Science Fiction Pint and Pizza Night featuring Classic Monster Movies
6 PM to 10 PM
All ages
FREE with minimum $5 food or beverage purchase
Beer and Pizza specials all night long
The best in B science fictions movies, drive-in classics, psychotronic weirdness and more. We’ll also do raffle prizes throughout the evening so expect some very cool, very strange science fiction prizes including figurines, posters, books, cards, VHS movies and more for that inner science fiction enthusiast in us all. Sponsored by La Dolce Video, The Arcata Eye, Daisy Drygoods, Vintage Avenger, Tin Can Mailman, The Clothing Dock and more.
Creature from a million years ago!… every man his mortal enemy… and a woman’s beauty his prey!
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is a monster horror film directed by Jack Arnold. Universal Pictures introduced audiences to yet another classic movie monster with this superbly crafted film, originally presented in 3-D. The story involves the members of a fossil-hunting expedition down a dark tributary of the mist-shrouded Amazon, where they enter the domain of a prehistoric, amphibious “Gill Man”, possibly the last of a species of fanged, clawed humanoids who may have evolved entirely underwater. Tranquilized, captured, and brought aboard, the creature still manages to revive and escape, slaughtering several members of the team, and abducts their sole female member (Julie Adams), spiriting her off to his mist-shrouded lair. This sparks the surviving crewmen to action, particularly those who fancy carrying the girl off themselves. Director Jack Arnold makes excellent use of the tropical location, employing heavy mists and eerie jungle noises to create an atmosphere of nearly constant menace. The film’s most effective element is certainly the monster itself, with his pulsating gills and fearsome webbed talons. The creature was played on land by stuntman Ben Chapman and underwater by champion swimmer Ricou Browning, who was forced to hold his breath during long takes because the suit did not allow room for scuba gear. The end result was certainly worth the effort, proven in the famous scene where the Gill Man swims effortlessly beneath his female quarry in an eerie ballet, a scene echoed much later by Steven Spielberg in the opening of Jaws.
A newlywed sheriff tries to stop a shambling monster that has emerged from a spaceship to eat people.
The Creeping Terror (1964) is a horror science fiction film widely considered to have been one of the worst films of all time. This hilarious anti-classic riffs on its one-note premise of two gigantic piles of crudely-stitched carpet swatches and rubber tubing running rampant through a hick town. Oh, and there’s some pseudo-scientific blather about the two monsters being alien sample collectors of some sort, studying human weaknesses by gulping down every brain-dead redneck and 30-year-old teenager they can find. (The would-be victims are remarkably accommodating; most of them gape like stunned carp as the monster approaches, then suddenly swan-dive into the hungry fellow’s maw.) Leaping bravely to Earth’s defense are a severely inbred deputy and a smug, nattily-dressed pretend-scientist. It’s hard to say whether the relentless, sleep-inducing narration obscuring most of the dialogue (apparently several reels of the film’s original dialogue track were destroyed) is a blessing in disguise, sparing the viewer from the almost certain agony of watching the “leads” (i.e. the director’s cousins and in-laws) attempt to act. At any rate, audiences are left with some of the goofiest setpieces ever committed to celluloid: the first alien’s attack on a portly gentleman (who clearly outweighs his attacker by at least 300 pounds); the deputy’s barely-concealed discomfort at watching his boss tongue-wrestle with his wife; the uncouth interruption of a hideous sock-hop by a slam-dancing monster; and the oft-noted tendency of the aliens to sport running shoes.