Nitehawk’s third annual all-night Halloween screening A NITE TO DISMEMBER time travels through DECADES OF HORROR!

Get schooled on horror history with A NITE TO DISMEMBER: DECADES OF HORROR as we screen five classic movies from the past fifty years. Starting at midnight on Halloween, Nitehawk celebrates films that punctuated each decade like a knife to the heart: Poltergeist (1980s), House on Haunted Hill (1960s), Bay of Blood (1970s), and Scream (1990s) with a surprise spanking new horror release right in the middle so secret that it will only be revealed moments before we show it!

As we do each year at A NITE TO DISMEMBER, there will be a costume contest (with prizes!), trivia (more prizes!), horror short films (pint sized fear!), and complimentary Nitehawk breakfast (eggs and tots!). This year there will also be a complimentary cereal bar courtesy of POST Cereal and guests will receive a special “survival” gift bag that, amongst other treats, includes a discounted fare from Uber. And we’ve got you covered on the drink front with complimentary coffee from Fazenda Coffee and a specialty cocktail with Owl’s Brew. Plus, sweets from our neighbor SweetHaus! Hosted by Shudder’s Sam Zimmerman and Nitehawk’s Kris King.

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

FILMS (in order of screening)…

POLTERGEIST (Tobe Hooper, 1982) – 35mm
Come into the light Carol Anne…
Poltergeist took the haunted house in film into a whole new era. Brought to you by the director of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Steven Spielberg, it shows the quick evolution from excitement to fear as the young Freeling family discovers their shiny new home in Cuesta Verde comes with a bad case of the evil spirits. Basically, the first in the Poltergeist series eviscerates middle class America in the 1980s by attacking them where it counts, their planned housing communities, with the technology of the time. Trust us, a television has never been so scary.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (William Castle, 1959) – Digital
They’re coming for me now…and then they’ll come for you…
Speaking of haunted houses, you’d be hard pressed to find one more outlandishly fun than this Vincent Price classic. Starring as an eccentric millionaire, Price invites five strangers to spend the night in a “haunted” house and whomever survives will get one million dollars. (Disclaimer: you don’t get money for surviving Nite). Directed by the ultimate film showman William Castle, House on Haunted Hill is full of plot holes but the film’s charm is part of the fun-loving gimmick experience of the time period that would make Castle a legend. Just beware the flying skeleton in the theater.

MYSTERY FILM (2000s)

A BAY OF BLOOD aka TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE (Mario Bava, 1971) – 35mm
Gee their good at playing dead, aren’t they?…
Violent, sexy and (yes) humorous, Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood or Twitch of the Death Nerve or the near countless other titles, is the film that inspired a generation of American horror. In fact, you may notice that one scene’s “inspiration” is outright copied in Friday the 13th: Part II. One the one hand, the story has a homicidal inheritance race. On the other, there’s a group of unaware sexed up, boozed up teenagers camping out in an abandoned house in the family bay who get caught up in the murderous mix. Like all of Bava’s films, A Bay of Blood is pure magic; pure gratuitous, gory magic. Know the original.

SCREAM (Wes Craven, 1996) – DCP
What’s your favorite scary movie?…
Wes Craven’s Scream has been called the movie that marks the end 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. Most important, the film doesn’t take itself too serious. In fact, it’s incredibly fun to watch this group of mid-90s high school students ponder the “rules” of horror movies while a masked killer cleverly guts their peers. At the center of it all is our Final Girl Sidney, a virgin who seems to be the target of the killer’s affection. And yes, there will be test at the end of the Nite so study up!

A comedy about Allie and Harper and their needlessly difficult journey to the beach.

Fort Tilden: New York City’s secluded seaside nirvana where, like flies to honey, Brooklyn’s hip millennial set flocks on sweltering weekend afternoons for unbridled summertime indulgence. Amidst the vexing stagnation of quarter-life crises, Allie (Clare McNulty) struggles to prepare for the Peace Corps, while Harper (Bridey Elliott) awaits checks from her father to fund her artistic dreams. But the two friends quickly shun responsibilities for the day when a pair of good-looking guys invites them along for a carefree Fort Tilden afternoon. As the two young women board their fixed-gear bicycles and embark on a lengthy journey to the beach, they quickly realize that, akin to their confusing, transitioning lives, they neither know where they’re going nor how they plan to get there. 

The debut feature film of directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers – and showcasing the comedic versatility of Clare McNulty and Bridey Elliott as Allie and Harper – “Fort Tilden” is a hilariously insightful and recognizable look at the consequences of extended adolescence.

An in-depth look at the legacy of Apple’s Steve Jobs.

