Welcome to The Heights Theater! We are implementing some temporary changes to make your visit as safe and comfortable as possible.
Masks are required at all times in the Heights Theater, both in the lobby and in the auditorium – only exception will be for eating food purchased at our concession stand, and once finished eating you will have to return to wearing your mask. Employees will be expected to wear masks.
Credit cards are the preferred form of payment
To ensure proper social distancing in the theater auditorium, you will be assigned a seat when you arrive, and we are limiting total capacity to about 25%. However, your group may sit together, and we will assign seats to accommodate this.
We will be selling concessions and have installed Plexiglas barriers between you and our staff.
All customer contact surfaces are disinfected before and after the start of each show.
35MM PRESENTATION
Stephen Neale (Milland) steps out of an asylum and into a web of espionage and deceit in this adaptation of the Graham Greene novel. Lang's bizarre set pieces create a mad world wherein a charity carnival could hold the secret to a murderous spy ring.
35mm print courtesy Universal Pictures
35MM PRESENTATION
When he crash-lands his autogyro in China, Professor Henry Quail (Fields) checks into the International House Hotel. There, he finds himself in the midst of a full-on plot to steal a television that can broadcast images from everywhere on earth. This crazy device allows the story to bring in performances by numerous vaudevillians, and this star-studded film was billed as "The Grand Hotel of Comedy!" This one features an indoor car race, Bela Lugosi, Cab Calloway and the notorious multiple divorcee Peggy Hopkins Joyce playing herself!
35mm print courtesy Universal Pictures
35MM PRESENTATION
This screening will also include the 1932 W.C. Fields short film "THE DENTIST", presented in a 35mm print from The Library of Congress
Brush salesman Migg Tweeny (Jack Oakie) is in Klopstokia, presumably to sell brushes. There, he meets and falls for the beautiful Angela (Susan Fleming), only to discover all the women there are named Angela. She's the daughter of the President (Fields, of course), who happens to be a champion weightlifter. Political intrigue, the Olympics, foreign debt, Mata Hari and underwater fisticuffs are all in order in this madcap romp, which is so crazy it might have inspired the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup. Produced and written by Herman and Joseph Mankiewicz, who also wrote Citizen Kane and All About Eve. Go figure!
35mm print courtesy Universal Pictures
35MM PRESENTATION
This screening will also include the 1930 W.C. Fields short film "THE GOLF SPECIALIST", presented in a 35mm print from The Library of Congress
Tillie (Alison Skipworth) has just lost her Shanghai bar in a dice game; her husband Gus (Fields) is rotting away in an Alaskan prison for murder. Each gets word of an inheritance awaiting them in Northern California, so they hightail it there and are suddenly mistaken for missionaries returned from Africa. A parody of the enormously popular Tugboat Annie movie and Saturday Evening Post stories, Tillie and Gus makes absolutely no sense... which means absolute no one will be able to stop laughing.
35mm print courtesy Universal Pictures
35MM PRESENTATION
Cross W.C. Fields with Salvador Dali you would get this surreal comedy. On the lot at Esoteric Pictures, W. C. Fields (played by W. C. Fields) pitches a script to a movie to a producer Franklin Pangborn (Franklin Pangborn). The movie concerns airplanes, alcohol, and eventually culminates in Fields falling from said airplane and into a giant bird's nest occupied by a wealthy Russian woman. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is Fields' final starring role, and it was so zany the studio didn't know what to do with it. But this is the comedian his most truly insane, breaking the fourth wall, throwing gag after incredible gag at you, and creating an upside-down movie-within-a-movie in which nothing is weirder.... except perhaps the movie it's in. W. C. Fields' masterpiece was unappreciated in its day, but has since been regarded as a classic.
35mm print courtesy Universal Pictures.
