“I can’t believe how funny this is! I remember being shocked by how relevant and fun and weird it felt…People have always been weird! How fun, how good!!” -Ayo Edebiri (Bottoms, The Bear)

Anticipating (and out-doing!) the frenetic, joke-a-second satire of Blazing Saddles, Scary Movie and Airplane!, HELLZAPOPPIN’ (1941) retains its ability to twist your head around over 80 years after it was first unleashed on unsuspecting cinema-goers. Adapting a popular Broadway show starring the now-forgotten comedy duo Olsen and Johnson, the film takes a wrecking ball to Hollywood conventions, mixing up wacky slapstick gags, verbal humor, and absolutely incredible dance sequences into a surreal, nearly-plotless meta-comedy radically ahead of its time. One jaw-dropping swing-dance number by the legendary African-American troupe Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers has gone viral many times over in the Internet age, a sign of the timeless appeal of this unclassifiable comedic scorcher.

“Respect and love to Monty Python, but everything they did with form was done here first, at 2x speed.” -Will Sloan

“Nothing can beat its manic first 15 minutes that tops Mel Brooks's entire career” -Peter Labuza

"Hellzapoppin’ takes the musical apart piece by piece, mocking and discarding every constituent element of genre and film form itself, giving their own film the MST3K treatment and leaving behind nothing but a smoking wreck of dancing girls and random surreality." -Sean Gilman

The film will be preceded by a selection of similarly frenzied Looney Tunes shorts, starting at 1 pm.

Screening as part of Arkadin’s November-long series, MUSICAL COMEDIES BUT NOT “MUSICAL COMEDIES” — you know, comedies with lots of music but not really musicals. You get us?

Arkadin does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. However, we encourage researching titles to determine if a screening may contain content that could be upsetting to you. Please feel free to contact us for guidance on specific films. Information about content can also be found on Common Sense Media, IMDB and DoesTheDogDie.com, as well as through general internet searches.