Events 2016
42nd Street 101 - Professor Gaz’s Complete History of 42nd Street
New York’s 42nd Street has forever been made famous by movie fans around the world as the home of the grindhouse. Every time we talk about rough exploitation films of the 70s and 80s, we conjure up images of brightly illuminated signs and seedy peepshows. Pickpockets and drug dealers operating underneath garish marquees advertising all night Kung-Fu triple bills. But what do we actually know about 42nd Street? This special talk will cover the history of New York’s most famous movie theatre location - how it started life as a glorious theatre district in the 1900s, its decline into a…
Polaris
performed by Michael Sabbaton
1920. In a Louisiana swamp, a man disturbed by recent events and too afraid to sleep begins to relive his nightmare. All around, there is a strange aurora of light. The man anxiously stares into the dark sky above and through the vapour-soaked trees the pole star, Polaris, winks; hideously striving to convey some strange message of the man’s ancient, ancestral past. Falling under the star’s hypnotic spell, he travels through dreams of twisted realities finally arriving at a threatened city in a strange, pre-historic, arctic land. Strange people, creatures and ‘alien gods’ reveal themselves as he man loses himself…
Pub Quiz
Abertoir’s famously disorganised pub quiz is back for another attempt to beat our clever audience with the usual batch of nightmarish questions. Now’s your chance to show you’re cleverer than Einstein, have more movie knowledge than IMDb, and can rattle off more director’s names than Jess Franco has pseudonyms!
Remembering The Deuce: A Candid Look at 42nd Street, by Steve Jones
Now that the original American grindhouse cinemas have closed and 42nd Street has been sanitized, all we have left of “the grindhouse experience” are photos, film clips, memorabilia, and a handful of accounts written by those who were there. For anyone who didn’t have the chance to visit a New York grindhouse it is probably hard to imagine what the grindhouses were like, but that background is partially what makes the idea of grindhouse cinema so alluring. One of the main problems with trying to capture “the grindhouse experience” now it that the first-hand descriptions that remain sound like their…
Sin Cities: From Sodom and Gomorrah to Las Vegas and Beyond
Grab your passport and dust off your time machine, as Abertoir regular Gavin Baddeley wants to take you on a journey. And few tour guides are better qualified to take you on the worst city breaks 4,000 years of history have to offer. In his unholy cross between Tripadvisor and the dodgiest urban planning lecture ever delivered, Gavin promises to take us to the sweaty core of cities so depraved, decadent, dangerous or downright wrong as to make New York's 42nd Street at its worst seem quaint and tranquil by comparison...
Stephen Thrower on Lucio Fulci
20 years on from his death, Lucio Fulci, director of much loved classics such as Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond and City of the Living Dead, still retains a reputation for sheer determination, controversy and love of outright gore, even though his films covered much more than just horror. Acclaimed writer Stephen Thrower, author of the uncoming re-issue of Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, presents a special talk looking back on the life and career of possibly one of the greatest Italian horror film directors ever, Lucio Fulci.
Tales of H. P. Lovecraft
performed by The Duke St Workshop & Laurence Harvey
The recent swelling of horror soundtrack releases in recent years has largely focused on – whilst still often the cult - the contemporary variety. Releases that contain a strong enough whiff of nostalgia to transform people back into late night cinema screenings and dubiously acquired video nasties of their childhood. However, Tales Of H.P. Lovecraft , the utterly unique LP by the Lancashire-based The Duke St Workshop and featured guest, British horror actor Laurence R Harvey (Human Centipede II & III/The Editor), looks further back, to explore and unearth the foundations that were laid for a great deal of contemporary…
The Beyond: The Composer's Cut
with live musical accompaniment by Fabio Frizzi and the F2F Band
Renowned film composer Fabio Frizzi and his band return to Aberystwyth with a very special performance to celebrate the memory of horror master Lucio Fulci, who died 20 years ago. 35 years after creating perhaps his most acclaimed score for The Beyond, Fabio Frizzi will be retracing his steps in order to realize one of the boldest projects in his life, a composer's cut. A new score for a cult classic: expanded, revitalized and realized through decades of added proficiency and mastery. The Frizzi 2 Fulci band will be performing live on stage in front of a full screening of…