The Nickel | Independent Cinema in Clerkenwell, London

The Nickel is an adult-oriented space. The films, preshow materials and space itself may contain violent, sexual and potentially offensive imagery unsuitable for under-18s or those of a sensitive disposition.

Please note we are unable to offer refunds or exchanges on tickets. No late admissions from 15 minutes after showtime.

SUNDAY SABBATH - MYSTERY HORROR MATINEE

Sunday Sabbath presents undisclosed deep cuts from the history of horror cinema.

From forgotten masterpieces and overlooked oddities to international nightmares and independently made cult classics, each screening offers a surprise journey into the darker corners of the genre. Expect the unexpected: supernatural terror, psychological unease, grisly slashers, Gothic chillers, folk horror, creature features and everything in between. The only thing we can guarantee is that you'll leave having discovered something you never knew you needed to see.

Adults only.

UNDER THE VOLCANO

(1984, USA/Mexico, John Huston)

On the Day of the Dead in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin, a former British consul living in a small Mexican town, drifts through the final day of his life in an alcoholic haze. The unexpected return of his estranged wife Yvonne offers the possibility of reconciliation, while the arrival of his half-brother Hugh reopens old tensions and regrets. As political anxieties gather on the eve of the Second World War and the festivities of the holiday unfold around him, Geoffrey moves through cantinas, streets, and memories, unable to escape either his past or his addiction.

Adapted from Malcolm Lowry's long-considered "unfilmable" 1947 novel, Under the Volcano was one of John Huston's most ambitious late-career projects. Filmed on location in Mexico and anchored by Albert Finney's Oscar-nominated performance, the film translates Lowry's dense modernist work into a meditation on self-destruction, mortality, and political uncertainty. Rather than treating alcoholism as a social problem or moral failing, Huston presents it as part of a wider tragedy unfolding against a landscape haunted by death, memory, and impending historical catastrophe. Widely regarded as one of Huston's finest later films, it remains a singular literary adaptation and one of cinema's most powerful portraits of addiction.

THE SWEET EAST

(2023, USA, Sean Price Williams)

During a school trip to Washington, D.C., teenager Lillian becomes separated from her classmates and drifts through a series of encounters across the American East Coast. Moving between political extremists, online radicals, aspiring artists, wealthy intellectuals, and lost idealists, she navigates a fragmented landscape of competing fantasies and ideologies. What begins as an accidental detour gradually becomes an episodic journey through contemporary American life, observed through the perspective of a protagonist who remains both participant and detached witness.

The feature debut of cinematographer Sean Price Williams, The Sweet East combines road movie, picaresque comedy, and social satire to construct a deliberately unstable portrait of the United States in the digital age. Shot on 16mm and written by critic and filmmaker Nick Pinkerton, the film draws on traditions of American independent cinema while reflecting the disorienting overlap of internet culture, political performance, and regional identity. Its succession of encounters functions less as a conventional coming-of-age narrative than as a survey of the myths, anxieties, and self-inventions that shape contemporary America. Starring Talia Ryder, Simon Rex and Jacob Elordi.

GIRL INTERNET SHOW

(2022, USA, Kati Kelli)

Meet Kati Kelli, the late outsider video artist whose subversive online uploads pushed the boundaries of the digital form. GIRL INTERNET SHOW: A KATI KELLI MIXTAPE unearths and reintroduces a surreal, singular body of work by the enigmatic artist. For nearly a decade before her passing in 2019, Kelli ran “Girl Internet Show,” a YouTube channel, parasocial experiment, and epically deranged one-woman universe built from scratch in her bedroom.

This hand-made mixtape from Jane Schoenbrun (I SAW THE TV GLOW) and Jordan Wippell features a lovingly curated selection of Kelli’s online work, unreleased videos, and TOTAL BODY REMOVAL SURGERY—her first (and final) short film opus.

BLUE MONDAY - MYSTERY XXX CINEMA

Blue Monday presents undisclosed selections from the deepest recesses of horny cult cinema - encapsulating everything from erotic thrillers, carnal noir, golden age porno and transgressive sleaze from both the underground and the mainstream.

This screening will feature adult-themed content, including sexually explicit and risqué material. Please consider yourself forewarned that these films may (and probably will) contain offensive and upsetting content. Do not attend if you are of a sensitive disposition.

Adults only.

SMOOTH TALK

(1985, USA, Joyce Chopra)

Fifteen-year-old Connie spends a hot Northern California summer escaping family tensions through beach trips, shopping malls and flirtations with boys. Restless, self-conscious and eager to enter the adult world, she catches the attention of Arnold Friend, a charismatic older stranger who arrives at her house while she is alone. What begins as smooth-talking seduction gradually develops into something far more threatening.

