as some of the goofy characters the LDS community has brought forth into the celluloid world!

"Peluca," the precursor to NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, also directed by Jared Hess and starring Jon Heder, will precede select screenings. Sweet!

Read the preview in THE REELER.

Mormonsploitation season tickets: $52 for all eight movies.

Order regular price tickets for each of the eight Mormonsploitation movies, and when you check out, you will automatically get a $20 discount from the list price of $72. To order tickets for more than one movie, tab back to the page listing all the movies after you reach the Shopping Cart page for individual movies. The discount will be applied automatically once you reach the Payment Screen. However, the purchases all must be made in the same session! God bless!

Special thanks to Emily Rems, James D'Arc of the BYU Film Archive, Stu VanAirsdale, Steve Fagan, Ed Seaman of Music Video Distributors, Paul Rachman of Slamdance, Dennis Nyback, and Murray Glass.

Mormonsploitation!

TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS (2005)

(dir. Ian Allen, 69 mins, 2005)

Thurs Dec 15 9pm - buy tix
Fri Dec 16 9pm - buy tix
Sat Dec 17 9pm - buy tix
Sun Dec 18 9pm - buy tix
Mon Dec 19 9pm - buy tix
Tues Dec 20 9pm - buy tix
Weds Dec 21 9pm - buy tix

filmmakers & special guests will attend

www.trappedbythemormons.com

a remake of the 1922 cult horror classic!

Mormonsploitation!
Pioneer Late Nights

ALL DOLLED UP

(dir. Bob Gruen 95 mins)

Sat Dec 17 10:15pm - buy tix

featuring the New York Dolls!

In the early 70's, rock photographer Bob Gruen and his wife Nadya purchased a portable video recorder. In a period of three years they shot over 40 hours of New York Dolls footage. Now for the first time ever this footage is unveiled. This feature length documentary captures the band during early performances in New York at Kenny's Castaways and Max's Kansas City, then follows the Dolls on their tour of the west coast, including footage from the Whiskey A Go Go, the Real Don Steele Show, Rodney Bingenheimer's E Club and much more. Intercut with revealing interviews, backstage banter and late night debauchery, this is THE definitive document of the New York Dolls.

Mormonsploitation!

PRIMER

(dir. Shane Carruth, 78 mins, 2004)

Fri Dec 16 midnight - buy tix

ALTHOUGH NOT OPENLY MORMON, PRIMER FEATURES TWO GUYS IN WHITE SHIRTS AND TIES WITH CRAZY IDEAS ABOUT THE FUTURE AND THE PAST SPEAKING GIBBERISH SOMEWHERE IN THE AMERICAN WEST. COULD PRIMER BE A COVERT MORMON PROPAGANDA MOVIE? COME INVESTIGATE!

"PRIMER is the headiest, most singular science-fiction movie since Kubrick made 2001."
(ESQUIRE)

"An ingenious movie about the perils of ingenuity. . .Invigorating. . .Like PI or MEMENTO, PRIMER is the kind of movie likely to inspire both imitators and cultists. . .Carruth has invented something fascinating."
(A.O. Scott, NY TIMES)

* Grand Jury Prize - Sundance Film Festival *

PRIMER is set in the industrial park/suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed contemporary city where two young engineers, Abe and Aaron, are members of a small group of men who work by day for a large corporation while conducting extracurricular experiments on their own time in a garage. While tweaking their current project, a device that reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it by blocking gravitational pull, they accidentally discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities--ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next.

A ThinkFilm release.

Mormonsploitation!

TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS (1922)

(dir. H.B. Parkinson, 1922)

Sat Dec 17 7pm - buy tix

The original Mormonsploitation classic!
Where the truth was revealed for the first time!

Starring Evelyn Brent and Olaf Hytten

This exploitative early film is a drama about the Mormon sect. The story of a young girl, lured into the Mormon's net by the most clever of the Mormon ranks.
(synopsis from imdb)

Extremely rare 16mm print proudly projected at the wrong speed, with special added Mormonsploitation shorts.

Mormonsploitation!
Pioneer Late Nights

NEW YORK DOLL

(dir. Greg Whiteley,78 mins, 2005)

Sat Dec 3 10:45pm - buy tix
Sat Dec 10 10:45pm - buy tix
Sat Dec 17 Midnight - buy tix

"As journeys go, this is one to treasure."
- Kenneth Turan, LOS ANGELES TIMES

"Greg Whiteley's small, tender documentary portrait looks at life after rock 'n' roll as experienced by the original bassist for the New York Dolls."
- Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

A recovering alcoholic and recently converted Mormon, we first meet mild-mannered Arthur Kane on the LA bus he takes most days to his job at the Family History Center library. No one would connect the shy 55-year-old in the suit and tie to Arthur "Killer" Kane, statuesque bassist for the legendary '70s rock band, The New York Dolls.

