Alien (The Director's Cut)
Dir: Ridley Scott
1979, USA / Color / 116min / 35mm
In space no one can hear you scream, but in the intimate confines of the Grand Illusion EVERYONE will hear you scream as you sit down to be terrified by the fantastic, fright-filled 5th year of our annual "All Monsters Attack!" horror movie extravaganza. While on their way home from a routine mining expedition, the crew of the Nostromo are awakened from hyper-sleep to investigate a strange distress signal from a nearby planet. They soon discover that the beacon was intended as a warning and not an S.O.S. Director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down) deftly turns what could have easily been another silly monster movie into a chilling and suspenseful thriller in the grand "old dark house" tradition.
Saturday night shows hosted by GeekGirlCon
Aliens
Dir: James Cameron
1986, USA / Color / 137min / 35mm
They're baaack! And this time there are hundreds of them! Where Alien is a classic example of the "less-is-more" styled creature feature, director James Cameron (Piranha II, The Terminator) pulls out all the stops for this over the top, in your face sequel. Fifty-odd years after barely surviving her first encounter with the slimy xenomorph that we all know and love, Ellen Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) escape pod is picked up drifting across the galaxy. After being revived from the cryogenic stasis, Ripley is once again faced with the possibility of tangling with the deadly alien. What starts out as a simple rescue/recon mission soon turns into a full-on battle to the death with the queen alien and her hordes of offspring. Aliens is not only one of the best sequels of all time, but it's one of the best action films ever!
Saturday night shows hosted by GeekGirlCon
Phantasm II
Dir: Don Coscarelli
1988, USA / Color / 97min / 35mm
"The ball is back!" Young Mike is released from psychiatric care after finally convincing his doctors that he believes that the terrible events of his past—the Tall Man, the silver balls of screaming death, the hideous dwarves—were only a figment of his imagination. Once he's free, Mike immediately contacts the ass-kicking ice cream man Reggie. They team up once again to hunt down and try to destroy the evil Tall Man before he and his minions of wretched dwarves can plunder enough graveyards to supply his alien homeworld with slaves made from compressed corpses! From the director of Beastmaster and
Bubba Ho-Tep.
The Last Circus
Dir: Alex de la Iglesia
2010, Spain-France Color / 107min / Blu-ray
1937, Spain is in the midst of the brutal Spanish Civil War. A "Happy" circus clown is forcibly recruited by a militia to fight. Still in his costume, he is handed a machete and led into battle against National soldiers, where he single handedly massacres an entire platoon! This absurd and disturbing scenario raises the curtain on a twisted tale of love, revenge, and psychopathic clowns that could only spring from the mind of filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia (Day of the Beast, 800 Bullets, Accione Mutante). Don't miss your chance to see this bizarre and surreal masterpiece before it's gone; this is a special limited engagement!
"Makes Pan's Labyrinth look like Sesame Street." - Village Voice
"Brilliant, bizarre. Dazzling and utterly demented." - NY Times
The Wolf Man
Dir: George Waggner
1941, USA / B&W / 70min / 35mm
We offer up a little bit of both the classic and contemporary for "All Monsters Attack!" This year is no different as week 2 of the series kicks off with a true horror classic! The inimitable Lon Chaney Jr. stars as Larry Talbot, a very practical man who returns to his ancestral home of Wales upon hearing of the death of his brother. While in Wales Larry visits a gypsy camp with Jenny, a local village girl. During their stay Jenny is attacked by a werewolf (played by Bela Lugosi), and although Larry manages to kill the monster he is bitten in the fight. He soon finds himself transformed by the light of the full moon and heading directly toward a fateful confrontation. Also starring Claude Rains and Ralph Bellamy.
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man
Dir: Roy William Neill
1943, USA / B&W / 74min. / 35mm
The second half of our classic werewolf double feature is this bizarre sequel to The Wolf Man. Larry Talbot (once again played by Lon Chaney Jr.) finds himself in an asylum recovering from an operation. Police Inspector Owen finds him there too wanting to question him about a string of recent murders. Talbot manages to escape from the asylum and the inspector, determined to find Maleva, the old gypsy woman who knows the secret of his curse. With Maleva's help, Talbot sets out to locate the one man who can help him to die—Dr. Frankenstein! Traveling to the ruins of Frankenstein's castle in search of the doctor's journals, he finds Frankenstein's monster (Bela Lugosi). But instead of finding the answers that he seeks, Talbot is locked in mortal combat with the monster; the supernatural vs. super-science!
