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.

An idyllic weekend of peace and quiet turns deadly for two college friends in HIGH TENSION.

A throwback to the grittiness of horror films from the 1970s, Alexandre Aja’s High Tension (Haute Tension) shows two best friends, Marie and Alex, who arrive at the country home of Alex’s parents for a quiet weekend of studying. And it all starts off very nicely until a homicidal delivery man (Phillippe Nahon from Gasper Noe film fame) arrives killing everyone, kidnapping Alex but unable to find the hidden Marie. What ensues next is a tense and extremely brutal game of cat-and-mouse in real splatter-style with an incredible twist ending that will undoubtedly shock you.

Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.

A young woman’s psychological state comes undone while alone in her London apartment in Roman Polanski’s REPULSION. A 35mm presentation!

The psychological unraveling of Carol’s mind in Repulsion is expressed through sequences of dream imagery, vivid hallucinations, and real life horror as only Polanski can produce on screen. When Carol’s sister leaves her clearly disturbed sister alone in their London apartment as she vacations with a gentleman, it sends Carol over the edge and into madness. From that point on the architecture of London, her apartment and its individual rooms becomes a living, threatening character to Carol: it lets evil men in, houses all foul and decaying things, and literally reaches out to consume her. Men, however how well or ill meaning, are not to be trusted and Carol’s ultimately (and innocently) fights back.

Part of Nitehawk’s FINAL GIRL October program.

Starring: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Drew Barrymore

Many consider Wes Craven’s Scream to be the end of an era for the American horror film as it folds in all of the genre’s tropes of the previous twenty years into one meta experience. With one of the more shocking first scenes in horror history (akin to Hitchcock killing off his main character in Psycho), it establishes everything you need to know about the ride you’re about to go on. More than anything, and without being hokey, Scream is a whole lot of fun as a group of high school students ponder the “rules” of horror movies while a masked killer cleverly guts their peers.

Starring: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn

Robert Wise’s stunningly brilliant filmic adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s book, The Haunting of Hill House, reveals an evil house that has a life all of its own. Immediately after being built by Hugh Crain for his wife, Hill House began its violent history of psychological manipulations and murders. Many years later, when paranormal researcher Dr. Markway invites a group of people to investigate the mysterious home, bizarre occurrences happen almost instantly. One character in particular, Eleanor “Nell” Lance, has a strangely natural connection to Hill House and becomes utterly consumed by its past. Noted as being one of the most frightening films in cinema, Wise’s usage of camera angles, soundscapes and special effects made you believe that the architecture is breathing, tracking, and alive.