HEIGHTS THEATER

ALL NEW DIGITAL RESTORATIONS!

The enormously popular LAUREL AND HARDY FESTIVAL returns for what will certainly be another sold-out screening. This year we feature THE CHIMP (1932) and WAY OUT WEST (1937). In the short film The Chimp, our heroes try their best to bring good fortune back to a busted circus, with hilariously disastrous results. The feature-length Way Out West, the pair head out west to deliver a deed to a gold mine, doing their bumbling best to help a young woman in the clutches of evil guardians. No matter if you're 9 or 90, the manic comedy of Laurel and Hardy is guaranteed to have you laughing.

An outrageous comedy that sends up Westerns, politicians, racists, sex... you name it, Blazing Saddles skewers it. Through a series of complex mechanisms, Bart (Cleavon Little), a black sheriff, is set up to take a fall when a railroad baron wants to buy up an entire town. A stellar cast was supported by Brooks' incredible script (written with Richard Pryor), and became the biggest box office film of the year. Brooks said: "I wrote berserk, heartfelt stuff about white corruption and racism and Bible-thumping bigotry. Blazing Saddles just got everything out of me--all of my furor, my frenzy, my insanity, my love of life and hatred of death."

The first pairing of sexy superstars Paul Newman and Robert Redford is a classic Western, and the biggest box office draw of 1969. Butch and Sundance rob trains, Union Pacific trans to be precise, to the chagrin of its owner, who hires a ruthless posse to kill the bandits. Retreating to Bolivia, Butch and Sundance try and set up shop in South America, with both hilarious and tragic results. A strange and thoroughly entertaining Western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid shouldn't be missed on the big screen.

This story about half-Irish, half-Italian criminal Henry Hill (based on a true story), touches on Scorsese's themes of being an outsider, as well as examining how crime thrills, edifies, warps and eventually destroys people. Considered by Roger Ebert to be the greatest film made about organized crime, Scorsese sought to focus on the small details, the quotidian life of a gangster in all its weird and often despairing ways. As usual, Robert De Niro is amazing, but Joe Pesci is at once hilarious and terrifying, a force of nature whose performance earned him an Academy Award.

Now a Heights yearly tradition, Hal Ashby's poignant black comedy about anti social Harold and his geriatric girlfriend Maude has to be one of the classic misfit love stories of all time. Harold and Maude was a true cult film phenomena in it's day running a record 2 years at the (now closed) Westgate Theater in Minneapolis, and it is not to be missed on the big screen.

The movie that changed world cinema as we know it today, whose success was the very definition of blockbuster, Jaws is also one of the most thrilling and entertaining films of all-time. Jaws is the terrifying story of a killer great white shark that terrorizes Amity Island during its peak summer months, and then becomes a thrilling character study of three-men as they chase the beast over open water. Nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, Jaws is a rightly considered to be one of the greatest films of all-time. Join us for its 45th Anniversary screening--it hasn't screened at the Heights since perhaps 1975!

Though it was his third feature film, Mean Streets is widely regarded as the first picture you could rightly know was "Scorsese", and the one that launched the careers of Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel. When his reckless best friend, Johnny Boy (De Niro) pushes a gangster too far, Charlie (Keitel) finds himself torn between helping his friend and remaining loyal to the church.

Moving away from the grittiness and violence of his earlier films, and obsessed with celebrating not only the Hollywood musical but New York in the 1940s, Scorsese crafted this gorgeous film with music by Kander and Ebb (famous for "New York, New York" among others), and featuring De Niro and Liza Minnelli as a jazz musician and singer who fall in and out of love. Rarely screened, this Martin Scorsese musical saw mixed reviews but has been rightly considered to be a charming classic all its own.

35MM PRESENTATION

Tim Burton's first (and some say best) movie, this crazy road movie tells the tale of eccentric man-child Pee-Wee Herman who's beloved bike is stolen in broad daylight, which propels him across the U.S. on the adventure of his life. Be sure and tell 'em Large Marge sent ya!

