Newly Restored Canucksploitation Films: Skip Tracer and Tales From the Gimli Hospital

Something that Canadian cinema excels at is a ready-made oddball, DIY, cult mode—both Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital and Zale Dalen’s Skip Tracer are prime examples of this. With their debut features, both directors proved their singular, surrealist penchants for genre and bucked the rules and expectations of commercial Canadian filmmaking. The restoration and accessibility of important works from Canada’s 70s and 80s cult canon has never been more important if we’re to understand and celebrate the past half century of Canadian filmmaking, for its ground-breaking moments.

Hollywood Suite is proud to present the television premiere of the restoration of these important Canadian films. Stream Tales from the Gimli Hospital and Skip Tracer on demand all month long in November, or click on the title or poster below to find additional broadcast play times.

Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988)

Premieres Nov 9 at 9pm ET on HS80
Available on demand in November
Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Angela Heck, Kyle McCulloch, Michael Gottli

In Maddin’s surrealist, Manitoban-set feature debut Tales from the Gimli Hospital, a lonely fisherman stricken with smallpox (Kyle McCulloch) embarks on a fierce competition with a fellow patient (Michael Gottli) to vie for the affections of Gimli Hospital’s angelic young nurses. As part of Telefilm’s Canadian Cinema – Reignited initiative to restore and re-release Canadian films of historic and cultural importance, the Toronto International Film Festival hand-picked the restoration of Tales from the Gimli Hospital to premiere at this year’s festival.

Skip Tracer (1977)

Premieres Nov 29 at 9pm ET on HS70
Available on demand in November
Director: Zale Dalen
Starring: David Petersen, John Lazarus, Rudy Szabo

Set in 1970s Vancouver, a debt collector (David Peterson) vies to win his company’s “Man of the Year Award” at any cost, only to be faced with the consequences of relentless and brutal tactics. Considered today to be an essential entry in the Canuxploitation oeuvre, Dalen’s feature film debut was the first Canadian film programmed at the New York Film Festival in 1979 and proved an exciting calling card for the young writer/director. It has been said to have influenced subsequent cult films including Alex Cox’s Repo Man (1984). The digital remaster of Skip Tracer was produced by Justin Decloux of The Great Canadian Cinema Library, utilizing materials from Library and Archives Canada.