Retro Cocktail Hour is celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Cinema a Go-Go with moon-landing mayhem, June 14, 7 p.m., at Liberty Hall.
Featuring the moon-themed movies, Project Moon Base (1953) and Radar Men from the Moon (1957). Project Moon Base tells the story of Colonel Briteis (Donna Martell), while she commands a lunar survey mission. Later, she and her crew are endangered by a nutty scientist!
Radar Men from the Moon pits Commando Cody, the jetpack-wearing hero of three Republic serials, against an army of invaders from the moon.
General Admission tickets are $10 and are available for purchase at the Liberty Hall box office. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Show starts at 7 p.m. Come out to Cinema a Go-Go to celebrate 10 years of laughable movies and to get a special anniversary poster (while supplies last).
Retro Cocktail Hour History
Since 1995, Darrell Brogdon has hosted the Retro Cocktail Hour, which is actually TWO hours - a weekly serving of "incredibly strange music," including everything from lounge music to tiki tunes to swinging soundtracks from the '60s and '70s. The show has listeners all over the world, from Bosnia to Japan.
The show is spiced with everything from obscure Italian B-movie soundtracks and bossa nova to contemporary bands like Don Tiki, Big Kahuna and the Copa Cat Pack, the Tokyo Panorama Mambo Boys, the Italian Secret Service, Balanco and others.
Behind the Cheesy Films: Cinema a Go-Go History
Cinema a Go-Go and Cinema Con Queso blossomed from a conversation between Retro Cocktail Hour host Darrell Brogdon and Daniel Aguado Ornelas of the Mexican Consulate in Kansas City over their mutual love for cheesy Lucha Libre movies after they had attended a WaiTiki concert in Lawrence in 2008. Brogdon mentioned the original event title, Cinema con Queso was named so due to the film's 'cheesy' nature. Daniel Aguado Ornelas helped Kansas Public Radio and Cinema con Queso get rights to air many movies from Mexico in the beginning stages of the event.
Kansas Public Radio was so impressed with the success of the original Cinema Con Queso event on May 29, 2009, that they decided to plan out a full season of Cinema a Go-Go's each year moving forward. While they loved airing Lucha Libre movies, there were only so many options available in that genre. Brogdon decided to broaden the cinematic scope and focus on great B, C and even D list movies from other countries.
Brogdon has always been a fan of cheesy horror films even since childhood. Brogdon shared, "When I was a kid, we lived near San Antonio, Texas, and every Friday night at 10:30 p.m. following the 10 o' clock news, they used to run this show called Project Terror. And they used to run a mix of horror movies and science fiction films. My friends and I would all stay up late - we were all nine or ten years old - and we would stay up and watch these scary, or what we thought were scary movies. With the perspective of many years later, you realize they are really pretty crummy movies; some of them are good, but most of them are not so good."
Brogdon later mentioned that much of the inspiration for the music on Retro Cocktail Hour is from European spy movies. These soundtracks for the spy movies helped lead him to a whole new genre of b-list movies to air at Liberty Hall.
When asked what he loved about Cinema a Go-Go, Brogdon said, "It's like watching Mystery Science Theatre with 200 of your closest friends."
Be one of those friends Friday, June 14, at Liberty Hall and help make the 10th Anniversary of Cinema a Go-Go extra special and extra cheesy.