When people think of boxing films, no other movie comes to mind before Raging Bull. With this brutal tale of boxer Jake LaMotta and his rise and fall, Scorsese doesn't shy away from the violence inherent in the sport both in and out of the ring. Gorgeously shot in black and white, and with De Niro's signature performance (and his losing and gaining weight not only became the stuff of legend but has inspired equally dedicated--or insane--actors to follow suit), Raging Bull is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made.

Alfred Hitchcock's first film in America is a rapturous gothic masterpiece, owing nearly as much to the Master of Suspense's vision as to producer David O. Selznick. An unnamed woman (Joan Fontaine) and the dashing Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) meet on the French Riviera and married. He brings her to his seaside castle, Manderley, which is overseen by the steely Mrs. Danvers, whose obsession with the first Mrs. de Winter--Rebecca--is driving the new wife to the brink of insanity. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it won two, including Best Picture, the only Hitchcock film to do so.

Long considered lost, this William Gillette film is a vital missing link in the history of Sherlock Holmes on screen. By the time it was produced at Essanay Studios in 1916, Gillette had been established as the world's foremost interpreter of Holmes on stage-having played him approximately 1300 times since his 1899 debut. This newly-restored SHERLOCK HOLMES represents the sole surviving appearance of Gillette's Holmes on film. The film faithfully retains the play's famous set pieces-Holmes's encounter with Professor Moriarty, his daring escape from the Stepney Gas Chamber, and the tour-de-force deductions. Audiences are going to be blown away when they see the original Sherlock Holmes on screen for the first time!

Do we really need to explain this one? Perhaps no movie musical is as beloved as Singin' in the Rain, which has sold out the Heights Theater three times in the last four years, and this year will be presented in 35mm! What a wonderful feeling!

Two men, each needing a certain someone out of their lives, meet on a train. The first, Guy, a tennis pro, is thinking of the easy divorce he knows will never come. The second, Bruno, a playboy obsessed with his mother, would like his father gone, as in, dead. But Bruno's got a plan, and with that Hitchcock launches this most wicked of films. Based on the acclaimed novel by Patricia Highsmith.

35MM PRESENTATION

Wilder's poison-pen letter to Hollywood is as acrid a noir as was ever committed to celluloid. When down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis (Holden) falls in with aging silent film queen Norma Desmond (Swanson, in an iconic performance), he finds himself plunged into a world of despair and betrayal.

"You talkin' to me?" Robert De Niro is riveting as the iconic Travis Bickle, the anti-hero and eponymous taxi driver in this, Martin Scorsese's instantly acknowledged masterpiece. Influenced by Godard, shot during a heat wave and garbage strike in New York, perhaps no film captures the look, feel, and utter despair of urban living in that aggrieved decade. An incredible cast that included Jodie Foster and Peter Boyle, a score by Bernard Herrmann, and cinematographer Michael Chapman's inventive photography (using available light in Yellow Cab), Taxi Driver is an experience that you will never forget. Winner of the 1976 Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival, Taxi Driver

Brits Samuel and Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) are brother and sister missionaries in what was then German East Africa, when World War I breaks out. When Samuel is beaten and killed by German soldiers, Rose climbs aboard the beat up boat the African Queen with Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart), the gruff, foulmouthed captain. The two fight the jungles, the rapids, the German army, and even one another until, and most surprisingly, they fall in love. Hepburn was never more fun and Bogart plays against type in a role that won him his only Academy Award.

Boris Karloff met his match with Elsa Lanchester, who plays the Bride of Frankenstein and sports perhaps the greatest hairdo in Hollywood's long history of great hairdos. Her performance was years ahead of its time, the kind of thing that wins Oscars today and was the perfect foil to Karloff. James Whale attempted to camp up his entry, but the result is a film that many consider superior to the first, more emotional and less stagy than the first, and perhaps the greatest entry of Universal's celebrated horror films.

