I joined the Colonial Theatre in April 2024, first serving on the floor as Front of House Manager before moving into an administrative role as Repertory Film Programming and Membership Manager. Thankfully, that extensive title has since been trimmed by a few syllables.
Some brief background on me: I’m an industry veteran with over a decade of experience programming and booking films for cinemas. I got my start at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute while in college, working under Programming Manager Valerie Temple. After graduating, I volunteered as the repertory film programmer at the Elks Theatre in Middletown, PA, then one of the oldest continually operating movie houses in the country.
My professional experience includes managing the film program at the Civic Theatre of Allentown and working in programming and contracting for the Hopewell Theatre in Hopewell, NJ. More recently, I earned my Master’s in Arts Administration from Drexel University, where my thesis focused on the history and methodologies of repertory film curation. In 2025, I co-founded Spectral Cinema, a traveling microcinema in the Lehigh Valley that regularly presents screenings at venues including Wind Gap’s Gap Theatre and Bethlehem’s Ice House.
With this monthly dispatch, my aim is to guide you through each month’s film programming—placing screenings in context and offering the occasional bit of film history or trivia to inform and, hopefully, spark your interest.
The term “crowd pleaser” can be slippery: what entertains one audience may leave another cold. Still, some favorites endure. The beloved romantic dramedies Moonstruck (May 6) and Steel Magnolias (May 10) deliver exactly what their reputations promise: laughter, warmth, and just enough emotional catharsis. Bring your mom to the latter and you’ve got a ready-made post-brunch Mother’s Day outing.
At the other end of the spectrum, everyone’s favorite tomb-raiding, whip-cracking, smirk-sporting archaeologist returns for Memorial Day weekend. If Jaws and Star Wars signaled a shift in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s Indiana Jones trilogy helped lock it into place, steering the industry toward globally marketable spectacle while proving, much like Lucas’ American Graffiti, that nostalgia could function as a powerful commercial engine.
Of course, blockbusters endure not just because of scale, but because of the creative vision behind them, and the Indiana Jones films have embedded themselves in popular consciousness in a way few franchises have. My personal favorite, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (May 23 and 24), may still be due for some critical rehabilitation, but the legacies of Raiders of the Lost Ark (May 23 and 24) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (May 23 and 24) remain firmly secure. All three will screen in pristine 4K remasters. Come one, come all.
For those with more vintage tastes, our beloved Classic Film series spans the emotional gamut this month, from scheming thespians to vigilante cops. The hills are indeed alive with the sound of your singing voices as we revive last year’s wildly successful sing-along screening of The Sound of Music (May 3). Like Indiana Jones, Robert Wise’s bona fide crowd pleaser struck a chord with audiences worldwide in the 1960s, going on to sweep the Academy Awards and dominate the box office. Adjusted for inflation, it remains the highest-grossing movie musical of all time, and its appeal shows no sign of fading.
Less successful on its initial release, The Misfits (May 9), celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, brought Marilyn Monroe together with then-husband Arthur Miller for John Huston’s memorably downbeat anti-Western. Spiritually adrift and newly divorced, Monroe’s Roslyn becomes entangled with two emotionally damaged men, played by Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, as they round up wild mustangs and drift further into their own twilight. The Misfits will screen on my personal 16mm print, which was among the first batch of release prints struck from the original negative. The print has some wear, but that only enhances the film’s gloaming aura.
It was Oscars all around for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (May 15), a legendary battle of wits between stage veteran Bette Davis and ingénue Anne Baxter. Inspiring everything from Showgirls to Black Swan, Mankiewicz’s caustic script still cuts deep. The French critic Jacques Lourcelles, a noted Mankiewicz enthusiast, argued that the film lacks the subtleties of earlier works like A Letter to Three Wives and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Even so, he recognized it as a transitional film, praising the director’s unrivaled verbal wit and its force when deployed as a weapon.
And last, but certainly not least, we celebrate Clint Eastwood’s 96th birthday with a special 35mm screening of Dirty Harry (May 31), directed by Don Siegel and marking its 55th anniversary. Praised and criticized in equal measure, this oft-misunderstood action-crime landmark plays almost like an urban Gothic, as loose-cannon Inspector Harry Callahan hunts the serial sniper Scorpio. Siegel frames their violence as disturbingly reciprocal – two sides of the same coin – placing emphasis on a kind of pathological relativism in which the line between lawman and psychopath begins to erode. We’ll be presenting the film on an IB Technicolor 35mm print, meaning its dye-transfer colors retain the vibrancy they had fresh from the lab, generously provided by our friends at Exhumed Films.
Speaking of Exhumed Films and 35mm, our partnership with the Philadelphia region’s foremost champions of horror and exploitation cinema continues with a brand-new 3D Double Feature (May 9) – projected in genuine over-under 3-D. This time, we present the sights, sounds, and sundry pleasures of Cannon’s wild Indiana Jones cash-in, Treasure of the Four Crowns, alongside the Hong Kong–Taiwanese co-production Dynasty.
Treasure of the Four Crowns doesn’t just ape Indiana Jones, it pulls from an eclectic grab bag of influences, from Rififi to the specter of Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre. Above all, it’s a symphony of projectiles, with objects constantly bursting off the screen and into the audience. Dynasty, by contrast, offers a more traditional period kung-fu narrative, albeit one supercharged with some of the most eye-popping 3-D ever put to film. Punches, poles, bamboo staffs, and flying blades all become instruments of stereoscopic overload. If melting faces and flying guillotines are your idea of fun, this is not to be missed.
