The Nickel | Independent Cinema in Clerkenwell, London

Become a member of The Nickel Cinema

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.

Poster for FRINGE! PRESENTS BANG!

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

Poster for WHO WANTS TO KILL JESSIE?

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.

Runtime: 81 mins

Certificate: PG

Poster for WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO?

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.

Runtime: 102 mins

Certificate: PG

Poster for MYSTERY MOVIE

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.

Certificate: 18

Poster for FRINGE PRESENTS: PROCESSING

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

Certificate: 18

Poster for MYSTERY DOJO: SURPRISE KUNG FU MATINEES

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!

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE BEGUILED

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.

Runtime: 105 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for PLAY MISTY FOR ME

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.

Runtime: 102 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for DOOR

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.

Runtime: 94 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for A NEW LOVE IN TOKYO

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

Runtime: 115 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for G.B.H.

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.

Runtime: 73 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for SURVIVING EDGED WEAPONS

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.

Runtime: 84 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for FLESHTONE

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.

Runtime: 91 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for IN THE COLD OF THE NIGHT

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.

Runtime: 112 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for PROTOMARTYR X THE NICKEL CINEMA: BRICK MANSIONS + ACTION JACKSON

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.

Certificate: 15

Poster for A GUNMAN NAMED PAPACO

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.

Runtime: 75 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THUNDERCRACK!

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.

Runtime: 159 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for CASSANDRA CAT

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.

Runtime: 104 mins

Certificate: PG

Poster for STRANGE BEHAVIOUR

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.

Runtime: 87 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THIRST

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.

Runtime: 95 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE PICK-UP

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.

Runtime: 92 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for CRAZY LIPS

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.

Runtime: 85 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for GORE FROM OUTER SPACE

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.

Runtime: 85 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE HEROIC TRIO

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.

Runtime: 88 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES

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.

Runtime: 102 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THREE GIANT MEN

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.”

Runtime: 81 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BADI AKA TURKISH E.T.

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.

Runtime: 77 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for CLUB LINGERIE (ON VHS)

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.

Runtime: 82 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BLONDE DEATH (ON VHS)

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.

Runtime: 98 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for JUBILEE

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.

Runtime: 106 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for SHOGUN ASSASSIN

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.

Runtime: 85 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for MYSTERY MOVIE

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.

Certificate: 18

Poster for WILD STYLE

WILD STYLE

(1983, USA, Charlie Ahearn)

Set in the Bronx, Wild Style follows a young graffiti artist navigating the early hip-hop scene of New York City. As he balances his creative ambitions with the pressures of street life, the film explores the interconnected worlds of breakdancing, DJing, rapping, and tagging. Rivalries, collaborations, and the pursuit of recognition drive the narrative, showcasing the energy and inventiveness of a burgeoning cultural movement.

Blending documentary-style realism with dramatized storytelling, Wild Style captures the vibrancy and raw creativity of early 1980s hip-hop. Its emphasis on street art, music, and community highlights the social and cultural roots of the movement, making it both a time capsule and an influential chronicle of urban youth expression.

Runtime: 82 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER

NIGHT OF THE JUGGLER

(1980, USA, Robert Butler)

A tough, New York City ex-cop relentlessly searches for his kidnapped teenage daughter, held by a deranged drifter who’s mistaken her for the child of a wealthy businessman. As the chase rages through the city’s derelict streets and subways, both men are pushed to the brink.

Restored at long last, this notorious cult thriller has been nearly impossible to see on any format except VHS for over four decades and is a furious, grimy portrait of Manhattan at its wildest.

Runtime: 101 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for FEAR OVER THE CITY

FEAR OVER THE CITY

(1975, France / Italy, Henri Verneuil)

A sadistic killer calling himself Minos is terrorising Paris, taunting the police and targeting women he considers immoral. Maverick detective Jean Letellier takes the case, but his pursuit soon becomes a breakneck war across rooftops, moving trains and the city’s vertiginous skyline.

Jean-Paul Belmondo performs his own staggering stunts in Henri Verneuil’s muscular policier - a grim serial-killer thriller welded to one of the most exhilarating practical-action films of the 1970s.

Runtime: 125 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for KAMIKAZE GIRLS

KAMIKAZE GIRLS

(2004, Japan, Tetsuya Nakashima)

Obsessed with Rococo fashion and the fantasy of an aristocratic eighteenth-century France, solitary Lolita Momoko lives a life of elaborate daydreams in rural Japan. Her carefully constructed world is disrupted when she forms an unlikely friendship with Ichigo, a foul-mouthed member of an all-female biker gang. Despite their opposing personalities, the pair embark on a series of misadventures that gradually reveal an unexpected bond.

Adapted from Novala Takemoto's novel, Kamikaze Girls established Tetsuya Nakashima as one of Japan's most inventive visual stylists. Blending hyperactive editing, pop-art imagery and irreverent comedy with genuine emotional warmth, the film celebrates individuality, female friendship and the liberating power of subculture. Since its release, it has become a modern cult favourite and one of the defining cinematic portraits of Japan's Lolita fashion movement.

Programmed and introduced by Elizabeth Pollitt

Runtime: 102 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for ANCHORESS

ANCHORESS

(1993, UK, Chris Newby)

In a remote fourteenth-century English village, teenage Christine Carpenter believes she has received a vision of the Virgin Mary. Rather than accept an arranged marriage, she chooses to be sealed inside a tiny cell adjoining the church, becoming the community’s anchoress. Her apparent spiritual authority soon brings her into conflict with a priest determined to control her visions, while suspicion gathers around her mother, a midwife whose knowledge is branded as witchcraft.

