The Nickel | Independent Cinema in Clerkenwell, London

FERAT VAMPIRE

(1982, Czechoslovakia, Juraj Herz)

A rally driver becomes entangled with a mysterious prototype car rumored to run not on fuel but on the lifeblood of its occupants. Drawn in by ambition and the corporation behind the machine, she slips into an obsession that blurs the line between mastery and surrender. Each race pulls her deeper into a world where technology feeds on human desire, and the cost of speed grows perilously high.

A sharp blend of satire and horror, Ferat Vampire uses automotive obsession to explore exploitation, seduction, and the illusion of control, building toward a chilling meditation on the price of progress.

THE CREMATOR

(1969, Czechoslovakia, Juraj Herz)

Karel, a mild-mannered crematorium worker, becomes increasingly obsessed with the idea of “cleansing” humanity through death, aligning his private rituals with the rise of Nazi ideology. As his moral compass erodes, he descends into madness, turning the people around him into victims of his delusional sense of duty.

A darkly comic and chilling horror, The Cremator blends psychological terror with surreal satire, offering a haunting meditation on complicity, obsession, and the banality of evil.

REFLECTIONS OF EVIL

(2002, USA, Damon Packard)

A rage-filled street vendor wanders through a warped Los Angeles, stumbling into encounters that twist the city into a feverish labyrinth of paranoia, failed dreams, and collapsing timelines. Haunted by the ghost of his sister and tormented by forces both mundane and uncanny, he barrels through the chaos in a spiral of frustration that borders on apocalyptic.

A ferocious blend of abrasive satire and surreal nightmare, Reflections of Evil channels cultural decay into an overwhelming sensory assault. The film becomes a darkly comic and disorienting vision of obsession, alienation, and a world fraying at every edge.

HOLLYWOOD 90028

(1973, USA, Christina Hornisher)

A lonely, struggling cameraman named Mark moves to Hollywood hoping to break into serious film — but the only jobs he finds are shooting sleazy adult loops. Alienated and sexually frustrated, Mark begins strangling the women he hurts the most. As his grip on reality loosens, his attempt at a fragile connection with a porn actress spirals into horror.

Bleak and unnerving, Hollywood 90028 submerges you in the underbelly of 1970s Los Angeles — a grim portrait of despair, isolation, and the darkness that festers behind ambition.

SHRIME TIME: A NIGHT OF BIZARRO UNDERSEEN ANIME

From radical student animation collectives to sun-bleached techno-dystopias and gore-drenched horror, Shrime Time shines where the sun daren’t: revealing the backside of seldom-seen Japanese visual culture.
Expect screenings from the 1960s to the present day, paired with special guests: musicians, artists, researchers and those obsessed with the outermost edges of Japan’s visual imagination.

The Shirime a y?kai (Japanese folkloric spirit and the evenings conveniently misspelled namesake) whose sole purpose is to startle unsuspecting samurai by revealing an eyeball in place of an arsehole. In his sick, twisted way, Shirime embodies the very spirit of B-cinema - a flash of grotesque brilliance, whose origin and intent remain a mystery, leaving the path forever altered.

So come. Sit still in the dark.
Let the rectacular eye stare deep into your curious soul.

The Shirime is watching.

SHORT EYES

(1977, USA, Robert M. Young)

In Manhattan’s House of Detention, the arrival of Clark Davis, accused of a reviled crime, unsettles the fragile balance of an already tense cellblock. As rumours spread, he becomes the focus of a dangerous mix of fear, judgment, and mounting hostility.

A stark and gripping adaptation of Miguel Piñero’s play, Short Eyes captures prison life with raw immediacy and unvarnished honesty, revealing a world where survival depends on shifting loyalties and morality is anything but clear.

NANG NAK

(1999, Thailand, Nonzee Nimibutr)

After returning from war, a young man reunites with his devoted wife in their riverside home, unaware that she died during childbirth and now lingers as a spirit bound by love and sorrow. As neighbors whisper and fear grows, the truth pushes toward a heartbreaking revelation that tests the limits of devotion.

A haunting blend of romance and folklore, Nang Nak transforms a classic Thai legend into a tender and atmospheric tale about loyalty, loss, and the power of longing that refuses to fade.

