Of all the local theaters serving up horror movies in October, the Grand Illusion Cinema has offered the most sustained and varied horror programming for the month. From classic Lon Chaney Jr. werewolf flicks to demented Japanese monster epics to zombie gutmunchers, the Illusion’s covered just about all of the boogeyman bases over the last three-plus weeks.
This weekend, they’re pulling out all the stops for a veritable Horror-palooza–three mind-blowing triple features that encompass the glory years of horror and exploitation and (maybe) the greatest golden-age gothic chillers crafted by an American studio.
Friday night’s assault begins at 7pm with The Brain Eaters, a straightahead 1958 sci-fi shocker loosely (but not loosely enough: a lawsuit ensued) based on the Robert Heinlein story, The Puppet Masters. Alien parasites set up camp in a small Illinois town, and it’s up to stalwart scientist Ed Nelson to save the world. Like a lot of thrillers of the era, it sports a reasonably involving plot, a zippy pulp pace, and some of the most wonderfully ludicrous monsters you’ll ever see in an old B-flick (the parasites bear a remarkable resemblance to fluffy bedroom slippers with pipe-cleaner antennae).
Things get gothic for Friday’s second feature, The Awful Dr. Orloff, a 1961 horror flick directed by the Spanish schlock auteur Jess Franco. Franco’s never been a favorite of mine, but Orloff‘s the closest thing to a classic he ever produced; a genuinely atmospheric chiller that takes a formulaic mad-scientist-repairs-hideous-daughter’s-face plot and runs with it.
Last but not least, The Magic Serpent brings together ninja magic, period swordplay, and giant monster brawls in a twisted 1966 Reeses Peanut Butter Cup of Weird. Tell me the trailer doesn’t give you the itchy pants to see it.
Saturday Night’s triple-feature cobbles together three very strange cinematic dogs (compliments of–big surprise–the fine folks at Something Weird Video). The first, The Godmonster of Indian Flats, imagines how a dusty old-west town might handle the onslaught of a giant, mucous-covered bipedal sheep monster (really).
Second up, The Zodiac Killer presents a 1971 dramatization/exploitation of the infamous serial killer’s exploits.
Capping the night’s bill: Bloody Pit of Horror, a notoriously odd 1965 stew of early-sixties cheesecake and cartoonish sado-masochism. Talk about strange bedfellows–the muscular executioner/tormentor running around torturing and murdering buxom models happens to be Mickey Hargitay (the actor/weightlifter papa of Law and Order: SVU’s Mariska Hargitay!).
The folks at the Grand Illusion are playing coy with the actual content of Sunday’s triple feature (possibly for legal reasons), but if the hints on their website are to be trusted, it’s a rare opportunity to see three of the horror genre’s undisputed masterpieces, on a big screen as God intended. I’ll follow the theater’s lead and offer a few hints: Think neckbolts, electricity, and immersive black-and-white. And don’t miss any of ‘em.