Death Kappa
Dir: Tomo'o Hariguchi
2010, Japan-USA / Color / 89min. / Blu-ray
From the producers of The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police comes this nostalgic throwback to the great "Kaiju" films of the 60s & 70s. The kappa, in Japanese folklore, are water goblins that are closely associated with a certain town in the country. Unfortunately, this particular area is also home to a militant splinter group of researchers dedicated to developing amphibious super soldiers based on the kappa of legends and their experiments result in a murder spree. Things get more complicated with the appearance of an actual kappa, the triggering of an atomic bomb, and a second monster rises from the nuclear fallout. Japan's defenses are helpless against all this monster mayhem! Mankind's only savior is an irradiated water goblin that is on the rampage with death in its eyes.
In Japanese w/English subtitles.
The Great Yokai War
Dir:Takashi Miike
2005, Japan / Color / 124min / 35mm
Japanese director Takashi Miike is known for his highly stylized and hyper-violent films such as Audition, Gozu and the Dead or Alive series. Here he takes a departure from the depraved weirdness that he's most noted for and turns his unique eye on more light-hearted, but still utterly bizarre, fare. A young boy from a troubled home becomes chosen as the "Kirin Rider," a protector of all good things. With his new destiny thrust upon him the young "Rider" finds himself in the middle of a great apocalyptic spirit war in which he must lead the ancient Yokai spirits (creatures from Japanese folklore) against armies of evil monsters.
In Japanese w/English subtitles.
"It's like a live-action Hayao Miyazaki film." - eFilmCritic.com
Maximum Overdrive
Dir: Stephen King
1986, USA / Color / 97min / 35mm
Stephen King's original screenplay (based on his short story "Trucks") centers around the Dixie Boy truck stop outside Wilmington, NC. Parked trucks start up on their own and begin circling the truck stop, seemingly lead by one particular truck with a big demonically smiling green goblin head on the grill. The trucks want to be fed, they want fuel; but when the food runs out will the humans escape or be flattened like road kill?
Night of the Living Dead
Dir: George Romero
1968, USA / B&W / 96min / 35mm
"They're coming to get you Barbara!" In 1968 those words were made famous as people flocked to theaters and drive-ins in droves to see a low budget but groundbreaking horror movie about the dead returning to life. A little known filmmaker from Pittsburgh by the name of George Romero had just changed the face of modern horror movies. Chaos descends upon the world as the brains of the recently deceased become inexplicably reanimated, causing the dead to rise and feed on human flesh! Could it be caused by radiation from a fallen satellite? Or some strange cosmic virus? As the catastrophe unfolds, a small group barricade themselves inside a rural house in an attempt to survive the night.
Dawn of the Dead
Dir: Zack Snyder
2004, USA / Color / 101min / 35mm
Picking up where Night of the Living Dead left off the zombie plague is reaching epidemic proportions and the living dead are taking over! A group of survivors takes refuge in a shopping mall. Do they make a last stand or try to escape through a sea of zombies to theoretical safety? In this re-make of George Romero's classic original sequel to NOTLD, director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen) and screenwriter James Gunn defy the conventional and accepted wisdom of the slow-moving "Romero" zombie and opt for a faster, more aggressive monster. In essence they create an entirely new level of danger and fear to an already mind-numbingly terrifying situation. Go spend the day at ZomBcon and then shamble your way to the G.I. to have your eyeballs covered in guts!
"... it's a bloody entertaining zombie apocalypse." - Sean Axmaker
Mondo-Creepo Triple Creature Feature
Our good friends at legendary, local video pioneers Something Weird Video have opened their dark, cavernous vaults of celluloid atrocities to let us bring you two horror filled triple-bills that will melt your optic nerve and send your detached eye- balls screaming and swirling down an endless vortex of fear and terror!!!
Friday, October 28
The Brain Eaters (Bruno VeSota / 1958, USA B&W / 60min / 35mm)
The Awful Dr. Orloff (Jess Franco / 1962, Spain-France B&W / 90min / 35mm)
The Magic Serpent (Tetsuya Yamauchi / 1966, Japan Color / 94min / 16mm)
Saturday, October 29
Godmonters of Indian Flats (Fredric Hobbs / 1973, USA Color / 89min / 35mm)
Zodiac Killer (Tom Hanson / 1971, USA Color / 87min / 16mm)
Bloody Pit of Horror (Massimo Pupillo / 1965, Italy-USA Color / 87min / 16mm)
Super-Secret Triple Creature Feature
Dir: Various
USA / B&W / 240min / 16mm
Three of the greatest horror classics ever made! This iconic trilogy stitches together chills, undead atmospherics, and a jolt of black comedy to give unnatural birth to the greatest screen monster of all time. Don't miss these on the big screen, the way they were meant to be seen.
