Starring: Robert Englund, Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Rusler, Clu Gulager, Hope Lange

To make an additional $10 donation to The Ali Forney Center, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen. Nitehawk will be matching all donations.

Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton) moves with his family into the home of the lone survivor from a series of attacks by dream-stalking monster Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). There, Jesse is bedeviled by nightmares and inexplicably violent impulses. It turns out Freddy needs a host body to carry out his gruesome vendetta against the youth of Springwood, Ohio. While Freddy gains influence, Jesse and his girlfriend, Lisa (Kim Myers), race against the clock trying to figure out what’s going on.

The follow up to the film that introduced Freddy Krueger into our nightmares has become an iconically queer film due to its not so subtle context, tones and explicit desires.

Starring: Michelle Krusiec, Joan Chen, Lynn Chen, Li Zhiyu, Jin Wang, Guanglan Shen

Wil (Michelle Krusiec) is a lesbian, but she not dare tell her widowed mother, Hwei-lan (Joan Chen), or her very traditional grandparents. She’s shocked, however, to find out she’s not the only one in her family with romantic secrets when she learns that her 48-year-old mother is pregnant. Unwilling to reveal who the father is, Hwei-lan is kicked out of her parents’ home and must move in with Wil, which puts a strain on Wil’s budding relationship with openly gay Vivian (Lynn Chen).

Starring: John Dresden, Geoff Binney, Jillian Kessner, Rey King, Cameron Mitchell

This August brings Kung-fu guru Grady Hendrix and Subway Cinema back to THE DEUCE with the ridiculously outre and outrageous RAW FORCE! Edward (NOT Eddie) D. Murphy’s 1982 shlock-sockey silliness – straight from the Philippines to your heart… and skipping your mind completely!

Ribald! Raucous!! A riot of wrong!! Kickboxing swingers at sea hit stormy waters when their delirious disco-party turns disastrous due to an ill-advised sojourn to “Warrior Island”… where everything – including the kitchen sink – that karate-horror could possibly offer awaits!!! A dastardly mini-mustachioed dictator, murder-minded monks… slave-trading and severed limbs… cannibalism… and an army of zombie-ghost kung-fu killers!! Mind-numbing nuttiness in a flick that doesn’t make a lick of sense! Gratuitous, goofy, and gonzo… jaw-droppingly jejune!

With cantankerous Cameron Mitchell as captain of said kickboxing swingers ship and Camille Keaton as “Girl in toilet”… You want more? Well, Raw Force has “more” in spades – leaving no stone unturned – and seeming like it just crawled out from under one!… A Raw Force to be reckoned with!!

Starring: Bernadette Peters, Adam Coleman Howard, Nick Corri, Madeleine Potter, Chris Sarandon, Mary Beth Hurt

As downtown rent prices increase and money fails to trickle down to the avant-garde artist set, Eleanor feels trapped in her live-in relationship with her boyfriend Stash (Adam Coleman Howard), a volatile artist whose temper might be more negligible than his talent. What he lacks in real feeling Stash makes up for in real estate, and the waifish but worldly Eleanor endures Stash’s infidelities with his rich groupie Daria (Madeleine Potter) as she struggles for recognition as an artist in her own right.

Taking their cue from Tama Janowitz’s edgy prose, on which she based her screenplay for the film, director James Ivory and cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts use a bold palate of colors and light to evoke New York as seen through the eyes of young artists. The avant-garde art world is here in form as well as content: split screen techniques that evoke Warhol (who was interested in filming these stories) and a relentless use of primary colors are the visual counterpart of these characters’ artistic styles and artistic temperaments. Slaves, which was very well received by European audiences, features some of Merchant Ivory’s most thoroughly realized design elements by production designer David Gropman and costume designer Carol Ramsey. Janowitz called the characters in her stories ‘modern saints,’ and ‘early Madonna’ might best describe the bold and outrageous clothes Ramsey creates for Eleanor and her circle.

Though many audiences, expecting another ‘frock film,’ were surprised by Merchant and Ivory’s unusual choice of subject matter in 1989, Eleanor has come to fit into the Merchant Ivory canon both as a displaced wanderer – a subject explored by the filmmakers again and again – and as a young female artist whose own talents are dominated by a temperamental male artist, the province of Francoise Gilot in Surviving Picasso.

Starring: Mindy Kaling, Emma Thompson, John Lithgow

A legendary late-night talk show host’s world is turned upside down when she hires her only female staff writer. Originally intended to smooth over diversity concerns, her decision has unexpectedly hilarious consequences as the two women separated by culture and generation are united by their love of a biting punchline.

Starring: Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, Luke Evans, McKaley Miller, Missi Pyle

Oscar winner Octavia Spencer stars as Sue Ann, a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own. She offers the kids the chance to avoid drinking and driving by hanging out in the basement of her home. But there are some house rules: One of the kids has to stay sober. Don’t curse. Never go upstairs. And call her “Ma.” But as Ma’s hospitality starts to curdle into obsession, what began as a teenage dream turns into a terrorizing nightmare, and Ma’s place goes from the best place in town to the worst place on earth.

Starring: Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick

Ten years after a futuristic cyborg was sent to kill Sarah Conner and she survived, a stronger Terminator (T-1000) comes back into her life to kill her son, John Conner. Again, the robotic assassins visit the past to eliminate the future leader of the resistance party (i.e. John Conner) but, thankfully, the rebels re-send a protector to keep them all alive. But this time, it’s the old Terminator, who’s out to save the future! As past selves meet the decisions of future selves (the mind melts), Terminator 2 is an exciting sequel complete with stunning make-up and special effects. Hasta la vista, baby.

Starring: Michael Beck, James Remar, David Patrick Kelly, Dorsey Wright

The Warriors is Walter Hill’s dystopian vision of a future New York run by ruthless (yet cleverly themed) street gangs. The “Armies of the Night” (gangs such as The Furies, The Boppers, The Hi-Hats, The Lizzies, The Turnball AC’s, The Gramercy Riffs and The Warriors) rule a future, gritty and violent New York. But when Cyrus, the leader of the most powerful gang The Gramercy Riffs, is killed after plotting to have all the gangs unite as a superpower to overthrow the police, The Warriors get blamed and things get really ugly. Taking place over one night with The Warriors gang has to get from the Bronx to their homebase in Coney Island, The Warriors shows their one shot at escaping the wrath of rival gangs and angry police.

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth, André Benjamin

Monte (Robert Pattinson) and his baby daughter are the last survivors of a damned and dangerous mission to deep space. The crew—death-row inmates led by a doctor (Juliette Binoche) with sinister motives—has vanished. As the mystery of what happened onboard the ship is unraveled, father and daughter must rely on each other to survive as they hurtle toward the oblivion of a black hole.

Starring: Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Farris, Fumihiro Hayashi

Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) doesn’t have much going on in her life. Freshly graduated and freshly married, she tags along to Japan with her hotshot photographer husband who leaves her to sit alone in her room while he rubs elbows with tinseltown boobs. In sky-high bar of her hotel, she meets Bob Harris (Bill Murray), an aging, sad sack actor visiting town to cash in on a quick celebrity endorsement. The two form a fast friendship as they explore the Tokyo bizarreride together.

Over a decade on, Lost in Translation still stands as Sofia Coppola’s defining work; an introspective and wistful romance between two people as puzzled by their own existence as they are by the neon buzz of Shibuya.