The lights are dim. Buck-fifty shells of beer clank on the bar and smoke rings waft slowly to the ceiling. The barkeep turns down the juke for the night and a grizzled biker gets his head chopped off in the corner.
OK, so the biker is a character in Northville Cemetery Massacre, a movie that's screening as part of Professor Mayhem's B-Movie Night — a themed event at Hamtramck's Painted Lady — but if you're a fish out of water, you might wonder what kind of den you've just entered. And what kind of people would watch such filth.
Truth is, the Hamtown watering hole is simply doing its hooch-slinging best to suspend reality with a night out that's not for the meek (or the highfalutin). In lieu of the usual brew-and-view Hollywood fare, the Painted Lady furthers its reputation as a working-class punk-rock joint by catering to the, uh, let's say, more eccentric film lover: the kind who finds gratuitous sex, underground social commentary and poorly executed violence to be unintentionally amusing.
It's every Tuesday night and it's a cheap date and more entertaining than Law and Order reruns ... sober. Past screenings include the aforementioned Northville Cemetery Massacre, the 1971 Native American ass-kicker Billy Jack, and ultra-gore slasher shows School Girls in Chains and the classic I Spit on Your Grave.
This week, they're screening 1970's I Drink Your Blood, the story of a gang of LSD-addled hippies, who, after being fed food laced with rabid dog blood, become frothy and cannibalistic. It is, of course, another wonderfully absurd flick from the recently repopularized (thanks, Quentin) Grindhouse canon. Try it. They really are nice folks — they just like some raunch.
Every Tuesday night, 10 p.m.-2 a.m. at the Painted Lady, 2390 Jacob, Hamtramck; 313-874-2991.
Eve Doster is the listings editor of Metro Times. Send comments to [email protected]
