THE WORLD IS FULL OF SECRETS

THE WORLD IS FULL OF SECRETS

Posted on by kriszta

THE WORLD IS FULL OF SECRETS
Dir. Graham Swon, 2018
USA. 98 min.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3RD – 10PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13 TH – 10PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18TH – 7:30PM Q&A WITH DIR. GRAHAM SWON
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28TH – 7:30PM

REGULAR TICKETS

Q&A TICKETS

Almost a zelig-like figure of the New York film scene, Graham Swon is best known as a producer on some of the best and most truly independent American films of the past decade. As if helping create the films of Ted Fendt, Ricky D’Amrbose, Matías Piñeiro, and Dan Sallitt weren’t enough, Swon is also a startlingly innovative filmmaker in his own right whose first two films, THE WORLD IS FULL OF SECRETS (2018) and AN EVENING SONG (for three voices) (2024), display an impressive penchant for visual experimentation, narrative game-playing, and a transcendental attention to the passage of time and memory. In honor of the release of AN EVENING SONG in New York and Los Angeles, we’ll be hosting Swon to present a special screening of his first film THE WORLD IS FULL OF SECRETS.

Set over one night at a girls’ high school slumber party where five friends hold a scary story contest, SECRETS is an heir to storytelling anthologies like Boccaccio’s Decameron, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, or EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt. Filled with sumptuous dissolves, a mysterious narrator, and durationally long shots that stretch beyond 20 minutes, it’s also a rich aesthetic experience aided by cinematographer Barton Cortright. Both nostalgic of teenage innocence and filled with the macabre, SECRETS is a unique and unsettling evocation of the precariousness of suburban childhood explored through American oral traditions.

“This non-gory horrific tale without monsters or bloodshed is probably the most poisonous and scary US film produced in recent years. Inspired by Southern Gothic’s dark romanticism, shot with acute minimalism, this film conjures up the best contemporary horror writers (such as Brian Evanson, Thomas Ligotti or Lisa Tuttle) with its hypnotic narration, its stylised grammar, both elegant and brutal, and its existential and metaphysical terror. In a gesture that reminds one of Warhol, Graham Swon prints on the young girls’ faces an ancestral violence inherent to the American culture, and puts the spectators in a torpor from which they will unheartedly depart.”

– Victor Bournérias

 

WOLF MOON RISING

Posted on by Ben Harris

WOLF MOON RISING
dir. Todd Sheets, 2025
United States, 82 min
In English

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16TH – 7:30PM W/Q&A

TICKETS

It’s always a full moon in space.

The crew of the starship Amberstar must battle for their lives after discovering savage werewolves in the deep void of space. 

This October, Spectacle is proud to present a one-night-only screening of SOV legend Todd Sheets’ latest Wild Eye film – the blood-soaked blast of low budget glory, Wolf Moon Rising.

With more than 40 movies to his name and no sign of slowing down, Sheets has conquered every corner of DIY splatter cinema… until now. For the first time ever, Sheets’ latest project takes us where he, and werewolves, have never gone before… space! 

Join us for the NY premiere of this sci-fi/ horror gore feast, best experienced with a packed crowd of fellow maniacs—plus a live Q&A with Todd Sheets himself and producer Rob Hauschild, moderated by Matt Desiderio of Horror Boobs / Wild Eye.

KING OF HOMESPUN CGI: PHILIP J. COOK

Posted on by Ben Harris

What if your afterlife took place in a PS2 cutscene? What if your house turned into a portal to a trans-dimensional realm run on Windows 11? Welcome to the world of Philip J. Cook, where big ideas meet barely-contained digital chaos—and it rips.

For over three decades, Philip J. Cook has been quietly building a parallel cinematic universe from his basement—one where cosmic battles, haunted landscapes, and low-poly monsters live side by side, held together by sheer imagination and a lot of green screen. Working far outside the studio system, Cook’s films embrace the uncanny charm of digital DIY, blending sci-fi, horror, and fantasy into a homespun genre stew that’s as earnest as it is otherworldly. Whether he’s conjuring purgatories or witches, his work pulses with the energy of someone who just really wants to show you something cool—even if he has to render it himself, one frame at a time. Shot on shoestrings and pure conviction, Cook’s films are scrappy, overambitious, and totally unhinged in the best way—proof that you don’t need a Hollywood budget to break reality wide open.

