BLOODSICK Release Party & 35mm Vampire Triple Feature: Fright Night (1985) + The Addiction (1995) + Vampyres (1974)

Sink your teeth into a blood-soaked celebration of the undead as we welcome bestselling, award-winning horror author (and Philly local!) Adam Cesare (Clown in a Cornfield) for the release of his latest novel, Bloodsick, from Union Square & Co.! Join us for an evening of fang-tastic festivities, book signings, and a triple dose of cinematic bloodsucking featuring three wildly different takes on the vampire mythos: Tom Holland’s irresistible ’80s horror-comedy Fright Night (1985), Abel Ferrara’s philosophical nightmare The Addiction (1995), and José Ramón Larraz’s deliriously erotic Vampyres (1974). With insatiable appetites, unholy desires, and plenty of bloodlust on the menu, we guarantee a bloody good time!

FRIGHT NIGHT (dir. Tom Holland, 1985)

Vampires invade the American suburbs in Tom Holland’s irresistible Fright Night, a wickedly entertaining fusion of Gothic horror, teenage comedy, and spectacularly gruesome practical effects. William Ragsdale stars as Charley Brewster, a horror-obsessed teenager convinced that his suave new neighbor Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) is a bloodthirsty vampire. When his warnings fall on deaf ears, Charley enlists the reluctant assistance of Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall), a washed-up horror movie host whose supposed expertise in the supernatural is suddenly put to the test. Holland gleefully updates the conventions of classic vampire cinema for the MTV generation, combining old-fashioned suspense and macabre humor with the creature effects wizardry of the 1980s horror boom. Bolstered by Sarandon’s seductive menace and McDowall’s endearing comic performance, Fright Night is a funny, frightening, and gloriously inventive horror-comedy that knows exactly when to bare its fangs.

Print Note: Fright Night will be projected from a rare low-fade 35mm print, courtesy of Exhumed Films.

THE ADDICTION (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1995)

Abel Ferrara reimagines the vampire film as a harrowing meditation on addiction, original sin, and humanity’s capacity for cruelty in this fiercely intelligent, black-and-white horror film. Lili Taylor stars as Kathleen Conklin, a New York University philosophy student whose intellectual certainties collapse after a mysterious woman (Annabella Sciorra) attacks her on a Manhattan street, leaving her with an insatiable craving for blood. Working from a screenplay by longtime collaborator Nicholas St. John, Ferrara draws unsettling connections between vampirism, chemical dependency, and historical atrocities, probing the uneasy relationship between victimhood and culpability. Shot in stark, expressionistic monochrome, The Addiction blurs philosophical inquiry and bodily compulsion, suggesting that the horrors of history continue to exert a corrosive influence upon the present. Featuring a memorably sinister Christopher Walken, Ferrara’s uncompromising nightmare is a provocative fusion of theological anguish, urban alienation, and existential horror.

Print Note: The Addiction will be projected from an archival 35mm print, courtesy of Anthology Film Archives.

VAMPYRES (dir. José Ramón Larraz, 1974)

Spanish filmmaker José Ramón Larraz brings a distinctly European sensibility to British Gothic horror in Vampyres, a feverishly erotic nightmare of bloodlust, sexual obsession, and supernatural menace. Marianne Morris and Anulka Dziubinska star as Fran and Miriam, two mysterious women who inhabit a secluded English country estate, luring unsuspecting motorists into their decadent world of seduction and slaughter. Eschewing traditional vampire mythology, Larraz combines the mist-shrouded landscapes and crumbling grandeur of Gothic horror with the sexual frankness and graphic violence of 1970s exploitation cinema. His fluid camerawork and disorienting shifts between dream and reality lend the proceedings a hypnotic intensity, while the languorous pacing makes its eruptions of brutality all the more startling. Sensuous, savage, and unapologetically transgressive, Vampyres is a striking entry in the lesbian vampire cycle and a quintessential example of European horror at its most uninhibited.

Print Note: Vampyres will be projected from a vintage Fuji print with some fading, courtesy of Exhumed Films.

WHAT IS BLOODSICK?

Follow the scent, feel the allure, and taste the blood in this thrilling and unforgettable vampire novel by the bestselling, award-winning author of Clown in a Cornfield.

“Deliciously smart and blissfully mean … an absolute blockbuster of a contemporary vampire novel. A page-turning, action-packed, bloody good time.” –Rachel Harrison, New York Times bestselling author of Play Nice and So Thirsty

A vampire awakens from a 300-year hibernation, bringing a plague of undeath to a working-class Massachusetts town. With the high school’s most notorious party house serving as ground zero for the infection, it isn’t long before the affliction spreads through the entire student body and beyond.

Ava, who’s hesitant to take the next step with her football star boyfriend, and Nick, Ava’s best friend who pines for more, must band together with an unlikely ally to fight a horde of their newly turned classmates. Bloodsick is a terrifying, character-driven novel where a hunger for blood mirrors the real-life body horror of being a hormonal American teenager.

Adam Cesare brings his signature wit and penchant for a bloody good time to this high-stakes action-packed vampire novel, sharpening the genre’s fangs in much the way he shepherded a new generation of slasher fans with his Clown in a Cornfield series.

Bloodsick is perfect for fans of The Lost Boys, Kalynn Bayron’s You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, and the body horror of Andrew Joseph White.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Cesare is a New Yorker who lives in Philadelphia. He studied English and film at Boston University.

He is the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Clown in a Cornfield series, the graphic novel Dead Mall, and several other novels and novellas including the cult hit Video Night. An avid fan of horror cinema, you can talk movies with him on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, and the rest of his socials.

SCHEDULE

More info coming soon!