Shot in stark, luminous black and white, Chris Newby’s extraordinary debut turns a recorded fragment of medieval history into a fierce study of faith, confinement and female resistance. Austere without feeling remote, Anchoress finds sensuality and rebellion inside the narrowest imaginable space: a haunting film about who gets to interpret divine experience, and what happens when a young woman claims that power for herself.

Runtime: 108 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for CARNAL KNOWLEDGE

CARNAL KNOWLEDGE

(1971, USA, Mike Nichols)

College roommates Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) begin their adult lives with sharply contrasting attitudes towards sex and relationships. Sandy approaches women with nervous idealism, while Jonathan treats intimacy as a contest governed by conquest, appearance and status. As the film follows them across several decades, their conversations and romantic entanglements—including their relationships with Susan (Candice Bergen), Bobbie (Ann-Margret) and Cindy (Cynthia O'Neal)—reveal how youthful fantasies harden into resentment, disappointment and emotional isolation.

Written by cartoonist and playwright Jules Feiffer and directed by Mike Nichols, Carnal Knowledge emerged during a period when American cinema was becoming more explicit in its treatment of sex, masculinity and dissatisfaction. Built around extended conversations and confrontational performances rather than conventional romantic plotting, the film examines the gulf between sexual liberation and genuine emotional maturity. Jack Nicholson delivers one of the defining performances of his early career, while Ann-Margret earned an Academy Award nomination for her fearless portrayal of Bobbie. The film's frank treatment of sexuality prompted censorship disputes in the United States, culminating in a landmark 1974 Supreme Court ruling that confirmed it was not legally obscene.

Runtime: 97 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for NADJA

NADJA

(1994, USA, Michael Almereyda)

Dracula is dead, and his daughter Nadja drifts through nocturnal New York mourning a father she despised. Her search for connection draws her towards Lucy, an unhappily married woman, while Van Helsing and his reluctant followers close in. As desire, family blood and ancient grudges tighten around her, Nadja must decide whether escape from her inheritance is possible, or whether every vampire story is doomed to repeat itself.

Michael Almereyda turns the Dracula myth into a deadpan downtown fever dream, mixing ravishing 35mm monochrome with ghostly Fisher-Price PixelVision. Elina Löwensohn gives the film its cool, bruised centre, joined by Peter Fonda as a wonderfully bedraggled Van Helsing. Executive-produced by David Lynch, Nadja is romantic, funny and deeply strange: an art-house vampire film steeped in cigarette smoke, alienation and the dying light of pre-millennial Manhattan.

Runtime: 93 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for CRASH

CRASH

(1996, Canada/UK, David Cronenberg)

After surviving a devastating car accident, film producer James Ballard is introduced to a clandestine subculture whose members derive erotic and psychological fascination from automobile collisions. As Ballard and his wife become immersed in this increasingly obsessive world, the boundaries between sex, technology, violence and desire begin to dissolve in ways that challenge every conventional notion of intimacy.

Adapted from J. G. Ballard's controversial novel, Crash is one of David Cronenberg's most provocative and uncompromising films. Rejecting sensationalism in favour of clinical detachment, Cronenberg explores the relationship between modern technology, the body and human desire with unsettling precision. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the film sparked fierce debate upon its release and remains one of the defining works of transgressive cinema.

Runtime: 100 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION

FEMALE PRISONER #701: SCORPION

(1972, Japan, Shunya Itō)

Betrayed by the corrupt narcotics officer she loved and brutalised inside a women’s prison, Nami Matsushima survives by becoming something colder, quieter and infinitely more dangerous: Scorpion. Her captors can humiliate her, starve her and bury her underground - but they cannot extinguish her appetite for revenge.

Meiko Kaji’s implacable stare anchors Shunya Itō’s explosive first Scorpion film, a ferocious pulp nightmare transformed by pop-art colour, expressionist sets and eruptions of surreal violence.

Runtime: 87 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION: JAILHOUSE 41

FEMALE PRISONER SCORPION: JAILHOUSE 41

(1972, Japan, Shunya Itō)

After a year chained in solitary confinement, Nami Matsushima attacks the prison warden and is sent to a brutal labour camp. She escapes with six fellow prisoners, beginning a hallucinatory flight across an unforgiving landscape while guards, police and the violence of the outside world close in.

The second Scorpion film abandons almost every rule of realism. Shunya Itō unleashes kabuki tableaux, ghostly songs, blood-red waterfalls and apocalyptic revenge, while Meiko Kaji stalks through it all like a silent figure from myth.

Runtime: 94 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE VANISHING (SPOORLOOS)

THE VANISHING (SPOORLOOS)

(1988, Netherlands/France, George Sluizer)

While stopping at a motorway service station during a cycling holiday in France, Saskia disappears without a trace. Years later, her partner Rex remains consumed by the mystery, unable to accept the absence of an explanation. As his obsession deepens, he begins receiving messages from a seemingly ordinary man who claims to know exactly what happened. What follows is not a conventional investigation but a chilling confrontation with the nature of curiosity, certainty, and the human need for closure.

Adapted by Tim Krabbé from his novella The Golden Egg, The Vanishing is one of the defining European thrillers of the late twentieth century. George Sluizer's film rejects the mechanics of the conventional murder mystery in favour of a rigorously controlled study of obsession and psychological terror. Drawing much of its power from its matter-of-fact presentation of extraordinary events, the film transforms everyday spaces—petrol stations, campsites, suburban homes—into sites of profound unease. Its influence can be traced through decades of psychological thrillers, while its famously devastating conclusion remains among the most unsettling in modern cinema.

