The Colonial will be celebrating Halloween all month long this October. Our offerings run from the silly and delightful to scary and horrific. There is literally something for everyone this month. Halloween at the Home of the Blob is something you do not want to miss.
Young Frankenstein (1974)
One of the most beloved screen comedies ever made, Mel Brooks’s loving tribute to the Universal monster movies brilliantly resurrects the monsters (and the laughs) of Hollywood’s golden age. Gene Wilder stars as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, the reluctant grandson of Victor Frankenstein, who inherits his infamous family estate in Transylvania and soon finds himself tempted to continue the family’s forbidden experiments.
Friday, October 2nd at 7:15 PM
Coco (2017) – Hispanic Heritage Month Film
Pixar journeys into the Land of the Dead with this vibrant, deeply felt celebration of family, memory, and Mexico’s Día de Muertos traditions. Aspiring musician Miguel dreams of following in the footsteps of his idol Ernesto de la Cruz, despite his family’s generations-old prohibition against music, but an unexpected journey on the Day of the Dead brings him face-to-face with the ancestors (and secrets) that shaped his family.
Saturday, October 3rd
The Ring (2002)
Arriving amid the first wave of Hollywood’s fascination with Japanese horror, Gore Verbinski’s chilling remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu became a phenomenon in its own right and helped usher J-horror into the American mainstream. Naomi Watts stars as Seattle journalist Rachel Keller, whose investigation into the mysterious deaths of four teenagers leads to an urban legend surrounding a cursed videotape: anyone who watches it receives a phone call announcing that they have only seven days to live.
Saturday, October 3rd at 7:00 PM
Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)
One of the wildest science-fiction horror films ever produced in Japan, Hajime Satō’s Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell begins as a disaster movie before spiraling into a feverish nightmare of alien invasion, vampirism, and apocalyptic dread. After a passenger plane crashes on a remote island, the survivors (including a corrupt politician, an arms dealer, a psychiatrist, and a hijacker) find themselves trapped with a parasitic, Blob-like extraterrestrial life form that invades human hosts through grotesque forehead fissures and drains them of blood.
Saturday, October 3rd at 9:30 PM
HORROR IN THE SHADOWS: Cat People (1942) + I Walked With A Zombie (1943) + The Leopard Man (1943) – 16MM Event
In the wake of the commercial disappointment of Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons, RKO Pictures established a low-budget horror unit under producer Val Lewton, tasking him with creating inexpensive genre pictures that could compete with Universal’s monster films. Rather than relying on elaborate makeup effects or familiar monsters, Lewton and his collaborators, including director Jacques Tourneur, reimagined horror as a cinema of atmosphere, suggestion, and psychological unease. Working within severe budgetary constraints, they transformed shadows into nightmares, silence into suspense, and the unseen into the source of the genre’s deepest terrors.
Sunday, October 4th at 1:00 PM
Night of the Living Dead (1968) – 16MM Screening
In 1968, Pittsburgh-based industrial filmmaker George A. Romero set out to make a low-budget shocker and instead changed the course of independent horror cinema forever. Pushing the zombie out of Haitian folklore and into the heart of the American middle class, Night of the Living Dead follows a desperate group of strangers who barricade themselves inside a rural farmhouse as the dead inexplicably begin to rise.
Wednesday, October 7th at 7:15 PM
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) – “Her Haunted World” Series
Before Sunnydale and the Hellmouth, there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fran Rubel Kuzui’s irreverent 1992 horror comedy that first introduced audiences to the cheerleader destined to become a pop-culture icon. Kristy Swanson stars as Buffy Summers, a shopping-obsessed Los Angeles teenager whose comfortable world of basketball games, boyfriends, and mall excursions is upended when the mysterious Merrick (Donald Sutherland) informs her that she is the latest in a long line of chosen vampire slayers. Her newfound calling soon pits her against the centuries-old Lothos (Rutger Hauer) and his hilariously persistent henchman Amilyn (Paul Reubens), culminating in a senior dance unlike anything Hemery High had planned.