DESPISER
Dir. Philip J. Cook, 2001
United States. 104 minutes
In English

THURSDAY OCTOBER 2ND – 7:30PM
TUESDAY OCTOBER 7TH – 10PM
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15TH -7:30PM W/Q+A
FRIDAY OCTOBER 24TH – 10PM

REGULAR TICKETS

Q+A TICKETS

In purgatory, there is no salvation. But there are a lot of flipped CG cars. The king of home-spun CGI, Philip J. Cook blessed the world with DESPISER in 2003 , a feature film filled with earnestness, polygons and gunslinging chase scenes. A political advertisement maker by day, Philip Cook found a creative outlet in the world of SFX, bringing to life the big budget sci-fi scripts he had written in the 80s. Phil worked on Don Dohler’s NIGHTBEAST in the 80s, making miniatures and filming SFX shots in his living room. Inspired by Dohler as well as Gerry Anderson (SPACE:1999), Phil set to work making his own films.

Described by Cook as “the story of an artist who travels to purgatory to rescue his wife from despotic forces,” DESPISER is a time capsule of the creativity in an age where at-home access to digital graphics programs was still new. Filmed in 1998 but released in 2003, DESPISER surfed the early wave of capturing performances on blue and green screen to be inserted in totally digital worlds before films like SPY KIDS of SIN CITY popularized the look. This indie gem of pure creativity stands as a testament to what one man can do with a computer and a lot of time.

PUNGO: A WITCH’S TALE
Dir. Philip J. Cook, 2020
United States. 102 minutes
In English

SATURDAY OCTOBER 4TH – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 15TH – 10PM

 TICKETS

When Dr. Grace Sherwood moves into an old house in Pungo, Virginia, the claws of the witch Grace Sherwood come alive to seek revenge for her drowning. Dr. Grace and the two contractors she hired to remodel the old house are thrust into the world of dark rituals, masked hunters and ghost tornados. Created 20 years after DESPISER, this film retains Philip J. Cook’s signature CGI immersion style, blending hand-crafted green screen worlds with on-location footage.

The real life “Witch of Pungo”, Grace Sherwood, was a local midwife and healer in the tidewater area of Virginia in the late 17th century. For years neighbors had blamed her for bad weather or crop yields, resulting in her trial as a witch. She was ordered to be bound by the hands and “ducked” in water to test her innocence (if she floated, witch) and was thus drowned in the Lynnhaven river in 1706. This imaginative retelling of injustice and revenge retains the unique creative style and B-movie charm of Phil’s earlier work and continues themes of religion, astrophysics and the nature of reality.

INCUBUS

Posted on by danschindel

INCUBUS
(INKUBO)
Dir. Leslie Stevens, 1966
United States. 74 min.
In Esperanto with English subtitles.

TICKETS

Thursday, October 2 – 10PM
Tuesday, October 7 – 7:30PM
Friday, October 17 – 5PM
Thursday, October 30 – 7:30PM

Malbono neniam estis tiel alloga

Living as a Jew in the Russian Empire through the latter half of the 19th Century, ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof was dismayed at the innumerable conflicts around him spawned by ethnic tensions, religious differences, and rising nationalist sentiment. Convinced that world peace would be achieved if disparate peoples could communicate easily with each other, Zamenhof developed Esperanto to act as a universal auxiliary language. His pet project became the center of a global community of goodwill and intercultural communication in the early 20th Century, a poignant example of the Utopian aspirations of the age (the word esperanto means “one who hopes”). Esperanto remains the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.

In 1965, after the cancellation of his television series THE OUTER LIMITS, Leslie Stevens began production on a horror film to keep his crew (which included future three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall) working. Stevens figured that having all the dialogue spoken in Esperanto would be a neat way to inject some uniqueness into the picture, and would help it get into arthouses, “where subtitles were.” The distinctly OUTER LIMITS-esque story features a village with a well that yields healing waters, attracting a soldier, Marc, who seeks to recover from his war wounds. A local succubus, Kia (Stevens’ wife Allyson Ames), tries to tempt Marc and secure his soul for Hell, but since he’s played by William Shatner, she naturally falls for his charms instead, incurring the wrath of the titular incubus (Alain Delon’s stunt double/bodyguard Milos Milos).

Shot in two weeks in NorCal, INCUBUS ultimately premiered to jeers from Esperanto speakers at the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival. The performers all learned their lines phoetically, which is obvious even if you don’t know the language. Still, Stevens was correct that it lends the movie an eerie, otherworldly quality. The film only received a theatrical run in France before ignominiously fading into a curio. Stevens blamed the lack of interest not on the movie’s dialogue being spoken in what was essentially an alien language, but on its assocation with Milos, who had killed his lover Barbara Ann Thomason (Mickey Rooney’s estranged wife) and then himself. Shatner would, of course, in short order become involved with a much better-known Utopian project. (By the way, the Esperanto term for “a blade”? Klingon.) Esperanto cinema never really caught on–INCUBUS remains one of only a handful of features shot wholly in the language–but Zamenhof’s dream endures.