Runtime: 107 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for LA PRISONNIÉRE

LA PRISONNIÉRE

(1968, France, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

Set within the sleek, decadent world of Parisian galleries and underground fetish clubs, a young woman becomes entangled with a manipulative photographer whose erotic power games blur the line between performance and imprisonment. What begins as fascination curdles into psychological captivity as she finds herself both subject and spectator in a labyrinth of desire.

A cool, hypnotic study of control and obsession, La Prisonnière stands as the final film of Henri-Georges Clouzot. Awash in pop art colors and disorienting compositions, it transforms erotic fixation into a sleek chamber of mirrors, where liberation and confinement become indistinguishable and every gaze conceals a trap.

Runtime: 106 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for BASIC INSTINCT

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.

Runtime: 128 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for FINAL FLESH

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.

Runtime: 71 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for WISE BLOOD

WISE BLOOD

(1979, USA, John Huston)

Returning from military service to a transformed American South, Hazel Motes arrives in a small Georgia city determined to reject the religious convictions that shaped his childhood. Proclaiming himself the founder of the "Church Without Christ", he embarks on a furious campaign against belief, attracting a succession of eccentric followers, opportunists, and would-be prophets. As Hazel's crusade against faith grows increasingly obsessive, his attempts to escape spiritual certainty lead him toward acts of self-destruction that mirror the fervour he claims to oppose.

Adapted from Flannery O'Connor's 1952 novel, Wise Blood occupies a distinctive place within John Huston's later work, combining Southern Gothic, black comedy, and religious allegory. Filmed in Georgia near O'Connor's home territory and closely preserving the novel's dialogue and structure, the film translates her world of preachers, charlatans, and spiritual seekers into a landscape where belief and disbelief become equally consuming forces. Anchored by Brad Dourif's remarkable performance, Wise Blood explores evangelical culture, American individualism, and the uneasy relationship between modernity and faith, resulting in one of the most unusual literary adaptations of the 1970s.

Runtime: 106 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for CORRUPTION

CORRUPTION

(1983, USA, Roger Watkins)

Williams receives a mysterious briefcase that grants immense power, but only if he renounces love. Drawn into a shadowy warehouse filled with disturbing sexual tableaux, he descends deeper into a hallucinatory world of control, desire, and moral decay.

A bleak and surreal blend of porn, horror, and art-film, Corruption uses stark visuals and minimal plot to craft a disorienting, unsettling journey through human depravity and obsession.

CONTAINS HARDCORE SCENES. ADULTS ONLY!

Runtime: 78 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for MYSTERY EROTIC THRILLER

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.

Certificate: 18

Poster for GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS

GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS

(1973, USA, Fredric Hobbs)

A small desert town is thrown into panic when a mysterious, mutated creature emerges from the surrounding wilderness. Half-human, half-beast, and entirely terrifying, the “Godmonster” wreaks havoc as locals struggle to understand what they are facing, torn between fear, fascination, and the desire to exploit the creature for profit and notoriety.

Blending science fiction, horror, and darkly satirical social commentary, Godmonster of Indian Flats turns a low-budget monster tale into an offbeat meditation on greed, superstition, and human folly. The film thrives on its surreal atmosphere and bizarre charm, creating a world where terror and absurdity coexist. Strange, unsettling, and oddly poignant, it transforms a desert nightmare into a critique of small-town paranoia and exploitation.

Runtime: 89 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for SHARKY'S MACHINE

SHARKY'S MACHINE

(1981, USA, Burt Reynolds)

A tough Atlanta vice detective becomes obsessed with bringing down a powerful pimp connected to a wider web of crime and corruption. As his investigation deepens, he pushes beyond the limits of the law, risking his career and safety in a relentless pursuit that pulls him further into danger.

Less about flashy action than slow-burn obsession, the film settles into the rhythms of surveillance, stakeouts, and creeping paranoia. Its sense of place is key, capturing a city simmering beneath the surface, while the central performance anchors the story in a mix of weariness, fixation, and quiet intensity.

Introduced by stalwart London cinemagoer, Steve Care as his birthday film selection!

Runtime: 122 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BITTER MOON

BITTER MOON

(1992, France / UK, Roman Polanski)

On a luxury cruise to Istanbul, buttoned-up British husband Nigel becomes fascinated by the beautiful Mimi and her bitter, wheelchair-bound husband Oscar. Night after night, Oscar draws him deeper into the story of their affair: a delirious descent from erotic obsession into humiliation, cruelty and mutual destruction.

Roman Polanski turns a holiday romance into a poisonous black comedy of sexual warfare, with Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Peter Coyote and Emmanuelle Seigner circling one another through a fog of lust, jealousy and very bad decisions.

Runtime: 139 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for MYSTERY DOJO: SURPRISE KUNG FU MATINEES

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!

Certificate: 18

Poster for ALLIGATOR

ALLIGATOR

(1980, USA, Lewis Teague)

Flushed into the sewers as a baby, Ramón survives by feeding on laboratory animals pumped full of experimental growth hormones. Twelve years later he is enormous, ravenous and heading for the surface, leaving weary detective David Madison and a reptile expert to confront the city’s least plausible urban legend.

Lewis Teague and screenwriter John Sayles deliver the rare Jaws imitation with teeth: a grubby, funny and surprisingly sharp monster movie, powered by Robert Forster’s deadpan charm and a magnificent thirty-six-foot rubber alligator.

Runtime: 91 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for WALKING THE EDGE

WALKING THE EDGE

(1985, USA, Norbert Meisel)

After her husband and young son are murdered during a brutal home invasion, Christine Holloway sets out to find the men responsible. Her search brings her to Jason Walk, a weary Los Angeles cab driver and small-time numbers runner who reluctantly agrees to help. Together they move through the city’s nocturnal underworld, drawing ever closer to sadistic gang leader Brusstar and his crew.