Thursday, October 8th at 7:30 PM
THE MONSTROUS-FEMININE: Rosemary’s Baby (1968) + Carrie (1976) – 35MM Double Feature
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.
Friday, October 9th at 7:15 PM
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – With Shadow Cast!
Equal parts glam-rock musical, gothic horror spoof, and midnight-movie phenomenon, Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show has spent five decades seducing audiences to abandon inhibition in favor of pure, joyous spectacle. When wholesome newlyweds Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) seek refuge in the castle of the flamboyant Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), they stumble into a delirious world of mad science, sexual liberation, and irresistible musical excess.
Saturday, October 10th at 10:00 PM
The Haunting (1963) – “Her Haunted World” Series
Robert Wise’s masterful adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House stands among the most elegant and unsettling haunted-house films ever made. Julie Harris stars as Eleanor Lance, a lonely young woman who joins a paranormal investigation at the sinister Hill House, where inexplicable disturbances gradually blur the line between supernatural menace and psychological collapse. Revisiting the aesthetic of suggestion he first honed while working with producer Val Lewton at RKO, Wise rejects graphic spectacle in favor of atmosphere, expressive black-and-white CinemaScope photography, uncanny sound design, and the power of the unseen.
Sunday, October 11th at 1:30 PM
Kwaidan (1964) – New 4K Restoration
Among the most visually astonishing horror films ever made, Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan adapts four supernatural tales drawn from the writings of Lafcadio Hearn into a dreamlike anthology unlike anything else in world cinema. From doomed romances and vengeful spirits to spectral musicians and otherworldly apparitions, each story unfolds within meticulously stylized environments that draw upon Kabuki theater, painted backdrops, and traditional Japanese art.
Sunday, October 11th at 5:00 PM
The Love Witch (2016) – “Her Haunted World” Series / 10th Anniversary
Writer-director Anna Biller conjures a ravishingly artificial world of sex, sorcery, and romantic obsession in this wicked feminist riff on the Technicolor melodramas and exploitation cinema of the 1960s. Samantha Robinson stars as Elaine, a glamorous modern-day witch who arrives in a small California town determined to find the perfect man, employing potions and spells to inspire an all-consuming devotion in her unsuspecting suitors…with increasingly disastrous results. Working as her own production designer, costume designer, and editor, Biller meticulously recreates the saturated colors, elaborate décor, and stylized performances of an earlier Hollywood while turning its conventions of feminine desire and male fantasy inside out.
Thursday, October 15th at 7:15 PM
Hocus Pocus (1993)
Three centuries after their execution in colonial Salem, the Sanderson Sisters return from the grave in Kenny Ortega’s irresistibly playful supernatural comedy…and have since become unlikely Halloween royalty themselves. Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy star as the trio of witches, accidentally resurrected by skeptical teenager Max Dennison on Halloween night, leaving Max, his younger sister Dani, and classmate Allison to stop them before they can secure their return for good.
Friday, October 16th at 7:30 PM
Exhumed Films 24 Hour Horror-thon – 35MM Marathon
The 24 Hour Horror-thon Part XIX will start at noon on Saturday and go straight through until noon on Sunday–or beyond! As in previous years, the lineup of films is kept secret; audience members will only find out what the features are as they unspool onto the screen. The show will be a combination of popular horror titles mixed with some really rare gems. Plus we’ll run tons of classic trailers, shorts, and other oddities, all projected from 35mm film. We will also have amazing prize giveaways, tons of merch for sale, and a bevy of spooky surprises!
Saturday, October 17th at 12:00 PM
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) w/ Live Organ Accompaniment by Brett Miller
Widely regarded as the foundational work of German Expressionist cinema, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari forever altered the visual language of horror by replacing physical reality with a world shaped by nightmare and madness. Werner Krauss stars as the mysterious Dr. Caligari, whose traveling carnival sideshow features the somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a sleepwalker seemingly capable of predicting the future…and perhaps committing murder.
