Forget candy. For horror fans [including yours truly] October is all about filling your chalice with blood-sucking screen time. Rumor has it, there should be another top-end cinema opening this month. The Ale House in east Bloomington has been running a little behind schedule, but is set to launch in the next week or two.
The Normal Theater has a stellar lineup of Halloween-themed flicks this month. Ahead of Guillermo del Toro’s newest project, Frankenstein, they’ll screen his gorgeously macabre 2006 Pan’s Labyrinth on Oct. 13. You’ll have to wait to see Frankenstein, unless you’re willing to travel. A check of Bloomington-Normal cinemas participating in the Oct. 14 limited release came up dry. But rest assured: The film premieres on Netflix on Nov. 7.
On Oct. 15, Normal Theater hosts author Heather Petrocelli and drag artist Peaches Christ [A.K.A. filmmaker Joshua Grannell] for a conversation on key themes from Petrocelli’s book, Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator. Grannell’s directorial debut, the 2010 black comedy All About Evil, plays the next day, starring Natasha Lyonne as the proprietor of a movie house that plays horror flicks for unsuspecting patrons oblivious to the fact that the films are nonfiction.
Later in the month, Community Players Theatre reprises its shadow-cast production of Rocky Horror Picture Show, airing Oct. 24-25 at both 7 and 10:30 p.m. And on Halloween night, John Carpenter’s O.G. 1978 film returns us to the Central Illinois-inspired fictional town of Haddonfield.
And for those endeavoring to revisit the ethnogothic, Candyman plays twice in October: the 15th at AMC Classic and on the 27th at the Normal Theater.
On the small screen, all eight episodes of The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox are now out on Hulu — an ideal watch for true crime fans. Bloomington-Normal loves a wrongful conviction story, and this limited series is right in the pocket. The story centers on the death of Meredith Kercher, a British foreign exchange student in Italy, and subsequent false convictions of Amanda Knox, an American foreign exchange student and Kercher's roommate, and Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raphelle Sollecito.
Knox herself did much of the writing and worked with executive producer Monica Lewinsky [who recently interviewed Knox for her podcast]. So, naturally, much of the focus is spent on the ripple effect of unwanted media attention and the court of public opinion — even after exoneration.
And while it's certainly not new, a recent rewatch of True Blood [also on Hulu and starring Nelsan Ellis, who attended ISU] showed the series holds up a decade after it ended. If anything, it's even more relevant — that is, if vampires were real and "came out of the coffin" to "mainstream" in a tiny Louisiana town only to find themselves at war with the religious right and a vigilante band of bigots who only recently were hypnotized into hedonistic orgies by an ancient Greek god.
You know, relevant.