INCUBUS was believed lost for decades before a well-worn 16mm print was discovered in the Cinémathèque Française in the late ’90s, which served as the basis for a new 35mm version and a DVD release. A 35mm copy in much better condition was found in 2023, and Le Chat Qui Fume used it to restore the film in 4K. Spectacle is excited to present the New York premiere of this restoration.

Thanks to Phil Ginley, Esther Rosenfield, and the American Genre Film Archive.
 

SPECTOBER 2025

Posted on by Ben Harris

I LIKE BATS
dir. Grzegorz Warchoł, 1986
Poland. 90 mins.
In Polish with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3RD – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9TH – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12TH – 5PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24TH – 5PM

TICKETS

The only feature film directed by Polish actor Grzegorz Warchol, and written by feminist novelist and columnist Krystyna Kofta, I LIKE BATS is dreamy fugue of a vampire picture set in a storybook Poland where empty cobblestone streets are bathed in fog and a supernatural glow. Katarzyna Walter stars as the woman with a fondness for the flying mammals in question; Iza, a vampire living a quaint, simple life working in her aunt’s curio shop. Her aunt insists that everyone would be happier if Iza had a man, but she is far too content making pottery, tending to her beloved bats, and satisfying her bloodlust by wreaking vengeance on the town’s local creeps. That is, until a celebrity psychoanalyst catches Iza’s eye and she feels a sudden urge for something more human. A colorful, feverish oddity featuring several iconic shots of its protagonist, I LIKE BATS promises to quench your seasonal Spectober desires for blood, love, and nocturnal critters.

2k restoration by Severin Films. Special thanks to the American Genre Film Archive.

TERROR TRACT
Dir. Lance W. Dreesen & Clint Hutchison, 2000.
United States, 96 min.
In English

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 5TH – 5PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 13TH – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24TH – MIDNIGHT
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29TH – 7:30PM

TICKETS

A real estate agent shows a newlywed couple houses, each with a darker secret than the last…

TERROR TRACT is a criminally underseen horror anthology film featuring performances by  Brian Cranston and John Ritter. Comprised of three chilling stories—NIGHTMARE, BOBO, and COME TO GRANNY—the film masterfully blends horror and dark humor. This October, come on a trip down the nightmarish streets of TERROR TRACT and uncover the sinister secrets lurking behind your neighbor’s door.

THE PASSING
Dir. John Huckert, 1984.
United States, 96 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3RD – 7:30PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9TH – 10PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19TH – 5PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30TH – 10PM

TICKETS

An elderly veteran is forced into an experiment where his consciousness is transferred into the body of a death row prisoner.

Produced on a budget of less than $100,000 over seven years by director John Huckert, THE PASSING is a heartfelt and thought-provoking exploration of aging, loneliness, and mortality. The film is elevated by the compelling performances and authentic on-screen chemistry of its two elderly leads, James Carrol Plaster and Welton Benjamin Johnson, who reflect deeply on their lives and relationships—described by author Arthur C. Clark (2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY) as “Amazing! Deeply moving.” THE PASSING remains a rare and touching gem, having seen limited exposure beyond its brief week-long theatrical run in 1985.

THE OCCULT EXPERIENCE
Dir. Frank Heimans, 1985
Australia, 95 min.
In English.

FROM THE DEPTHS OF MEN’S DARKEST SOULS COMES…

MONDAY, OCTOBER 6 – 10PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 – 5PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 27 – 7:30PM

BUY TICKETS

The 40th anniversary screening of this seminal examination on Paganism and other esoteric spiritual practices.

A documentary collaboration between filmmaker Frank Heimans and the prolific English-Australian folk religion scholar Nevill Drury, THE OCCULT EXPERIENCE first premiered on TV via Sydney’s Channel 10. Further presented at the 1985 International Film and Television Festival of New York, and now, forty years later, for the most ominous of Spectobers. Cross-country explorations of the peculiar met with refreshing sympathy, treated to some of the most wholesome H.R. Giger along the way.

Special thanks to Megan Drury and Jay, the current webmaster for https://www.nevilldrury.com

THE KISS
Dir. Pen Densham, 1988.
United States, 101 min.
In English.

SUNDAY, 5TH – 7:30PM
SATURDAY, 18TH – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, 23RD – 10PM
WEDNESDAY, 29TH – 10PM

TICKETS

Amy’s estranged aunt comes to live with her after the sudden death of her mother. However, Amy soon starts to suspect her aunt may have something to do with the sudden influx of supernatural occurrences and the death of her mother. 

