American Hunter. 1988. Indonesia. Directed by Arizal. Screenplay by Deddy Armand. With Christopher Mitchum, Ida Asha, Mike Abbott, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace. English. 35mm. 92 min.
A 35-seat microcinema in Williamsburg, Spectacle was founded in 2010 with a mission to show “lost and forgotten cinema.” Screenings—two to five daily, promoted with homemade posters and trailers—are programmed and staffed by what has grown to be a cadre of around 50 people, all volunteers. Spectacle's limited means has meant working with filmmakers and distributors sympathetic to its mission, or uncovering rarities buried so deep that no one else has touched (or, in many cases, heard of) them, lending a spirit of solidarity and genuine discovery to its programming. The roles of programmer, cinema attendant, projectionist, trailer editor, and poster designer are often combined or done in close collaboration, and all become part of a collective creative expression.
We salute Spectacle with a tiny sampling of the more than 1,440 trailers that have been created by volunteers over the last 15 years, including noise artist C. Spencer Yeh’s seminal trailer for American Hunter, the 1988 schlock sensation starring Chris Mitchum (son of Robert) and directed by the Indonesian action auteur known simply as Arizal. Originally shown at Spectacle on low-quality video in 2012, the film will be shown here in the only known 35mm print, imported from Switzerland for this screening.
In his notes for that 2012 screening, Spectacle volunteer and Screen Slate founder Jon Dieringer wrote: “Christopher Mitchum returns for what might be the purest expression of Arizal’s shoot-’em-up aesthetic as Jake Carver, an ‘agent’ whose self-described occupation is to ‘fight bad guys.’ Highlights include a jeep driving off the side of one skyscraper into the window of another, a three-way motorcycle/pick-up truck/train chase, a baby being run over by a car crashing through the side of a supermarket yet miraculously surviving, an eight minute helicopter chase, an awkwardly clothed shower sex scene, one house explosion, one castle explosion, dozens of car explosions, male bondage and electrocution, and a fist fight inside a dungeon full of what appears to be cardboard boxes overflowing with shredded paper…. Approximately ten of the 92 action-packed minutes have been described.”