CULTPLEX presents: STAB 2025

Nobody does Halloween quite like CULTPLEX. Sure as the leaves falling from the trees, the Manchester cinema has lined up their annual mega season of scary movies for all of you super creeps out there. STAB is scheduled to run the whole of October, starting with 1974’s locally-shot The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (Wed 1 Oct) and culminating in a Halloween night double bill featuring Oscar nominee The Substance and the classic 1985 zombie flick Day of the Dead on Friday 31 October.

In between there’s a whole load of blood, guts, fangs and killer dolls, as CULTPLEX rolls out what they reckon is the north’s biggest season of horror movies. Featuring live scores, special guests, collaborations and marathon screenings, there’s something here for everybody from the hardened horror connoisseur to the scaredy cat looking for something a little seasonally spooky this October.

Highlights of STAB 2025 include a Vampire All-Nighter (18-19 Oct) which incorporates Robert Egger’s newly-minted Nosferatu, alongside some 80s classics, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In and the mighty Blade. A Chucky-thon showcases the best of the Child’s Play series and it’s famous pint-sized killer on Saturday 11 October. From the legendary Dario Argento, Deep Red screens with a new live score and DJ set from Slow Knife (Sat 25 Oct), while younger film fans can check out Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit earlier the same day.

This year, there’s also a focus on celebrating British horror in the form of a Hammer Horror double bill (Sun 19 Oct), a showing of legendary television event Ghostwatch (Thu 30 Oct), and a chance to revisit Chris Morris’ surreal comedy sketch show Jam (Sun 5 Oct). Bringing things up to date (and across the Atlantic) is a double bill from hip indie studio A24 featuring Danny and Michael Philippou’s Talk To Me and Ari Aster’s Hereditary on Friday 3 October. While the GASP! Horror Film Festival team take us to Japan with 1968 Godzilla movie, Destroy All Monsters (Thu 16 Oct).

STAB is more than just screenings too. Scarred for Life podcast are presenting a special live edition where with guest John Thomson (Cold Feet, 24 Hour Party People). Author Justin John Doherty will join the cinema to talk about Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 Don’t Look Now ahead of the release of his new book on the film. Then there’s the Manchester Amateur Gaming League which gets a menacing makeover on Wednesday 22 October, and quizzes in the form of A Lovely Time’s Treehouse of Horror-themed Simpsons night (Sun 19 Oct) and CULTPLEX’s regular (Spooky) Quiz Show (Wed 8 Oct).

We did say this was the north’s biggest horror film season. We haven’t even touched on Interference Films Troma Double Bill (Fri 17 Oct) or the many, many one-off screenings of everything from Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man (Sun 12 Oct) to video-shop staple Urban Legend (Sat 25 Oct) to Kevin Smith’s Tusk (Sat 18 Oct). Your best bet is to head on over to the CULTPLEX website to find your favourites, or just throw a (virtual) dart at the calendar and get set for spooky vibes in one of Manchester’s most welcoming cinema spaces.