Directed by Norbert Meisel, WALKING THE EDGE is a lean, hard-edged revenge thriller built around the unlikely pairing of Robert Forster and Nancy Kwan, with cult favourite Joe Spinell at his most menacing. Shot on the streets of Los Angeles, the film combines urban grit, melancholy and sudden violence, gradually turning its damaged central characters into a formidable vigilante partnership.

Runtime: 94 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for I AM A SEX ADDICT

I AM A SEX ADDICT

(2005, USA, Caveh Zahedi)

On the eve of his third marriage, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi looks back over the compulsions, affairs and visits to sex workers that wrecked his previous relationships. Speaking directly to the camera, he reconstructs his worst decisions with actors, former partners and a disarming willingness to expose his own vanity. Confession repeatedly tips into comedy, then circles back towards consequences that cannot be laughed away.

Part memoir, part documentary and part elaborately staged act of self-incrimination, I Am a Sex Addict turns the confessional film inside out. Zahedi’s cheerful candour is both seductive and suspect, forcing the audience to question whether honesty can become another form of selfishness. Awkward, formally playful and often painfully funny, it is less a story of redemption than an uncomfortably intimate portrait of a man trying to make art from the damage he has caused.

Runtime: 98 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BLUE MONDAY - MYSTERY XXX CINEMA

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.

Certificate: 18

Poster for SWEET BABY CHARLIE aka THE SADIST

SWEET BABY CHARLIE aka THE SADIST

(1963, USA, James Landis)

A trio of schoolteachers traveling by car through rural California stop at a junkyard for help, only to encounter a young man and his unstable girlfriend. What begins as a minor inconvenience quickly turns into a hostage situation, as the couple reveal themselves to be violent fugitives with a taste for sadistic control and escalating cruelty.

Shot in stark black and white by Vilmos Zsigmond early in his career, the film traps its characters in a pressure cooker of intimidation and unpredictability. Its stripped-down setting and relentless focus on power imbalance give it a raw, early blueprint feel for later home-invasion and exploitation cinema. Watch out for an incredible and demonic leading performance by Arch Hall, Jr.

Runtime: 95 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for NATURAL ENEMIES

NATURAL ENEMIES

(1979, USA, Jeff Kanew)

Paul Steward, the editor of a scientific journal, wakes after a sleepless night convinced that his life has become an empty failure. Having decided to murder his wife, their children and then himself, he spends the day revisiting his past and indulging his long-suppressed desires before returning home.

A bleak, confrontational psychological drama starring Hal Holbrook and Louise Fletcher, Jeff Kanew’s debut feature turns a midlife crisis into an unsettling portrait of despair, alienation and domestic violence.

Runtime: 100 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for CECIL B. DEMENTED

CECIL B. DEMENTED

(2000, USA, John Waters)

Cecil B. Demented follows an underground filmmaker who leads a radical group of devoted cinephiles determined to wage war against mainstream Hollywood. During a movie premiere, the group kidnaps a famous but frustrated actress and forces her to star in their guerrilla film, which they shoot illegally across the city while evading the authorities and studio security.

Blending dark comedy with anarchic satire, Cecil B. Demented celebrates rebellious filmmaking and critiques the commercialization of cinema. The film portrays its band of self proclaimed film terrorists as both fanatics and passionate artists, using outrageous stunts, confrontations, and film culture references to champion independent creativity over corporate entertainment.

Runtime: 88 mins

Certificate: 18

Wednesday 14/10

Poster for REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER

REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER

(1975, USA, Milton Katselas)

A veteran New York City police officer dies during a botched undercover operation, leaving his inexperienced replacement to uncover what really happened. As the investigation unfolds, she becomes entangled in the city’s bureaucratic pressures, internal corruption, and the psychological toll of policing a system that resists transparency.

The film unfolds as a tense urban crime procedural, but its focus steadily shifts toward the emotional strain of its protagonist and the institutional forces surrounding her. Its New York setting is used less for spectacle and more as a dense, procedural environment where ambiguity and moral compromise dominate.

Runtime: 112 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for BAD LIEUTENANT

BAD LIEUTENANT

(1992, USA, Abel Ferrara)

A corrupt New York City police lieutenant spirals through a world of drugs, gambling, and moral decay, abusing his authority while sinking deeper into self-destruction. When a brutal crime shocks the community, he becomes obsessed with the case, confronting questions of guilt, redemption, and faith as his own life unravels.

Abel Ferrara’s film is raw and confrontational, driven by an intense central performance and an unflinching look at addiction and spiritual crisis. Its loose, almost documentary-like style gives the story a sense of immediacy, pushing the character’s descent into something deeply uncomfortable and difficult to shake.

Runtime: 96 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for ROMANCE X

ROMANCE X

(1999, France, Catherine Breillat)

A schoolteacher enters into an emotionally detached relationship with a man who refuses physical intimacy, leading her to pursue a series of increasingly explicit encounters outside the relationship in an attempt to understand her own desires and frustrations. As she moves through different sexual experiences, questions of control, vulnerability, and emotional fulfillment begin to dominate her life.

Catherine Breillat approaches the material with a confrontational directness that treats sexuality as both psychological terrain and philosophical inquiry. Rather than building toward conventional eroticism, the film maintains a cool, analytical tone that turns intimacy into a site of emotional exposure, imbalance, and self-examination.

Runtime: 99 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE BEDROOM WINDOW

THE BEDROOM WINDOW

(1987, USA, Curtis Hanson)

While hiding in her lover Terry’s apartment, Sylvia witnesses a violent attack from his bedroom window. To protect their affair, Terry tells the police that he saw it himself - a gallant lie that collapses under scrutiny and places both the witness and the surviving victim in mortal danger.

Before L.A. Confidential, Curtis Hanson fashioned this deliciously contrived Hitchcockian neo-noir, casting Steve Guttenberg against type alongside Isabelle Huppert and Elizabeth McGovern in a tightening web of voyeurism, guilt and murder.

Runtime: 112 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for MYSTERY MOVIE

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.

Certificate: 18

Poster for IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES

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.

Runtime: 102 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for FRANKENHOOKER

FRANKENHOOKER

(1990, USA, Frank Henenlotter)

When a freak lawnmower accident reduces his fiancée Elizabeth to a collection of salvageable parts, amateur scientist Jeffrey Franken refuses to let death end their engagement. His plan is simple: find the perfect replacement body, assemble it piece by piece and bring Elizabeth back with a bolt of homemade electricity. Unfortunately, his search takes him into Times Square’s sex trade, and the resurrected woman who emerges has inherited more than one set of memories.

Frank Henenlotter’s delirious reworking of Frankenstein is a neon-pink mixture of gross-out horror, gutter comedy and unexpectedly tender romance. Patty Mullen’s electrically twitching performance is one of cult cinema’s great comic creations, while the film’s exploding bodies and handmade effects push bad taste into gleeful cartoon abstraction. Beneath the sleaze lies a warped warning about possession, reconstruction and the male urge to build the perfect woman.

Runtime: 84 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for ONE, TWO, THREE

ONE, TWO, THREE

(1961, USA, Billy Wilder)

C. R. MacNamara, a Coca-Cola executive stationed in West Berlin, is charged with looking after his boss’s visiting daughter. When she secretly marries a fervent young East German communist, Mac launches a frantic scheme to turn her new husband into an acceptable capitalist son-in-law before her parents arrive.

Billy Wilder’s breathless Cold War farce stars James Cagney at full speed, firing off rapid dialogue, political satire and escalating comic chaos against a divided Berlin.

Runtime: 104 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE UNKNOWN (ON 16MM + LIVE SCORE BY FISCAL HARM)

THE UNKNOWN (ON 16MM + LIVE SCORE BY FISCAL HARM)

(1927, USA, Tod Browning)

On the lam, criminal Alonzo hides in the circus as The Armless Wonder, a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Alonzo keeps the arms he really has concealed to hide his identity. Meanwhile, ringmaster’s daughter Nanon has a phobia of being touched by men, but is romantically pursued by not only Alonzo but the strongman Malabar. Alonzo’s desperation to remain with Nanon will only end in tragedy.

Lon Chaney delivers a striking silent performance defined by physical transformation and expressive intensity, anchoring a dark melodrama that blends crime, romance, and early psychological horror. The circus setting becomes a space of illusion and concealment, where identity is constantly performed and nothing is quite what it seems.

The film will be shown on an original 16mm print with live score by Fiscal Harm.

Runtime: 60 mins

Certificate: 18

Sunday 18/10

Bar 4:05pm

Film 4:30pm

16mm

Poster for THE DOLL

THE DOLL

(1962, Sweden, Arne Mattsson)

“A study of erotic delusion”

Lonesome night watchman Lundgren works the graveyard shift at a Stockholm shopping mall and in desperation steals a mannequin to bring home to keep him company. One night the mannequin comes alive, fulfilling his darkest fantasy but also questioning his grasp on reality. As the chorus of nosy neighbours starts suspecting something untoward in his dingy attic flat, Lundgren’s life begins to unravel.

Arne Mattsson’s sprawling resumes spans over 60 films including a proto-giallo detective series, breezy folk comedies and pulpy-thrillers, but in his mid-career flurry of films he directed Vaxdockan aka The Doll: a darkly poetic arthouse-creeper. British censors were swift to ban it due to “indecency” giving it the infamous “BANNED IN ENGLAND” tagline, but it’s lurid marketing obscured what is a beautifully realised psycho-fairytale about urban alienation and agalmatophilia. With strange and intense performances by Per Oscarsson and (Bergman actress turned “Swedish Sin” icon) Gio Petré, this is undoubtedly the crown jewel of Mattsson’s oeuvre.

Programmed and introduced by Harry Thorfinn-George

Runtime: 96 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE HEROIC TRIO

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.

Runtime: 88 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for SHOGUN ASSASSIN

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.

Runtime: 85 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BELLE DE JOUR

BELLE DE JOUR

(1967, France, Italy, Luis Buñuel)

A young, wealthy housewife living in Paris is unable to consummate her marriage with her husband and becomes consumed by elaborate sexual fantasies. After learning about a discreet brothel where clients’ identities are protected, she begins working there during the afternoons under an assumed name while maintaining her conventional domestic life.

As her double life continues, the boundaries between fantasy and reality become increasingly unstable, and her relationships outside the brothel begin to intersect with her secret work in unexpected ways. The narrative maintains ambiguity over what is real versus imagined, sustaining a tone of psychological uncertainty throughout.

Runtime: 101 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE

(1977, France, Spain, Luis Buñuel)

A wealthy middle-aged man becomes infatuated with a young woman he meets during a train journey, initiating a turbulent and frustrating pursuit of her affection. Despite repeated encounters, she continually eludes his attempts at intimacy, appearing in shifting contexts that complicate his understanding of who she is and what she wants.

