Welcome to IndieWire After Dark, the place we decide a brand new theme for our midnight movie programming each month!
Join us Friday nights at 9:30 p.m. ET to discover the perfect in fringe movies — accessible at any hour within the streaming age.
Whether you’re working within the lab late one night time or going to your favourite repertory theater after hours, now’s the time to do the Midnight Movie Monster Mash. This October, we’re honoring the Halloween season with a carousel of killers so uncommon their beastly mugs would make Lon Chaney quake — and he’s been useless for 100 years.
Ancient beasts predate people, and monsters have at all times stalked our campfire tales. But in cinema, the monster film has mutated into an uncontainable style behemoth all its personal. From B-movie creature options to chilling portraits of serial killers, the terrors of the large display we select to name “monsters” are as colourful and diversified because the doorways a certain Pixar flick would have them stroll via.
A multi-headed archetype that encompasses a sprawling taxonomy of characters, monsters will be simply as arduous for audiences to categorise as they’re for victims to flee. Any human antagonist — however notably these in horror — will be labeled a metaphoric monster in the event that they’re evil sufficient. Hannibal Lecter? Monster. Annie Wilkes? Monster. Ryan Murphy’s true crime Netflix anthology? That’s “Monster,” however similar thought.
With Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, Wolf-Man, and extra staple characters in its menacing menagerie, Universal Studios cornered the American market on so-called “classic” monster movies many years in the past. But that didn’t cease the booming world of Kaiju from exploring a slew of misunderstood entities by itself — setting in movement the global rise of Godzilla and extra skyscraper-shaking giants. Those mammoth film stars would ultimately cross paths with Universal likenesses in movies equivalent to 1965’s “Frankenstein vs. Baragon.” (It ought to maybe go with out saying that Boris Karloff was not concerned in that effort.)
To complicate issues additional, loads of filmmakers toy with perspective to indicate us simply how mistaken we will be when naming one thing or somebody a so-called “monstrosity.” Just take a look at Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance.” It’s the most effective movies of the yr and but vastly divisive — pairing physique horror with a deeply tragic portrait of 1 lady’s unfathomable struggling. Is a monster something or anybody that disgusts us? Or is it anybody who would label one other’s ache “disgusting”?
Narrowing down such an unlimited subject to 4 movies for simply 4 Fridays in October 2024 was tantamount to torture. (Somehow there’s no Rick Backer on right here?!) Still, when it got here time to place bolts in necks, the secret was the identical as at all times: intestine(s). The following focuses on lightning-in-a-bottle monsters which have friends elsewhere — however who broke via their very own cinematic cages in a uniquely midnight method with these movies.
Stay tuned for a month that can present us not just a few particularly brutal cannibal hillbillies and a pair of quietly lovable fist-fighting colossi but in addition an interview with a genre-favorite remaining man and “Bloodsucking Bastards” star Fran Kranz. Plus, we’re supplying you with an excuse to eat up each final second of director Mark Herrier’s “Popcorn”: a 1991 slasher spoof so good, it’s virtually scary we haven’t slain it but.
IndieWire After Dark publishes new midnight film and cult film suggestions (that’s THE BAIT)… and our spoiler-filled reactions to them (that’s THE BITE)… each Friday at 9:30 p.m. ET.
Happy Halloween! Here’s what’s ALIIIIIIIIVEEE in October 2024:
“The War of the Gargantuas” (1966)
Directed by: Ishirō Honda
After Dark on Friday, October 4
Technically a unfastened sequel to the aforementioned “Frankenstein vs. Baragon,” author/director Ishirō Honda’s 1966 monster film follows up his earlier movie with the story of two ape-like humanoids born of Frankenstein’s monster’s genetic materials. (If you watch the English dub that’s… the English subtitled model swaps each occasion of “Frankenstein” for “Gargantua.”) The brown, land-dwelling Sanda faces off with the inexperienced, semiaquatic Gaira after he learns his estranged brother has been gobbling up the individuals of Tokyo. They’ll battle throughout the town in a narrative that’s as quietly melancholy as it’s a advice of mass destruction depicted via miniatures.
“Motel Hell” (1980)
Directed by: Kevin Connor
After Dark on Friday, October 11
Starring Rory Calhoun and Nancy Parsons as an particularly screwed-up sibling duo, 1980’s gory “Motel Hell” is a splendidly schlocky outing that’s finest remembered for its notorious “field of heads” imagery. The horror comedy got here sooner than 1989’s “Heathers,” but it surely takes the croquet nightmare scene everyone knows and love from that film to essentially the most ridiculous heights of hicksploitation. The tagline tells you all you should know: “IT TAKES ALL KINDS OF CRITTERS TO MAKE FARMER VINCENT’S FRITTERS.”
“Bloodsucking Bastards” (2015)
Directed by: Brian James O’Connell
After Dark on Friday, October 18
Scream Factory provides “Cabin in the Woods” star Fran Kranz his personal “Shaun of the Dead” with this ludicrously maligned vampire epic informed by the use of a extra trendy “Office Space.” Is it (A) Quietly hilarious? (B) One of Pedro Pascal’s sharpest performances? (C) Hiding a few of horror’s silliest anti-capitalist beats since “The Belko Experiment”? or (D) All of the above? Take your time answering, however keep in mind… you’re on the clock. The organic clock, meat sack.
“Popcorn” (1991)
Directed by: Mark Herrier
After Dark on Friday, October 25
Multiple films-within-a-film and an bold illustration of midnight tradition make this meta slasher a must-see monster film with a brutal behind-the-scenes story. Set inside a theater, “Popcorn” follows a gaggle of movie college students making an attempt to avoid wasting the situation by placing on a singular program within the soapy shadow of a… serial killer? Just go along with it. Starring Jill Schoelen, amongst others, this cult basic is filled with nods to the likes of William Castle and feels miraculous to behold whenever you study simply how exhausting the manufacturing actually was. The make-up alone is definitely worth the watch.
Revisit IndieWire After Dark’s Back to School Night from September 2024:
