THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER’S
popular SCARY MOVIES Film Series returns with New York Premieres
of AMERICAN MARY, CITADEL, HERE COMES THE DEVIL,
HORROR STORIES, MANIAC, SEXYKILLER AND STITCHES
Revival highlights include screenings of
Wes Craven’s cult classic DEADLY BLESSING
and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH with Vincent Price
popular SCARY MOVIES Film Series returns with New York Premieres
of AMERICAN MARY, CITADEL, HERE COMES THE DEVIL,
HORROR STORIES, MANIAC, SEXYKILLER AND STITCHES
Revival highlights include screenings of
Wes Craven’s cult classic DEADLY BLESSING
and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH with Vincent Price
NEW YORK, October 11, 2012 – The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual horror fest Scary Movies returns for its 6th edition featuring a blood-curdling collection of first-time New York City screenings of highly anticipated horror films and thrillers, genre rarities and fan favorites.
Scary Movies 6 kicks off in high gear with two unusually strong-female-driven terror tales, both featuring medical students with unorthodox methods—the 2008 Spanish SEXYKILLER, just now making its New York debut, and the Soska Sisters’ AMERICAN MARY. Other highlights include the remake of the notorious grindhouse classic MANIAC starring Elijah Wood; the horror comedy STITCHES featuring a zombie clown bent on exacting bloody revenge; the creepy Korean omnibus HORROR STORIES; two films presenting the latest in evil-kid incarnations: CITADEL and HERE COMES THE DEVIL; and EDEN LAKE, which includes an early Michael Fassbender appearance.
Rounding out the program will be presentations of Wes Craven’s DEADLY BLESSING, the Vincent Price starrer THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, John Schlesinger’s THE BELIEVERS, and Giorgio Ferroni’s THE NIGHT OF THE DEVILS.
Gavin Smith, Film Comment magazine's editor-in-chief and co-curator of Scary Movies, said, "This year's Scary Movies lineup delivers what we feel have become hallmarks of this series: Must-see new films like AMERICAN MARY, STITCHES and MANIAC, some underappreciated gems like THE BELIEVERS and EDEN LAKE, and the rediscovery of great work by masters of horror – with Vincent Price in THE LAST MAN ON EARTH and Wes Craven's DEADLY BLESSINGS nicely filling the bill."
Series programmed by Laura Kern and Gavin Smith.
SCARY MOVIES 6 Films, Descriptions and Schedule
New York Premiere!
AMERICAN MARY (2012) 100m
Directors: Jen & Sylvia Soska
Country: Canada
A penniless med student, increasingly disillusioned with the field she’s slaving away to enter, stumbles upon an irresistible opportunity for alternative education—an underground school of sorts where she’s able to utilize and refine her skills, while earning loads of cash. Mary descends into a dark new world of illegal body modification, encountering a variety of sketchy characters, while becoming more and more adept with her scalpel. But how long before all the carnage—professional and otherwise—takes its toll? The spectacle of Mary (fearlessly played by Katharine Isabelle) testing those limits is disquieting and wholly fascinating.
Friday, October 26, 9:15pm
THE BELIEVERS (1987) 114m
Director: John Schlesinger
Country: USA
New York City, 1987: a memorable place and time for cinematic voodoo. Occult-loving audiences were first givenAngel Heart and then The Believers, the one and only horror movie made by John Schlesinger, the English director best known for the likes of Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, and the second of only two horror movies featuring Martin Sheen. Here, an ultra-likable Sheen plays Cal, a suddenly single father whose path accidentally crosses with a Santeria cult known to sacrifice animals… and children. And to make matters worse, they take an active interest in his boy. A genuinely chilling—and severely underappreciated—film rich with mood and character.
Sunday, October 28, 4:00pm
New York Premiere!
CITADEL (2012) 84m
Director: Ciarán Foy
Country: Ireland
Welcome to the traumatized, paranoid psyche of Tommy, new father, and soon-to-be widow—his wife lies comatose never to awaken, after a horrific act of violence in their grim tower block just as they were finally moving out. Reduced to an agoraphobic wreck, he now lives in constant fear that the pack of feral hoodie-wearing children responsible for the attack is now after his daughter. Only a cantankerous priest believes him, and together they set out to rid the world of the evil little suckers once and for all. A Cinedigm/ paFlat Iron Film Company release.
Tuesday, October 30, 7:00pm
DEADLY BLESSING (1981) 98m
Director: Wes Craven
Country: USA
Somewhere along the way from The Hills Have Eyes to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven made this underseen and underrated oddball gem, still not available on DVD. Set in Amish-like country, it features a couple whose marital bliss is put to an early end when he’s killed by his tractor—yup, such things happen in these parts, especially when there’s a psycho on the loose, and much of the town is made up of loopy religious fanatics (led by Ernest Borgnine). Soon the newly widowed woman’s two best friends (paging Sharon Stone!) arrive on the scene, just to be counted in among the targets. A persistent sense of
lurking fear overrides some silliness, for a movie that is ultimately much more fright than camp.
Sunday, October 28, 6:30pm
EDEN LAKE (2008) 91m
Director: James Watkins
Country: UK
Four years before The Woman in Black, this year’s fake-scare fest for Harry Potter–loving tweens, James Watkins delivered a deadly punch to the gut with a directorial debut that was strictly for adults. At first glance a run-of-the-mill horror-in-the-wilds outing, Eden Lake soon blows its competition out of the water thanks to its sheer unflinching grisliness, as a couple who go camping in search of romantic tranquility are instead terrorized by a gang of chillingly sadistic teens. It’s a trip the lovebirds may not live to remember and audiences will not easily forget. (An early screen performance by Michael Fassbender is an added bonus.)
Sunday, October 28, 8:45pm
New York Premiere!
HERE COMES THE DEVIL (Ahí va el Diablo) (2012) 97m
Director: Adrián García Bogliano
Countries: Mexico/USA, 2012; 97m
Hot from the Toronto Film Festival, this unnerving, refreshingly ultra-lo-fi story of the super-creepy aftermath of a Mexican family outing gone seriously bad has the kind of blunt forcefulness and functional, almost primitive stylistic means of a true low-budget indie. Don’t be fooled: with his sixth feature, unpredictable Argentinian genre specialist Bogliano (Penumbra, Rooms for Tourists) knows what he’s doing and keeps things rough and ready, spinning a tale of possession, revenge, and reason-defying, steadily encroaching supernatural forces that will keep you guessing right up to the WTF? finale. A Magnet release.
Tuesday, October 30, 9:00pm
New York Premiere!
HORROR STORIES (2012) 108m
Director: Hong Ji-young, Im Dae-woong, Jeong Beom-sik, Kim Gok, Kim Sun & Min Gyoo-dong
Country: South Korea
K-horror may have become tepid in recent years, but this one, despite a generic title, gives the genre a spirited boost. Combining the talents of six established horror directors for an anthology film of four parts—plus a wraparound segment—these horror stories each play out in tight, confining places like apartments (with a looming psycho stalking terrified children), airplanes (a dangerous serial killer onboard), ambulances (transporting a nasty virus and potential zombies), and inside a world of vain ambitions (where a man goes to extreme lengths to maintain his youthful appearance). Prepare for an intensely in-your-face experience in terror.
Monday, October 29, 9:00pm
THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964) 86m
Directors: Ubaldo Ragona & Sidney Salkow
Countries: Italy/USA
Atmospherically shot in an eerily deserted Rome, this spare and haunting chronicle of a man who uncovers and exterminates the undead by day,
and holes up in his besieged house by night, remains the best version of Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 novel, I Am Legend. A plague has wiped out humanity and transformed the world’s population into vampires, leaving scientist Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) to a lonely and futile one-man war—until one day he finds he’s not alone. Forget 2007’s overproduced Will Smith version and the strained ponderousness of Charlton Heston in The Omega Man: This is the closest in mood and tone to Matheson’s novel, even if the author adopted the
pseudonym “Logan Swanson” when he saw the finished film.