Luis Buñuel structures the narrative around repetition and contradiction, with the same events retold from different perspectives, emphasizing instability in perception and desire. The film’s fragmented storytelling and surreal interruptions create a constant tension between romantic obsession and psychological uncertainty.

Runtime: 103 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for SHAKEDOWN

SHAKEDOWN

(1988, USA, James Glickenhaus)

Public defender Roland Dalton is assigned to represent a drug dealer accused of killing an undercover police officer. Convinced that the shooting was self-defence, Dalton turns to renegade narcotics cop Richie Marks for help and uncovers a network of corrupt officers protecting a lucrative drug operation. Their investigation pulls both men into an escalating war fought across the streets, courtrooms and rooftops of New York.

Peter Weller and Sam Elliott tear through James Glickenhaus’s gloriously excessive action thriller, a film that combines hardboiled conspiracy plotting with some of the most outrageous practical stunt work of the 1980s. From a department-store shootout to a climax involving a passenger jet, SHAKEDOWN continually finds new ways to outdo itself while preserving the grit and momentum of a classic urban crime movie.

Runtime: 97 mins

Certificate: 18

Wednesday 21/10

Poster for THE MAD BOMBER (ON 16MM)

THE MAD BOMBER (ON 16MM)

(1972, USA, Bert I. Gordon)

William Dorn, a disturbed Los Angeles man whose life has been destroyed by personal tragedy, begins planting and detonating bombs around the city against people and places he blames for society’s problems. When one of his attacks is witnessed by a serial rapist, police detective Geronimo Minelli is forced to track down both the bomber and the dangerous criminal who may hold the key to identifying him.

A grimy piece of early-1970s exploitation cinema, Bert I. Gordon’s crime thriller mixes police procedural, psychological study, and urban nightmare. Chuck Connors gives the film its unsettling centre as a man consumed by rage and paranoia, while the collision between the bomber, the detective, and the rapist creates a bleak portrait of violence and social decay.

Runtime: 91 mins

Certificate: 18

Wednesday 21/10

Poster for TOKYO DRIFTER

TOKYO DRIFTER

(1966, Japan, Seijun Suzuki)

Tetsu, a fiercely loyal yakuza enforcer, tries to follow his boss Kurata into legitimate business after their gang is dissolved. When a rival organisation attempts to seize Kurata’s property, Tetsu’s refusal to change allegiance makes him a target. Ordered to leave Tokyo for his own protection, he becomes a wandering outlaw, pursued across Japan by assassins and unable to escape the criminal identity he hoped to abandon.

Seijun Suzuki transforms a familiar gangster story into an extraordinary pop-art spectacle of colour, music and deliriously stylised violence. Sets shift from neon nightclubs to near-abstract white spaces, while star Tetsuya Watari repeatedly sings the film’s infectious title song. Cool, funny and visually explosive, TOKYO DRIFTER turns studio genre filmmaking into a bold act of cinematic rebellion.

Runtime: 83 mins

Certificate: 12

Poster for ANATOMY OF HELL

ANATOMY OF HELL

(2004, France, Catherine Breillat)

A woman invites a man she meets at a nightclub to spend several days with her in a remote seaside house, offering him money to observe her in private moments of intimacy and vulnerability. What begins as an unusual arrangement becomes an increasingly confrontational exchange about desire, disgust, power, and the limits of looking.

Anatomy of Hell is a deliberately austere and confrontational dialogue between two bodies and two perspectives, stripping away narrative comfort in favour of philosophical provocation. The film’s static framing and clinical tone push its themes of sex, shame, and perception into uncomfortable territory, forcing attention onto gaze and reaction rather than conventional plot.

Runtime: 77 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for CHAMPAGNE AND BULLETS

CHAMPAGNE AND BULLETS

(1993, USA, John De Hart & James Paradise)

Former police officer Rick Bode is forced from the department after refusing to participate in the schemes of corrupt judge Norman. Reunited with his old partner Huck, Rick sets out to expose a criminal network involving blackmail, murder and a satanic cult. Along the way he finds time for romance, martial arts, country music, spiritual contemplation and the irresistible dance sensation known as the Shimmy Slide.

Written, produced by and starring John De Hart, CHAMPAGNE AND BULLETS is an extraordinary vanity-project action epic whose ambition is matched only by its profound eccentricity. Its awkward dialogue, sudden tonal shifts and complete sincerity have made it a cult phenomenon, especially in its alternate incarnation as GETEVEN. Far more than a conventional bad-movie curiosity, this is personal cinema in its purest and most bewildering form.

Runtime: 99 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for MYSTERY EROTIC HORROR

MYSTERY EROTIC HORROR

Mystery Erotic Horror presents undisclosed deep cuts from cinema’s most feverish and forbidden corners - where desire collides with religious mania, occult ritual, sadism and bloodshed. Expect perverse passions, sacrilegious imagery, decadent excess and exquisitely bad decisions, as sex and death become dangerously intertwined. 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.

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE BABY

THE BABY

(1973, USA, Ted Post)

Set in Los Angeles, The Baby follows Ann Gentry, a social worker assigned to investigate the unusual Wadsworth household. Living there is a fully grown man known only as “Baby,” who is treated by his domineering mother and manipulative sisters as if he were still an infant. He is kept in a crib, dressed in diapers, and discouraged from developing beyond a childlike state. As Ann spends more time with the family, she becomes increasingly disturbed by the strange dynamics and psychological control that keep Baby trapped in permanent infancy.

Blending psychological horror with dark melodrama, The Baby explores themes of power, dependency, and manipulation within a deeply dysfunctional family. As Ann attempts to intervene and free Baby from his abusive environment, hidden motives and unsettling secrets begin to surface. The story builds toward a shocking twist that forces the audience to reconsider the characters and their intentions, leaving the boundaries between victim and perpetrator disturbingly unclear.

