This Halloween weekend, the Esquire Theatre in Clifton is screening a slew of freaky films — both classics and cult favorites.
Guillermo del Toro's Fascist Spanish fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth and its terrifying eyeball-hand Pale Man take over the big screen at 4 and 9:50 p.m. Oct. 31
Phantasm — the 1979 horror about an evil undertaker who turns corpses into zombies — plays 5 p.m. Oct. 30, 4 and 10:15 p.m. Oct. 31 and 7 p.m. Nov. 1.
Poltergeist — the terrifying tale of a family tortured by ghosts in the TV — screens 4 p.m. Oct. 28, 4 p.m. Oct. 29, 1 and 10 p.m. Oct. 31
And the theater is also screening Universal Pictures' classic 1930s monster movies including Dracula and Frankenstein (they already screened The Mummy and The Wolf Man earlier this month).
Let's head to Wikipedia for a quick rundown of the importance of these films:
Universal Classic Monsters is a name given to the horror, fantasy, thriller and science fiction films made by Universal Pictures during the decades of the 1920s through the 1950s. They were the first shared universe in mainstream film. They began with The Phantom of the Opera, a classic silent film starring Lon Chaney. Universal Classic Monsters continued with talkies including core monsters in the franchise Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon. The films often featured Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and/or Lon Chaney Jr.
In Dracula, Bela Lugosi stars at the titular blood-sucker, with remaining screen times this month at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 30.
And catch Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein, screening at 7 p.m. Oct. 29 and 2 p.m. Nov. 1.
The Esquire Theatre is located at 320 Ludlow Ave., Clifton. Head to esquiretheatre.com to get tickets and learn about the theater's COVID guidelines here.