From Stephen Volk (GHOSTWATCH, GOTHIC) comes THE KISS — an ’80s suburban nightmare channeling the dread of POLTERGEIST and the social rot of SOCIETY; with special effects by Chris Walas (THE FLY, GREMLINS) and a pulse‑pounding score from J. Peter Robinson (THE GATE, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART 2). Spectacle invites you to peel back the polite veneer of small‑town life and reveal the ravenous darkness beneath with… THE KISS.

THE CARRIER
Dir. Nathan J. White, 1988.
United States, 99 min.
In English.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10TH – 7:30PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20TH – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28TH – 10PM

TICKETS

A small town is thrown into chaos after seemingly random objects start melting people when touched. However, they soon realize somebody is responsible, and a civil war of mistrust and violence erupts as residents desperately search for the elusive carrier.

With a premise that echoes something from the Troma catalog, THE CARRIER unexpectedly devolves into something far more disturbing. What begins as a seemingly straightforward werewolf melodrama rapidly morphs into a bleak, post-apocalyptic nightmare, evoking films like THREADS or THE CRAZIES. This October Spetacle invites you to a town overrun with trash bag-clad villagers, where wild house cats become the only currency worth risking your life for in a world spiraling into madness.

INCUBUS
(INKUBO)
Dir. Leslie Stevens, 1966
United States. 74 min.
In Esperanto with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2ND – 10PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7 TH- 7:30PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17TH – 5PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30TH – 7:30PM

TICKETS

Malbono neniam estis tiel alloga.

Living as a Jew in the Russian Empire through the latter half of the 19th Century, ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof was dismayed at the innumerable conflicts around him spawned by ethnic tensions, religious differences, and rising nationalist sentiment. Convinced that world peace would be achieved if disparate peoples could communicate easily with each other, Zamenhof developed Esperanto to act as a universal auxiliary language. His pet project became the center of a global community of goodwill and intercultural communication in the early 20th Century, a poignant example of the Utopian aspirations of the age (the word esperanto means “one who hopes”). Esperanto remains the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.

In 1965, after the cancellation of his television series The Outer Limits, Leslie Stevens began production on a horror film to keep his crew (which included future three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Conrad Hall) working. Stevens figured that having all the dialogue spoken in Esperanto would be a neat way to inject some uniqueness into the picture, and would help it get into arthouses, “where subtitles were.” The distinctly Outer Limits-esque story features a village with a well that yields healing waters, attracting a soldier, Marc, who seeks to recover from his war wounds. A local succubus, Kia (Stevens’ wife Allyson Ames), tries to tempt Marc and secure his soul for Hell, but since he’s played by William Shatner, she naturally falls for his charms instead, incurring the wrath of the titular incubus (Alain Delon’s stunt double/bodyguard Milos Milos).

Shot in two weeks in NorCal, Incubusultimately premiered to jeers from Esperanto speakers at the 1966 San Francisco Film Festival. The performers all learned their lines phoetically, which is obvious even if you don’t know the language. Still, Stevens was correct that it lends the movie an eerie, otherworldly quality.The film only received a theatrical run in France before ignominiously fading into a curio. Stevens blamed the lack of interest not on the movie’s dialogue being spoken in what was essentially an alien language, but on its assocation with Milos, who had killed his lover Barbara Ann Thomason (Mickey Rooney’s estranged wife) and then himself. Shatner would, of course, in short order become involved with a much better-known Utopian project. (By the way, the Esperanto term for “a blade”? Klingon.) Esperanto cinema never really caught on–Incubusremains one of only a handful of features shot wholly in the language–but Zamenhof’s dream endures.

Incubus was believed lost for decades before a well-worn 16mm print was discovered in the Cinémathèque Française in the late ’90s, which served as the basis for a new 35mm version and a DVD release. A 35mm copy in much better condition was found in 2023, and Le Chat Qui Fume used it to restore the film in 4K. Spectacle is excited to present the New York premiere of this restoration.

Thanks to Phil Ginley, Esther Rosenfield, and the American Genre Film Archive.

TRANSCENDING THE BOUNDARIES OF PAIN — THREE VISIONS OF HELL FROM OLAF ITTENBACH

Posted on by smacfarlane

OLAFITTENBACH

For 35 years, Olaf Ittenbach has been one of Germany’s most resourceful filmmakers and a pioneer in shot-on-video horror and splatter. He used funds from his work as a dental technician for his debut feature, the Spectacle classic BLACK PAST.

Ittenbach has always had an eye/ear for relentless, shrieking pain. He takes clear influence from canon classics like THE EVIL DEAD, HELLRAISER, and DEAD ALIVE while adapting entirely new ways of seeing through the most primitive of camera tech, juxtaposed with detailed phantasmaGORical violence. His morbidly meticulous gore effects are made with clear passion—and as a direct response to the German government’s historically draconian views on violent movies. The man has even lent his SFX talents to fellow German directors like Timo Rose and cinema bad boy Uwe Boll.

