Chicago Film Festival After Dark Lineup
From the Chicago International Film Festival, currently in progress:
We’re thrilled to announce the lineup for After Dark! Plunge into paranoia, witchcraft, and soul-wrenching stand-up comedy with our lineup of horror and flinch-inducing fringe films! Featuring eight full-lengths from the U.S., Canada, Taiwan, India, and Japan, and a shorts program from Austria, Romania, UK, Mexico, and South Korea, the After Dark program boasts a diverse lineup for fans of the bizarre.
In Tag, Sion Sono, Japanese cinema’s most entertaining shockmeister, delivers his craziest picture yet. A young schoolgirl (who’s actually three different people) must fight killer winds, machine-gun-toting teachers, pig-headed monsters, and fate itself to escape a strange, deadly reality. The terrifying Ludo matches hypnotic imagery with sinister mythology to create a truly frightening experience. In Entertainment, Gregg Turkington (a.k.a. Neil Hamburger) delivers a memorably disturbing performance in this absurdist road-movie oddity co-written by Tim Heidecker (Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim) and throbbing with angry humor. The Laundryman, is a kinetic horror/kung-fu mash-up featuring innocuous-seeming dry cleaners fronting for a hitman-for-hire operation. A modern-day Taxi Driver, Other Madnesses plumbs the seedy underbelly of New York through the eyes of a man slowly losing his mind. Like a marital twist on The Fly, Bite incisively uses body horror to uncover the true terror of humanity’s mating rituals. The Abandoned is a claustrophobic, bone-tingling thriller that merges visceral scares with slow-burning mystery, a haunted house that turns into a chilling psychological portrait. A disturbingly intimate take on paranoia, the debut of They Look Like People will leave you on high alert, taking a good look at your co-worker, your neighbor… and even your best friend. In our Drawn to the Blood – Midnight Program, prepare for the sexy, the horrifying, and the abnormal with these boundary-pushing short films.
For additional details and film schedule, visit http://www.chicagofilmfestival.com/chicago-film-festival-announces-after-dark-lineup/
Too Much Fright Makes the Baby Go Blind from the Neo-Futurists, 10/31
Too Much Fright Makes the Baby Go Blind
- Curated by Trevor Dawkins
- Saturday, October 31
- Doors open at 7:00 p.m., Show begins at 7:30 p.m.
- ADVANCE RESERVATIONS RECOMMENDED ($25)
- Costumes encouraged!
- The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland
- For tickets and information visit www.neofuturists.org or call 773-275-5255
The Neo-Futurists brutalize your senses with Too Much Fright Makes the Baby Go Blind, a special Halloween horde of 30 plays performed in 60 merciless minutes that explore the macabre, the strange, the unknowable terrors of the back of your mind. Expect dark humor, heavy metal, and existential dread. Also, expect candy.
Ensemble member Trevor Dawkins says, “It’s Too Much Light but about a billion times scarier. We’re still playing ourselves, we’re still doing 30 plays in 60 minutes, but we’re also going to give you a crazy case of the heeby-jeebies. It’s like a haunted house but everything we do and say is true which is way scarier. Oh, and we’ve got a real ghost. Did you hear about the ghost? Yeah, we have one. Who wouldn’t want to kick off their Halloween with a spooky night of performance art?”
The cast for Too Much Fright includes Ensemble members Ida Cuttler, Bilal Dardai, Trevor Dawkins, Tif Harrison, Nick Hart, Jeewon Kim, Kirsten Riiber, Leah Urzendowski, and Malic White.
Vampires: The Creatures of the Night – A Slideshow Presentation by Martin V. Riccardo
Chicago vampirologist Martin V. Riccardo will present a slideshow/lecture “Vampires: Creatures of the Night” at the Lyons Public Library on Monday, October 26 at 6:30 pm.
The Lyons Public Library is located at 4209 Joliet Ave., Lyons, IL 60534. Admission is free.
Vampires have penetrated all aspects of popular culture. Vampire researcher Martin V. Riccardo reveals the origins of these bloodthirsty fiends of the midnight realm. Through folklore, literature, movies, and television, the full range of the vampire is examined. Special attention is given to the powerful impact of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, and the historical figure of Vlad Tepes known as Dracula in Romania. The program also looks at the real vampire bats of Latin America, and strange reports of unearthly figures such as the vampire of Highgate Cemetery in England, and Dracula’s ghost in Romania.
Martin V. Riccardo is a behavioral hypnotist and the director of Vampire Studies, an information center for vampire fans, which he founded in 1977. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today in relation to his vampire research. Mr. Riccardo has written many magazine articles and several books on vampires, including Liquid Dreams of Vampires, a study of the vampire image in dreams and fantasies. He has communicated with thousands of vampire fans over the years and is one of the cultural experts consulted in National Vampire.
Founded in Chicago in 1977 as the Vampire Studies Society by Martin V. Riccardo, the organization was the first vampire fan club to use the word “vampire” in its name (there had previously been several organizations built around Dracula). For several years the society published a Journal of Vampirism. The word “society” was dropped in 1990 and Vampire Studies now exists as a correspondence network and information clearing-house for people interested in all aspects of vampire lore. Those interested may contact Riccardo at P.O. Box 151, Berwyn, IL 60402-0151.
Leave a Comment Go to Post...Win FREE Passes to An Advance Screening of Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse
Dark Chicago has received passes to a special advance screening of the upcoming horror/comedy SCOUTS GUIDE TO THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE on Wednesday, October 28th. This screening will feature exclusive footage from the film, a Scouts photo op and promotional items exclusive to this event.
Three scouts and lifelong friends join forces with one badass cocktail waitress to become the world’s most unlikely team of heroes. When their peaceful town is ravaged by a zombie invasion, they’ll fight for the badge of a lifetime and put their scouting skills to the test to save mankind from the undead.
To claim your passes, visit http://www.gofobo.com/ScoutsGuideChiHorror.
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse opens nationwide on October 30th.
Leave a Comment Go to Post...Win Tickets to See a FREE Advance Screening of CRIMSON PEAK On October 13th
Dark Chicago has 30 Admit Two Passes to give away to see the much-anticipated new movie from Guillermo del Toro CRIMSON PEAK. To win one, simply email darkchicago@gmail.com with the subject header “MY INTEREST HAS BEEN (CRIMSON) PEAKED”; winners will be notified and receive their pass via the email address from which they submitted. Full screening details (including time and location) will be on the pass.
Crimson Peak opens nationwide on Friday, October 16, 2015.
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