The directorial debut of Allan Moyle (Times Square, Pump up the Volume, Empire Records) The Rubber Gun stars Stephen Lack (who also co-wrote the script) several years before he starred in David Cronenberg’s Scanners. Featuring original songs by Lewis Furey – who earned acclaim for his collaborations with Gilles Carle, Leonard Cohen, and Carole Laure – this inventive drug drama set the stage for an unflinching subgenre that made waves in subsequent decades with acclaimed films like Drugstore Cowboy and Trainspotting. The Rubber Gun fuses documentary and fiction filmmaking strategies, with most of the actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves. In spite of a shoestring budget, the film has an urgency and vivid reality that earned it widespread praise and a place at MoMA’s New Directors/New Films and the Locarno Film Festival’s 1977 edition. The Toronto International Film Festival has cited The Rubber Gun as “of the best films of the seventies,” but it has been out of official circulation for decades, making it long overdue for rediscovery. (Canadian International Pictures)