This Spectober, Spectacle is proud to showcase three utterly depraved and infernal works from one of underground horror’s most prolific voices: THE BURNING MOON, PREMUTOS: THE FALLEN ANGEL, and NO REASON.

BURNINGMOON

THE BURNING MOON
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 1992
Germany, 98 min.
In German with English Subtitles

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4 – 5PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12 – 7:30PM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22 – 10PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 – 10PM

BUY TICKETS

WHEN THE MOON IS FULL, THE BLOOD TIDE RISES

Widely regarded as Ittenbach’s masterpiece, this is one of the strangest horror anthologies ever made. Produced not long after BLACK PAST, Ittenbach writes, directs, and co-stars, playing an ultra-dirtbag fictionalized version of himself, the delinquent Peter. When he isn’t flunking classes or taking part in ultra-violent teenage gang wars, he’s stuck babysitting his little sister. He decides to torment her with two twisted tales: one about a woman on a blind date from hell, the other about a serial killer priest who hopes to literally raise Hell. The picture is infamous for its deranged maximalist finale, a Dante’s Inferno-like descent into the putrid. THE BURNING MOON is a must-see for folks who yearn for homemade gore in their horror.

Taking a trip into hell on a skateboard that’s rolling over shattered glass and broken bones.
–Bob McCully, creator/host of the Split Your Head podcast

This movie will purify you.
–Annie Choi, Bleeding Skull

Special thanks to AGFA.

PREMUTOS

PREMUTOS: THE FALLEN ANGEL
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 1997
Germany, 115 min.
In German with English Subtitles

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8 – 10PM
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18 – 10PM
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23 – 730PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 – 730PM

BUY TICKETS

Before Lucifer… there was PREMUTOS

For his third film, Ittenbach and team were given the prestigious opportunity to film on 16mm. The results are the kind of nasty, lush spectacle that would make even g enre legends like Peter Jackson and Clive Barker blush. Ittenbach directs, writes, and stars, playing yet another German boy who accidentally unleashes satanic horrors. This time around, however, the humans attempt to fight back, creating a gleeful bloodbath that rivals the likes of DEAD ALIVE. PREMUTOS is the closest thing Ittenbach’s made to an epic.

139 Dead Bodies; 75 Zombies; 17 Exploding Heads; 6 Decapitations; 2 Breasts; 6 Crucifixions; 3 Burning Houses; 1 Exploding Car
–Brewce Longo, Bloodsick Productions

NOREASON

NO REASON
Dir. Olaf Ittenbach, 2010
Germany, 74 min.
In German with English Subtitles

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 – MIDNIGHT
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 – 10PM
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 – 10PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31 – MIDNIGHT

BUY TICKETS

After experimenting in English-language productions for two films, Olaf Ittenbach returned to Germany to make the strangest movie of his career. NO REASON stars Irene Holzfurtner as the tormented Jennifer, an ordinary housewife living an ordinary day until mid-bath, she mysteriously descends into a bloodsoaked, sadistic underworld, guided by a Cthulhu-masked individual. What begins as a series of morbid tests devolves into a dive into Jennifer’s unreliable psyche. A blast of psychological “woman in trouble” pulp and cosmic horror, NO REASON takes Ittenbach’s usual narrative intrigue of damaged characters seeking truth through dismemberment and pushes it to its limit.

Special Thanks to Stephen Biro and Suzie from Unearthed Films

SPECTACLE X CDFF PRESENTS JOE ZASO’S SCREAMBOOK I + II

Posted on by smacfarlane

This Spectober, Spectacle is thrilled to again work with local documentary filmmaker Curtis Whitear and the rest of the Childhood Delusion Film Festival crew to bring you one of the more obscure horror anthology series. This duology was the first foray into filmmaking for New York City’s own “Horror Himbo,” Joe Zaso— evoking another Spectacle classic HAWK JONES, SCREAMBOOK and SCREAMBOOK II: THE NEXT ISSUE are brazenly playful send-ups of Tales of the Crypt and similar series from our youth, all shot and acted predominantly by kids. Do you dare give in to your childhood delusions and open the SCREAMBOOK?

