THE MONSTROUS-FEMININE: Rosemary’s Baby (1968) + Carrie (1976)

“Rosemary’s Baby is one of horror cinema’s all-time slow burns, drawing viewers gradually into entertaining the possibility that the movie’s series of strange coincidences and accumulating sense of dread are only subjective representations of Rosemary’s unraveling mental state.” — Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

One of the most important movies of my life. It’s one of the two films, the other being Robert Altman’s Nashville, that made me want to be a critic. And that’s because Carrie did more than thrill, frighten, and captivate me; it sent a volt charge through my system that rewired my imagination, showing me everything that movies could be. — Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

SYNOPSIS

Inspired by film scholar Barbara Creed’s influential concept of the Monstrous-Feminine, which examines how horror cinema constructs the female body (particularly sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood) as a site of fear and abjection, we present a very special 35mm Fright Night double-feature pairing two landmark horror films centered on women’s experiences.

ROSEMARY’S BABY (dir. Roman Polanski, 1968)

Roman Polanski’s masterful adaptation of Ira Levin’s bestselling novel advanced the modern horror template inaugurated by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, relocating the genre’s greatest terrors from Gothic castles and supernatural monsters to the intimate spaces of marriage, pregnancy, and domestic life. Mia Farrow delivers a career-defining performance as Rosemary Woodhouse, a young wife whose move into an elegant Manhattan apartment gives way to mounting paranoia as she begins to suspect that her husband, neighbors, and even her own body are no longer her own. A landmark of reproductive horror that exemplifies the concerns later theorized by Barbara Creed as the “Monstrous-Feminine,” Polanski relies on atmosphere, suggestion, and creeping uncertainty rather than explicit shocks, crafting one of the genre’s most influential tales of paranoia, conspiracy, and betrayal.

Format: 35mm

Print Note: Rosemary’s Baby will screen in a gorgeous low-fade 35mm print, courtesy of Exhumed Films.

CARRIE (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)

Brian De Palma’s breakthrough adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel fuses supernatural horror with an achingly sympathetic portrait of adolescent loneliness and humiliation. Sissy Spacek is revelatory as Carrie White, a painfully shy high school outcast whose first menstruation coincides with the emergence of terrifying telekinetic powers, culminating in one of cinema’s most unforgettable acts of retribution. A canonical text in Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine, which analyzes the film at length, Carrie locates its horror in the anxieties surrounding menstruation, female puberty, sexuality, and religious repression while never losing sight of the vulnerable young woman at its center. Balancing operatic visual style with genuine pathos, De Palma transfigures Stephen King’s Cinderella-inspired tragedy into one of the defining American horror films of the 1970s.

Format: 35mm

Print Note: Carrie will screen in a stunning 35mm Fuji print, courtesy of Exhumed Films.

SCHEDULE

Introduction / Trailers: 7:15 PM

Rosemary’s Baby (1968): 7:30 PM

Intermission (15 minutes): 9:45 PM

Carrie (1976): 10:00 PM

End of Show: 11:40 PM

TICKETS

Adults: $22

Senior/Student/Military/Veteran: $19

Members: $16

Designer/Director/Visionary Members: Free