Skip to main content'Tis the season to watch movies outdoors, but no alfresco picture show is quite the equal of the NW Film Center's Top Down series—it has beer. (MacTarnahan's, to be exact.) The revivals shown at 8 pm Thursday nights atop the Hotel deLuxe parking garage are an intentionally sloppy, motley six-pack (Hitchcock's Blackmail kicked things off last week). Just as well, since the sound isn't always strong enough to be heard over city noises. But the goal is to enjoy yourself enough that you won't quite know what's going on anyway. Here's a guide.
July 29: Door-to-Door Maniac (Five Minutes to Live) (1961)
What it is: Johnny Cash as a New Jersey goon (the origin is somewhat unconvincing) who holds a housewife hostage, inexplicably stopping every so often to play himself a little guitar.
Why you might watch it sober: Cash is the best actor in the movie. A destructive dynamo, smashing ceramics and dancing across the parlor, he comes across like Edward G. Robinson if Robinson sometimes fancied playing himself a little guitar. Also, he uses Ron Howard as a human shield.
Why you might want to get drunk: Cash is the best actor in the movie. Everybody else is a cardboard suburban cutout, except Cay Forrester, who plays the housewife as a collapsing, shrieking advertisement for Valium.
Take a drink every time…Cash plays himself a little guitar song.
Aug. 5: Little Darlings (1980) Image courtesy Everett Collection
What it is: Tatum O'Neal and Kristy McNichol betting who will lose her virginity first at summer camp.
Why you might watch it sober: It's basically The Parent Trap, if you replaced the word "parent" with "vagina." It's impossible to find on DVD, and surprisingly sensitive in its execution.
Why you might want to get drunk: There's a lot of sniggering slapstick. Then there's a lot of crying. It's like talking to your teenage daughter about sex, except somewhere in the back of your mind you're aware she is now in her 40s.
Take a drink every time…you feel uncomfortable.
Aug. 12: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1957) Image courtesy noiroftheweek.com
What it is: Dana Andrews plays a reporter who frames himself for murder (with the help of his crusading editor) to prove an innocent man can get the electric chair. This is not the best plan ever conceived.
Why you might watch it sober: Very hard to find on DVD, it's the titanic Fritz Lang directing an uncompromising, claustrophobic melodrama with cocktail-hour sophistication and a malicious twist.
Why you might want to get drunk: Until the last 10 minutes, when the trap snaps shut on your neck, it's very boring.
Take a drink every time…one of the journalists wonders if this isn't a bad idea, maybe.
Aug. 19: Troll 2 (1990) Image courtesy fearnet.com
What it is: So-bad-it's-popular schlock about a family menaced by vegetarian goblins who turn people into plants before eating them. There are, predictably, no trolls.
Why you might watch it sober: Its badness is zesty; I was enchanted by the vaguely Norwegian goblin masks designed by sexploitation actress Laura Gemser.
Why you might want to get drunk: It feels like a liquidation sale at a seasonal haunted house. It may well have been made drunk.
Take a drink every time…somebody starts secreting liquid green sap. But you might as well start when the family starts singing, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and not stop for a while.
Aug. 26: To Die For (1995) Image courtesy vietbao.vn
What it is: Nicole Kidman seducing Joaquin Phoenix into whacking her husband Matt Dillon to save her delusions of TV stardom.
Why you might watch it sober: It's one of Gus Van Sant's best films, and it forever associates the music of Donovan with the image of Kidman trapped in an ice block.
Why you might want to get drunk: Its vision of murderous striving for any public attention now looks quaint. Chilling, that.
Take a drink every time…Kidman makes Phoenix feel uncomfortable.
The Top Down series screens Thursday nights through Aug. 26 atop the Hotel deLuxe parking garage on the corner of Southwest 15th Avenue and Yamhill Street. $8.
WWeek 2015