DIGITAL CINEMA PRESENTATION
Impressed by Eraserhead, producer Mel Brooks (yes, that Mel Brooks) brought Lynch on board to helm this heartbreaking story of John Merrick (John Hurt), aka The Elephant Man. When Dr. Frederick Treaves (Anthony Hopkins) "discovers" the Elephant Man at a freak show, the doctor finds Merrick to be intelligent and sensitive, and his profound kindness moves almost everyone he meets. Lynch's period detail is astounding, capturing 19th-century London in all its soot-stained industrial glory. Nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director and Actor.
Presented by The Heights Theater and The Trylon Cinema.
DIGITAL CINEMA PRESENTATION
After the financial and critical disaster of Dune, Lynch retreated to the surrealist world he knew best, and with Blue Velvet established himself as a controversial and mesmerizing auteur. This is the story of Jeffrey (Kyle Maclachlan, Lynch's muse if ever there was one) who returns home to Lumberton, Oregon only to find a human ear in an abandoned lot. Enter Frank (Dennis Hopper), one of the nastiest villains ever to appear in a movie, who terrorizes Dorothy (Isabella Rosellini) and draws a very curious Jeffrey into this sticky web of lust and murder. Despite dividing the critics of its day, Blue Velvet earned Lynch an Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and has since been regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.
Presented by The Heights Theater and The Trylon Cinema.
DCP courtesy Park Circus.
35MM PRESENTATION
To make his story of "finding love in Hell", Lynch adapted Barry Gifford's bleak novel and then evoked the spirits of the Wizard of Oz, Elvis, Marlon Brando's "Snakeskin" Xavier and the glories of speed metal to craft this controversial thriller. Sailor (Nicholas Cage, never more Nicholas Cage-y than here) and Lula (Laura Dern) are in love. That infuriates Lula's evil mother, Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother), who hires some creepy degenerates to murder our young lovers, who are forced to flee through a uniquely Lynhian wasteland. Adored and despised in equal measure, Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and earned Ladd an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Presented by The Heights Theater and The Trylon Cinema.
35mm print courtesy Park Circus.
DIGITAL CINEMA PRESENTATION
Considered at the time Lynch's worst film (moreso even than Dune), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me has since come to be regarded as one of his finest pictures, an underrated and emotionally shattering look at the dark side of the American dream. Both prologue and epilogue to the 1991 TV show, the film allowed Lynch to explore with greater depth the world of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in the weeks before and after she was murdered. A film of surprising emotional depth, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is must-see viewing for anyone who loves the Twin Peaks universe. Don't miss this rare screening.
Presented by The Heights Theater and The Trylon Cinema.
DCP courtesy Janus Films.
DIGITAL CINEMA PRESENTATION
Conceived as a pilot for ABC, then rejected, Lynch barely tied up the loose ends to create perhaps his most perplexing movie. Mulholland Drive is the story of Betty (Naomi Watts), who has come to Los Angeles from a small town to become a famous actress. Into her life drops Rita (Laura Elena Harring), who has been in an accident and lost her memory. Put the blue key into the box and... the story becomes one of a frustrated failure, Diane (Watts), who may or may not have had her ex-lover, star actress Camilla Rhodes (Harring), murdered. Mind-bending, gorgeous, sexy and utterly devastating, Mulholland Drive might be Lynch's most personal film. Mulholland Drive earned David Lynch a nomination for Best Director, and a BBC poll of film critics named it the best film of the 21st Century.
Presented by The Heights Theater and The Trylon Cinema.
DCP courtesy Janus Films.
35MM PRESENTATION
NEW gorgeous digitally restored Two-Color Technicolor 35mm print!
This pre-code two-color Technicolor horror picture should not be confused as mere historical movie novelty. The Mystery of the Wax Museum is creepy, disturbing and guaranteed to scare even the most jaded moviegoers! When a sculptor is burned in an arson fire, he returns a dozen years later, determined to create wax figures that are as close to real life as humanly--or inhumanely--possible. Don't miss this rare 35mm screening that will leave you screaming!
35mm print courtesy The UCLA Film and Television Archive.