Adapted from Joyce Carol Oates’s short story Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, SMOOTH TALK gave Laura Dern her first leading role, opposite a deeply unsettling Treat Williams. Director Joyce Chopra captures both the excitement and danger of adolescent sexual awakening, shifting almost imperceptibly from sun-drenched coming-of-age drama into a tense and deeply ambiguous psychological thriller. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival.

THE BLACK ROOM

(1982, USA, Elly Kenner, Norman Thaddeus Vane)

A serially unfaithful businessman rents a secret room in a Hollywood Hills mansion from a brother and sister, intending to use the space for his extramarital encounters. Unaware that his landlords are serial killers, he soon discovers that the women he brings to the room are being murdered as part of their own sinister scheme.

A strange hybrid of psychological thriller, horror, and erotic exploitation, the film combines sexual obsession, voyeurism, and gruesome violence with a bizarre blood-transfusion plot. Its low-budget atmosphere and unusual premise place it firmly within the oddball American exploitation cinema of the early 1980s.

A Culture Film Publication x Vinegar Syndrome screening.

Runtime: 88 mins

Certificate: 18

Tuesday 15/9

Bar 8:15pm

Film 8:45pm

Digital

Book here

THE FEMALE HAMLET

(1976, Turkey, Metin Erksan)

A young woman named Hamlet returns home after studying drama in America to discover that her father has been murdered by her uncle, who has married her mother. After seeing her father’s ghost and learning the truth behind the crime, Hamlet decides to pretend madness in order to uncover the conspiracy and take revenge.

Metin Erksan’s adaptation transforms Shakespeare’s tragedy into a surreal Turkish revenge drama, replacing the Prince of Denmark with a female protagonist and relocating the story to a contemporary Turkish setting. Blending melodrama, experimentation, and elements of Yeşilçam cinema, the film offers a highly unconventional interpretation of one of literature’s most famous revenge stories.

AAHHH BELINDA

(1986, Turkey, Atıf Yılmaz)

A young theatre actress named Serap agrees to appear in a television commercial for a shampoo called Belinda. During the production, she suddenly finds herself transported into the life of the character she was portraying, becoming Naciye, a housewife with two children. Unable to convince those around her that she is actually an actress named Serap, she struggles to understand her new reality and find a way back to her former life.

A surreal blend of comedy, fantasy, and social satire, the film uses its body-switching premise to explore identity, gender roles, and the expectations placed on women in Turkish society. Its shifting between performance and reality creates an unusual and often unsettling examination of how easily personal identity can be shaped by external roles.

BLONDE DEATH (ON VHS)

(1984, USA, James Robert Baker)

Shot on consumer-grade video and circulating for decades as a near-mythic underground tape, Blonde Death follows the runaway odyssey of Tammy, a teenage misfit fleeing an abusive home with two queer outsiders who christen themselves her new family. Their improvised road trip blends impulsive romance, petty crime, and manic self-invention, gradually collapsing into violence as the trio drifts further from stability. The film’s messy exuberance is threaded with a growing sense of doom, capturing the volatility of youth pushed to the margins.

A seminal artifact of queer DIY cinema, Blonde Death fuses melodrama, punk energy, and camp excess with unexpectedly sharp social commentary. Director James Robert Baker — better known for his incendiary fiction — uses the limitations of shot-on-video production to amplify the film’s immediacy and emotional rawness. The result is a rare, transgressive work whose jagged form reflects the precarity, rebellion, and desperation of its characters, standing at the intersection of outsider art and queer counterculture.

Programme notes by Dominic Hicks

THE BEAVER TRILOGY

(2000, USA, Trent Harris)

In 1979, filmmaker Trent Harris encounters an eccentric young man named Groovin’ Gary in Beaver, Utah, who invites him to film a local talent show where he performs in drag as Olivia Newton-John. Fascinated by Gary’s personality and performance, Harris later recreates the story twice more: first with Sean Penn in Beaver Kid 2 (1981), and then with Crispin Glover in The Orkly Kid (1985). The three films are combined into a single work that explores the life, dreams, and outsider identity of its central figure.

Part documentary, part fiction, and part experimental investigation into the act of filmmaking itself, the trilogy examines how a real person’s story changes when filtered through different performers and interpretations. A unique piece of underground cinema, it became a cult landmark for its strange blend of humour, empathy, performance, and questions about identity and representation.

FRINGE! PRESENTS BANG!

BANG!
Close this long hot summer with a steamy selection of sexy shorts; our legendary program returns to serve up the politics of queer pleasure, from dyke cowgirls on the run, to stoned ass worship from the closet. BANG presents a whole spectrum of bodies, genders and kinky desires. Expect bold desire, filthy fun, and the tenderness of queer encounters.

