Sunday, August 9 – Siskel Film Center — 164 N State Street
Tickets: $14 at the door or purchase in advance
1:00 PM
THAT DARN CAT!
Directed by Robert Stevenson • 1965
Like most bad cats, “D.C.” comes home with other people’s ducks, sneaks into kitchens, knocks over dishes, and wreaks havoc at local businesses — but our hero (immortalized in song by Bobby Darin) also finds time to catch kidnappers. Hired as an informant for the FBI after bringing home a piece of evidence, D.C. is trailed by agent Zeke Kelso (Dean Jones) with the help of Hayley Mills, hoping to recover a missing bank teller and a suitcase full of cash. Disney’s funniest and most leisurely-paced live-action romp was directed with total conviction by Robert Stevenson (Mary Poppins, Old Yeller) and rings true for any of us who’ve had to answer for an only partially domesticated pet. The terrific ensemble cast includes William Demarest and Elsa Lanchester as nosy neighbors, Tom Lowell as the surfing-crazed boyfriend, Roddy McDowall as the duck hunter, and Dorothy Provine as the older sister who thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. She’s right! (JA)
116 min • Walt Disney Productions • 35mm from the Chicago Film Society collection at the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, permission Disney
4:00 PM
HATARI!
Directed by Howard Hawks • 1962
After the “comeback” success of Rio Bravo in ’59, Hawks doubled down on his late-period style, bringing John Wayne over to Tanzania for another loosely plotted adventure pic in which, basically, a group of men (and one or two women) hang out at their very dangerous workplace and occasionally take breaks to perform extremely difficult feats. Here they aren’t flying mail planes in South America, driving cattle across the high plains, or defending a besieged Western jail, but capturing live African animals for zoos. Extended scenes of the team members navigating their sociosexual statuses at basecamp alternate with thrillingly photographed sequences of actual rhino hunts. (The title of the film, as any poster will tell you, means “Danger!” in Swahili.) Red Buttons shows up as comic relief, Elsa Martinelli provides a formidable romantic foil for the Duke, and Henry Mancini contributes an appropriately scattershot soundtrack, including the indelible calliope-driven “Baby Elephant Walk.” (GW)
157 min • Paramount Pictures • 35mm from private collections, permission Paramount
NEXT UP: A PAGE OF MADNESS on Saturday, August 22 at Music Box