Horror remains one of cinema's most inventive, subversive, and enduring forms. This October, explore a carefully curated selection of the genre's greatest achievements on the big screen. After all, fear is best experienced together.
USA 1934 • 69 min (1.37:1) • Not Rated
Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer
Starring: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop, Egbert Van Alstyne
Venue: The Scratching Post (114 E University Ave, Champaign)
Advance tickets: $10 ($8 for current members)
Regular admission: $12 (at the door)
Presented by: Film-Fanatic.Club
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A delirious pre-Code horror classic, this 1930s nightmare is less a traditional monster movie than a collision of German Expressionism, Art Deco modernism, and pure cinematic weirdness. Its bold imagery, sinister eroticism, and gleefully macabre tone make it one of the strangest and most visually distinctive horror films of the classical Hollywood era. For fans of cult cinema, pre-Code Hollywood, and movies that seem to have escaped from another dimension, this is an essential big-screen discovery. The real attraction of this rarely seen gem is the legendary pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, reunited after The Mummy and given characters that allow their contrasting screen personas to collide spectacularly. But the film belongs just as much to Edgar G. Ulmer, whose strikingly economical direction wastes no time plunging audiences into an atmosphere of ominous architecture, occult obsession, sexual tension, and escalating madness.
Content Warnings: Horror violence, murder, occult imagery, Satanic themes, torture, nudity, and disturbing imagery.
#BorisKarloff #BelaLugosi #ClassicHorror #PreCodeHollywood #HorrorCinema #CultCinema #GermanExpressionism #ArtDeco #UniversalHorror #ClassicCinema
Mexico/Italy 1989 • 123 min (1.85:1) • Not Rated
Directed by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell
Venue: Cloud Mountain Kombucha (208 W Griggs St, Urbana)
Advance tickets: $10 ($8 for current members)
Regular admission: $12 (at the door)
Presented by: Film-Fanatic.Club
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A hallucinatory descent into madness and memory, this masterwork stands as one of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s most ferocious and personal visions—equal parts surrealist nightmare, operatic melodrama, and cult initiation rite. Emerging after years of myth-making around the director’s unrealized projects, the film marked a triumphant return that reaffirmed Jodorowsky’s status as cinema’s high priest of the subconscious. Drenched in ritual, symbolism, and Grand Guignol intensity, it plays less like a conventional narrative than a waking dream engineered to unnerve and mesmerize a roomful of viewers at once. Decades later, its power remains undiminished: shocking, hypnotic, and unmistakably the work of a singular auteur whose influence continues to ripple through cult and midnight cinema.
Content Warnings: Graphic violence and gore, murder, disturbing imagery, sexual content, nudity, religious imagery, psychological trauma, body horror, and themes of abuse and incest.
#AlejandroJodorowsky #CultCinema #MidnightMovie #SurrealCinema #ArtHouseHorror #VisionaryDirector #CultClassic #BigScreenExperience
UK 1983 • 97 min (1.85:1) • Rated R
Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, Cliff DeYoung, Dan Hedaya
Venue: Amy's Place (120 N First St, Champaign)
Advance tickets: $10 ($8 for current members)
Regular admission: $12 (at the door)
Presented by: Film-Fanatic.Club
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A landmark of stylish 1980s horror, this sensual, decadent vampire film transformed the genre into something closer to an art object. At its center is a centuries-old lesbian couple whose glamorous existence begins to unravel when mortality intrudes, giving the film an erotic and emotionally charged dimension that was strikingly unconventional for mainstream cinema of its era. Long before becoming one of Hollywood's most commercially successful visual stylists, Tony Scott announced himself with a debut of extraordinary confidence. His music-video sensibility—fluid camerawork, saturated imagery, slow motion, and hypnotic editing—collides with gothic romanticism to create a world of beauty, desire, decay, and eternal loneliness. Catherine Deneuve radiates icy elegance, David Bowie brings unforgettable rock-star charisma, and Susan Sarandon delivers a fierce, sensual performance as the woman drawn into their immortal world. Set to an unforgettable post-punk soundtrack, it remains one of the most visually intoxicating, erotically charged, and genuinely distinctive vampire films ever made.
Content Warnings: Graphic blood and violence, sexual content, nudity, vampirism, death, body horror, disturbing imagery, and mature themes.
#TonyScott #DavidBowie #CatherineDeneuve #SusanSarandon #VampireCinema #GothicHorror #CultClassic #ArtHouseHorror #LesbianRomance #1980sCinema #RepertoryCinema #PostPunk #BigScreenExperience
USA / Canada 1986 • 96 min (1.85:1) • Rated R
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel
Venue: Analog Wine Library (129 N Race St, Urbana)
Advance tickets: $10 ($8 for current members)
Regular admission: $12 (at the door)
Presented by: Film-Fanatic.Club
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A landmark of modern horror and one of the defining achievements of David Cronenberg's career, this astonishing fusion of science fiction, romance, and body horror turns a classic monster premise into something profoundly human. Cronenberg, one of cinema's great chroniclers of physical transformation and psychological obsession, uses grotesque imagery not simply to shock but to explore aging, illness, sexuality, mortality, and the terror of losing control of one's own body. At the center is a career-defining performance from Jeff Goldblum, who transforms from eccentric scientist to increasingly horrifying creature with extraordinary physical and emotional commitment. Geena Davis gives the film its emotional center, making the increasingly gruesome transformation genuinely heartbreaking. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Makeup, the film remains a triumph of practical effects — and an experience that demands to be seen on the big screen. Visceral, tragic, strangely beautiful, and deeply disturbing, it is Cronenberg's science-fiction nightmare at its most powerful.
