Something called a "Super Bowl" intercepts many venues' schedules this weekend. See the big game on the big screen, Bigfoot at the New Bev or big scares in the anthology The Theatre Bizarre! more ›

What happens when your birthday falls on Halloween? If you're Cinefamily, you go all-out Disco Dracula Dance Party! Then take a complete 180 toward enlightenment with the documentary My Reincarnation at Laemmle's. more ›

The third film in a horror franchise is often its defining point. It's when Friday the 13th gave Jason his hockey mask. It's when Halloween realized audiences wouldn't accept anyone but Michael Myers. It's when Saw transitioned from Jigsaw to his proteges. We don't yet know whether Paranormal Activity 3 will be as important in the grand scheme of the series. more ›

For British noir fans, the final screenings of Went The Day Well? at the New Beverly will go down very well indeed. Then, the Cinefamily's Thursday Hellraiser thrillogy will pin you to your seat! more ›

The Academy celebrates the art of the amateur filmmaker. You bring it, they'll screen it! The Cinefamily goes bonkers for bizarro Bollywood horrors, then goes Dracula disco dancing! more ›

John Landis knows a thing or two about movie monsters. He's written & directed creature classics An American Werewolf in London & Michael Jackson's Thriller, and distilled decades of knowledge into a new book, Monsters in the Movies. more ›

October 1st marks the beginning of the season of the witch, and the New Beverly's going not double, not triple, but sextuple bubble toil & trouble! Every year, the All-Night Horror Show brings 12 hours of beasts, blood & the beyond to the silver screen, and every year it's graced this computer screen more ›

Say good-bye to the horror of logging on to your computer after a night out only to find pictures of yourself with your fist wrapped around a beer, sweat dripping down your forehead and your mouth forming the word "wooo!" -- the Gods of Facebook have deigned to let us approve photos before they get tagged. more ›

The release of Final Destination 5 this weekend shows that the preceding film in the horror series wasn't, as its title proclaimed, The Final Destination. Thank goodness! While the franchise won't (& shouldn't) win any Oscars, it delivers exactly what it promises: ridiculously contrived, increasingly gory death sequences. more ›

Trailers for Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 promise "the motion picture event of a generation." While that honor (sadly) still belongs to Avatar, franchise fans have plenty to cheer about with the release of the penultimate Potter film. Warner Bros. unleashes The Deathly Hallows on over 4,000 screens nationwide this weekend, including IMAX screenings in Burbank, Century City, The Howard Hughes Center, Universal CityWalk and Woodland Hills. more ›

I'd be remiss to my Lord Samhain if I put off the Halloween coverage a second longer. But before plunging into the depths of hell, take a moment to plumb the depths of heaven at the Aero. Counterculture cartoonist Bill Plympton appears in support of his latest work, Idiots and Angels. The hand-crafted dark comedy finds a drunken curmudgeon sprouting a pair of wings that compel him to do good deeds. The only problem is - he wants to be bad, and will stop at nothing to sour his spirits. If you can't make it on Thursday, it's also playing for one week only at Laemmle's Sunset starting Friday. more ›

It's a three dimensional brawl between horror films My Soul To Take and Scar 3D! The former has the advantage of genre legend Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) as writer/director, but the disadvantage of a fake 3D conversion and title change (it was known as 25/8 - which title is worse?). Scar 3D has the advantage of being shot in 3D, but the disadvantage of only playing on one screen. more ›

It's the spook-spookiest season of all! This Saturday, the New Beverly shocks from dusk to dawn with the Third Annual All Night Horror Show. $20 nets 12 hours of terror: Dario Argento's Tenebrae ("a beautiful ballet of deplorable violence and stunning photography"), Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell ("[a] mastery of atmosphere [... and] straight-up, old school gore"), The Evil ("one of the best haunted house pictures ever"), a sinful secret film, big-bad-buzzard-bomb The Giant Claw, The Breeders ("packed with tasteless scenes [and] an overabundance of female nudity") and killer genie flick The Outing. As if that weren't enough, there's tons of trailers and other goodies between the scares. Last year was standing room only - so get there early, and stay there late! If you're cursed with a curfew (or a case of the sleepies), the Cinefamily features two more Argento films on Thursday evening, and a pajama party Saturday night which pairs Neve Campbell vehicle The Craft with campy musical Teen Witch. Senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell will be in attendance if her schedule allows. more ›

As someone who had used Facebook since its inception, only to participate in Quit Facebook Day earlier this year, I'm very interested in The Social Network. It's a rare peek into the real world behind our augmented reality, with plenty to "like": David Fincher as director, Aaron Sorkin as writer and Jesse Eisenberg as "the CEO, bitch!" himself, Mark Zuckerberg. The film has a near-perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics comparing it to Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood & The Godfather. Freakonomics aims for a similar pedigree with its documentary all-star squad: Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Seth Gordon (King of Kong), Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) and Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) tackle abortion, education, offbeat baby names and cheating sumo wrestlers through statistical vignettes, but there may be too many cooks in the kitchen. more ›

