This Week in Seattle Cinema: Obligatory Halloween Edition
It's Halloween. The official holiday might not be until Monday, but two distinct, temporary changes in the fabric of our society render it impossible to deny that our city is already in mid-celebration: if you want to go out to the bars, you're probably going to end up seeing at least one creepy, manic dude dressed up as Charlie Sheen and if you want to go into a movie theater, you're probably going to end up seeing a horror film. Give in to the extended holiday spirit and catch any of the following three macabre delights.
Super-Secret Triple Creature Feature
Grand Illusion Cinema (10/30, 7pm)
Sure, you could stay in on Halloween Eve, nurse your Halloween Friday and/or Halloween Saturday hangover and just watch the new Boardwalk Empire. That's cool. It sounds like a perfectly fine way to spend a Sunday night. Or you could get off your ass and go for what's in the mystery box! The mystery box, of course, being Grand Illusion Cinema, who will be showing "an iconic trilogy" that gives an "unnatural birth to the greatest screen monster of all time." While that description would almost be too obvious of a hint towards the Star Wars prequels and Natalie Portman's cold, dead stare, apparently at least one of the entries is being advertised as a black and white film. Will it be Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead? Could it be Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein? Tomorrow night, leave it in the hands of Grand Illusion.
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Guild 45th Theatre (10/29-11/3)
While Martha Marcy May Marlene is pointedly short on the kooky fun of other Halloween offerings, it's almost guaranteed to make your skin crawl. Inhabiting the claustrophobic journey of a young woman trying to rebuild her life after escaping the grasp of a hauntingly magnetic cult, Elizabeth Olsen delivers a spellbinding screen debut that, against all odds, overshadows her own sisters' cinematic genesis in the equally terrifying Steve Guttenberg vehicle It Takes Two. Co-starring John Hawkes (You and Me and Everyone We Know, Winter's Bone) in a somehow even darker-than-usual role as the deceptively warm cult leader, Martha Marcy May Marlene might not be most properly classified as a horror film, but it just might be the most terrifying thing you'll see this year.
13 Ghosts/The Tingler Double Feature
SIFF Cinema at the Uptown (Halloween, 7pm)
I'll be totally straightforward here and say that I'm mostly recommending this night of ghastly fun for The Tingler, which was arguably schlock horror auteur/gimmick artist William Castle's crowning achievement in cheese. 13 Ghosts, the classic ghost story/thing ruined by Matthew Lillard, is just grim icing on the spooky cake. As SIFF explains on their website: "Castle promoted [The Tingler] with the gimmick of Percepto, where select seats were wired with tiny electric motors that would vibrate and cause a "tingling" sensation during key scenes in the movie. While that costly (and possibly dangerous) process is no longer available to us, we will be amping up the excitement with hand-held joy buzzers—so you can shock your neighbors (and yourselves)." Halloween may fall on the absolute worst school night of the week this year, but if celebrated at the Uptown, the terrible joybuzzer puns you'll get to come up with alone should make 2011's Hallow's Eve an ELECTRIFYING good time.