Content Warnings: Graphic body horror, gore, vomiting, bodily transformation, violence, sexual content, disturbing imagery, death, and psychological distress.
#Cronenberg #JeffGoldblum #GeenaDavis #BodyHorror #HorrorCinema #ScienceFiction #CultCinema #PracticalEffects #1980sCinema #RepertoryCinema #ClassicHorror #BigScreenExperience
USA 1968 • 96 min (1.37:1) • Not Rated
Directed by: George A. Romero
Starring: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl Hardman, Marilyn Eastman, Keith Wayne
Venue: The Virginia Theatre (203 W Park Ave, Champaign)
General admission: $10 (advance tickets available now)
Presented by: University of Illinois Alumni Association, Film-Fanatic.Club, Champaign Park District
An Illinois Public Media Film Series event
Few films have transformed an entire genre as completely as this landmark independent production. Before its release, zombies as we know them simply didn't exist. Working with a shoestring budget outside the Hollywood system, George A. Romero reinvented horror forever, creating the blueprint that countless films, television series, video games, and novels continue to follow more than half a century later.
Its grainy black-and-white photography, documentary realism, and relentless sense of dread remain remarkably effective, while its shocking violence and uncompromising ending still carry tremendous power. Beneath the horror lies a razor-sharp reflection of a nation fractured by war, racism, and social unrest, giving the film a depth rarely found in genre cinema.
What began as a regional independent feature has become one of the most influential films in cinema history. Essential viewing for horror fans and film lovers alike, this is the movie that changed the undead — and horror itself — forever.
Content Warnings: Graphic violence, gore, cannibalism, disturbing imagery, child violence, gun violence, racial themes, and intense scenes of terror.
#HorrorClassic #IndependentCinema #CultCinema #FilmHistory #ClassicHorror #Halloween #CinemaLovers #1960sCinema #Zombies
USA / Canada 2015 • 92 min 1.66:1) • Rated R
Directed by: Robert Eggers
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw
Venue: The Literary Book Bar (122 N Neil St, Champaign)
Advance tickets: $10 ($8 for current members)
Regular admission: $12 (at the door)
Presented by: Film-Fanatic.Club
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A landmark of modern horror and the astonishing feature debut of Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Northman, Nosferatu), this chilling tale of superstition, isolation, and religious paranoia helped usher in a new era of intelligent, atmospheric horror. Drawing extensively from period diaries, folklore, and historical records, Eggers creates a world of astonishing authenticity, immersing audiences in the fears and anxieties of colonial New England. Rather than relying on conventional jump scares, the film builds dread through meticulous craftsmanship: candlelit interiors, haunting sound design, stark natural landscapes, and an overwhelming sense that something is profoundly wrong. Every detail contributes to an atmosphere of mounting paranoia as faith, family, and identity begin to unravel. Featuring a breakout performance by Anya Taylor-Joy, this modern folk-horror classic is a remarkably assured debut — hypnotic, disturbing, and utterly immersive. It's the kind of film that demands to be experienced in a dark theater, where its creeping dread can take full effect.
Content Warnings: Horror violence, disturbing imagery, child death, animal violence, religious extremism, psychological distress, nudity, and occult themes.
#RobertEggers #AnyaTaylorJoy #FolkHorror #HorrorCinema #CultCinema #ArtHouseHorror #RepertoryCinema #ModernHorror #A24 #HorrorClassic
Horror is more than a genre. It is one of cinema’s most powerful ways of confronting the fears, anxieties, and obsessions of its time. Horror films can reflect social upheaval, challenge cultural taboos, explore our relationship with technology and the unknown, or give form to fears that are difficult to express any other way. At its best, horror is provocative, imaginative, and artistically fearless.
Our SHOCKTOBER Horror Film Festival celebrates that full spectrum, from groundbreaking classics and international cinema to cult favorites, overlooked gems, psychological nightmares, dark fantasies, and films that simply know how to scare the hell out of you. We believe horror deserves to be taken seriously as an art form while never losing its sense of fun.
And horror is better together. There is nothing quite like experiencing a great horror film on a big screen with an audience, where screams become laughter, shocks become shared experiences, and even the most disturbing moments become part of a memorable night out. SHOCKTOBER is an invitation to explore, discover, scream, laugh, and celebrate the strange and endlessly creative world of horror cinema.
