Nitehawk’s LIVE SOUND CINEMA presents a special one-nite pre-Halloween screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film THE LODGER with a live score by MORRICONE YOUTH!

A Jack-the-Ripper type murderer called “The Avenger” is terrorizing London by targeting young blond women. How Hitchcockian! At the same time of these attacks, a mysterious man takes a room at the a family-owned boarding house and strikes up a relationship with the proprietor’s pretty blonde daughter. To thicken the plot, she’s engaged to a policeman hot on the trail of “The Avenger” who thinks her Lodger lover is the serial killer! Part of the restored newly restored “Hitchcock Nine” by the British Film Institute, The Lodger is considered the “first true Hitchcock film” and is, obviously, a thrilling way to kick start your Halloween.

Morricone Youth is a New York City band formed in 1999 dedicated to performing and recording old film and television soundtrack and library production music.

Nitehawk goes back to COLLEGE with our special one-weekend screening of ANIMAL HOUSE!

The ultimate frat house fracas, the John Landis directed/Harold Ramis penned Animal House hits Nitehawk’s screen for one weekend only. Showing you what happens when National Lampoons brings you a story about a group of 1960s college students try to save their Delta Tau Chi Fraternity. So come out and root for the slobs as they go after that pesky dean and… kill a horse in the process.

Nitehawk’s annual all-night horror movie screening on Halloween is back with a series of horrifying sequels!

Like all good monsters who return from the grave, Nitehawk is bringing back its all-night horror movie marathon with The Return of…A Nite to Dismember! Starting at midnight on Halloween we will celebrate our second year by presenting only the very best in horror film sequels: Evil Dead II, The Bride of Frankenstein, Friday the 13th: Part 2, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and Return of the Living Dead. There will also be horror shorts, inspired montages, giveaways, trivia, and a costume contest plus breakfast in the morning. Hosted by Fangoria’s Sam Zimmerman and Nitehawk’s Kris King!

RSVP to Flavorpill to get a bag of tricks-and-treats at the event! (note: you’ll still need to buy a ticket)

Forget trick-or-treating, spend the nite with us!

FILMS (in order of screening)…

EVIL DEAD II (Sam Raimi, 1987) – 35mm
A parody to director Sam Raimi’s original feature, Evil Dead II is a comedic take on a lone survivor (the estimable Bruce Campbell) and a group of strangers who fight the undead released after reading the Necronomicon.

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935) – DCP
Widely considered to be one of the best movie sequels in cinema, James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein introduces Dr. Pretorius who tries to get Dr. Frankenstein back into the human-making business in order to make a wife for the beloved Karloff monster.

FRIDAY THE 13TH: PART 2 (Steve Miner, 1981) – Digital
A new set irresponsible, sex-crazed camp counsellors are back at a camp near Crystal Lake and so is the killer…it’s not Mrs. Voorhees but the indestructible Jason!

DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (Terence Fisher, 1966)  – Digital
Though technically the third in the Hammer Dracula series, Dracula: Prince of Darkness is the second film featuring the iconic Christopher Lee as Dracula as he seduces a group of four unsuspecting castle visitors.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (Dan O’Bannon, 1985) – Digital
The dead are back…Return of the Living Dead features a group of scientists who accidentally release poisonous gas that reanimates the dead, eventually turning most everyone into zombies who crave BRAINS!

Starring: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Adrian Grenier, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt

Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a recent college graduate with big dreams. Upon landing a job at prestigious Runway magazine, she finds herself the assistant to diabolical editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). Andy questions her ability to survive her grim tour as Miranda’s whipping girl without getting scorched.

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard, Diahnne Abbott

Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) is a failure in life but a celebrity in his own mind, hosting an imaginary talk show in his mother’s basement. When he meets actual talk show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis), he’s convinced it will provide his big break, but Langford isn’t interested in the would-be comedian. Undaunted, Pupkin effectively stalks Langford — and when that doesn’t work, he kidnaps him, offering his release in exchange for a guest spot on Langford’s show.

Starring: Kevin Van Hentenryck, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner, Robert Vogel

What’s in the basket? Well, it certainly isn’t a bushel of kittens. When country kid Duane Bradley arrives in New York with only his mysterious basket, he peaks the curiosity of everyone he meets and this intrigue kills. It actually contains his deformed siamese twin whom he’s on a pack to kill all those who considered him inhuman when born. Duh! As always, a lady comes into the picture and complicates things while the freak twin escapes to wreak havoc on, well, everyone. Basket Case is low budget and high gore, just how we like it.

Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale

H.P. Lovecraft’s writings can be difficult to adapt to the big screen but this 1985 horror-comedy film, based on the story “Herbert West – Reanimator”, is by far one of the best…and the most entertaining. Brilliant but strange medical student Herbert West starts some trouble when he brings his professor (Hans Gruber, not from Die Hard) back from the dead. This, naturally, complicates things for everybody but particularly for one fellow med student and his girlfriend. Sure this is a comedy in this cult favorite but there’s gore a-plenty!

Halloween season can officially begin with Nitehawk’s screening of the maddest story ever told…SPIDER BABY!

Jack Hill’s Spider Baby is an absolute horror classic about the Merrye family who have a rare recessive gene that turns them into cannibals after a certain age. Save for the occasional murderous mishap, all is managed just fine by the family butler who takes care of the children and the older cannibals housed in the basement until distant relatives come in to inquire about the estate. Although in black and white, Spider Baby is full of colorful characters like the silently expressive Ralph Merrye (Sid Haig), the greedy Emily Howe (Carol Ohm), and the concerned caretaker Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.). But it’s the young mischievous Merrye daughters who truly steal the show with their distorted grown-up behavior, vocal hatred of people, and the deadly game of playing spider.

Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.

Starring: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Joan Bennett, Alida Valli, Udo Kier, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé

Dario Argento’s Suspiria is a candy-coated nightmare with an explosion of color and sound, heightening all the gory kills and strange occurrences to an all time pitch-perfect high. (Those bugs, the razorblades, the Goblin soundtrack!). In this horror fairy tale written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi, ballet dancer Suzy Banyon attends the German Tans Academy only to instantly find herself in the middle of a series of gruesome, and supernatural, murders. As she uncovers the dark history of the prestigious academy, the coven of witches tighten their grip on her and her classmates. She fights hard to solve the mystery before the Black Queen completely consumes her!

A group of friends are terrorized by a family of cannibals in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!

Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of a handful of films that punctuate the very life-blood of cinematic history. Intensely brutal with very little reprieve or consideration for the audience, it came out of a rift of a socio-cultural framework, bursting onscreen with the evisceration of the family structure, youth culture, and cultural fragility in a post-Vietnam United States. Like Night of the Living Dead did five years earlier, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre reveals the unraveling framework of society and places the possibility of horror/death to occur anywhere; not in the Gothic castle nor in the fields of Vietnam but, more terrifyingly, in our surrounding neighborhoods. The film also reveals one of the first final girls (Sally) in the American slasher genre.