ECCENTRIC CINEMA

Telekinetic warriors battle each other for world domination. A young girl goes on a picaresque journey that brings her in touch with America’s fringe political groups. A frustrated housewife struggles with a pregnant teenage daughter, her foot fetishist son, and a philandering pornographer husband. “Eccentric Cinema” presents all this plus The Room in January!

The program starts on January 4 with David Cronenberg’s Scanners. Stephen Lack and Michael Ironside star as powerful beings called “scanners,” created in birth with the ability to read minds, control bodies at a microscopic level, and move objects with a mere thought. The two men battle across Canada, tearing up the countryside and blowing up parts of Toronto. Ironside longs to rule humanity; Lack wants to put an end to the scientific experiments and free the scanners from government control. Filled with graphic gore, Cronenberg’s trademark chilly atmosphere, and a paranoid streak a mile wide, Scanners stands as one of the director’s most famous films.

Tommy Wiseau’s The Room screens January 11. If you have not experienced The Room at the Drexel, you don’t know what you’re missing. The loyal fans have created their own live experience à la The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They’re always excited to indoctrinate newbies into the cult of Wiseau. A Drexel tradition for 16 years, The Room is a gonzo masterpiece.

On January 18, we go more contemporary with 2023’s The Sweet East, written by film critic Nick Pinkerton and directed by Sean Price Williams. Talia Ryder stars as a high schooler who breaks away from her field trip group in Washington D.C. after a conspiracy theorist shoots up a pizza parlor. On her journey to New York City, she meets anarchist crust punks, Nazi sympathizers, Islamic extremists, delusional filmmakers, and Gibby Haynes from the Butthole Surfers as a priest. Capturing the freewheeling and satirical spirit of Terry Southern’s 1960s novel Candy, The Sweet East flips the bird at America’s political posturing.

We close out the program on January 25 with John Waters’ Polyester, starring Divine and screen legend Tab Hunter. Divine plays Francine Fishpaw, a stressed-out suburban wife whose family is falling apart. When she meets Todd Tomorrow (Hunter), Francine thinks she’s finally found someone who truly loves her. But nothing ever goes to plan in the world of Waters, and Francine soon discovers she is a pawn in a larger scheme to steal her divorce settlement and ship her kids off to a prostitution ring. Modeled after Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas, Polyester takes a jaundiced look at the insanity and simmering lust lurking beneath the suburbs.