Q&A with director, writer and producer JOE ZASO moderated by Curtis Whitear and Phil Ginley October 26th 7:30 pm

All screenings will feature a sneak peek from the Childhood Delusion Film Festival team

SCREAMBOOK

SCREAMBOOK
Dir. Joe Zaso, 1984
United States, 78 min.
In English

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1 – 7:30PM
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10 – 10PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 – 5PM

BUY TICKETS

IT WILL TEAR THE SCREAMS RIGHT FROM YOUR THROAT

Joe Zaso’s directorial debut at the age of 14, SCREAMBOOK is SOV horror meets high school public access TV experiment. Modeled after anthologies like CREEPSHOW, we’re treated to five spooky stories–“Family Reunion,” “Tommy,” “Secret of the Bottle,” “Ye Old Toy Shop,” and “Worms”– all lovingly introduced with construction paper and crude marker-drawn comic covers that match-cut into live action. Silly, glitchy, and charmingly creative, SCREAMBOOK is an essential piece of Long Island cinematic horror history, as well as a textbook example of young auteurs making art by any means necessary.

Screambook is a euphoric thunderclap of surrealism. It’s a voyage to other realms, where cooked spaghetti is a murder weapon and melted Play-Doh is a substitute for monsters.
–Joseph A. Ziemba, Bleeding Skull

SCREAMBOOKII

SCREAMBOOK II: THE NEXT ISSUE
Dir. Joe Zaso, 1985
United States, 74 min.
In English

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1 – 10PM
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14 – 10PM
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 26 – 7:30PM (Q&A)

BUY TICKETS

Q&A TICKETS

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE YOU “SCREAMBOOK” COMES FOUR NEW HORRORS!

Like all great sequels, THE NEXT ISSUE is bigger and badder in every regard. We begin with a setting from a bygone era: the mom-and-pop video rental store. Unfortunately for the customers, the ghoul behind the counter (Jill Casey) is more concerned with telling scary stories than the latest tape release. The Cryptkeeper-like hostess with a cackling, manic no-wave jr. energy introduces four more fuzzy lo-fi tales of terror: “Till Death Do Us Part,” “Silversweets,” “Birthday Wishes,” and “A Grave Matter.” It’s DIY filmmaking as play, with all the howling and youthful tenacity from your school’s field day.

Don’t overanalyze it. Just bask in the kaleidoscopic confusion of lights, demented laughter and all the glorious mom perms. Gives you the warm fuzzies that you’ve come to expect when you blindly stumble upon an attic box full of clamshell nostalgia.
—13beersl8r, letterboxd

Special thanks to Joe Zaso and Curtis Whitear

MIIKE MADNESS 2025

Posted on by laura

SATURDAY OCT 11th ALL DAY 10AM-2AM

$5 PER SHOW or $25 FULL DAY

Day Passes Available HERE, Individual tickets will be available at the door.

THIS OCTOBER SPECTACLE IS PROUD TO BRING YOU  AN ALL DAY MYSTERY MARATHON OF THE WORK OF  THE GREATEST LIVING FILMMAKER, TAKASHI MIIKE.

FIND LOVE AND DIE THIS SPECTOBER.

Most famous in the west for his extreme horror and gonzo yakuza films, Miike is prolific (Over 110 features, A dozen television series) and even more influential. His films range from classy remakes to video game + manga adaptations, children’s films to torture porn, samurai masterpieces to filmed stage productions, psychedelic comedies to anime — even a recently teased upcoming collaboration with Charli XCX(?!?)

Miike’s work is unflinching but humane, cruel to the point of excruciating and drawn to stories of outsider characters (queer, foreign, female) in hostile male spaces,  mordantly funny in his darkest moments, a tone none of his acolytes can ever hope to capture.

Miike cut his teeth on direct to video films (dubbed V-cinema in Japan) for a decade before exploding onto the European festival circuit at the turn of the century with his beloved gore classics Audition and Ichi the Killer. Currently he is prepping Bad Lieutenant Tokyo for release, now the third iconoclastic director in the series pantheon with Abel Ferrara and Werner Herzog. He has cameos in both Hostel and the Animal Crossing movie.

He is your favorite director’s favorite director. He is the hardest working submissive in show business. Spectacle can barely hope to scratch the surface in honoring him today, with this 7 film marathon.