Introduced by programmer, Maria De Paula-Vázquez

Runtime: 84 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BLACK DEVIL DOLL FROM HELL (ON VHS)

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.

Runtime: 70 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for BLOODY MUSCLE BODY BUILDER IN HELL

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.

Runtime: 62 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for REFLECTIONS 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.

Runtime: 138 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for THE WICKER MAN

THE WICKER MAN

(1973, UK, Robin Hardy)

When a devout Christian police sergeant travels to the remote Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, he encounters a close-knit community whose pagan beliefs and seasonal rituals stand in stark contrast to his own. As his investigation deepens, every answer seems only to raise more disturbing questions, leading him towards a revelation he could never have anticipated.

Directed by Robin Hardy from a screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, The Wicker Man overturns the conventions of the traditional horror film, replacing monsters and haunted houses with folklore, religious conflict and mounting psychological unease. Christopher Lee considered Lord Summerisle to be his finest performance, while Paul Giovanni's extraordinary folk-inspired soundtrack became inseparable from the film's haunting atmosphere. Initially released in a heavily truncated version, it has since been restored and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest British horror films ever made.

Runtime: 94 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for EYES OF FIRE

EYES OF FIRE

(1983, USA, Avery Crounse)

A group of settlers in 18th-century Appalachia flee their village after a mysterious tragedy, only to confront the forest itself, haunted, malevolent, and alive with supernatural forces. As fear and superstition deepen, their bonds fracture, and the wilderness becomes both a physical and psychological nightmare.

A slow, atmospheric blend of folk horror and period drama, Eyes of Fire transforms the untamed landscape into a character itself, exploring human fragility, guilt, and the unseen terrors lurking in nature and the mind.

Runtime: 86 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for PHENOMENA

PHENOMENA

(1985, Italy, Dario Argento)

A young American girl enrolled at a Swiss boarding school begins experiencing strange psychic connections with insects after a series of brutal murders targeting students in the area. As she uses her abilities to investigate, she becomes increasingly entangled in a mystery involving a serial killer and the surrounding forest.

The film blends giallo horror with supernatural elements, combining elaborate set pieces, dream logic, and graphic violence. Its structure moves between investigative mystery and surreal fantasy, creating a disorienting atmosphere where psychic perception and physical danger constantly overlap.

Runtime: 116 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN

(1971, Italy/France/Spain, Lucio Fulci)

Carol Hammond, the daughter of a prominent politician, is tormented by increasingly vivid dreams involving her glamorous, free-spirited neighbour Julia Durer. When Julia is found brutally murdered, the line between Carol's nightmares and reality begins to dissolve, drawing her into a labyrinth of murder, hallucination and psychological manipulation where nothing can be trusted.

Directed by Lucio Fulci before his celebrated cycle of gore films, A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is one of the masterpieces of the Italian giallo. Combining surreal dream imagery, elaborate murder set pieces and psychedelic visual design, the film reflects the influence of the sexual revolution while pushing the boundaries of censorship with its graphic violence and eroticism. Featuring a mesmerising score by Ennio Morricone and standout performances from Florinda Bolkan, Stanley Baker and Anita Strindberg, it remains one of Fulci's most elegant and accomplished works.

Runtime: 103 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN 3D

FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN 3D

(1973, Italy/France, Paul Morrissey)

Presented by The Evolution of Horror: Baron Frankenstein pursues a grotesque scientific mission to construct a perfect master race, harvesting bodies and limbs from the peasantry to assemble his ideal creations. As his experiments descend into obsession, sexual pathology, and farce, the boundaries between aristocratic authority and abject violence collapse. Excessive, confrontational, and deliberately artificial, Paul Morrissey’s Flesh for Frankenstein reframes the horror myth as a corrosive satire of power, reproduction, and class, presenting a diseased vision of Europe where ideology and flesh are equally disposable.

Runtime: 95 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for DRILLER KILLER

DRILLER KILLER

(1979, USA, Abel Ferrara)

A struggling painter in downtown Manhattan finds his creative frustrations compounded by financial pressure, intrusive roommates, and the relentless noise of a neighbouring punk band. As his psychological state deteriorates, the boundaries between artistic desperation and personal collapse erode, culminating in nocturnal escapades of violence that steadily overwhelm his grip on reality.

Positioned at the intersection of no-budget punk cinema and urban psychodrama, Driller Killer captures late-1970s New York at its most frayed—tense, impoverished, and artistically volatile. Ferrara’s portrait of creative burnout situates horror within the material conditions of the city, reflecting the economic precarity and cultural fragmentation that shaped the downtown scene.

Runtime: 101 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for HIRUKO THE GOBLIN

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.

Runtime: 89 mins

Certificate: 15

Poster for VIOLENCE VOYAGER

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.

Runtime: 83 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for SPIDER BABY

SPIDER BABY

(1967, USA, Jack Hill)

A decrepit mansion houses the Merrye family, whose surviving children suffer from a bizarre, degenerative disease that makes them increasingly violent, cunning, and feral. As outsiders arrive, the family’s twisted games and macabre antics escalate, revealing their darkly comic, horrifying nature and the strange, grotesque world they inhabit.

Spider Baby blends black comedy, gothic horror, and campy thrills into a deliriously twisted fable. With its eccentric characters, claustrophobic setting, and outrageous yet eerie atmosphere, the film has become a cult classic of macabre American cinema.

