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The Hollywood Theatre’s All Night Horror Marathon! sold out in less than 30 minutes, but as Halloween icon Dr. Frank-N-Furter once said: Babies, don’t you panic.
There’s ghoulish goodies on screens throughout Portland this October, offering everything from well-aged classicism (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Eyes Without a Face) to otherworldly sexiness (The Hunger, Breaking Dawn, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) to absolute silliness (Frankenhooker).
Where to begin? Start with our guide to a month of spooky screenings on both sides of the Columbia River. It’s all here, starting with an iconic alien visitation…
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org.
The Hollywood is covering the 1950s through the early 2000s, complete with cannibals, zombies, ghosts and vampires. October begins with The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), starring Michael Rennie as an alien ambassador sent to warn Earthlings they need to live peacefully or be destroyed. Predictably, this doesn’t go well (a 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves proves that even Keanu can’t bring world peace).
Other standouts include Hellraiser (1987), which will be hosted by Carla Rossi, and a variety of Dracula films—including Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974), a kung fu variation with Peter Cushing in his usual role as Van Helsing. And proving that the Prince of Darkness is frightening in any language, the Hollywood is showing Spanish Dracula (1931) and Deafula (1975), an ASL vampire flick filmed in Portland.
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St., 971-808-3331, cstpdx.com.
The Clinton offers early horror classics and a nice mix of cult and crap from the ‘80s and ‘90s. In the former category, Robert Wiene uses sharp angles and shadows to tell the tale of an insane hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders in the quintessential German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Then comes Eyes Without a Face (1960), Georges Franju’s masterpiece about a plastic surgeon who gives his daughter a face transplant after a disfiguring accident. Other cult favorites include Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surrealistic Santa Sangre (1989), about a young circus performer and a crime of passion that shatters his soul; the urbane vampire classic The Hunger (1983), featuring David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon; and Ringu (1998), the nightmarish Japanese film about a curse that befalls viewers of a VHS tape.
Oh, and don’t miss Frankenhooker (1990), which is aptly billed as a terrifying tale of “sluts and bolts.”
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-252-0500, academytheaterpdx.com.
The Academy offers classics from the 1940s to the ‘90s, starting with Lon Chaney Jr. in Universal Pictures’ 1941 classic The Wolf Man. There’s also Halloween fare from the 1960s and ‘70s, including Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) starring his frenemy Klaus Kinski. The 1980s, meanwhile, will be represented by cult classics like schlocky psychological thriller The Boogeyman (1980), creepy clown camp Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988), and Beetlejuice (1988) featuring Michael Keaton as the manic bio-exorcist from the Netherworld.
Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515, cinema21.com.
Tod Browning’s unforgettable classic Freaks (1932), made with a cast of real-life sideshow performers before the restrictions of the Motion Picture Production Code, is part of a Halloween double feature. Browning’s film, the twisted tale of a beautiful trapeze artist who plans to seduce and kill a little person in the troupe to get his inheritance, is being shown with another wild pre-code offering, Safe in Hell (1931). Films from this era are relished for their unbridled depiction of sex, drugs, violence and general sleaze.
Kiggins Theatre
1011 Main St,, Vancouver, Wash., 360-816-0352, kigginstheatre.com.
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) shows on Halloween with the creepy twin girls who were “corrected” by their father and iconic performances by Shelley Duvall and Jack Nicholson as the unhappily married couple stranded at a seemingly vacant lodge in Colorado. There’s also a monthly screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (it doesn’t just screen at the Clinton, you know!) with the Denton Delinquents. And the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra presents F.W. Murnau’s eerie Nosferatu (1922), with live musical accompaniment, in November.