Beware of the GHOULIES, they’ll get you in the end. Presented in 35mm!
Why is it every time a group of teenagers have a party in a secluded mansion, one of them has to go and perform some sort of spooky demonic ritual? Does that ever end well? It certainly doesn’t in VHS horror shelf staple Ghoulies, where a group of teenaged party-goers (including a baby faced Mariska Hargitay) unwittingly invite a group of tiny, razor toothed ghouls into their merry band. The pint-sized beasties prove to be poor party guests, chomping at the bit to ruin the kids’ good time (and also kill them). Worst yet, the lil’ terrors aren’t the kids’ only problem: there’s also an undead wizard who can shoot lightning out of his eyes.
Part of Nitehawk’s March LIL’ TERRORS series.
A journalist seeking a Pulitzer Prize commits himself into a mental institution in Samuel Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR. Presented in 35mm (courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive)!
In Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor, journalist Johnny Barret concocts an elaborate scheme to fake his way inside a mental institution (he’s fighting an attraction to his sister who is really his stripper girlfriend) in order to uncover the truth behind an unsolved murder and win a Pulitzer Prize. Provocative for its release in the 1960s, not only does the film include innovative camera angles and sequences (taking place nearly exclusively within the institutional walls) but it also dives into issues such as racism, incest, and mental illness. Shock Corridor also masterfully explores the very fine line between madness and insanity as the journey of our main character leads to very unexpected, and electric, places.
Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.
Part of Nitehawk’s March COMMITTED brunch series.
Doctors in a mental hospital find themselves in a love story wrapped up in murder, amnesia, and psychoanalysis in Alfred Hitchock’s SPELLBOUND.
The doctors who run the mental hospital are the ones questioning sanity in Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller Spellbound. When Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) comes to replace the outgoing director at the Vermont mental hospital, it’s soon revealed that he is not who he says he is and, in fact, believes he is a murderer. That when psychoanalyst Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) decides to assist Edwardes in seeking the truth and his innocence. They break beyond their institutional confines but what they discover is an intricate web of twisted identities and fever pitched delusions that puts them back where they started. Furthering its interest in Freudian dream analysis, artist Salvador Dali produced the film’s haunting surrealist dream sequence in which the “truth” is revealed.
Part of Nitehawk’s March COMMITTED brunch series.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, Danny DeVito, Will Sampson, Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif, William Redfield
Everything is borderline in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Based on the book of the same, the story centers around the arrival of Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) at the Oregon State Hospital who, after a slew of disobedient acts including a statutory rape conviction, has been transferred from prison for a mental evaluation. Self-righteous in his defiance against authority and so certain about his sanity, McMurphy rallies with his fellow patients to break beyond and challenge the normal routine. However, he soon discovers that his search for freedom is not shared by all and that some find necessary comfort within the institutional walls. Haskell Wexler’s cinematography compounds our feeling of overwhelming expansiveness and claustrophobic interiors as we question what madness looks like.
Starring: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy, Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, Jeffrey Tambor, Vanessa Redgrave, Whoopi Goldberg
Based on a novel of the same name, Girl, Interrupted details the instability felt by a generation during the turbulent socio-political climate of the late 1960s through the lives of complicated young women at a mental institution. Committed for various reasons, ranging from food disorders to incest to suicide attempts, their stories intertwine with the main character Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) whose memoir narrates the film. She has unwittingly signed herself into the hospital after a suicide attempt and it becomes a place where she is shocked into the realities it houses and the boundaries of madness. Not unlike Randle in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest, Susanna is on a self-destructive bent but harnesses the ability to decide whether she’d go over the edge into insanity or pull herself back into the world.
A young socialite is committed after the gruesome death of her cousin in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER.
From the Tennessee Williams play of the same name comes the rather shocking film that tackles homosexuality, social class, and incestual feelings, Suddenly, Last Summer. Young socialite Catherine Holly (Elizabeth Taylor) has been committed to a mental hospital because of her breakdown following the gruesome death of her poet cousin, Sebastian. The truth behind her European vacations with him and the circumstances surrounding his demise are so unseemly that her Aunt Violet (Katherine Hepburn) will do anything to keep them secret, including bribing the hospital doctor to give Catherine a lobotomy. She tries to escape but as she finds herself dangling from a balcony above a room of disturbed men, compounding her disorientation and fear stemming from her cousin’s indiscretions. For her, the trouble is that as a beautiful woman who knows too much, the more she rallies to prove her sanity, the more mad she seems. It’s only until she is able to leave the confines of the mental institution that she’s able to find her stability.
Part of Nitehawk’s March COMMITTED brunch series.
Nitehawk presents a special one night screening of VICE Sports’ THE MIRACLE MAN with WBA Middleweight champion Danny Jacobs in person!
This incredible short film by VICE Sports shows Brooklyn native Danny Jacobs’ inspirational journey to winning the WBA title after battling cancer. Doctors told Jacobs he would never be able to walk again, nonetheless step back into the ring, but the middleweight boxer is back and owning his title as the first cancer survivor to become a world champion! Screening also includes additional short films by VICE Sports.
In the Iranian ghost town Bad City… A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT.
The first Iranian Vampire Western ever made, Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut basks in the sheer pleasure of pulp. A joyful mash-up of genre, archetype, and iconography, its prolific influences span spaghetti westerns, graphic novels, horror films, and the Iranian New Wave.
Starring: Urbano Barberini, Natasha Hovey, Karl Zinny
Saturday’s show will be hosted by members of the Mahoning Drive-In staff with prize giveaways, classic intermission snipes and more fun, recreating a night at The Historic Mahoning Drive-In for indoor audiences.
Usually taking in a late night horror movie at the local theater is a bit of harmless (if gross) fun. You see some folks get mauled, squirm in your seat a bit and then head home for a night of uneasy sleep. Things aren’t so easy for the moviegoers in Lamberto Bava’s Demons. Given a free ticket from a masked stranger, a group of night owls head off to a West Berlin movie house to take in a bit of ultra-violent Italian horror. Lulled into a sense of safety by the flickering light of the projector, the real horror begins when an honest-to-God demon rips its way out of the screen and starts slashing its way through the crowd. With their only exits bricked off, as if by magic, the surviving members of the audience must take up arms and fight off the growing demon horde.
Demons is a a grotesque bit of meta-horror from Bava and producer Dario Argento, filled with ruthless baddies, cheeseball heavy metal, and every color of blood, bile and pus you can imagine. Don’t be frightened, though: it’s only a movie.
Starring: Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, Silvia Collatina
A New York professor moves out to the sticks to pick up the work of a colleague who got into a bit of a Shining situation when he murdered his mistress and then killed himself. Undeterred by his friend’s grotesque end, the good doctor packs up the wife and kid and moves into a dilapidated mansion that comes complete with a basement door that’s been nailed shut and a ghostly young girl that constantly tells everyone to get the hell out of there.
Brutal and borderline incomprehensible, even by the loose standards of Italian horror, The House by the Cemetery closes out director Lucio Fulci’s The Gates of Hell trilogy, the director’s loose collection of atmospheric apocalyptica (with The Beyond and The City of The Living Dead). Set atop a wintry hill, constantly swept in fog, The House by the Cemetery passes along like a dream. Slick with rot, the particulars of its motives and story fade away in favor of atmosphere and imagery.