Runtime: 79 mins

Certificate: 18

Wednesday 28/10

Poster for BABY BLOOD

BABY BLOOD

(1990, France, Alain Robak)

A parasitic creature escapes from the body of an exotic animal and takes refuge inside Yanka, a performer in a travelling circus. Now carrying an unnatural pregnancy, she hears the creature speaking to her and is compelled to satisfy its endless demand for human blood. As Yanka cuts a violent path across France, the relationship between mother and unborn monster becomes increasingly intimate and difficult to escape.

Alain Robak’s splattery French body-horror comedy combines the biological nightmare of early Cronenberg with the unruly energy of European exploitation cinema. Emmanuelle Escourrou gives a fearless physical performance, shifting between terror, fury and reluctant maternal attachment as the carnage mounts. Grotesque, funny and unexpectedly sympathetic towards its heroine, BABY BLOOD has grown into a fiercely loved cult discovery.

Runtime: 88 mins

Certificate: 18

Wednesday 28/10

Poster for ERASERHEAD (ON 16MM)

ERASERHEAD (ON 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

Poster for TETSUO THE IRON MAN

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.

Runtime: 67 mins

Certificate: 18

Poster for MS. 45 PLUS ✝✝✝ BASEMENT NUNSPLOITATION COSTUME PARTY ✝✝✝

MS. 45 PLUS ✝✝✝ BASEMENT NUNSPLOITATION COSTUME PARTY ✝✝✝

(1981, USA, Abel Ferrara)

A timid, mute seamstress is attacked and raped twice in one day. Traumatized by the assaults, she kills her second attacker, takes his handgun, and begins roaming the streets of New York after dark, randomly shooting men with a .45 caliber pistol.

Set against the grime of early 1980s Manhattan, the film gradually shifts from exploitation thriller to a bleak portrait of trauma, alienation, and urban violence. Its uncompromising tone and Zoë Lund's remarkable central performance have made it one of the defining films of the rape-revenge cycle.

Come dressed as a nun or priest and join our basement party till late!

Runtime: 80 mins

Certificate: 18

Friday 30/10

Bar 6:00pm

Film 6:30pm

Digital

Poster for THE NICKEL’S PSYCHOTRONIC HALLOWEEN MYSTERY MOVIE MASH - WEEKEND PASS

THE NICKEL’S PSYCHOTRONIC HALLOWEEN MYSTERY MOVIE MASH - WEEKEND PASS

Two days, eight mystery horror movies from around the world.

Across Halloween and the following day, The Nickel presents four deep-cut psychotronic horror films per day: forgotten exploitation, regional nightmares, video-era mutations, disreputable sleaze and eye-popping oddities that have slipped through the cracks of horror history.

Every title remains secret until showtime. Come for one day or sacrifice yourself to the entire weekend.

Films will screen at 2:00pm, 4:15pm, 6:30pm and 9pm on both Saturday 31st October and Sunday 1st November.

Costumes highly encouraged.

Artwork by Jordan McLaughlin

Certificate: 18

Saturday 31/10

Bar 2:00pm

Film 2:30pm

Digital

Book here

Poster for THE NICKEL’S PSYCHOTRONIC HALLOWEEN MYSTERY MOVIE MASH - DAY ONE 31/10

THE NICKEL’S PSYCHOTRONIC HALLOWEEN MYSTERY MOVIE MASH - DAY ONE 31/10

DAY ONE ONLY - 31/11

Presenting four deep-cut psychotronic horror films: forgotten exploitation, regional nightmares, video-era mutations, disreputable sleaze and eye-popping oddities that have slipped through the cracks of horror history.

Every title remains secret until showtime. Come for one day or sacrifice yourself to the entire weekend.

Films will screen at 2:00pm, 4:15pm, 6:30pm and 9pm on Saturday 31st October. Weekend passes and day tickets for Sunday the 1st November also available.

Costumes highly encouraged.

Artwork by Jordan McLaughlin

Certificate: 18

Saturday 31/10

Bar 2pm

Film 2:30pm

Digital

Book here

Poster for THE NICKEL’S PSYCHOTRONIC HALLOWEEN MYSTERY MOVIE MASH - DAY TWO 1/11

THE NICKEL’S PSYCHOTRONIC HALLOWEEN MYSTERY MOVIE MASH - DAY TWO 1/11

DAY TWO ONLY - 1/11

Presenting four deep-cut psychotronic horror films: forgotten exploitation, regional nightmares, video-era mutations, disreputable sleaze and eye-popping oddities that have slipped through the cracks of horror history.

Every title remains secret until showtime. Come for one day or sacrifice yourself to the entire weekend.

Films will screen at 2:00pm, 4:15pm, 6:30pm and 9pm on Sunday 1st November. Weekend passes and day tickets for Saturday the 31st also available.

Costumes highly encouraged.

Artwork by Jordan McLaughlin

Certificate: 18

Sunday 1/11

Bar 2pm

Film 2:30pm

Digital

Book here

Poster for CAMP - A SHORT FILM SHOWCASE

CAMP - A SHORT FILM SHOWCASE

THE NICKEL teams up with cyberfemme studio EVERYONE IS A GIRL for a showcase of short films centred on the theme of CAMP, accompanied with readings.

The Nickel Cinema’s regular roster of B-movies, softcores, and underrated gems has begun to shed some buttery spotlight on underrepresented cinematic traditions. At EIAG, we make collaborative projects about the feminine, the seductive, the virtual, and the covert. For this CAMP showcase, we are joining forces to present films from our community that are not afraid to play, deceive, and perform. Join us for a night of London’s most sparkliest, performative, abject, delicious, and scandalicious emerging cinema.

Programme of films to be announced.

Certificate: 18