Deadly Prey is the Citizen Kane of Rambo rip-offs. Or, more accurately, Citizen Kane is the Deadly Prey of William Randolph Hearst biopics. Don't believe me? Check Cinefamily favorite Everything is Terrible! for video clips or the Gentleman's Guide to Midnight Cinema podcast for an in-depth discussion. There's no better venue for such cinematic splendor than Horrible Movie Night, a monthly film/comedy spectacular with alcoholic beverages, sugary brownies, improv intermissions, and a competition for the best audience one-liner. If you're on a strictly low-testosterone diet, check out Viscera Film Festival, an all-day women's horror festival at Downtown Independent. The line-up sports 34 shorts spanning three genres - comedic, experimental & scary - and these ladies don't need Aunt Flo to bring the gore! Guests include Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Brea Grant (Heroes), Cerina Vincent (Cabin Fever), and a killer cadre of filmmaking final girls. more ›

It's only March, but I can already guarantee House is the weirdest film you'll see in a theater this year. The slice of '70s pscyhedelia takes a band of Japanese school-girls, sends them to an old house, and severs all ties to sanity. House deftly melds art-house tricks with gore and slapstick, and turns on a dime. There's new-wave editing, laser ghost cats, gorgeous lighting, dancing skeletons, faux newsreel footage, martial arts, haunting melodies and a series of deaths so outrageous I don't even know how to put them to words. It opens at the New Beverly on Friday, where it plays for an entire week. And considering all the amazing films the Bev only screens a couple nights... more ›

Adam Green is the iconic director of the neo-horror genre, who struck it big with Hatchet in 2006. Last year he filmed Frozen which was released last weekend. The story centers on 3 friends who get stuck on a chairlift after the ski resort shuts down at the end of the weekend and they are left hanging for days. Think about that next time you head up to Mammoth. more ›

Chalk Rep’s Twelfth Night opens tonight at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Shakespeare’s classic comedy of mistaken identity integrates indie folk rock and a high fashion sensibility. The play runs weekends through Feb. 28. Tickets are $30, but there are pay-what-you-can performances on Super Bowl Sunday at 7 pm and Sat., Feb. 13th at 2 pm. more ›

Low budget plus scary story telling has proved itself again. Following in the footsteps of The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity is now the highest grossing films ever with a 433,900 percent return on investment (the film cost $15,000 to make), according to The Wrap. Last weekend, its fifth in theatres, it was number one in the box office. more ›

This is it! The weekend horror hounds have been waiting for all month - everyone & Bates' mother has a Halloween Event, all guaranteed to be a scream! Go old school with Noise-feratu, Downtown Independent & Summer Fun Time Society's live performance of ghoulish grandaddy Nosferatu, featuring hardcore bands Kill Kill Kill, 0rgan Music, 8-bit blooper WMX, and other artists so crazy they've been banned from the internet. more ›

If you happened to be around Hollywood & Highland on Saturday evening, you may have encountered a spooky sight: Zombies! Organized by fans of the genre, a "Zombiewalk" took place this weekend, which found a band of bloody, creepy, blank-faced undead Angelenos making use of the public transit system and taking a stroll through the heart of Hollywood to celebrate all that is zombie. more ›

If you've been to the New Bev as often as I have, you've found that the theater isn't run by a staff so much as a family. Friday, they pull out all the stops for one of their own, Julia Marchese, as she makes her big screen debut in the thriller Golden Earrings. Of course, for every sweet Julia, there are a plethora of bastard stepchildren. more ›

There are plenty of movies out there that pay homage to their forefather films, those exceptionally well made pieces that stand the test of time and help to define a genre. However, this is perhaps seen nowhere more than in horror film vein, where hat-tips to the Evil Deads, the Braindeads, and even the Shaun of the Deads are practically mandatory. But these exist for a very specific reason: those movies kick ass. more ›

Mubia is a black revolutionary wrongfully sent to the electric chair for raping & murdering white women. Precocious teen porn star Heather passes her time playing with ventriloquist dummies & Ouija boards. You don't have to be too horror-savvy to know that this is a roomful of bodies waiting to happen. At the stroke of midnight, Mubia is executed and Heather inadvertently Ouijas his soul into her dummy, infusing him with curly hair, a baadasssss attitude & a mouth that would make Richard Pryor roll over in his grave. The two fall deeply in love, but their relationship faces its greatest test when Heather's porn star friends come over for a girls' night of car-washing, showering, bathing & Twister. For once Heather leaves to grab food, an influx of slavery images, black power memories & demonic influences overwhelms Mubia (via a kaleidoscopic collision the filmmakers dub "Negroscope") and the starlets meet their ends in increasingly violent fashion. Maybe that all-white jury was all right... more ›

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A car breaks down on an isolated country road. It is not only a dark and stormy night, it is the longest night in the world. The occupants, little Judy and her dysfunctional parents, are forced to seek shelter for the night in a remote old mansion. The mansion comes into view as it is illuminated by a flash of lightning, of course. Dolls pokes fun at the formulaic haunted house cliche while also providing... more ›