In his signature black turtleneck and blue jeans, shrouded in shadows below a milky apple, Steve Jobs’ image was ubiquitous. But who was the man on the stage? What accounted for the grief of so many across the world when he died? From Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney, Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine is a critical examination of Jobs who was at once revered as an iconoclastic genius and a barbed-tongued tyrant. A candid look at Jobs’ legacy featuring interviews with a handful of those close to him at different stages in his life, the film is evocative and nuanced in capturing the essence of the Apple legend and his values which shape the culture of Silicon Valley to this day.

The sins of the past will become your present.

Can you really go through life having never wronged anyone? Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) are a young married couple whose life is going just as planned until a chance encounter with an acquaintance from Simon’s high school sends their world into a harrowing tailspin. Simon doesn’t recognize Gordo (Joel Edgerton) at first, but after a seemingly coincidental series of encounters and mysterious gifts prove troubling, a horrifying secret from their past is uncovered after nearly 20 years. As Robyn learns the unsettling truth about what happened between Simon and Gordo, she starts to question: how well do we really know the people closest to us, and are past bygones ever really bygones?

If you thought you’d loved Lily Tomlin before, behold GRANDMA!

Elle Reid has just gotten through breaking up with her girlfriend when her granddaughter Sage unexpectedly shows up needing 600 dollars before sundown. Temporarily broke, Grandma Elle and Sage spend the day trying to get their hands on the cash as their unannounced visits to old friends and flames end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets.

One girl. One city. One night. One take.

Set in Berlin’s famous Kreuzberg’s district, Victoria shows two very life-changing hours in the life of a young, runaway party girl from Spain. A movie in a single take (so, no cuts either), Victoria starts with three men asking her to join them as they hit the town until their partying turns into a bank robbery and things, well, they start to unravel.

A gambler on a losing streak teams up with a younger gambler, hoping to change his luck.

Down on his luck and facing financial hardship, Gerry teams up with younger charismatic poker player, Curtis, in an attempt to change his luck. The two set off on a road trip through the South with visions of winning back what’s been lost.

Three elite climbers struggle to find their way through obsession and loss as they attempt to climb Mount Meru, one of the most coveted prizes in the high stakes game of Himalayan big wall climbing. 

In 2008, three American climbers, Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk arrive in India to make an attempt to climb Mount Meru. Surviving a massive storm on the wall and battling for 19 days through sub zero temperatures with only 8 days of food, they are beaten back just 100 meters below the elusive 21,000ft summit. After swearing off the route and returning home, family, friendship, loyalty and the will to continue dreaming of the impossible climb are tested by loss and disasters that conspire to keep them from returning to the Shark’s Fin for one last try. With intimate interviews and narration from Jon Krakauer, the documentary film Meru examines obsession, friendship, dreams and sacrifice, on and off one of the world’s most difficult mountains.

Starring: Zalman King, Raymond Young, Mark Goddard, Deborah Winters, Argentina Brunetti, Robert Walden

It’s the 1970s in Los Angeles and people are freaking out! One second, they’re perfectly normal, everyday yuppies who hang out at parties, raise their kids, and toil away at work; but then, seemingly out of nowhere, their hair begins to fall out and they kill everyone in sight! The mayhem erupts all around the city, as one man tries to solve the mystery of the city wide killing spree. All signs point to a dangerous form of LSD called Blue Sunshine that the murderer’s all took in the hippie-dippy haze of the 1960s.

Nitehawk’s BOOZE & BOOKS presents a screening of STARDUST MEMORIES in celebration of Tom Shone’s new book “Woody Allen: A Retrospective” published by Abrams Books. Shone will introduce the film!

Update: Tom Shone will sign copies of the book before the screening!

Filmmaker Sandy Bates goes fully into his own existential crisis while attending a retrospective of his work. Recounting his past relationships as the complications of his present ones play out, he searches for meaning both in work and in love. The tender balance between the tragedy and comedy of life plays out as he weighs the importance of each. And while it seems that his audience prefers to look at the bright side of life amongst all the tragedy, Sandy can’t resist staying in the muck.

In Woody Allen: A Retrospective, author Tom Shone traces Allen’s entire professional life as an entertainer and director, weaving in archival and original interviews, and accompanying this new critical monograph with more than 250 behind-the-scenes stills, photographs, posters, and ephemera. Tom Shone is the film critic for the Guardian US and the Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine. He has written for Slate, the New Yorker, and the Sunday Times. He is the author of Blockbuster, In the Rooms, and Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective (Abrams, 2014).

Please note that we offer two ticket prices for Stardust Memories. The $45 ticket includes a copy of the book two weeks before it’s release and at a discounted rate! Just select the option when purchasing and present your ticket to pick up in our lobby the night of the screening! Take a sneak peek at the book below…

Part of Nitehawk Cinema’s BOOZE & BOOKS signature series.