October Film Highlights

As the trees begin to turn various shades of red, so too do our cinema screens with brains, intestines and blood being gratuitously splattered as horror fans’ favourite holiday approaches. October’s Film Events column, therefore, celebrates the horror happenings across Scotland.

First up, the Cameo serves a smorgasbord of terror with their third All Night Horror Madness (15 Oct). Catering for all tastes, the terrifying quartet on offer ranges from stonewall slasher classic Halloween to acid-flashback mind-fuck Blue Sunshine. Throw in Sam Raimi’s haunted cabin in the woods riot The Evil Dead, campus killer-on-the-loose shocker Pieces, and a Cameo 1 filled with like-minded gore-hounds and you’ve a perfect night of cinema. The horror will be all the more vivid as three of the movies are screening from beautiful 35mm prints.

Over to Glasgow now for a bat-shit German doctor and some shuffling living dead. Back in May, Southside Film Festival closed its hugely successful first programme of events with horror masterpiece Nosferatu. They continue their love of Weimar-era chills with Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a dazzling example of German Expressionism, which screens 16 Oct with live Wurlitzer Cinema Organ accompaniment in the beautiful surroundings of Pollokshaws Burgh Hall. Rounding off this mini southside Halloween season, George A. Romero's apocalyptic debut Night of the Living Dead is screening 30 Oct at the Shed. The film is preceded by a zombie walk through Shawlands. (A braver man might ask, ‘How will we be able to tell?’, but not me.)

October also sees the return of much-loved film season Psychotronic Cinema, which will be giving movie fans on both the East and West coasts a shot of celluloid goodness each month until May 2012, and kicks-off with three baroque belters. At the GFT, in Glasgow, there’s a rare 35mm screening of Dario Argento’s sinewy giallo The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (19 Oct), while at the Filmhouse, in Edinburgh, Paul Morrisey’s Blood of Dracula shacks up with the sexy adventures of Ilsa: Tigress of Siberia for a trashtastic double-bill (20 Oct).

Rounding off (rather incongruously you might think) this month’s horror selection is Scotland Loves Anime Film Festival 2011 – it’s those big eyes, they freak me out. Highlights include the European premiere of Hotarubi no Mori E (8 Oct, GFT; 14 Oct, Filmhouse), a poetic fairytale about a little girl lost in the woods; Mardock Scrambles Parts 1 and 2 (8 Oct, GFT; 15 Oct, Filmhouse), described as “a pulse-pounding cyberpunk adventure”, also a European premiere; and Interstella 5555 (7 Oct, GFT), the bonkers visual interpretation of Daft Punk's brilliant second album Discovery.

Do have nightmares...