The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976 Original Theatrical Cut)

Opened Friday, January 23, 2026

SHOWTIMES AT IFC CENTER

50th Anniversary! 1976 Original Theatrical Cut! (Also playing: the 1978 Cut) 

Starring frequent collaborators Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel and based on an idea he developed with Martin Scorsese, Cassavetes’ unforgettable neo-noir is the tale of a strip-club owner pressured by gangland thugs into murdering a stranger.

After originally releasing this 135-minute version, Cassavetes responded to humdrum box office and negative reviews by trimming almost 30 minutes to put out a more widely seen 108-minute cut two years later. Opinions differ on which version is better, but in honor of Cassavetes’ stress-inducing, underseen noir’s 50th anniversary, we’re presenting both cuts, letting you make up your mind on these two very different takes on a beloved genre from one of independent cinema’s greatest masters.

In what other film would a waitress from famed post-hippie L.A. restaurant The Source take her morning break next door to audition for Ben Gazzara’s bizarro performance-art strip club? When his high-flying lifestyle owes debts to a sinister syndicate (led by Seymour Cassel and a wonderfully mushy Timothy Carey), he’s given a tough choice: knocking off a Chinese “bookie” or losing his beloved theater.

Cassavetes renders all of this with a hallucinatory eye, subverting genre conventions with his unsettled rhythms and a sweetly absurdist tone. Likewise, Gazzara perfectly embodies the fractured, contradictory persona of a character as much filled with frailty and vice as he is with ambition and integrity.

“A movie about a testy, outsider artist and his gang of misfit collaborators, the John Cassavetes biopic once-removed.” -WBUR

  • Country USA
  • Year 1976
  • Running Time 135 minutes
  • Format DCP
  • Distributor AGFA
  • Director John Cassavetes
  • Cast Ben Gazzara, Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel, Morgan Woodward, Azizi Johari
  • Accessibility Assistive Listening, T-Coil

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.