Arthur became the bass player for the Dolls in 1971 and helped form, in rocker Morrissey's words, "one of the most raucous, notorious bands in musical history." Decked out in platform heels, skin-tight pants, smeared lipstick and hair a mile high, the Dolls' gender-bending stage antics belied a ferocious sound that presaged punk and influenced a generation of musicians. But drug abuse and inner-band bickering led to a split in 1975, with Arthur himself bottoming out.

In the early spring of 2004, Morrissey, former President of the New York Dolls fan club and curator of the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London, asked the Dolls to reunite for two shows. Arthur was ecstatic.

But how would it all turn out?

(synopsis adapted from RottenTomatoes)

Mormonsploitation!

WAGON MASTER

(dir. John Ford, 86 mins, 1950)

Sun Dec 18 7:15pm - buy tix
Weds Dec 21 7:15pm - buy tix

Rare 35mm screening of this classic Mormon Western, directed by John Ford!

John Ford directs a tale of Mormon mischief in the Wild West!

‘Hell’ ain’t cussin’, it’s geography!

"With its singing cowboys, square-dancing Mormons, and the trancelike drumming of Navajos (whom Ford views with admiration), this is the closest thing to a musical that Ford ever made. The rock cliffs of the valley remind wagon master Travis (Ben Johnson) of a cathedral; with the whooping ram’s-horn call of the earthy Sister Ledeyard (Jane Darwell), Ford fills that cathedral with a primal, exultant folk Mass."
- Reed Brody, THE NEW YORKER

John Ford said of this film, "WAGON MASTER came closest to what I hoped to achieve." A relaxed epic Western without major stars, it features Ward Bond as Jonathan Wiggs, a sardonic Mormon taking a wagon train of his people to Utah's San Juan Valley with freewheeling cowpokes Travis Blue (Ben Johnson) and Sandy Owens (Harry Carey Jr.) as guides. En route, the group comes upon a medicine show troupe, run by Dr. A. Locksley Hall (Alan Mowbray), that is heavily under the influence of its product and out of water, and they too become part of the caravan. As the trek continues, the Mormons also begins to run low on water, which is less of a problems than a meeting with the murderous Clegg family, led by the unctuous Uncle Shiloh (Charles Kemper), who claims that he and his five "boys" are simple cowhands. To avoid violence, Wiggs allows them to join the convoy but regrets it when the medicine troupe attempts to leave the wagon train and is stopped at gunpoint by the Cleggs. An enjoyable character-based excursion that draws humor from the uneasy coexistence of a wide range of social types, WAGON MASTER showcases the gruff and appealing Bond in a role that he would repeat, with little alteration (and great popular success), on television's WAGON TRAIN.

(synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes)

Mormonsploitation!
Bizarro Mondays program

A MORMON MAID

(dir. Robert Z. Leonard, 1917)

Mon Dec 19 7pm - buy tix

This is a "Bizarro Monday" program. Every Monday at 7pm the Pioneer presents the finest (and trashiest) in horror, sci-fi, freakshow, exploitation, martial arts, genre, b-movies, z-movies, and just plain weird stuff.

This silent melodrama is set against the 1840s westward migration of the Mormons. Dora, a young woman, and her family are saved from an Indian attack by a Mormon community traveling to Utah. They join the wagon train. Dora is pursued by two men, one a recent convert, the other a scheming elder with a stable of wives. The Mormon elder wants her in his harem. When the mother kills herself from revulsion toward polygamy, the daughter must consider her own future and the man she loves. One of Mae Murray's few surviving films, this was intended by Robert Leonard to be a thoughtful drama about the goods and evils of Mormonism, but today it is generally considered pure anti-Mormon propaganda.
(synopsis from imdb)

Extremely rare 16mm print proudly projected at the wrong speed, with special added Mormonsploitation shorts.

Mormonsploitation!
Tuesdays @ 7

Dennis Nyback presents

The Mormon
Church Explains It All To You

Tues Dec 20 7pm - buy tix

This is a Tuesdays@7 program. Every Tuesday at 7pm features special guests presenting their film, and is followed by a beer and pizza reception for ticket holders.