Programmed and introduced by Harry Thorfinn-George

This screening has been kindly supported by Mono Streaming Company, Thailand

DANCE FREAK + VIDEO INTRO

(2025, USA, Alan Resnick, Robby Rackleff)

On the worst day of his life, an unassuming man crosses paths with a feral, hypnotic stranger who looks exactly like him. The encounter detonates his reality: violence erupts, memories collapse, and he wakes days later implicated in crimes he doesn’t understand. As his identity splinters and the city turns hostile, the question isn’t how to clear his name, but whether he can prove he’s even himself.

Co-directed by Alan Resnick and Robby Rackleff, Dance Freak is a low-budget, high-intensity descent into psychological chaos. Blending abrasive humor, stark black-and-white imagery, and a relentless audiovisual assault, the film channels their shared lineage of unsettling genre work into something lean, volatile, and deliberately unhinged.

BULK + BEN WHEATLEY Q&A

(2025, United Kingdom, Ben Wheatley)

Freelance journalist Corey Harlan is pulled into a bizarre experiment gone wrong when a string‑theory brane explodes, sending him to rescue its creator. Each door he opens leads to another reality, another genre, and a world where names, relationships, and even physics shift unpredictably.

A feverish kaleidoscope of sci‑fi, noir, and genre parody, Bulk is a handcrafted midnight‑movie vortex where chaos reigns and the rules of reality are optional.

+ Q&A WITH DIRECTOR, BEN WHEATLEY!

BULK + BEN WHEATLEY INTRO

(2025, United Kingdom, Ben Wheatley)

NEKROMANTIK

(1988, Germany, Jörg Buttgereit)

A young man works for a company that cleans up after traffic accidents, but his obsession with death takes a darker turn when he brings home a corpse to share with his girlfriend. As their macabre fascination deepens, love, desire, and mortality collide in increasingly shocking and taboo ways.

Unflinching and transgressive, Nekromantik is a confrontational exploration of obsession, eroticism, and the grotesque, challenging viewers to confront the limits of morality and the allure of the forbidden.

MYSTERY MOVIE

Not for the easily offended, and strictly programmed for adult audiences only - our mystery films are eye-popping forays into the bold and bonkers world of psychotronic cinema. Expect the unacceptable.

SANTA SANGRE

(1989, Mexico/Italy, Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Freakishly scarred by a traumatic childhood, young Fenix grows up under the oppressive influence of his circus-performer parents. When tragedy strikes, he becomes the puppet of his mother’s murderous obsession, carrying out brutal acts while trapped between guilt, devotion, and desire. The lines between reality, hallucination, and ritual blur in a kaleidoscopic descent into violence and surreal spectacle.

A hypnotic fusion of horror, surrealism, and carnival grotesque, Santa Sangre explores obsession, trauma, and the intoxicating power of performance in a world where blood and devotion are inseparable.

TRASH HUMPERS

(2009, USA, Harmony Korine)

Follow a small group of elderly “Peeping Toms” through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world. Crudely documented by the participants themselves, we follow the debased and shocking actions of a group of true sociopaths the likes of which have never been seen before. Inhabiting a world of broken dreams and beyond the limits of morality, they crash against a torn and frayed America.

MEET THE FEEBLES

(1989, New Zealand, Peter Jackson)

Heidi, star of the “Meet The Feebles Variety Hour” discovers her lover Bletch the Walrus is cheating on her. And with all the world waiting for the show, the assorted co-stars must contend with drug addiction, extortion, robbery, disease, drug dealing, and murder.

DELETED SCENES PRESENTS: BARBARELLA

(1968, France/Italy, Roger Vadim)

SEX PILLS! SEX MACHINES! HAIRY GUYS! HAIRLESS GUYS! LOVE!

In the distant future, sex has fallen out of fashion. Space adventurer Barbarella is tasked by the Earth’s president to travel to another planetary system to retrieve the positronic ray, a powerful weapon of potential mass destruction. Barbarella’s on a mission and nothing will get in her way, except perhaps her sex drive and everyone’s sexual ambition. She’ll help the blind angel Pygar rediscover the will to fly (by having sex with him), and defeat torture device The Excessive Machine (destroying it by outlasting its death-inducing orgasm).