This brave and biting comedy by Charlie Chaplin was his first sound film, and most successful picture. Released at a time when the U.S. was still in a tenuous truce with Germany, The Great Dictator not only satirized the Fuhrer, but accurately portrayed Hitler's hunger for world domination, and his dangerous policies against the Jews, perhaps the first major American film to do so. The Great Dictator is not only one of the greatest movies of all-time, but perhaps the most important comedy ever made.

In bombed out Berlin, weary Susanne Wallner, an artist and concentration camp survivor, returns to her apartment to find drunken ex German soldier Dr. Hans Mertens there. It was her place before the war, but since he has no place to go, they become reluctant roommates, then friends. But the very worst war criminals still walk the streets of Berlin, the murderers among us, driving their victims into varying degrees of trauma or melancholy. And yet, hope remains.

The very first film shot in Germany after the war, and the model for what became known as "Rubblefilms", movies whose locations were the blasted out cities of Europe (The Third Man is perhaps the most famous), it was financed by the Soviets and their allies. The Murderers Are Among Us is a stunning combination of thrilling noir and moving drama, and nearly impossible to see in the U.S. Don't miss this incredibly rare screening, with a print courtesy of the University of Massachusetts' DEFA Film Library.

NEW DIGITALLY RESTORED 35MM PRINT!

This pre-code two-color Technicolor horror picture should not be confused as mere historical movie novelty. The Mystery of the Wax Museum is creepy, disturbing and guaranteed to scare even the most jaded moviegoers! When a sculptor is burned in an arson fire, he returns a dozen years later, determined to create wax figures that are as close to real life as humanly--or inhumanely--possible. Don't miss this rare 35mm screening that will leave you screaming!

DIGITAL CINEMA PRESENTATION.

Jack Torrence, a recovering alcoholic, retreats to the Overlook Hotel with his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, in tow, in the hopes of breaking his writer's block. But the hotel is host to a variety of dark secrets, none more disturbing than those in Room 237. The Shining is one of Kubrick's more startling masterpieces, and Jack Nicholson's performance is the stuff of legend.

DCP courtesy Warner Bros.

35MM TECHNICOLOR DYE-TRANSFER PRINT!!

Like Singin' In The Rain, The Wizard of Oz is one of our most popular events and sells out year after year, which is no surprise because you may never see OZ look so amazing on the big screen than in this rare 35mm TECHNICOLOR DYE TRANSFER presentation!! Has there ever been a more essential piece of movie magic than the journey of Dorothy and Toto? Probably not.

Manny (Henry Fonda) is not a rich man, so when his wife (Vera Miles) needs dental work, he goes to his life insurance company to borrow on the policy. There, confused employees identify him as a man who had twice held them up, and in no time Manny is plunged into a nightmare that sees him sent to Sing Sing. Based on a true story, and perhaps the most direct expression of Hitchcock's desperate fear of being arrested, The Wrong Man is at once thrilling, despairing, and ultimately hopeful.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Harper Lee's beloved novel, the Heights is proud to present To Kill a Mockingbird. In the history of motion pictures, there has probably never been a film that is as beloved as its source novel as this story. Perfectly cast, with Gregory Peck in his Oscar-winning role as Atticus Finch, and featuring Mary Badham as Scout, Philip Alford as Jem, and a young Robert Duvall as Boo Radley. The film of To Kill a Mockingbird captured the nation's attention with nearly as much force as the book.

What a year for Mel Brooks: in 1974 he made the biggest box office hit with Blazing Saddles, and then released Young Frankenstein, another hit and arguably his masterpiece. Taking up where the James Whale version left off, Young Frankenstein sees Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) is a modern day physician who thinks his grandfather's experiments were exercises in lunacy. Inheriting the family estate, he heads to the castle, awaited by Igor (Marty Feldman) and finds himself drawn into the quest to create life. Shot in gorgeous black and white, and surprisingly moving, Young Frankenstein is a bona fide classic, en par with the original monster movie.