Expect some surprises.

~~~~

10 am
XXXX XXXXX: XXXXXXXX XX X XXXX
dir. Takashi Miike, 1991.
Japan, 79 mins.
In Japanese and English with English subtitles.

A kidnapped child triggers an international incident, in the most rampage mode movie ever released direct to video. Imagine if Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever was remade by an insane person. 

Noon
XXX XXXXX
dir. Takashi Miike, 1999.
Japan, 85 mins.
In Japanese, Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles.

Three teens of Chinese descent get in way over their heads in this lyrical gem reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai… only possessing a much crueler worldview.

2 pm
XXXXXXX
dir. Takashi Miike, 2001.
Japan, 150 mins.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

A soulful yakuza epic that bridges the gap between Fukasaku and Kitano, largely unseen by western audiences who were already going to Miike for grossouts rather than emotional depth. 

INTERMISSION

6 pm
XXXX XXXXX XXXXXX
dir. Takashi Miike, 1997.
Japan, 103 mins.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

A mad cybernetics scientist experiments on a severed head in this exploration of masculine ideation. *Exactly* the kind of movie you come to Spectacle to see.

8 pm
XXXX
dir. Takashi Miike, 2003.
Japan, 130 mins.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

Nightmarish and droll, two criminals stumble into a surrealistic horror tale that will have something to upset or delight just about anyone. 

10:30 pm
XXXXXXXXX X
dir. Takashi Miike, 2001.
Japan, 84 mins.
In Japanese with English subtitles.

One of Miike’s many remakes of a beloved arthouse classic, also one of the most fucked up movies ever made.

MIDNIGHT
XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX
dir. Takashi Miike, 2007.
Japan, 120 mins.
In English.

When art directors die they go to the set of this film in heaven. Lowkey a musical. Miike once declared “Paul Verhoeven loved it!”

SHRIEKSHOW XIV

Posted on by Ben Harris

Hold on to your skulls for Spectacles’ 14th annual Shriek Show Marathon! Featuring fourteen hours of mind-melting mystery horror films from six different countries.

Day passes are available online for $25, and single screening tickets will be available at the door on a first-come, first-served basis for $5.

OCTOBER 25th: 12PM- 2AM

DAY PASSES

NOON
XXXXXX
Dir. XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX, 1988.
Indonesia. 94 min.
In Indonesian with English Subtitles.

A woman learns the ways of black magic to exact revenge. 

2PM
XXXXX
Dir. XXX XXXXX, 1974.
United States.  83 min.
In English.

A snake collector lures residents of a small town to his snake ranch. 

4PM
XXXXX
Dir. XXX XXXXXXXXX, 2005
United States. 85 min.
In English.

I know what you did in Louisiana last summer. 

6PM
XXXXXX XX: XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX
Dir. XXXXXX XXXXXXX, 1991.
Germany. 72 min.
English Dub.

8PM
XXX XXXXXXXXX
Dir. XXXXX XXXXXXXXXXX, 2006
Thailand. 97min.
In Thai with English Subtitles.

A woman visits a gothic mansion to find her lost husband.

10PM
XXX XXXXX XXX
Dir. XXXXX XXXXX, 1989
Italy. 96min.
In English.

Dario Argento’s New Nightmare.

MIDNIGHT
XXX XXX XXXX XXXX
Dir. XXXX XXXXX, 2004
Japan. 50 min.
In Japanese with English Subtitles.

A woman tries to bring her child back from the dead. 

BEST OF BEST OF SPECTACLE

Posted on by mackenzie

Since the dawn of the theater, there have been films that have defined Spectacle’s identity and its ethos—films that transcend the walls of our humble ex-bodega and tap into the sense of radical rediscovery that our collective is always chasing. The weird, the pertinent, the beautiful, and the ineffable—these films have been cataloged in our long-running annual series “Best of Spectacle.” At the end of every calendar year, in a tradition that began in 2013, the collective votes on what films should get a second showing in January. Our January calendars have thus become a repository for some of our fondest memories spent with both packed houses and loyal, solitary midnight Spectacleheads.

September of 2025 marks our 15th anniversary at 124 South 3rd Street, and as such it seems a ripe occasion to play the entire catalog of hits. Unfolding in chronological order until we catch up with the present, Spectacle is excited to unveil the “Best of Best of Spectacle”: a running series of films that built our foundation like bricks and resulted in some of Spectacle’s greatest trailers, posters, screenings and memories.

SEVEN WOMEN SEVEN SINS
dirs. various, 1987.
Various, 101 min.

MONDAY, JUNE 1 – 10 PM

BUY TICKETS

As wide-ranging an omnibus film as there has ever been, a group of some of the most important international filmmakers of the last few decades – all of them female – take on each of the biblical vices. Bette Gordon, Chantal Akerman, VALIE EXPORT, Maxi Cohen, Laurence Gavron and more contribute a contemporary celluloid sin. The result is a thoroughly unpredictable introduction to each filmmaker’s work; encapsulating devious narratives and experimental collages, film and video.

Extended from May in tribute to the late experimental performance icon and Spectacle favorite VALIE EXPORT.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies.

HISTORY LESSONS
dir. Barbara Hammer, 2000.
USA, 70 min.
In English

MONDAY, JUNE 1 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 18 – 10 PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 25 – 10 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 30 – 10 PM