Jane Fonda’s fourth and final collaboration with her then-husband Roger Vadim created one of film’s most memorable characters and sex symbols, placing Fonda at the epicentre of 60s culture and turning her into a true icon and poster child of the decade’s sexual freedom.

This screening is part of I LOVE YOU JANE FONDA!, the first double bill night by Deleted Scenes.

DELETED SCENES PRESENTS: WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

(1962, USA, Edward Dmytryk)

Dove Linkhorn (Laurence Harvey) meets teen rebel Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda) hitchhiking and train-hopping from Texas to Louisiana in search of his long-lost love Hallie Gerard (Capucine). When they reach New Orleans, he finds Hallie working at a brothel. Dove wants to whisk her away, but he’ll have to go through madam Jo Courtney (Barbara Stanwyck) first, who’s obsessed with Hallie and also lures Kitty in, enlisting her as the brothel’s youngest girl with far-reaching consequences.

Jane Fonda is a bombshell in her second role in this film noir, an early showcase of her magnetic screen presence and a foreshadowing of the sex-on-legs icon she’d become throughout the decade with films like Joy House, Circle of Love and Barbarella.

This screening is part of I LOVE YOU JANE FONDA!, the first double bill night by Deleted Scenes.

BEYOND THE INFINITE TWO MINUTES

(2020, Japan, Junta Yamaguchi)

In a small café, a seemingly ordinary television reveals a glimpse of the future: exactly two minutes ahead. The café owner and his friends experiment with this time loop, only for simple curiosity to cascade into chaos, comedy, and escalating temporal confusion. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes transforms a low-stakes premise into a labyrinth of cause and effect, where every action multiplies and timelines overlap in unexpected ways.

Yamaguchi’s long-take cinematography and meticulous real-time framing create a kinetic, immersive experience, trapping characters—and viewers—in the cascading logic of near-future sight. What begins as a playful experiment becomes a study of consequence, improvisation, and human desire to control the uncontrollable. Time here is both a tool and a trap, and connection feels urgent, fleeting, and perpetually one step ahead of itself.

LOVE HOTEL

(1985, Japan, Shinji Sōmai)

In a single night inside a Tokyo love hotel, two damaged lives intersect under the pressure of desperation, fantasy, and self-erasure. A failed businessman planning his own death hires a call girl, only for their transaction to unravel into something unstable and emotionally raw. Love Hotel operates within the framework of pink cinema, yet consistently resists its expectations, redirecting erotic spectacle toward exhaustion, confession, and psychological exposure. Sex here is not titillation but a temporary suspension of consequence—a space where shame can be voiced without permanence.

Sōmai’s long takes and restless camera movement trap the characters in real time, refusing narrative shortcuts or moral framing. The hotel room becomes a liminal zone between performance and collapse, where power shifts moment to moment and intimacy feels both compulsory and unreachable. Stripped of glamour and redemption, Love Hotel presents desire as a survival mechanism already failing, and connection as something briefly possible only when nothing else remains intact.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER + LIVE SCORE

(1928, France, Jean Epstein)

Jean Epstein’s silent adaptation of Poe’s tale is a masterclass in early cinematic expressionism, merging abstract imagery with atmospheric tension. The decaying Usher estate, filmed in shadowed chiaroscuro, embodies psychological collapse, while the film’s experimental editing and camera movement intensify the narrative’s dreamlike terror. A touchstone of avant-garde horror, it remains visually hypnotic nearly a century later.

Presented from a unique 35mm film print scan with a live score by Marika Tyler-Clark

THE WITCH THAT CAME FROM THE SEA

(1976, USA, Matt Cimber)

A troubled woman named Molly works nights as a waitress at a seaside bar while caring for her young nephews by day. Haunted by memories of childhood abuse at the hands of her sea‑captain father, she becomes increasingly tormented by nightmares and fantasies. As her grip on reality slips, she begins seducing men and enacting a brutal, vengeful murder spree.

