The Grand Illusion

Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur elevated the horror film to new heights of poetic abstraction with this entrancing journey into the realm between life and death.

When she takes a job caring for a comatose woman on a Caribbean island, a young nurse (Frances Dee) finds herself plunged into a mysterious world where the ghosts of slavery haunt the present and Vodou priests have the power to summon the living dead. Sugarcane swaying in a moonlit field, the hypnotic beat of ceremonial drums, the relentless pull toward death—the otherworldly atmosphere of this bold reimagining of Jane Eyre is as close as studio-era Hollywood ever came to pure dream-state surrealism.

“It transcends the conventions of the horror genre and remains one of Lewton-Tourneur’s most compelling studies in light and darkness.” Don Druker, Chicago Reader

“It is Tourneur’s caressingly evocative direction, superbly backed by Roy Hunt’s chiaroscuro images, that makes sheer magic of the film’s brooding journey into fear.” Tom Milne, Time Out

Supplemental screening opportunity: See Tourneur’s classic and then stay to see it discussed in Maya Annik Bedward’s new documentary BLACK ZOMBIE.

From the flickering screens of Hollywood horror to the haunted cane fields of colonial Haiti, BLACK ZOMBIE unearths the buried origins of the zombie, reclaiming it as a symbol of survival and spiritual resistance.

Long before it became associated with flesh-eating ghouls, the zombie was a living metaphor for slavery: not a monster, but the ultimate victim of colonial power. A symbol of stolen agency was recast as an object of fear, while Black spiritual traditions were distorted, sensationalized, and erased.

Director Maya Annik Bedward traces the evolution of the zombie, reconsidering iconic films like I Walked with a Zombie, Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie, and The Serpent and the Rainbow, alongside archival footage, vérité scenes, and interviews with cultural historians, artists, and genre legends including Yves-Grégory Francois, Mambo Labelle Déesse, Slash, Tom Savini, and Zandashé Brown. Part cultural reckoning, part horror remix, BLACK ZOMBIE exposes how a figure born from enslavement, spiritual belief, and resistance was transformed into one of pop culture’s most profitable monsters.

Critic’s Pick! “The gangs of the undead are all here to reflect an often ignored and complicated genealogy: from the entranced white woman in Victor Halperin’s White Zombie to the multiracial mob of flesh-eaters in George A. Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead to the frenzied hordes in World War Z and beyond.” Lisa Kennedy, The New York Times

“An intellectual pleasure. Maya Annik Bedward artfully threads the needle between Caribbean spiritual practices and what we’ve seen on screen. A smart, nuanced love letter to Haiti, and a delight for cinephiles.” Caroline Colvin, Dread Central

“Black Zombie demands you reconsider both the horrors humans are capable of and the untold beauty of the living and the dead. It’s the rare documentary you want everyone you know to watch.” Jessi Cape, Austin Chronicle

We invite you once again to make the theater your living room for another trip back in time to the heyday of made-for-TV horror movies.

For this year's triple feature pizza party, we're broadcasting three more chilling tales straight from 1960s, 70s, and 80s network TV, when original horror movies haunted home television screens on a regular basis. The evening's program consists of another trio of lesser-known gems, this time featuring creepy phone calls, stalkers, highway horror, and mysterious items of the occult. As always, the titles are secret, so you won't find out what frightening fables are in store for you until airtime.

Regular concessions will be available for purchase at the beginning of the transmission and throughout the night. The main course will arrive following the first feature. And in addition to satiating the more carnivorous appetites, we’ll have options for our vegetarian and vegan friends too. Plus, during intermissions, you’ll be treated to period-specific Halloween commercials to complete the experience.

The beloved cult classic fantasy, recently restored!

A traveling tax collector (Leslie Cheung) short on funds opts to take shelter in a seemingly abandoned temple. He is surprised to discover a young woman (Joey Wang) there and instantly falls for her beauty and grace. While every romance has its challenges, the tax collector gets more than he bargained for when he learns that the maiden is, in fact, a ghost... forced into servitude by a demon. With the help of a brave warrior, the tax collector must brave the perils of a supernatural world in order to free his newfound love.

In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Special live intro from local Hong Kong genre film connoisseur and one of the programmers of the Seattle Film Society, Patrick McFarland.

“…hard to top for stylistic boldness, vivid pictorialism, and dramatic power.” Ted Shen, Chicago Reader

“Blending every genre under the sun into a film that feels like a permanent sugar rush, this action horror classic was perfecting wire-fu long before Western audiences knew what it was.” Justin Bowyer, Empire

The Sprocket Society presents: a yacht blithely strays into cut-throat terror in this legendary pre-Code thriller, shown with spooky shorts — all on 16mm film!

A secret island owned by a rich, calculating psychopath with unholy kinks. An innocent man and woman thrown together by pure chance, stranded by “accident,” far beyond the help of any caring soul. Frayed wits and a woodsman’s knife pitted against the rich man’s cunning, his arsenal, and his pack of ravening hounds. Ah, the manhunt is on! The bloodlust…so sweet. So perfectly crafted. So inconsequential.

