Halloween at HOME

Halloween hits HOME this month and there’s something spooky going on in just about every corner of the building. Featuring a programme of chilling cinema, thrilling theatre and frightful family fun, the Manchester arts centre is embracing the darkness like never before.

In the theatre, Deepest Fears presents audiences with two blood-curdling ghost stories, inspired by The Room in the Tower by E. F. Benson and The Captain of the Polestar by Arthur Conan Doyle. Literary types can also look forward to an evening with historian and novelist Philippa Gregory who promises to take the audience on a historic journey into the world of Royal Witch, her new novel set in the treacherous court of Henry V.

In collaboration with Film4, HOME’s cinema screens play host to FilmFear: a series of dastardly double bills which start with Christopher Lee as Count Dracula himself in a pair of Hammer Horror classics. That’s followed by a British folk horror double (Witchfinder General + A Field in England) and a couple of cult horror comedies in American Werewolf in London and Shaun of the Dead, concluding with two unmissable deep-cut scary sci-fi movies (Quatermass and the Pit + Lifeforce) on Halloween night itself.

Film buffs should also note that HOME’s Halloween programme includes what is perhaps the cinematic event of the year as Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils returns to the big screen, now restored and uncensored for the first time in half a century. Russell’s notorious film is joined by another controversial one from the same year, as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange returns alongside a contextualising discussion with a selection of special guests.

For younger audiences (or just those who prefer a milder brand of scary), Aardman Animations’ Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom and Laika’s Wildwood lead the way on the film front. Families can also look forward to the musical theatre adaptation of The Littlest Yak, plus a series of workshops and craft events in downstairs’ Creativity Corner where little ones can make everything from spider head dresses to an enchanted forest.

We always appreciate it when HOME uses its unique space to bring audiences and art forms together in conversation. Family frights, literary history, ghostly theatre and serious horror cinema under one haunted roof? This spooky season has it all.