This year's offering of fun and frightening Halloween-time films includes the annual screening of the silent classic NOSFERATU, this year with live musical accompaniment by Not So Silent Cinema; new 35mm prints of ultra-intense, long-out-of-circulation neo-Gothics WAKE IN FRIGHT and POSSESSION; the teenage terror landmark CARRIE; the haunted house comedy THE GHOST BREAKERS with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard, and a return engagement of the rom-zom-com favorite, SHAUN OF THE DEAD.

Member passes accepted at all screenings in the Halloween on Screen series except NOSFERATU.

"The best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence." - Nick Cave

Alongside MAD MAX and WALKABOUT, this film is widely acknowledged as one of the seminal films in the development of modern Australian cinema. Directed by Ted Kotcheff (NORTH DALLAS FORTY, FIRST BLOOD), it tells the story of a British schoolteacher's descent into personal demoralization at the hands of drunken, deranged derelicts while stranded in a small town in outback Australia. One of the few films to screen twice at the Cannes Film Festival: in competition in 1971, and the restored version in the Cannes Classics section in 2009. With Donald Pleasence, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay and Jack Thompson.

DIR Ted Kotcheff; SCR Evan Jones, after the novel by Kenneth Cook; PROD George Willoughby. Australia/US, 1971, color, 114 min. RATED R

Wed, Oct 17, 6:30 (Montgomery College Show); Fri, Oct 19, 4:20, 9:45; Sat, Oct 20, 10:00; Sun, Oct 21, 9:45; Tue, Oct 23, 9:20; Wed, Oct 24, 9:20; Thu, Oct 25, 9:20

About Not So Silent Cinema
Not So Silent Cinema is a film score project led by Boston-based composer Brendan Cooney that creates innovative and original live scores for classic silent films. Cooney and his klezmorim quintet's score for NOSFERATU features a haunting tapestry of klezmer motifs, gypsy grooves, avant-garde textures and classic horror effects. For more information, visit notsosilentcinema.com.

Tickets $20/$18 AFI Members (2-star level & up)
Fri, Oct 26, 7:30, 9:45
No passes accepted.

A surprise hit in 2004 and an enduring cult item since, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's "rom-zom-com" — a romantic comedy, with zombies, that is — remains one of the best examples of the horror-comedy hybrid genre. Dumped by his girlfriend, slacker appliance salesman Pegg is so down in the dumps that he fails to notice the zombie plague taking over his London neighborhood until one pops up in his backyard. Fortunately, he and his couch-potato flatmate Nick Frost prove to be ace zombie dispatchers, and round up their remaining loved ones to make a final stand at their local pub, the Winchester.

DIR/SCR Edgar Wright; SCR Simon Pegg; PROD Nira Park. UK/France, 2004, color, 99 min. RATED R

Fri, Oct 26, 11:45; Sat, Oct 27, 11:45; Wed, Oct 31, 4:45

If only they knew she had the power.

Shy, awkward Carrie (Sissy Spacek) has trouble fitting in with the obnoxious teens at her high school, and her home life is equally challenging, where she's tormented by her religious nut mother (Piper Laurie). Carrie experiences a moment of sheer terror after she gets her first period in the gym class shower, and is mocked by her classmates. Her spirits lift when the cutest boy at school asks her to the prom; but no one can foresee what awaits at the dance, when a prank pushes Carrie over the edge and unleashes an unimaginable force of retribution. Stephen King's first published novel, and the first adapted for the screen.

DIR Brian De Palma; SCR Lawrence D. Cohen, after the novel by Stephen King; PROD Paul Monash. US, 1976, color, 98 min. RATED R

Fri, Oct 26, 12 midnight; Sat, Oct 27, 12 midnight; Sun, Oct 28, 7:30; Wed, Oct 31, 6:30 (Montgomery College Show)

Manhattan muckraker Bob Hope meets cute with perky Paulette Goddard, who is about to embark to Cuba to collect an unusual inheritance: Castillo Maldito, a reputedly haunted castle on a lonely island. Chivalrously, Hope offers to accompany Goddard on her quest and keep her safe from any ghosts and ghouls — a promise he'll have to keep once they arrive and things start going bump in the night! This spooky comedy is one of Hope's best films, featuring snappy wisecracks, a crackling pace and eye-popping set design and special effects.

DIR George Marshall; SCR Walter DeLeon, after the play by Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard; PROD Arthur Hornblow, Jr. US, 1940, b&w, 85 min. NOT RATED

Sat, Oct 27, 11:00 a.m.; Wed, Oct 31, 3:00

Groundbreaking directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez join forces for the ultimate film experience: a thriller double feature inspired by their favorite exploitation films. In Rodriguez's PLANET TERROR, El Wray (Freddy Rodríguez) and his ex, Cherry Darling (Rose McGowan), fight off a zombie army infected with a biochemical weapon. DEATH PROOF is Tarantino's take on a pedal-to-the-metal shocker featuring Kurt Russell as the deranged Stuntman Mike.

DIR/SCR/PROD Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino; PROD Elizabeth Avellan, Erica Steinberg. US, 2007, color, 191 min. RATED R

Sat, Oct 27, 9:45

"The film marks the spot where the avant-garde, the grotesque and the insane meet." - David Edelstein, The New York Times

Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani's marriage is on the rocks, but their love/hate dynamic is taken to unimaginable extremes in Andrzej Zulawski's notoriously over-the-top horror-amour-fou classic, long difficult to see in its complete form and now ripe for rediscovery. Quite at home in the divided Berlin of the early 1980s, the well-to-do couple play out their union's disintegration across the borders of sanity all the way into the supernatural. Best Actress awards for Adjani, 1981 Cannes Film Festival and Cesar Awards.

DIR/SCR Andrzej Zulawski; SCR Frederic Tuten; PROD Marie-Laure Reyre. France/West Germany, 1981, color, 127 min. RATED R

Wed, Oct 31, 9:10; Fri, Nov 2, 7:00; Sun, Nov 4, 6:30