NB! This shorts programme has two screenings, one screening at 6:30pm and a repeat screening at 8:45pm.

Runtime: 95 mins

Certificate: 18

Friday 18/9

Bar 6:00pm

Film 6:30pm

Digital

Sold Out

WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?

(1966, Czechoslovakia, Václav Vorlíček)

When scientist Růženka Beránková develops a machine capable of manipulating dreams, an experiment on her husband produces an unexpected consequence: characters from his favourite comic strip begin to materialise in the real world. Chief among them is Jessie, a glamorous heroine pursued by a superhuman strongman and a gun-toting cowboy. As the dream figures wander through Prague, leaving chaos in their wake, the boundaries between everyday reality and comic-book logic steadily collapse.

One of the great achievements of Czechoslovak popular cinema of the 1960s, Who Wants to Kill Jessie? combines science fiction, slapstick comedy, and comic-strip aesthetics into a playful satire of bureaucracy, technology, and mass media. Co-written by Miloš Macourek and featuring visual contributions from legendary comics artist Kája Saudek, the film brings speech balloons, sound effects, and graphic imagery directly into live-action space decades before such techniques became commonplace. Produced during the fertile period that also generated the Czech New Wave, it occupies a unique position between state-studio filmmaking, pop art experimentation, and fantastical genre cinema.

WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO?

(1966, France, William Klein)

A television crew follows Polly Maggoo, an American supermodel living in Paris, as part of a documentary attempting to uncover the person behind her public image. While the crew investigates her life, Polly navigates the attention of the fashion world, admirers, and men who project their own fantasies onto her. (IMDb)

William Klein’s satirical mockumentary takes aim at the absurdity of fashion, celebrity culture, and the media’s obsession with image and personality. Blending pop art, surreal humour, and documentary techniques, it captures the artificial world of 1960s fashion while questioning whether anyone can truly exist outside the images created around them.

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.

Please consider yourself forewarned that these films may (and probably will) contain offensive and upsetting content. Do not attend if you are of a sensitive disposition.

FRINGE PRESENTS: PROCESSING

Processing takes film as a site of alchemy: a medium to be scratched, spliced, remixed and reanimated until its material grain becomes indistinguishable from memory itself. Across hand-processed Super 8, analogue video synthesis and found footage, this shorts programme interlaces the medium and materiality of queer film with desire and speculative futures; it refuses fixity.

As part of the screening, you are invited to take part in a cameraless 16mm filmmaking workshop. Working collaboratively through a series of material experiments, shared scores and collective processes, the group will scratch, draw on and rework film by hand. These experiments will be assembled into a short community film and screened as part of the programme.

Workshop: 60 min
Film Screening: 45 min

MYSTERY DOJO: SURPRISE KUNG FU MATINEES

Enter the 36 Chambers of Grindhouse Cinema, with these Sunday mystery martial-arts matinees that harken back to the glory days of 42nd Street.

Expect deep-cut chopsocky plucked from the 70s and 80s screening on both digital and VHS - with bone-crushing bashers from the genre that mixed Chinese folklore and fantasy, spaghetti westerns, melodrama, Japanese samurai films and American genre cinema into an electrifying combo that inspired both the future of action films - and hip hop.

These Kung Fu flicks became an international sensation in the 1970s, particularly at the Grindhouse cinemas that proliferated in impoverished inner-cities. Here were movies in which working-class heroes stood up to oppression, speaking loud and clear to the marginalised underclasses around the world.

Bring the ruckus!

THE BEGUILED

(1971, USA, Don Siegel)

A wounded Union soldier, played by Clint Eastwood, is taken in by the inhabitants of a secluded Southern girls’ boarding school during the American Civil War. As he recovers under their care, the isolated household begins to shift in tone, with tension, jealousy, and suppressed desire slowly emerging beneath the surface of polite Southern hospitality.

Don Siegel constructs something quietly oppressive, letting the closed environment do most of the work as civility gradually erodes into manipulation and emotional volatility. What starts as a simple act of care becomes increasingly uneasy, with power constantly shifting between caretaker and captive.

PLAY MISTY FOR ME

(1971, USA, Clint Eastwood)

A late-night radio DJ in California becomes the target of an increasingly obsessive fan who begins inserting herself into his personal life. What starts as flirtatious contact escalates into stalking, emotional manipulation, and escalating violence that disrupts both his relationships and sense of safety.

Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut leans into a taut psychological thriller structure, using its coastal California setting and radio broadcast framework to build intimacy and unease at the same time. The film steadily tightens its focus as admiration curdles into fixation, turning everyday encounters into sources of threat.