Bleak and disturbing, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is more psychological horror than supernatural — a grim portrait of trauma, repression, and rage that turns intimacy into terror and the ocean’s memory into a twisted obsession.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

(1978, Czechoslovakia, Juraj Herz)

A humble village girl becomes the captive of a grotesque Beast, a figure both terrifying and tragic. As she navigates his eerie, shadow-filled castle, fear gives way to curiosity and compassion, revealing the humanity hidden beneath his monstrous exterior.

A darkly gothic and visually striking fairy tale, Juraj Herz’s Beauty and the Beast blends horror and romance, exploring obsession, transformation, and the thin line between terror and tenderness.

DANCE FREAK + VIDEO INTRO

(2025, USA, Alan Resnick, Robby Rackleff)

MYSTERY MOVIE

POINT BLANK

(1967, USA, John Boorman)

After being double-crossed and left for dead, a mysterious man named Walker single-mindedly tries to retrieve the rather inconsequential sum of money that was stolen from him.

PRIME CUT

(1972, USA, Michael Ritchie)

A seasoned mob enforcer is sent from Chicago to rural Missouri to settle a dispute with a sadistic meatpacking boss whose criminal empire runs as brutally as his slaughterhouses. As the job spirals into a collision of organised crime, forced labour, and industrial violence, the boundaries between urban professionalism and pastoral brutality collapse. Hard-edged and deeply unsettling, Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut exposes an America where exploitation is systemic and bodies are commodities, blending crime thriller conventions with a bleak, often surreal vision of power, corruption, and survival on the margins.

IN A GLASS CAGE

(1986, Spain, Agustí Villaronga)

In a secluded coastal villa, a former Nazi doctor—now paralysed and confined to an iron lung—exists in a state of physical ruin and moral stasis. When a mysterious young man enters the household as his carer, the relationship that forms becomes a disturbing excavation of past crimes, suppressed desires, and inherited violence. As power shifts between captor and captive, In a Glass Cage refuses the comfort of redemption or psychological distance, instead staging cruelty as something intimate, cyclical, and disturbingly ordinary.

Villaronga’s debut is among the most confrontational works of post-Franco Spanish cinema: a cold, austere meditation on fascism’s afterlife, where punishment offers no cleansing and innocence is revealed as a fragile fiction. Its clinical compositions and relentless quietude trap the viewer in a moral vacuum, forcing an encounter with evil not as spectacle, but as a lingering condition that survives its perpetrators.

HARD TO BE A GOD

(2013, Russia/Germany, Aleksei German)

A group of scientists observe a distant planet locked in a perpetual medieval state, where brutality, ignorance, and superstition dominate everyday life. Disguised as nobles and forbidden to intervene, one emissary moves through a world of mud, violence, and oppression, increasingly consumed by the moral cost of detachment. Monumental, abrasive, and relentlessly immersive, Aleksei German’s Hard to Be a God dismantles the conventions of science fiction, using historical grotesquerie to interrogate power, responsibility, and the limits of enlightenment in the face of human cruelty.

CHRISTIANE F.

(1981, Germany, Uli Edel)

A thirteen-year-old girl drifts from adolescent boredom into the underground world of drugs, prostitution, and petty crime that surrounds Berlin’s Bahnhof Zoo. What begins as experimentation quickly hardens into dependency, as friendships, family structures, and any sense of safety erode under the pressures of addiction. Stark, unsentimental, and closely rooted in lived testimony, Uli Edel’s Christiane F. documents youth culture at the point of collapse, presenting a bleak social landscape shaped by neglect, urban anonymity, and the quiet brutality of survival at the margins.

GLORIA

(1980, USA, John Cassavetes)

Gloria Swenson is a tough, self-reliant woman who has left her mob-connected past behind, only to be thrust into danger when a young boy’s family is brutally murdered. Tasked with protecting the traumatized child from relentless killers, Gloria navigates the gritty streets of New York with a mix of grit, cunning, and raw instinct. Every encounter tests her resilience as she fights to keep both of them alive.

A tense and stylish urban thriller, Gloria showcases Cassavetes’ trademark focus on character and emotion. Gena Rowlands delivers a fierce, magnetic performance, transforming Gloria into a modern antiheroine whose toughness is matched only by her humanity.

