‘Deadman’ Is a Lurid Halloween Spoof

In the spirit of Halloween, Filmforum tonight will present Peggy Ahwesh and Keith Sanborn’s outrageous half-hour “The Deadman” (LACE at 8), which in its raunchy sex and camp pathos recalls early Warhol and such vintage underground fare as the late Curt McDowell’s “Thundercrack!”

A sendup of lurid vamp melodrama, complete with silent-era intertitles, it plays around with the old sex-death equation, in this case the uninhibited carrying on of a young woman after the demise of her lover. Playing with it is an authentic blue movie of the ‘20s, “Getting His Goat,” a genuinely--and intentionally--hilarious blend of bawdy sex and humor. It will be accompanied by a rather suggestive 1931 Betty Boop cartoon, “Bimbo’s Initiation.” (213) 276-7452.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and UCLA’s final Critic’s Choice program of the season is “Tomorrow,” director Joseph Anthony and writer Horton Foote’s stunning 1972 film of the William Faulkner short story. It screens Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater. A backwoods love story of tenderness and austerity, it stars Robert Duvall in one of his finest performances as a taciturn yet gentle Mississippi sawmill laborer, and he’s well-matched by his leading lady, Olga Bellin. Following the screening, Foote will be interviewed by Jerry Roberts, film critic for Copley newspapers. Information: (213) 206-FILM, 206-8013.

“Chinatown” (1974), one of the key American films of the ‘70s, resurfaces Friday for a run at the Fine Arts, too late to whet anyone’s appetite for the sequel, “The Two Jakes.” “Chinatown”--like the sequel--was written by Robert Towne, arguably the best Hollywood screenwriter of his generation and certainly the one most knowledgeable about his native Southern California.

Directed with understatement by Roman Polanski and set in the late ‘30s, “Chinatown” reveals the tragic interplay of personal and political corruption and unfolds in the manner of a Raymond Chandler mystery. Jack Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes, the canny private eye, takes on a seemingly routine marital infidelity case that leads him to a shocking secret in a prominent family and to a land grab involving the development of our water supply.

Nicholson, Faye Dunaway as the ill-fated heroine, and John Huston as her malignant, powerful father couldn’t be better. According to Towne, it was Polanski who insisted on the film’s downbeat ending, without which a sequel probably would never have been made. The further irony is that for maximum clarity and impact “The Two Jakes” really needs to be seen in tandem with “Chinatown.” Double feature anybody? Information: (213) 652-1330.

The UCLA Film Archive’s “A Season of New Zealand Films” continues Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz Theater with a revival of Vincent Ward’s starkly beautiful and distinctive “Vigil” (1984) and “The Navigator” (1987). On Sunday at 7:30, four short documentaries on Maori life made by James MacDonald from 1919-23 will screen, followed by Geoff Murphy’s harrowing 1982 “Utu.” The four silent films, which seem so intriguing, are as cinematically dull as they are ethnologically invaluable as records of Maori crafts and culture. There is an awful lot of basket weaving and the like, plus native dances. A jolting contrast to the static placidity of the MacDonald films, the tense and riveting “Utu” stars Anzac Wallace as the fierce leader of an 1870 Maori rebellion with an ending as surprising as it is complex.