Joel McRae, Fay Wray, and a gloriously villainous Leslie Banks star in a tightly wound thriller that’s as short and hard-hitting as a crossbow bolt.

A low budget studio throw-away, 94 years later it’s been copied countless times yet never bested. Co-helmed by the director of King Kong and shot on the same jungle sets, the tension and fog-choked visuals linger long after the credits roll.

All aboard: your berth awaits!

Presented with selected short subjects.

“The filmmakers deliver terrific set pieces and exotic atmosphere, resulting in one of the most lavish and best-looking B-movies ever made, with wonderfully lurid pre-Code flourishes: gruesome violence, sadism, and sexual perversity.” Sean Axmaker, Video Librarian

“There isn’t an ounce of fat and no line is thrown away. Films like this really aren’t made anymore, and it’s a breath of fresh air, even after 90 years.” Dan Roberts, We Are Cult

The first feature film wholly produced by Vinegar Syndrome Pictures, directed by Kurtis M. Spieler (Re-Director of New York Ninja).

A group of friends in a punk rock band discover a hidden cemetery in the woods, where they accidentally raise a horde of undead friars. Shot entirely on 16mm film, NIGHT OF THE VAMP-FRIARS is a loving tribute to the homegrown horror films made during the height of the video store era.

20th anniversary screening of Sofia Coppola's pastel-soaked cult classic, newly restored in 4K.

Coppola brings a candy-colored palette, a dreamy synth-pop soundtrack, and Converse high-tops to eighteenth-century Versailles for this exuberantly subversive, extravagantly stylized anti-biopic of one of history’s most infamous (and perhaps misunderstood) figures.

Kirsten Dunst portrays Marie Antoinette as a rebellious teenage princess, who marries the awkward young dauphin of France (Jason Schwartzman), soon to be crowned King Louis XVI. Feeling isolated in a royal court rife with scandal and intrigue, Marie Antoinette defies both royalty and commoner by living like a rock star—which can work for only so long.

Named the 10th best movie of the 21st century by The Big Picture podcast.

“A buoyant, passionately sympathetic dream-bio.” Stephanie Zacharek, Salon

“With lyrical intelligence and scrappy wit, Coppola creates a luscious world to get lost in. It’s a pleasure.” Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

“A startlingly original and beautiful pop reverie that comes very close to being transcendent.” Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times

Eleanor Coppola's behind-the-scenes documentation of her daughter Sofia directing the 2006 film MARIE ANTOINETTE, capturing the craftsmanship and challenges of being a young female director.

Polarizing upon its release, Sofia Coppola’s MARIE ANTOINETTE is now, 20 years later, widely embraced as a 21st-century cinematic cornerstone and a distilled expression of its director’s recurring themes of celebrity, wealth, and isolation. For the first time, Coppola’s dynamic craftsmanship in creating her personal vision for the brief life of the 18th-century queen in the years leading up to the French Revolution is on full display in this diary shot by her mother, filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, on the film’s set in Versailles in 2005.

From almost 80 hours of video, Eleanor began to assemble the footage during the pandemic lockdown, and Sofia helped finish editing it after Eleanor’s death in 2024. Narrated by Diane Lane, reciting Eleanor’s journals from the time, this is a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse that is both process-oriented and touchingly personal.

“Lush, intimate and compulsively watchable, this Coppola family affair bottles the fleeting nature of time and invites us to the ultimate Versailles party.” Tomris Laffly, Variety

“Making Marie Antoinette is considerably more than meets the eye… [It is] a circular and tenderly meta-textual film unto itself — one about two generations of women paying tribute to each other across space and time, seeding each other with the strength required to be seen in a world that would sooner flatten them into the wallpaper.” David Ehrlich, IndieWire

Writer/director/editor Aaron Strand scheduled to join for an in-person intro and Q&A. Raw, unflinching, and surprisingly funny, WITHDRAWAL was shot on miniDV in Athens, GA for a budget of $60k and is a prime example of indie filmmaking at its finest.

Artistic lovers Viv (Millie Rose Evans) and Jay (Brent Michal) are trapped in a vicious cycle of codependent heroin addiction. When Viv's wealthy parents hire an interventionist to take her to rehab, the couple decides to go it alone with nothing but a suboxone prescription and each other. All they have to do is survive one harrowing night of withdrawal. As the hours tick by, physical, mental, and emotional torments send them searching through fractured memories, trying to figure out where it all went wrong.

Winner of a dozen awards on the festival circuit, including Best Feature/Best Director at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival and Best Actress at the Kanazawa Film Festival.

“Withdrawal could well be the best film about addiction since Requiem for a Dream.” Bobby LePire, Film Threat

“Superbly acted and jarringly raw and realistic to the core, Withdrawal offers a harsh look at drug addiction through expert filmmaking.” Becca Johnson, Film Focus Online