Get Chills With These Horror Film Screenings At Music Box, Patio

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 25, 2013 9:45PM

Halloween is one of our favorite times of the year for movie watching because we can either break out the Universal and Hammer Horror classics that fill our shelves at home or head to a screening locally. Both the Patio Theater and Music Box Theatre have unique screenings of popular and camp classics in the works guaranteed to put a chill in your spine without having to consider seeing the Carrie remake.

Let’s start at the Music Box where a much-hyped Sundance hit slides alongside a Roman Polanski classic and one of the lesser known films in the Hammer cannon. Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow was shot using guerilla filmmaking techniques at Walt Disney World and Disneyland, without Disney’s knowledge; the film’s website is keeping a running counter on the length of time Disney hasn’t filed a lawsuit. Moore makes deft use of both theme parks and his decision to film in black-and-white adds a noir-ish aspect to the film as unemployed Jim White (played by Roy Abramsohn) obsesses over two teenage French girls during a family trip to Disney World. (And haven’t we all been there?) As the vacation concludes, Jim begins to experience increasingly disturbing experiences and visions. If you thought Disney World was creepy on its own, wait until you see how Moore presents it.

If that isn’t your speed you can catch restored prints of Rosemary’s Baby and a 2K remaster of The Wicker Man. Both are worthy of your money but I would recommend The Wicker Man as you can find the remastered Rosemary's Baby on Netflix and other major streaming services. Edward Woodward (who would go on to bigger fame in America in the television series The Equalizer) plays a cop and devout Christian determined to solve a case involving a missing 12-year-old girl the residents of Summerisle—including the girl's mother—claim never existed. Worse for Woodward’s character is the revelation the townsfolk, led by Christopher Lee, practice the Celtic paganism of their ancestors and are angling to sacrifice him to the totem for which the film takes its name. Lee, exasperated at doing Dracula films at this stage in his career, tears into the scenes with abandon, proving once again why he was Hammer’s Most Valuable Player. Another reason to watch the Wicker Man is the chance to see Britt Ekland as a lusty innkeeper's daughter who gives Woodward a major case of blue balls.

Over at the Patio The Northwest Chicago Film Society has a double feature set for 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30 that remind us why science fiction was such a popular theme in film during the 1950s—the beginning of the Atomic Age. John Gilling’s The Gamma People follows the exploits of two reporters who manage to enter an isolated European country to discover the nation’s insane despot ruler is doing unsavory things with gamma rays. Bert I. Gordon’s Beginning of the End is a by the numbers tale of radiation turning everyday insects into monsters buoyed by Peter Graves’ performance as the doctor responsible for unwittingly unleashing an army of supersized grasshoppers on Chicago and the suburbs. Gordon made a career out of movies like this, King Dinosaur, Earth vs. the Spider, The Amazing Colossal Man, Village of the Giants and Empire of the Ants. He earned the nickname "Mister B.I.G." as a reference for both his initials and the way he liked to portray giant-sized creatures in film.