DOOR

(1988, Japan, Banmei Takahashi)

A housewife named Yasuko lives with her husband and young son in a high‑rise apartment, where a persistent door‑to‑door salesman begins to harass her after she accidentally injures him trying to keep him outside. The unwanted encounters quickly escalate into threatening phone calls, disturbing messages on her front door, and a growing sense that her everyday life is slipping into paranoia and danger. As the salesman’s behaviour becomes more unsettling, the tension widens into a nightmarish battle for control of her own home.

This 1988 Japanese horror thriller builds dread out of ordinary life disrupted by obsession and intrusion, moving from quiet unease to increasingly intense scenes of psychological and physical threat. Known for its raw atmosphere and relentless pacing, Door has become a cult rediscovery for fans of classic J‑horror rooted in fear that starts at the threshold of home.

A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO

(1994, Japan, Banmei Takahashi)

Part whip-smart hangout comedy, part pink film erotica. A New Love in Tokyo follows Rei, an aspiring actor and professional dominatrix, as she splits her time between rehearsing experimental theatre, hanging out with her friend Ayumi - a call girl, and gleefully dominating her clients in the dungeon.

Marketed in some territories (and still occasionally referred to) as ‘Tokyo Decadence 2’, A New Love in Tokyo stands distinct as an unashamedly joyous, charming, and sexually-charged work. Directed by pinku/V-cinema legend Banmei Takahashi (Door, Door II), and shot with an energetic, moody atmosphere. Don’t miss the rare chance to catch this newly restored pink cinema classic on the big screen.

Programmed and introduced by film critic Alexander Sternberg

G.B.H.

(1983, United Kingdom, David Kent-Watson)

A former boxer turned nightclub bouncer is drawn back into a world of violence when he is hired to protect an upmarket Manchester club. As rival criminals attempt to take control of the business, he finds himself caught between gang warfare, loyalty, and survival.

A rough-edged British crime thriller from the early 1980s, the film belongs to the independent gangster cinema that emerged outside the mainstream, with a gritty northern setting and a focus on nightclub culture, intimidation, and street-level violence. Its low-budget atmosphere and exploitation influences make it a curiosity for fans of British crime cinema.

SURVIVING EDGED WEAPONS

(1988, USA, Dennis Anderson)

Originally produced as a police training video, the film demonstrates the dangers posed by knives and other handheld weapons through a mix of reenactments, interviews, and real-world case studies. Officers, medical professionals, and survivors recount violent encounters while the film breaks down how quickly ordinary situations can escalate into deadly confrontations.

Its reputation comes largely from the strange collision between instructional seriousness and unintentionally surreal presentation that feels like a cross between Killing of America and Deadbeat at Dawn. Detached narration, abrupt tonal shifts, and graphic practical demonstrations give it an uncanny quality that has transformed it from niche training material into a cult object of fascination.

FLESHTONE

(1994, USA, Harry Hurwitz)

A painter named Matthew Greco, fascinated by death and violence, becomes involved with a woman he meets through a phone-sex line. When he discovers a mutilated body that appears to be hers, he is drawn into a mysterious murder investigation where the victim’s identity, the motive, and the truth behind the crime become increasingly uncertain.

A dark erotic mystery thriller from director Harry Hurwitz, the film blends psychological obsession, crime, and noir elements with a distinctly early-1990s direct-to-video atmosphere. Led by Martin Kemp, it explores themes of voyeurism, fantasy, and the blurred line between desire and danger.

IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT

(1990, USA, Nico Mastorakis)

A high‑profile fashion photographer named Scott Bruin is plagued by a series of increasingly disturbing nightmares in which he appears to attack and kill a mysterious woman. When that woman begins to step out of his dreams and into his waking life, Scott must confront whether his visions are merely fantasies or harbingers of something more sinister and real.

This 1990 erotic thriller blends psychological mystery with late‑night cable ambience and surreal dream logic. Its mix of neon‑soaked visuals, uneasy tension, and uncanny mood make it a standout example of early‑90s genre cinema that sits somewhere between noir, nightmare, and sleazy intrigue.

PROTOMARTYR X THE NICKEL CINEMA: BRICK MANSIONS + ACTION JACKSON

Protomartyr do a Nickel takeover with a double bill of Detroit-set action movies!

In BRICK MANSIONS at 6.30pm - a dystopian Detroit, abandoned brick mansions left from better times now house only the most dangerous criminals. Unable to control the crime, the police constructed a colossal containment wall around this area to protect the rest of the city. For undercover cop Damien Collier (Paul Walker) every day is a battle against corruption. For Lino (David Belle), every day is a fight to live an honest life. Their paths never should have crossed, but when drug kingpin, Tremaine (RZA) kidnaps Lino's girlfriend, Damien reluctantly accepts the help of the fearless ex-convict, and together they must stop a sinister plot to devastate the entire city.