EVOLUTION OF HORROR PRESENTS: FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN 3D

(1973, Italy/France, Paul Morrissey & Andy Warhol)

A deranged scientist and his accomplice attempt to create the perfect human by assembling parts from the dead, infusing their monstrous creations with life and desire. As their experiments spiral out of control, chaos, grotesque humor, and erotic excess collide in a spectacle of shocking decadence.

A campy and transgressive fusion of horror and satire, Flesh for Frankenstein revels in grotesque excess, merging body horror, dark comedy, and surreal commentary on obsession, creation, and human vice.

+ POST FILM DISCUSSION WITH EVOLUTION OF HORROR

3D GLASSES PROVIDED FOR TICKETHOLDERS!

CINEMANIA

(2002, USA, Angela Christlieb & Stephen Kijak)

A group of obsessive cinephiles navigate New York City in search of screenings, cataloging every film and obsessing over schedules, stars, and trivia. Their lives are consumed by cinema, blending daily routine, personal quirks, and unrelenting devotion to the art form.

A charming and eccentric documentary, Cinemania celebrates obsession, fandom, and the transformative power of movies, offering an intimate glimpse into lives lived entirely through the lens of film.

AMERICAN MOVIE

(1999, USA, Chris Smith)

Mark Borchardt, an aspiring filmmaker in Wisconsin, struggles to complete his low-budget horror film Coven, juggling financial woes, personal setbacks, and relentless ambition. Friends and family become both collaborators and obstacles as he chases his dream against overwhelming odds.

Funny, inspiring, and at times heartbreaking, American Movie is a documentary about obsession, creativity, and the eccentric determination required to make art, capturing the highs and lows of pursuing a passion with unflinching honesty.

FASCINATION

(1979, France, Jean Rollin)

In the isolated countryside outside Paris, a fugitive thief seeks refuge in a remote château, only to find himself ensnared in a ritualistic world governed by enigmatic women and unspoken rules. Fascination distils Jean Rollin’s obsessions into their most austere form: minimal dialogue, heightened gestures, and eroticism drained of warmth.

Vampirism here is less a narrative engine than a social order—formal, aristocratic, and terminally bored—where violence is ceremonial and desire is rigidly choreographed. Rollin’s camera lingers on bodies and interiors with clinical detachment, emphasising repetition over suspense and atmosphere over causality. The film’s spare structure and sudden brutality converge in a conclusion that rejects romanticism entirely, presenting immortality not as excess or ecstasy, but as a hollow system sustained by habit, blood, and decay.

+ Introduction by Filmmaker & Programmer, Craig Williams

VAMPYROS LESBOS

(1971, West Germany/Spain, Jesús Franco)

In the sun-drenched interzones between Istanbul and the Spanish coast, a young woman becomes entangled with a hypnotic vampire whose erotic pull dissolves the boundaries between dream, desire, and death. Vampyros Lesbos abandons conventional horror mechanics in favour of atmosphere and repetition, drifting through nocturnal clubs, modernist interiors, and bloodless acts of seduction that feel more ritualistic than violent. Franco treats vampirism less as a curse than as a state of erotic dislocation—an endless present where pleasure overrides causality and identity slips out of focus.

Anchored by Soledad Miranda’s uncanny screen presence and propelled by a hallucinatory jazz-funk score, the film occupies a singular space between exploitation cinema and avant-garde mood piece. Its languid pacing and fetishistic surfaces mask a deeper emptiness at the core, where liberation and annihilation become indistinguishable, and desire circulates without resolution.

+ Introduction by Filmmaker & Programmer, Craig Williams

SCANNERS INC. PRESENTS: KILLING ZOE

(1993, USA, Roger Avary)

In the suffocating heat of Paris, an American safecracker is drawn into a botched bank robbery that spirals into nihilistic excess, chemical detachment, and self-annihilation. Killing Zoe captures the early-90s collision of cinephilia and disaffection: a film obsessed with its own cool, yet unable to escape the violence and emptiness it performs. Avary stages crime as a closed circuit of bravado and decay, where loyalty erodes under narcotics and adrenaline, and style becomes a form of denial rather than control.

