STAB Horror Film Season at Cultplex

Opening on Wednesday 2 October with CULTPLEX’s annual showing of 1974 shocker The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, the mammoth STAB Horror Film season is back and set to be a proper highlight of Manchester’s Halloween season.

This year’s STAB is the biggest yet, with an alarming array of classic horror and recent cult hits scheduled alongside some more hands on Halloween activities. The month-long event reaches a bloody crescendo with a pair of vintage seventies films in the form of The Exorcist and Alien the night of Halloween itself, but there’s plenty of the red stuff to look forward to in the run up.

The month-long event reaches a bloody crescendo with a pair of vintage seventies films

Some highlights of the season include the return of the Scream (Sun 6 Oct) Stab-A-Thon marathon which celebrates Wes Craven’s meta slasher franchise, and a Zombie All Nighter (Sat 12 Oct) that sees audiences locked into CULTPLEX to witness four back-to-back walking dead flicks that take audiences.

From Japan, there are screenings of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Sun 27 Oct) and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on The Grudge (Wed 30 Oct) — neither of which are for the faint of heart. Speaking of extreme horror, audiences might want to brace themselves for Interference Films’ presentation of Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs (Wed 9 Oct), plus a showing of the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Sat 26 Oct), our pick for the greatest horror movie ever made.

For film fans looking for something slightly more mellow, how about James Whale’s 1935 eternal The Bride of Frankenstein (Sun 27 Oct) or Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in camp classic Death Becomes Her (Sat 2 Nov). There’s some millennial nostalgia in the selection 1991 version of The Addams Family (Sat 12 Oct) and Brendan Fraser in Cult Club selection The Mummy (Sun 20 Oct).

It’s hard to stress just how many horror classics are showing on the big screen this year

It’s hard to stress just how many horror classics are showing on the big screen this year. In addition to those previously mentioned, there’s also a 40th birthday party for Freddy Krueger and 1974’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (Sat 26 Oct); a showing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Thu 3 Oct) with live soundscape curated by Sprechen Cinema’s Chris Massey and Richie V;  a GASP! Film Fest presentation of Dario Argento’s Suspiria (Wed 23 Oct) — and many more we don’t have space to mention.

While the films take centre stage, STAB is more than just movies. CULTPLEX have lined up a marathon of cult tv show Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (Fri 18 Oct). Then there’s the Manchester Amateur Gaming League which rebrands as MAGHOUL on Thursday 24 October, while fans can test their knowledge with a (Spooky) Quiz Show (Wed 16 Oct) and a A Lovely Time’s regular The Simpsons quiz which gets a Treehouse of Horrors makeover for the season (Sat 26 Oct).