The word “psychotronic” might as well have been invented for these features. Popularized by genre film buff Michael J. Weldon, publisher of the hallowed Psychotronic Video magazine, the term refers to films “traditionally ignored or ridiculed by mainstream critics at the time of their release: horror, exploitation, action, science fiction, and movies that used to play in drive-ins or inner-city grindhouse.” Despite its roots in disreputable fare, the psychotronic cinema has fostered one of the most enthusiastic segments of the current cinephile landscape, with a renewed sense of fan and scholarly interest that has resulted not only in reams of text on everything from lesbian vampire movies to Blaxploitation but has kept the home video (not streaming) market alive with immaculately produced limited editions and robust sales.
In a sense, our Fright Night series carries on the tradition of psychotronic cinema. One of our longest-running house series, Fright Night returns this month with a double-bill that’ll tear you in two. These programs serve to replicate that distinct grindhouse aura many of these titles were originally exhibited in…albeit with the snoring patrons and sticky floors replaced by the hum of our 16mm projectors. For May, we present SLASHERS ON 16MM (May 15): a two-pronged jolt of bloodshed and stalking, commencing with Joseph Zito’s genre favorite, The Prowler, and indie legend Charles B. Pierce’s formative, The Town That Dreaded Sundown.
The Prowler follows a jilted WWII vet who resurfaces 35 years after murdering his girlfriend, continuing his killing spree down the shore in and around Cape May. Director Joseph Zito (Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) transforms the seaside haven into a nocturnal killing ground, as a camo-clad assailant methodically stalks a new crop of teenagers. Lensed with eerie precision by João Fernandes, The Prowler pairs streetlamp-lit Americana with nerve-shredding set-pieces and some of the most jaw-dropping practical effects of the slasher era, courtesy of makeup legend Tom Savini. Quoth the tagline: “It will freeze your blood.”
Based on the real-life Texarkana Moonlight Murders, The Town That Dreaded Sundown blurs the line between docudrama and proto-slasher, as a hooded “Phantom” terrorizes a small Southern town with a string of seemingly random attacks on lovers’ lanes and quiet homes. Blending procedural detail with regional texture, Pierce stages the violence with unnerving restraint, punctuated by sudden, brutal shocks, as law enforcement scrambles to contain a threat that remains frustratingly elusive. Anticipating the true-crime rigor of David Fincher’s Zodiac and shot on location amid a thick backwoods atmosphere, The Town That Dreaded Sundown fuses quasi-documentary realism with grindhouse terror (and just a touch of down-home comic relief), coalescing into a haunting portrait of paranoia, vulnerability, and a community under siege. You’ll never look at a trombone the same way again.
For those with more mainstream cult tastes, consider our one-off screening of The Driver (May 20), Walter Hill’s overlooked neo-noir classic. When I learned that May 20 is supposedly National Streaming Day, my mind immediately went to the films that aren’t available at the click of a button, chief among them this gripping, elemental descent into the nocturnal underworld. Starring Ryan O’Neal as a laconic getaway driver pursued by Bruce Dern’s obsessive cop, The Driver is all stripped-down tension and existential cool. A foundational influence on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, this rarely screened title has recently received a sterling 4K restoration, preserving its peculiar blend of neon luminescence and neo-Western archetypes.
And don’t forget about our TOTAL ANARCHY (May 29) double feature of Heavy Metal and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, sponsored by our friends at The Record Shop on Bridge. While both titles reference music genres, these aren’t quite musicals—despite their wall-to-wall, banger-filled soundtracks. Instead, they’re celebrations of pure, anarchic outsiderness. The animated cult classic Heavy Metal delivers a kaleidoscopic barrage of sci-fi, fantasy, and hard rock excess, while Rock ’n’ Roll High School channels a sugar-rush teenage rebellion, powered by the Ramones and the anything-goes esprit of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. Heavy Metal will screen on a 35mm print direct from the studio, while Rock ’n’ Roll High School comes to us via a beautifully restored DCP.
From the sublimely ridiculous to the ridiculously sublime, we close out this preview with a look at our Art House Cinema offerings for May. If you’re in the mood for something more formally adventurous (or simply curious to step outside your comfort zone), consider our 60th anniversary screening of Persona (May 17), Ingmar Bergman’s haunting psychodrama with a distinctly metacinematic edge. Often ranked among the greatest films of all-time and a profound influence on David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., Bergman’s film was indifferently received upon release and has gone on to become his preeminent example of his depths as an artist.
But I’ve saved the very best for last. We close out the month of May with an Art House Cinema screening for the ages. When asked which of his contemporaries he most admired, Ingmar Bergman named the Russian prodigy Andrei Tarkovsky “the greatest of us all.” In a filmography of masterpieces, few are as enrapturing as his high-concept science fiction landmark, Stalker (May 31), a loose adaptation of the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky. Among the cinema’s most rarefied experiences, Stalker follows an eponymous guide leading two intellectuals into the forbidden “Zone,” a landscape reclaimed by nature and seemingly endowed with a mysterious sentience. (Its imagery eerily predicts the fallout of Chernobyl.) At its center lies “The Room,” where one’s deepest, often unconscious desires are said to materialize. A crucial inspiration for myriad media, from the film Annihilation to video games, Stalker remains one of the most singular moviegoing experiences I know. I’m eager to revisit its wonders and enigmas with you at the Colonial. A pre-screening seminar, led by yours truly, will precede the film.
From repertory staples to psychotronic excess, May is a month that moves freely between the canonical and the disreputable, between films that shaped the culture and those that thrived just outside it. However you choose to navigate it, we hope you’ll join us in the dark.
–Dan Santelli