BUY TICKETS

The final installment in Barbara Hammer’s groundbreaking “lost queer trilogy,” HISTORY LESSONS imagines a world in which lesbians are as omnipresent as white heterosexual cis men. Manipulating everything from Eleanor Roosevelt studded newsreels to analog skin flicks, Hammer rewrites history with this reclamation of an almost always marginalized demographic.

“Radical sexual politics in a jester’s surprise package of impudent humor and Situationist-style found-footage monkeyshines” – Variety

BUMMING IN BEIJING
( 流浪北京)
dir. Wu Wenguang, 1990.
China, 70 mins. (Extended cut: 135 mins.)
In Mandarin with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4 – 7:30 PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 13 – 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 15 – 7:30 PM (EXTENDED CUT)
TUESDAY, JUNE 23 – 7:30 PM (EXTENDED CUT)

BUY TICKETS

“In 1990, Chinese documentaries were almost exclusively stodgy, didactic talking head affairs broadcast on state-run media. Then Wu Wenguang’s BUMMING IN BEIJING came out, kicking off an entire independent documentary scene in the country. Shot directly before and after the Tiananmen Square Massacre on cameras taken from a government TV station, BUMMING IN BEIJING follows five broke bohemians (including future art stars like Zhang Dali, long before they found fame) in grimy late 80s Beijing. Shot in a vérité style that would soon be adopted by a new generation of filmmakers, the movie includes an onscreen mental breakdown, a time-capsule view of the emergence of the country’s avant-garde, and proof that the hippest place in China used to be KFC.” – Aaron-Fox Lerner, Time Out Beijing Film Editor

“The prolonged moments of near silence in BUMMING IN BEIJING produce the aesthetic effect of outlasting the remembered roar of government tanks.” – Ernest Larsen, Art In America

THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS
(aka EL CHARRO DE LAS CALAVERAS)
dir. Alfredo Salazar, 1965.
80 minutes, Mexico.
In Spanish with English subtitles.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3 — 7:30 PM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10 — 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 19 — 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 29 — 10 PM

TICKETS

A masked rider (not Zorro) arrives in a sleepy Mexican villa in the midst of a slew of vicious werewolf attacks during what seems like a solid month of full moons. The Rider is given lodging by a señorita and her young son – Perico – who appear to be the next targets of the flannel-clad lycanthrope. The Rider, with the help of a local witch dispatches of the monster who turns out to be the boys father. As he rides off into the sunset with Perico by his side one may expect the credits to roll but don’t rise from the opulent comfort of your seat just yet, viewer, this adventure is far from over. The Rider (now taller and with a different mask) along with the help of a new boy and their manservant Cléofas (the films “comic relief”) fight a vampire in some highly unconvincing day for night photography. It’s worth mentioning that the vampire not only has the giant head of a bat but also has the power to change into an equally unconvincing rubber bat and flies off. Finally, The Rider faces his deadliest foe yet when he teams up with a woman in possession of the cabeza of none other than the Headless Horseman and his two robed skeleton henchmen leading to a machete fight at sunset.

Director Alfredo Salazar is best known for his contributions to Mexican horror in the form of many, many Santo/Blue Demon movies as well as penning such psychotronic fare as THE NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES and the should-be classic THE MAN & THE MONSTER (produced by and starring his brother Abel). Star Dagoberto Rodríguez had a 30-or-so year career in Mexican film and television, which is more than likely the reason he removes his mask and reveals his identity in the middle of the film. Due to its “monster of the week” feeling and suspicious change of companions/mask/location/etc the working assumption is that THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS is actually three episodes of a serial stitched together to make it feature length. Nevertheless, Salazar wears his love of classic Universal monsters on his sleeve and creates a film unlike any other.

THE SECRET OF THE MUMMY
(aka O Segredo da Múmia)
dir. Ivan Cardoso, 1982.
Brazil, 85 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4 — 10 PM
FRIDAY, JUNE 12 — 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 16 — 10 PM
MONDAY, JUNE 22 — 7:30 PM

TICKETS

A tale as old as time: Dr. Vitus, a disgraced scientist (Wilson Grey who would go on to be one of Cardoso’s go to character actors for the majority of his career) devotes his dying days to the reconstruction of a map that had been divided into 8 parts and scattered to the winds with their owners meeting most mysterious deaths.

On a trip to Egypt he finds a mummy, Runamb, and brings it with him back to Brazil. You aren’t going to believe this – but it comes to life and wreaks havoc on all in his path obsessing over Nadia, a dancer who had scorned him when he was alive – well, more alive anyway.

Fleshing out his vision after NOSFERATO IN BRAZIL, Cardoso again takes advantage of the countryside and finds juicy roles for the legendary José Mojica Marins—better known as Coffin Joe—and Regina Casé (THE SECOND MOTHER).