In ACTION JACKSON, Ex-football player Carl Weathers stars in this violent action film as Detroit policeman Jericho Jackson. The dedicated but brutal cop is plunged into nefarious doings concerning a crooked industrialist (Craig T. Nelson) and his drug-addicted girlfriend (pop-singer Vanity), breaking many people's bones before solving the case.

Protomartyr will be in person at The Nickel to kick off the night with a Q&A.

A GUNMAN NAMED PAPACO

(1986, Brazil, Mário Vaz Filho)

A mysterious gunslinger dressed entirely in black crosses the Brazilian wilderness dragging a coffin filled with valuable—and highly unusual—merchandise. On his way to make a deal in the lawless town of Santa Cruz das Almas, Papaco encounters rival bandits, dangerous women, a crooked undertaker, a heavily armed dwarf and seemingly endless opportunities for sex and violence.

Produced in São Paulo’s legendary Boca do Lixo filmmaking district, A GUNMAN NAMED PAPACO transforms the spaghetti western into an outrageous bisexual pornochanchada. This filthy, foul-mouthed mutation of Django combines gunfights, broad comedy and hardcore XXX action with a brazenly borrowed Ennio Morricone score. Presented with newly translated English subtitles created especially for this screening.

Please note: this film contains unsimulated sex.

THUNDERCRACK!

(1975, USA, Curt McDowell)

On a dark and stormy night, a group of strangers become stranded at the remote mansion of the eccentric and grieving Mrs. Gert Hammond. As they take shelter from the storm, the guests reveal increasingly bizarre personal histories and secrets, while the arrival of an unusual stranger with a mysterious past adds to the night’s strange events. Meanwhile, rumours of a killer gorilla on the loose heighten the atmosphere of absurd danger.

Curt McDowell’s underground cult classic combines the conventions of the old dark house horror film with camp comedy, surreal melodrama, and explicit sexuality. Created within the San Francisco underground scene and featuring contributions from filmmaker George Kuchar, it is a wildly unconventional collision of exploitation, parody, and avant-garde experimentation.

CASSANDRA CAT

(1963, Czechoslovakia, Vojtěch Jasný)

A magician living in a small Czech town discovers that his cat possesses a strange power: whenever people look at it while wearing special glasses, their true personalities and hidden desires are revealed in bursts of vivid colour. The cat’s arrival throws the town into chaos, exposing hypocrisy, jealousy, and repression among its respectable citizens.

Blending fantasy, satire, and children’s fable, the film uses playful visual experimentation to critique conformity and social performance. Its shifting colours and whimsical tone mask a sharp commentary on authority, desire, and the fear of emotional honesty.

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR

(1981, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Michael Laughlin)

In a small Midwestern American town, a series of brutal murders begins after teenagers become involved in a mysterious behavioural experiment. As the killings continue, police chief John Brady investigates a connection between the crimes and a local university research project that appears to be manipulating the minds of young people.

A strange hybrid of slasher, science fiction, and paranoid conspiracy thriller, the film combines the atmosphere of 1950s creature features with the violence and experimentation of early 1980s horror. Its unusual mix of dark humour, bizarre scientific ideas, and Tangerine Dream’s electronic score has helped it develop a cult reputation among fans of offbeat genre cinema.

THIRST

(1979, Australia, Rod Hardy)

Kate Davis is a wealthy young woman who is kidnapped by a secret organisation known as the Brotherhood, a society of self-proclaimed vampires who reveal that she is a descendant of the infamous Elizabeth Bathory. Taken to a remote facility, she is subjected to psychological conditioning as the group attempts to awaken her supposed vampire heritage and force her to accept their way of life.

One of the strangest entries in Australian horror cinema, the film reimagines vampirism as a modern underground society rather than a supernatural curse, replacing gothic castles with clinical laboratories, blood farms, and corporate-style organisation. Blending science fiction, horror, and social satire, it creates an unsettling vision of immortality, elitism, and control.

THE PICK-UP

(1968, USA, Lee Frost)

A pair of mob money couriers, Frankie and Tony, are transporting a package containing one million dollars when they encounter two women, Dana and Marcia, who trick them and steal the money. With the threat of their criminal employers hanging over them, the two men must track down the con artists and recover the stolen cash before they become targets themselves.

Lee Frost blends crime thriller, film noir, and exploitation elements in a gritty black-and-white story of betrayal, greed, and revenge. Featuring involvement from exploitation figures including producer and actor David F. Friedman, the film occupies the rougher edge of late-1960s independent American genre cinema, mixing a straightforward crime plot with the era’s emerging “roughie” sensibilities.

