Director Wes Craven died in August and his memory will be honoured with a double-bill screening of two of his lesser celebrated films at this year's IFI Horrorthon, which runs from October 22 to 26.
Craven, most famous for 1996's horror lampoon Scream, will have his films The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) and The People under the Stairs (1991) screened at the Horrorton.
This year’s festival opens with the Irish premiere of The Invitation, a tense and unnerving thriller which sees Will and his girlfriend attend his ex-wife’s dinner party, only to realise there are ulterior motives to her kindness.
Opening night also presents the second feature from one of 2014’s Festival guests, Jessica Cameron, whose film Mania features a lesbian couple fleeing across the US after a brutal murder in their hometown.
Other disturbing delights include premieres of Howl, in which passengers on a late-night broken down train are forced to band together as an unseen presence starts to attack them one by one; Turbo Kid, which concerns one brave Kid who stands up to an evil overlord in this homage to ‘80s action movies; and Children of the Night, focusing on a remote orphanage populated by child vampires.
Other premiere highlights include Jeruzalem which follows two young American women when the Biblical end of days begins as they tour Jerusalem; Rabid Dogs, a remake of a Mario Bava film about three criminals who take their hostages on a violent road trip; and Tales of Halloween, which sees suburban residents terrorised by supernatural creatures in this excellent anthology.
Scream queen, Hammer regular, Caroline Munro will introduce a Q&A following a screening of Dracula A.D. 1972 as part of the tribute to Christopher Lee at 1.00pm on Friday Oct 23. The Hammer classic sees Lee (1922 – 2015) playing a Dracula who is not tired of life at all but reasonably happy to roam around London, seeking revenge on the descendants of his nemesis Van Helsing.
There is also a screening of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), in which Lee plays endangered Sir Henry Baskerville in Terence Fisher’s adaptation of the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes adventures.
Individual tickets for the IFI Horrorthon films are on sale now at the IFI Box Office in person, on the phone 01 679 3477 or online at www.ifi.ie