Sunday, October 18th at 6:00PM
Practical Magic (1998) – Craft Cinema
Presented by The Colonial & Here & Now Crafts
Initially overlooked upon its release, Griffin Dunne’s enchanting adaptation of Alice Hoffman’s bestselling novel has since become a beloved Halloween cult classic. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman star as Sally and Gillian Owens, sisters descended from a long line of witches whose family is bound by a centuries-old curse that dooms the men they love. Blending romance, supernatural fantasy, comedy, and just a touch of spooky atmosphere, Practical Magic casts an irresistible spell through its celebration of sisterhood, found family, and feminine resilience.
Wednesday, October 21st at 7:15 PM
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s epochal horror classic forever changed the course of American genre cinema, establishing the template for the modern slasher film while remaining unmatched by the countless imitators that followed. On Halloween night in the quiet suburb of Haddonfield, Illinois, escaped mental patient Michael Myers returns home to stalk teenage babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.
Friday, October 23rd at 7:15 PM
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick and Tim Burton’s beloved holiday classic transports audiences to a world where every holiday has its own kingdom, and Halloween dreams of becoming Christmas. When Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, stumbles upon the wonders of Christmas, he hatches an ill-fated plan to take over the holiday himself, setting two worlds on a collision course of spooky delights and festive cheer.
Saturday, October 24th
The Innocents (1961) – “Her Haunted World” Series / 65th Anniversary
Reimagining Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw through a distinctly Freudian lens, Jack Clayton’s The Innocents remains one of the most elegant and genuinely unsettling ghost stories ever brought to the screen. Deborah Kerr stars as a sheltered governess who arrives at a remote country estate to care for two seemingly angelic children, only to become convinced that the house is haunted by malevolent spirits…or that something far more troubling may be taking shape within her own mind.
Sunday, October 25th at 5:00 PM
Nosferatu (1922) – Live Theatre Organ Accompaniment by Dennis James
One of the foundational nightmares of the cinema, F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula remains among the most haunting interpretations of the vampire myth ever committed to film. Max Schreck gives an unforgettable performance as Count Orlok, the cadaverous vampire whose journey from his remote Transylvanian castle brings pestilence, death, and an ever-lengthening shadow to the German town of Wisborg.
Sunday, October 25th
Pet Sematary (1989) – Book to Screen
Few Stephen King adaptations stare into the abyss as unflinchingly as Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary, a grimly effective tale of grief, mortality, and the terrible consequences of refusing to let go. Dale Midkiff stars as Louis Creed, a doctor who moves with his wife and children to rural Maine, where an ancient burial ground beyond the local pet cemetery possesses the inexplicable power to return the dead to life…though what comes back is never quite what was buried.
Thursday, October 29th at 7:15 PM
The Exorcist (1973) – 35MM Screening
Director William Friedkin’s most famous film transformed William Peter Blatty’s controversial bestseller, loosely inspired by a purported real-life exorcism case from the 1940s, into a cultural phenomenon that shocked audiences and, following the success of Rosemary’s Baby, further legitimized horror as a vehicle for Hollywood prestige. Ellen Burstyn stars as actress Chris MacNeil whose twelve-year-old daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), begins exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior, prompting a desperate search for answers that leads beyond medicine and psychiatry to the ancient rite of exorcism.
Saturday, October 31st at 1:30 PM
Phoenixville’s Halloween Bash
Get ready to do the Monster Mash and raise the dead at Phoenixville’s premier Halloween bash!
Hosted by Mayor Peter, this unforgettable night will take over the Colonial with special performances, immersive rooms, a costume contest, specialty drinks, and plenty of surprises lurking around every corner. Dance the night away from 8 PM to midnight as the theatre transforms for one wickedly fun Halloween celebration.
Don your best costume (they’re required!) and prepare for a night of tricks, treats, and things that go bump in the night.
Saturday, October 31st at 8:00 PM