CRAZY LIPS

(2000, Japan, Hirohisa Sasaki)

After her brother is accused of murdering four people, Satomi Kurahashi desperately searches for a way to prove his innocence. She turns to a mysterious psychic for help, but the investigation quickly spirals into a bizarre series of supernatural events involving disturbing visions, strange rituals, and revelations that go far beyond a simple murder case.

Hirohisa Sasaki’s film is an outrageous collision of horror, comedy, action, and exploitation, pushing Japanese genre cinema into deliberately chaotic territory. Mixing supernatural mystery, grotesque imagery, and absurd humour, it plays like a fever dream of late-1990s/early-2000s underground horror rather than a conventional thriller.

GORE FROM OUTER SPACE

(2001, Japan, Hirohisa Sasaki)

A woman named Lucy is sentenced to death for the murder of her daughter, but as she tells her story to a nun, a bizarre chain of events is revealed involving a psychic, a corrupt politician, and two FBI agents investigating a strange alien presence. As the mystery unfolds, the boundaries between reality, science fiction, horror, and absurd comedy become increasingly blurred.

A sequel of sorts to Hirohisa Sasaki’s Crazy Lips (2000), this wildly eccentric Japanese genre mash-up combines alien invasion, horror, comedy, and surreal absurdity. With appearances from cult Japanese filmmakers and actors including Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Hideo Nakata, it plays like an intentionally chaotic parody of UFO movies, police thrillers, and exploitation cinema.

THE HEROIC TRIO

(1993, Hong Kong, Johnnie To)

Newborn babies are disappearing across a nameless city, abducted by the Invisible Woman and delivered to a monstrous underground master searching for an imperial heir. Standing in her way are Wonder Woman, a masked vigilante hiding her identity from her police-inspector husband, and Thief Catcher, a shotgun-wielding mercenary willing to work for whoever pays. As their shared histories emerge, the three women are drawn together against an enemy commanding an army of killers beneath the city.

Michelle Yeoh, Anita Mui and Maggie Cheung join forces in Johnnie To’s delirious collision of superhero fantasy, wuxia action, gothic horror and Hong Kong New Wave style. Produced and choreographed by Ching Siu-tung, THE HEROIC TRIO tears through motorcycle stunts, invisibility cloaks, flying blades, cannibalistic henchmen and spectacular wirework with the untamed invention of Hong Kong cinema at its early-1990s peak.

IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES

(1976, Japan/France, Nagisa Oshima)

In 1930s Tokyo, former geisha Sada Abe begins an affair with Kichizo, the married proprietor of the inn where she works. Withdrawing from the world into rented rooms, the pair surrender themselves to an increasingly intense cycle of sex, jealousy and experimentation. Their mutual obsession gradually consumes every other part of their lives, carrying them towards an infamous and violent conclusion.

Based on the true story of Sada Abe, Nagisa Oshima’s IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES became an international sensation through its unprecedented combination of arthouse filmmaking and unsimulated sex. Produced as a French-Japanese collaboration to escape Japan’s censorship laws, the film was seized, banned and cut in numerous countries, while Oshima faced an obscenity trial at home. Fifty years later, it remains one of cinema’s most beautiful, confrontational and genuinely erotic studies of desire taken to its absolute limit.

THREE GIANT MEN

(1973, Turkey, T. Fikret Uçak)

A crime wave terrorises Istanbul, and the police call in two unlikely heroes to stop the gang responsible: American superhero Captain America and Mexican masked wrestler Santo. Their investigation leads them to a criminal organisation headed by a ruthless villainous version of Spider-Man, who is involved in a series of violent crimes and sinister schemes.

One of the most infamous examples of Turkish exploitation cinema, Three Giant Men is an unauthorised superhero mash-up that combines comic-book characters, crime melodrama, and action spectacle in typically wild 1970s Turkish genre fashion. Its bizarre reinterpretation of familiar heroes, homemade effects, and complete disregard for established comic-book continuity have made it a cult favourite among fans of “Turksploitation.”

BADI AKA TURKISH E.T.

(1983, Turkey, Zafer Par)

A young boy discovers a friendly alien who has arrived on Earth and forms a bond with the strange visitor. As the alien attempts to survive in an unfamiliar world, the pair must avoid those who want to capture and study him, leading to a series of adventures involving friendship, curiosity, and the encounter between humans and an outsider from another planet.

A classic piece of Turkish genre cinema, Badi reflects the wave of local science-fiction and fantasy productions that reinterpreted popular international films through limited budgets and local filmmaking traditions. Its affectionate alien-child relationship and homemade effects have given it a cult reputation among fans of Turkish exploitation and “Turkish knockoff” cinema.

