Halloween night in

Ghosts. Werewolves. Vampires. Knife wielding thugs being sick on the pavement. There are lots of reasons not to leave the house on Halloween. Time Out presents our ideas for a fun movie-themed night in...

Sympathy for the Mutant Double Bill
‘Freaks’ and ‘Nightbreed’

Release your inner Elephant Man or Bearded Lady with a pair of twisted but strangely humane shockers. Tod Browning’s original fairground nightmare shows exactly what happens when the carnival is over, while Clive Barker’s compromised effort features long-forgotten early ’90s hairdo Craig Sheffer embracing the deviant monstrosity that lurks inside us all…
Fun activities: Playing Twister, chanting ‘one of us!’ at passers-by.
What to eat: Mis-shapes and Monster Munch

Horror in the Hood Double Bill
‘The People Under the Stairs’ and ‘Candyman’

As if the masked muggers, the bent coppers and the corner clockers weren’t enough, now the righteous got to contend with crazy bloodsucking freaks from the back of beyond, like your mother. Set it off with Wes Craven’s ghetto-fabulous slumlord freakshow ‘The People Under the Stairs’, then bring it on home with Tony Todd fogging up the mirror in the urban-legendary ‘Candyman’.
Fun activities: Getting served, fleeing from the po-po
What to eat: Cheeseburger & a 40

No Sleep ’Til Bedtime Octuple Bill
‘A Nightmare on Elm Street Parts 1-7’ and ‘Paperhouse’

For the confirmed insomniac, a night of anti-soporific horrors to keep those eyelids propped. Like a considerably less horrifying take on Timmy Mallet’s ‘Wide Awake Club’, the kids in the ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ series know it’s always best to run from a psychotic joker in a brightly coloured chunky-knit sweater. And to wash it all down, a little-seen Brit classic in which a helpless girl constructs a dark fantasy world inside her dreams.
Fun activities: Twitching, muttering, jumping at shadows
What to eat: Coffee, red bull, amphetamines

Eat the Rich Double Bill
‘Society’ and ‘They Live’

Power to the people, right on! Give the aristo scum a poke in the eye with a pair of politically charged grue flicks. LA’s lifesucking mutant hoi-polloi are fisting the masses in ‘Society’, but Earth fights back when our Reaganomic alien overlords get it in the neck from Rowdy Roddy Piper in John Carpenter’s furious war-cry of the common man, ‘They Live’.
Fun activities: Expostulating on Marxist theory
What to eat: Gruel, moldy crusts, fetid water, crispy pancakes

Mind the Doors Double Bill
‘Death Line’ and ‘An American Werewolf in London’

There’s butchery in Bond Street and slaughter in Sloane Square with our tube terror twosome. First, a bullish Donald Pleasence is on the trail of a moony sadsack cannibal in the wondrous ‘Death Line’, then that tall fella with the tentacles from ‘Return of the Jedi’ gets gnawed on by an animatronic mongrel in Time Out’s very own Tottenham Court Road station.

Fun activities: Watch the films on a laptop whilst circumnavigating the Circle Line
What to eat: Anything that smells strongly of grease

‘Aw, Look at His Little… Ouch!’ Double Bill
‘It’s Alive’ and ‘The Omen’

‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child.’ I also hung my nanny and tried to eat my parents. Yes, those terrible tots are on the loose again, munching down the midwife in loopy Larry Cohen’s generation-gap mindmelter ‘It’s Alive’, and staring eerily at the poor doomed humans in Richard Donner’s original ‘Omen’.
Fun activities: singing nursery rhymes, contemplating the wonder of parenthood
What to eat: Jelly babies, pureed food

Total Wuss Double Bill
‘Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’ and ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’

Yes, for those who can’t stomach any actual horror in their horror movies, two worthy period adaptations so prestigious they even put the author’s name above the title so people would know they were, like, literary and stuff. First off, Sir Ken stitches poor old Bob DeNiro up like a kipper then tries to palm him off on Helena Bonham-C, then Mad Gaz Oldman gets all ruffled over Winona Ryder in Francis Ford Coppola’s stately, bloodless teen-goth fantasmagoria.
Fun activities: Listening to Coldplay, crocheting, discussing feelings
What to eat: Cauliflower, boiled chicken, sugary tea

---