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Cinefamily Screens 30 Banned Horror Films all Month Long
Do you love things that go bump in the night? Do you think you have the intestinal fortitude to watch horror flicks all month long? Then head over to Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater tonight and for the next 30 nights for Nightmare City: A Video Nasties Celebration— 35mm midnight screenings of horror movies selected from a list of "Video Nasties."
According to Cinefamily, when a moral panic broke out in the U.K. during Margaret Thatcher's reign, the government blamed all of society's problems on horror films that lined video store shelves with "covers so exploitatively gratuitous and repellent that an entire nation freaked out and banned them."
After the dust settled, 72 "Video Nasties" were banned or recut dramatically to alter the gore. Included on the list were The Evil Dead (seriously??), Faces to Death and Possession. Now, Cinefamily culls the best of the banned to screen all month long.
Oh, and to make it interesting, they're holding a contest to see whomever can sit through as many screenings as possible. Third place gets the 3-DVD UK box set Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide; second place gets the DVD set and a vintage large-format French theatrical poster for The Burning and the 3-DVD UK box set; and grand prize winner gets the box set and a chance to program an upcoming Cinefamily midnight movie screening.
There's a free screening of a Video Nasties documentary tonight at 10 pm. It's followed by the 11:59 pm screening of Night Warning. On tap for the rest of the week: Hell of the Living Dead, The Witch Who Came From The Sea, Axe, Evilspeak, Inferno and Dead & Buried.
Check out the full schedule for Nightmare City: A Video Nasties Celebration. Tickets are $12 per film screening.
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