CLUB LINGERIE (on VHS)

(2014, USA, Jared Masters)

When Renae inherits her grandfather’s failing nightclub, she revamps it with lingerie models and the customers come running. Unfortunately, so does a mysterious killer.

Jared Masters’ gleefully disreputable microbudget slasher-comedy is a neon-lit cocktail of bare flesh, bad taste and backstage bloodshed - the kind of handmade Hollywood sleaze that feels beamed in from a vanished late-night cable channel.

BLONDE DEATH (ON VHS)

(1984, USA, James Robert Baker)

JUBILEE

(1978, UK, Derek Jarman)

After an encounter with the occult philosopher John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I is transported from the sixteenth century into a near-future Britain marked by social collapse, media saturation, and authoritarian control. Arriving in a London populated by punk gangs, aspiring pop stars, political extremists, and cultural opportunists, she witnesses a society in which traditional institutions have disintegrated and power has been absorbed by entertainment, violence, and spectacle. Moving between squats, wastelands, recording studios, and ruined urban spaces, the film unfolds as a series of encounters rather than a conventional narrative.

Widely regarded as the first British punk film, Jubilee emerged directly from the cultural ferment of late-1970s London and features appearances from figures associated with the punk and post-punk scene, including Toyah Willcox, Jordan, Adam Ant, and Gene October. Rather than functioning as a celebration of punk culture, Derek Jarman's film subjects both the establishment and the counterculture to sustained scrutiny, presenting a vision of Britain shaped by commodification, nationalism, and social decay. Combining historical fantasy, political satire, and experimental filmmaking, Jubilee remains one of the key cinematic responses to the economic and cultural crises that transformed Britain during the 1970s.

SHOGUN ASSASSIN

(1980, Japan/USA, Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston)

After his wife is murdered by agents of a paranoid shogun, former executioner Ogami Ittō takes to the road with his young son Daigoro, pushing him through feudal Japan in a baby cart fitted with an alarming arsenal of hidden weapons. Pursued by ninja assassins and three fearsome Masters of Death, father and son carve a path through ambushes, betrayals and spectacular fountains of blood.

Created for American grindhouse audiences by re-editing and dubbing the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films, SHOGUN ASSASSIN transforms Kenji Misumi’s samurai epics into a lean, hallucinatory barrage of flashing blades, severed limbs and pulsing synthesiser music. Initially notorious in Britain for its extreme violence, the film became a midnight-movie classic whose influence can be felt everywhere from Wu-Tang Clan’s Liquid Swords to Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

MYSTERY MOVIE

BASIC INSTINCT

(1992, USA/France, Paul Verhoeven)

A volatile San Francisco homicide detective is drawn into a murder investigation in which the prime suspect, bestselling novelist Catherine Tramell, appears to have written the crime before it happened. Cool, wealthy and completely unruffled, Catherine turns interrogation into seduction, pulling Nick Curran into a tightening web of sex, obsession and violence.

Paul Verhoeven’s gleaming, ice-cold erotic thriller is Hollywood excess at its most shameless and controlled - a lurid game of authorship and appetite, driven by Sharon Stone’s star-making performance, Jan de Bont’s cobalt cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith’s serpentine score. Few studio films have made danger look this luxurious.

FINAL FLESH

(2009, USA, Ike Sanders)

As a nuclear catastrophe approaches, the suburban Pollard family confronts extinction through four increasingly deranged episodes involving bodily transformation, domestic ritual and the possibility of rebirth. Their fractured story unfolds like a transmission from another dimension, performed with total sincerity by actors who appear to inhabit a world whose logic is only barely connected to our own.

FINAL FLESH began as a collection of absurd scripts written by Vernon Chatman, co-creator of Wonder Showzen, then anonymously commissioned from four separate custom-fetish video companies whose performers believed every word was genuine. Edited together into a single feature, the result is an uncanny collision of conceptual comedy, outsider performance and apocalyptic science fiction. Hilarious, unsettling and almost impossible to categorise, it feels less like a conventional film than an artefact recovered from a parallel civilisation.

MYSTERY EROTIC THRILLER

Mystery Erotic Thriller presents undisclosed deep cuts from the genre’s overheated history - from neon-soaked 80s neo-noir and glossy 90s studio sleaze to forgotten direct-to-video delirium. Expect dangerous affairs, obsessive desire, double-crosses, voyeurism, murder and exquisitely bad decisions, as sex becomes a weapon and nobody proves quite as innocent as they first appear. Come blind, surrender to the mystery and discover a film you may never otherwise have thought to see.

These screenings are strictly for adult audiences and may contain explicit sexual content, violence and other potentially offensive material. Do not attend if you are of a sensitive disposition. Adults only.