This screening is presented by Scanners, Inc. from a 35mm scan overseen by Peter Aldanmaz (aka NC-17), responsible for the film’s recent restoration. Drawn from release prints, the scan preserves the texture of the original theatrical experience—grain intact, reel-change marks visible, and damage left unpolished.

SCANNERS INC. PRESENTS: THE RULES OF ATTRACTION

(2002, USA, Roger Avary)

Set within the insulated sprawl of an East Coast liberal arts college, The Rules of Attraction fractures youth into overlapping monologues of desire, resentment, and emotional vacancy. Characters orbit one another without alignment, mistaking proximity for intimacy and indulgence for meaning. Avary adapts Bret Easton Ellis with a cold formalism that mirrors the film’s worldview: time loops, perspectives contradict, and events recur without consequence. Romance is transactional, sex is anesthetic, and connection is endlessly deferred. What emerges is not a cautionary tale but a system—self-contained, performative, and quietly brutal—where everyone is both observer and casualty.

This screening is presented by Scanners, Inc. from a 35mm scan.

SCANNERS INC. PRESENTS: OUT FOR JUSTICE

(1989, USA, John Flynn)

On the streets of Brooklyn, a cop’s pursuit of a psychopath who murdered his partner escalates into a one-man campaign of humiliation, intimidation, and retributive violence. Out for Justice strips the police thriller down to its rawest components: territorial masculinity, public dominance, and justice reduced to spectacle. Steven Seagal’s Gino Felino operates less as a lawman than as an unstoppable corrective force, moving through bars, alleys, and family spaces with absolute certainty and zero moral hesitation.

Flynn frames the city as a hostile arena where order is imposed, not negotiated, and where legality is secondary to personal codes of loyalty and honour. The film’s notorious confrontations—played out in full view of the community—transform justice into a performance designed to shame as much as punish. Devoid of irony or self-reflection, Out for Justice embodies a particular early-90s fantasy of control: blunt, territorial, and brutally efficient, offering catharsis not through resolution, but through dominance asserted until resistance collapses.

This screening is presented by Scanners, Inc. from a 35mm scan.

SCANNERS INC. PRESENTS: CLASS OF 1984

(1982, USA, Mark L. Lester)

In a decaying urban high school ruled by gangs, intimidation, and institutional collapse, an idealistic music teacher enters a system already beyond repair. Class of 1984 weaponises the teen delinquent film, escalating it into something closer to vigilante horror, where authority is systematically humiliated and civility proves to be a fatal weakness. Lester frames the school as a closed ecosystem of aggression—corridors as battlegrounds, classrooms as holding cells, where violence is not aberrant but structural.

The film’s moral universe is stark and unsentimental: attempts at reform are punished, empathy is exploited, and retaliation becomes the only language left intact. Its lurid set-pieces and confrontational tone reflect early-80s anxieties about social breakdown, youth nihilism, and the perceived failure of liberal restraint. Class of 1984 offers no rehabilitation narrative and no clean resolution—only the grim suggestion that once authority collapses, order can be restored only through force, leaving victory indistinguishable from surrender.

This screening is presented by Scanners, Inc. from a 35mm scan.

SCANNERS INC. PRESENTS: HARDCORE

(1979, USA, Paul Schrader)

When a devout Midwestern businessman travels to Los Angeles in search of his missing daughter, he descends into the commercialised labyrinth of the pornography industry, confronting a world that operates by entirely different moral and economic laws. Hardcore reframes the detective narrative as a spiritual crisis, charting not just a physical search but the collapse of a belief system unable to survive contact with late-70s American capitalism. Schrader’s direction is austere and punitive, refusing sensationalism even as it exposes exploitation, coercion, and commodified intimacy.

The film’s power lies in its refusal to grant moral superiority to any side: faith offers no protection, transgression offers no freedom, and revelation provides no cleansing. As the father pushes deeper into spaces he cannot control or comprehend, the film reveals the violence inherent in both repression and consumption. Hardcore ultimately presents America as a divided landscape held together by denial, where innocence is a constructed fantasy and exposure brings not salvation, but a quieter, more devastating form of loss.

This screening is presented by Scanners, Inc. from a 35mm scan.