Cinefamily announces 2012 Halloween Horror Festival: Nightmare City

The Cinefamily put out an announcement yesterday regarding their 2012 Halloween horror festival, named Nightmare City (presumably because it is turning the City of Angels into a City of Nightmares during October). Besides a slew of screenings at the Silent Movie Theatre, Nightmare City includes films and other events at numerous other locations around Los Angeles, including the Steve Allen Theatre, the Echoplex, and the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre. Cinefamily tabulates the terrifying total at 73 events in six venues, including 61 horror films, 16 live shows, and an exhibition of black light poster art.

In order to enjoy this wide range of Halloween events, all you need is a membership with the Cinefamily, which you can obtain here. Membership gets you free admission to every Cinefamily event; invitations to members-only screenings; free popcorn, and other goodies.

The announcement is perhaps a tad late. Many of the events have already appeared in the Cinefamily’s calendar for the Silent Movie Theatre. Also, to some extent, the “Nightmare City” is an umbrella used to gather together disparate Halloween events being presented by other organizations in Los Angeles. Thus, Cinefamily members can obtain free tickets to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences program, A Monstrous Centennial: Universal’s Horror Legacy. There are also discounts on a variety of other shows and screenings, at CInespia, UCB, and elsewhere.

Read the full announcement below:

For our 5th anniversary, along with our producing partners at The Woodshed Horror Company (Elijah Wood’s new production company) and Cinespia, we’ve expanded this annual horror celebration into a real, bonafide festival — of not just film, but of music, comedy, and all the other arts as well. We wanted to broaden the definition of what a horror festival could be, so this year, there’s tons of events, and at multiple places besides Cinefamily. It’s everything from premieres to puppet shows, from analog synth concerts to massive retrospectives; and it’s over the city: at Cinespia’s Hollywood Forever home base, at the Steve Allen Theatre, at the Echoplex, and even at the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre.

We’ve programmed 73 events in six different venues. 61 horror films, 16 different live shows, and one incredible blacklight poster exhibit of contemporary artists. This new festival is spreading over our beloved city like a shadow. This October, our City of Angels will become…NIGHTMARE CITY.

This will be an annual event, a kind of Mardi Gras of the macabre that we can all look forward to each year. The number of partners for this inaugural year is already huge — and Cinefamily membership gets you into not just a vast majority of our own shows for free, but discounts all over town to great stuff. SO MAKE A DONATION AND GET A MEMBERSHIP, AND YOU’VE GOT A PASSPORT TO NIGHTMARE CITY.

THE PASSPORT INCLUDES:

1) For the art lovers, we’ve turned the upstairs area at Cinefamily into a gallery, and we’ve asked Sammy Harkham to curate a show featuring original work: ten of his favorite contemporary artists, all working in the rarified form of blacklight poster art. Unwelcome” features works from folks like Will Sweeney, Brian Chippendale and Shary Boyle — and from October 12th all the way up to October 31st, you can join us in the ultimate chillout lounge, surrounded by incredible works like these.

2) For music aficionados: The Sound of Horror. Live scores and concerts galore. Steven Severin (from Siouxsie and the Banshees) re-scoring Dreyer’s Vampyr , radio drama masterJoe Frank in a brand-new live storytelling session, and our “Synthpocalypse” Halloween party featuring James Ferraro — plus our honored guest, Claudio Simonetti (of Goblin), who’s traveling all the way from Italy to be with us!

3) For film fest rats: 6 L.A. film premieres. Starting with the L.A. premiere of The American Scream (Fantastic Fest 2012’s winner of Best Documentary Feature, pictured at top) on Oct. 12th, the latest Sion Sono film (Guilty of Romance ), Elijah Wood’s remake of Maniac , and a tour of some of the best new genre films in the world. All FREE for members.

4) For fans of classic horror: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrates Universal Studios’ centennial with a program of Universal Horror classics. Members get in FREE: we have tickets for Cinefamily members to their shows here at our box office — all the biggies from Bride of Frankenstein to 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera , shown at their gorgeous Samuel Goldwyn Theater, in Beverly Hills. PLUS, we have a Cinefamily-curated sidebar of “Universal Horror B-Sides” here at the Silent Movie Theatre location. 20 films in total!

5) For the hardcore gorehounds: 30 straight midnight movies, all on 35mm: the “Video Nasties” series. From October 12th onwards, members can hang out in our members-only chill out lounge before and after these Video Nasties shows.

6) Discounts, and other bonuses on partner events. Your Cinefamily membership/Nightmare City passport gets you discounts on a wide list of events, and other benefits like early admission. This includes horror-themed shows at UCB, the Steve Allen Theatre, USC (a sneak peak of the brand-new Hideo Nakata film, with Nakata in person), and, yes — hold your breath — DAWN OF THE DEAD at CINESPIA. That’s right, we can all watch Romero’s masterpiece at the cemetery together, on Oct. 20th (and while you wait, Gaslamp Killer will DJ).

7) MUCH MORE.

The calendar is still going up in detail, so look on the website for more details as they emerge.