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.

BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL

(1995, Japan, Shinichi Fukazawa)

Set in a dingy Tokyo apartment, a self-absorbed bodybuilder sets out to film a showcase of his sculpted physique with the help of his ex-girlfriend and a cameraman, only to discover that the room is haunted by a furious spirit determined to drag them into chaos.

A frenzied splatter comedy forged in pure DIY ambition, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell channels the scrappy inventiveness of cult cabin-in-the-woods horror while leaning hard into slapstick absurdity. Shot on gritty video and exploding with handmade practical effects, it transforms one claustrophobic location into a whirlwind of possession, rubbery monstrosities, and delirious blood soaked spectacle.

BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL (ON VHS)

(1984, USA, Chester Novell Turner)

A lonely and pious woman finds herself drawn to a mysterious antique doll whose malevolent influence quickly escalates from unsettling pranks to violent, supernatural terror. As the doll’s control tightens, her life spirals into chaos, and those around her fall victim to its relentless, demonic will.

A shot on video masterpiece from former church organist, Chester N. Turner, Black Devil Doll from Hell revels in low-budget excess and devilish theatrics. The film leans into grotesque violence, uncanny puppetry, and unrepentant exploitation, creating a nightmarish energy that is as absurd as it is frightening.

HIRUKO THE GOBLIN

(1991, Japan, Shinya Tsukamoto)

When a teacher disappears beneath a rural school, his archaeologist colleague Hieda arrives to investigate a recently uncovered burial mound. He joins forces with the missing man’s teenage son, Masao, whose classmates are being transformed into grotesque spider-legged heads. Together they must descend into the ancient chambers below the school and prevent a gateway to the world of demons from opening completely.

Following the industrial nightmare of Tetsuo, Shinya Tsukamoto turned to folk horror and creature comedy for this wildly kinetic adaptation of Daijiro Morohoshi’s manga. HIRUKO THE GOBLIN combines handmade effects, frantic camerawork and school-holiday adventure with images of genuine nightmare intensity. Playful, disgusting and constantly inventive, it reveals a more colourful but no less unruly side of Tsukamoto’s cinema.

Introduced by James Balmont - film critic and writer.

VIOLENCE VOYAGER

(2018, Japan, Ujicha)

American schoolboy Bobby and his friend Akkun take a shortcut through the mountains and discover a mysterious amusement park called Violence Voyager. Armed with water pistols, they enter what appears to be an innocent adventure game, but soon find children trapped inside a cruel experiment involving chemical weapons, grotesque mutations and an army of mechanical monsters.

Created using Ujicha’s distinctive gekimation technique, in which hand-painted cardboard figures are manipulated before the camera, VIOLENCE VOYAGER transforms childhood adventure into a tactile, psychedelic nightmare. The deliberately limited movement makes every eruption of blood and bodily transformation feel disturbingly physical. Funny, imaginative and increasingly horrifying, the film occupies a unique space between picture-book innocence, underground animation and extreme body horror.

Introduced by James Balmont - film critic and writer.

TETSUO THE IRON MAN

(1989, Japan, Shinya Tsukamoto)

A man is mysteriously transformed into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and metal after a bizarre encounter with a scrap‑metal–obsessed stranger. As his body slowly fuses with machinery, he becomes increasingly violent and unrecognizable, spiraling into a nightmarish cycle of rage, obsession, and mechanical mutation.

Shinya Tsukamoto’s debut is a visceral, industrial horror experience, drenched in stark black-and-white visuals, rapid editing, and metallic sound design. The film’s relentless energy and body‑horror imagery create a feverish, almost hypnotic assault on the senses, establishing it as a landmark of Japanese cyberpunk cinema.

ERASERHEAD (16mm)

(1977, USA, David Lynch)

In a desolate industrial landscape, nervous printer Henry Spencer learns that his estranged girlfriend has given birth to his child. The couple attempt to care for the premature, inhuman infant in Henry’s cramped apartment, but domestic life rapidly disintegrates. Left alone with the constantly crying baby, Henry retreats into fantasies involving the mysterious woman who lives inside his radiator.

David Lynch’s first feature is a masterpiece of handmade surrealism, created over several years with a tiny crew and an obsessive attention to image and sound. Its stark monochrome photography, elaborate industrial environments and enveloping mechanical drone transform anxieties about sex, parenthood and responsibility into a private nightmare. Unsettling, darkly funny and endlessly mysterious, ERASERHEAD remains one of the defining works of American midnight cinema.

Introduced by Dominic Hicks and presented on 16mm with a reel intermission and programme notes.

Runtime: 89 mins

Certificate: 15

Thursday 29/10

Bar 6:00pm

Film 6:30pm

16mm

Book here