Robtober 2019
A month’s worth of movies to help you stay awake
Every October, I put together a big schedule of horror films, most of which I haven’t seen before. Films and dates (all subject to change) are listed for any friends who want to join me, and ticket links are included for public screenings.
This year, I’ve set aside a weekend to plow through the entire Nightmare on Elm Street series (I’ve only ever seen the first three). I’m also finally finishing off (the current version of) TimeOut’s 100 Best Horror Films and chipping away at some blinds spots I discovered via a bit of data mining after last year’s Robtober. And of course I’ll be taking advantage of some of the many theatrical screenings around NYC, a full roundup of which can be found beneath the schedule. Hope you have a horrific month!
The War of the Worlds
A small town in California is attacked by Martians, beginning a worldwide invasion.
The Leopard Man
A seemingly tame leopard used for a publicity stunt escapes and kills a young girl, spreading panic throughout a sleepy New Mexico town.
Color Me Blood Red
A crackpot artist kills various people to use their blood as his new crimson red color for his paintings.
The Gruesome Twosome
A demented, elderly woman has her deranged son kill and scalp various young women to use their hair for her wig shop while a persistent coed tries to link various killings on a local Florida college campus to them.
Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore
Gory, Gory, Hallelujah! Take an outrageous ride through the wild world of exploitation films with this often-hilarious documentary.
Cure
A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they’ve done.
Lake Mungo
After 16-year-old Alice Palmer drowns in a local dam, her family experiences a series of strange, inexplicable events centred in and around their home. Unsettled, the Palmers seek the help of psychic and parapsychologist, who discovers that Alice led a secret, double life. At Lake Mungo, Alice’s secret past emerges.
Witchfinder General
A young soldier seeks to put an end to the evils caused by a vicious witch-hunter when the latter terrorizes his fiancée and kills her uncle.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The monstrous spirit of a slain child murderer seeks revenge by invading the dreams of teenagers whose parents were responsible for his untimely death.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge
A teenage boy is haunted in his dreams by deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger, who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
A psychiatrist familiar with knife-wielding dream demon Freddy Krueger helps teens at a mental hospital battle the killer who is invading their dreams.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the dreams of the remaining Dream Warriors, as well as those of a young woman who may be able to defeat him for good.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
The pregnant Alice finds Freddy Krueger striking through the sleeping mind of her unborn child, hoping to be reborn into the real world.
Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare
Dream-haunting Freddy Krueger returns once again to prowl the nightmares of Springwood’s last surviving teenager, and of a woman whose personal connection to Krueger may mean his doom.
New Nightmare
A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather Langenkamp play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?
The Lighthouse
The hypnotic and hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
The Cremator
Set in World War II, a demented cremator believes cremation relieves earthly suffering and sets out to save the world.
Young Frankenstein
An American grandson of the infamous scientist, struggling to prove that his grandfather was not as insane as people believe, is invited to Transylvania, where he discovers the process that reanimates a dead body.
Centipede Horror
A crazed evil wizard uses his powers to take revenge on beautiful women by making them vomit up live centipedes, which then proceed to eat their victims.
Cube
6 complete strangers of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in an endless maze containing deadly traps.
Slumber Party Massacre II
Courtney Bates, the younger sister of Valerie, and her friends go to their condo for a weekend getaway, but Courtney can’t get rid of the haunting feeling that a supernatural rockabilly driller killer is coming to murder them all.
Bones
Over 20 years after his death by a gunshot, Jimmy Bones comes back as a ghost to wreak revenge on those who killed him and to clean up his neighborhood.
Session 9
Tensions rise within an asbestos cleaning crew as they work in an abandoned mental hospital with a horrific past that seems to be coming back.
The Seventh Victim
A woman in search of her missing sister uncovers a Satanic cult in New York’s Greenwich Village, and finds that they may have something to do with her sibling’s random disappearance.
More Horror Happenings in NYC
From trashy genre flicks to oblique arthouse gems to spooky family fun, New York’s cinemas have something for everyone this month.
Alamo Drafthouse
- Terror Tuesday: “This eclectic series spans all centuries, covering everything from seminal horror treasures to undiscovered D.I.Y. monster-blasts.”
- Video Vortex: “Ultra-obscure, ultra-bizarre movies from the fringes of the universe. And beyond.”
- Weird Wednesday: “A one-way ticket to the edges of reality where imagination and commercial excess dance on the graves of common sense and decency.”
Anthology Film Archives
- The Devil Probably: A Century of Satanic Panic: “Inspiring a wealth of creative output, negative perceptions about Satanism and the occult have been perpetually harnessed by those in power to stoke alarmist fears about feminists, people of color, rebellious youths, communists, and many other groups and movements that have threatened the status quo.”
BAM
- NYC Horror: “Making potent use of the city’s anything-goes energy and gritty history, these films find horror in both the supernatural and the all-too-real everyday terrors that come with life in one of the world’s most thrillingly unpredictable metropolises.”
Metrograph
- Killer Hitchcock: “Bringing the spirit of the Victorian Penny Dreadful and the 1920s stage thriller into the midcentury, Hitchcock helped to invent modern horror, and these films show that in several cases, he still hasn’t been topped for sheer style and savagery.”
Museum of the Moving Image
- See It Big! Ghost Stories: “In this nearly hundred-year survey, we look at some of the greatest ghost stories of all time, from a sinister silent classic to supernatural Hollywood romances of the forties to classic Japanese kaidan adaptations to contemporary scare machines.”
- RetroActive: A Disreputable Cinema Halloween: “A series of 1980s horror films that all share a theme of resurrection – five films chock full of ghouls and creeps returned from the grave… returned again from the decade from which they came.”
Nitehawk Cinema
- All of Them Witches: “For our Halloween/October 2019 program, we explore the many different ways the witch has been manifested in movies (black hats, devotees to satan, misguided youth).”
- Halloween Week: “Nitehawk welcomes Haddonfield, Illinois’ favorite son, Michael Myers, to the silver screen with a pair of Double Features highlighting some of his deadliest work – and let’s not forget the evil witches of Halloween III!”
- New Horror: “Like their predecessors, these films tackle class, gender identity, and race in way that shows us both where we are and how far we, perhaps, haven’t come.”
Spectacle Theater
- Body Counting with Tim Ritter: “Hankering for a good old-fashioned slasher, but sick of all those slick production values and coherent plots? Look no further than Spectacle’s very special October retrospective of early Tim Ritter joints.”
- Spectober Midnights
Various Locations
- Brooklyn Horror Film Festival: “The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is a premier east coast genre festival that embodies the spirit of Brooklyn. Taking place in venues throughout the borough, we showcase the best new independent films, throw parties, host events, and more.”