Sunday, October 28, 2:00pm
New York Premiere!
MANIAC (2012) 90m
Director: Franck Khalfoun
Countries: France/USA
Finally, a horror remake we can get behind! This new variation on William Lustig’s 1980 grindhouse classic, which maintains the original’s nastiness while adding a touch of style, stars Elijah Wood as the tortured soul who relieves his existential pain by scalping women and draping his bloody trophies on his collection of mannequins. If Wood seems an unlikely choice for a serial killer, think again: he’s scary as hell, yet also has a tragic dimension, even revealing a little vulnerability for a beautiful artist who unluckily comes into his life. And because the film is shot almost completely from the protagonist’s POV, the fleeting glimpses of Wood—randomly reflected in mirrors and windows—are all the more jarring. An IFC Midnight release.
Saturday, October 27, 8:00pm
Wednesday, October 31, 6:15pm
THE NIGHT OF THE DEVILS (La notte dei diavoli) (1972) 91m
Director: Giorgio Ferroni
Countries: Italy/Spain, 1972; 91m
A delirious amnesiac is admitted to the hospital and through flashbacks we learn of the horrific events that brought him there. This unfolding account of a recent encounter with a cursed family—written by Aleksei (brother of Leo) Tolstoy—originally served as the basis for the middle segment in Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath nearly a decade earlier. But this is by far the creepier, fleshier version. Says RaroVideo, who this month is finally giving the film the DVD and Blu-ray release it deserves: “Atmospheric and gory, Night of the Devils is a Eurohorror classic not to be missed.”
Saturday, October 27, 6:00pm
New York Premiere!
SEXYKILLER (Sexykiller, morirás por ella) (2008) 100m
Director: Miguel Martí
Country: Spain
Taking a page from the Scream playbook—and, in turn, paying homage to that homage in its first scene—Sexykiller is a film that knows the genre so well that it can poke fun at it while still also staying true to it. Bristling with energy and twisted fun, Sexykiller boasts quite the title character: a medical student with a killer fashion sense who just happens to be a sexy serial killer. It’s also a love story and a zombie flick—a movie as gloriously schizo as its outlandish heroine.
Friday, October 26, 7:00pm
New York Premiere!
STITCHES (2012) 85m
Director: Conor McMahon
Country: Ireland
“Stitches” has a very bad day at work—so bad it turns out to be his last one, as an accidental meeting with a carving knife sends him to clown heaven. Six years later, he returns to the scene of the mishap to exact his revenge on the bratty kids who witnessed his “final” act. Realistic, likeable teenage characters offset loads of cartoonish, highly inventive gore, making for horror-comedy at its bloody best. Like every good clown act, Stitches (played by English stand-up superstar Ross Noble) will provoke both laughter and shrieks. An MPI/Dark Sky Films release.
Wednesday, October 31, 9:00pm
Screening Schedule for SCARY MOVIES 6
Screening Venue:
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
145 West 65th Street
Friday, October 26:
7:00pm SEXYKILLER (100m)
9:15pm AMERICAN MARY (100m)
Saturday, October 27:
6:00pm NIGHT OF THE DEVILS (91m)
8:00pm MANIAC (90m)
Sunday, October 28:
2:00pm THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (86m)
4:00pm THE BELIEVERS (114m)
6:30pm DEADLY BLESSING (98m)
8:45pm EDEN LAKE (91m)
Monday, October 29:
9:00pm HORROR STORIES (108m)
Tuesday, October 30:
7:00pm CITADEL (84m)
9:00pm HERE COMES THE DEVIL (97m)
Wednesday, October 31:
6:15pm MANIAC (90m)
9:00pm STITCHES (85m)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña, Program Director, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, currently planning its 50th edition, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. The Film Society presents a year-round calendar of programming, panels, lectures, educational programs and specialty film releases at its Walter Reade Theater and the new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.
The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow #filmlinc on Twitter.
