The glorious gothic interior of the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds comes into its own with a spine-chilling series of film screenings, performances and events for Halloween week.
On the night itself (Monday 31 October), Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 masterpiece of psychological horror Don’t Look Now returns to the big screen. As a serial killer stalks the labyrinthine alleys and murky canals of Baroque Venice, a married couple (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) are shaken by visions of their late daughter and a terrifying premonition. Voted the greatest British movie of all time by a film industry panel, Don’t Look Now’s unsettling atmosphere and bold innovations in cinematic storytelling remain shockingly effective today.
Cat’s Eyes bring their gloriously sinister baroque pop to Leeds for the first time on Wednesday 2 November as part of Beacons Metro 2016. On their 2011 debut the duo of Faris Badwan (The Horrors) and operatically-trained singer and multi-instrumentalist Rachel Zeffira spliced saturnine post-punk with sixties girl group sounds. Their soundtrack for The Duke of Burgundy matched the film’s homage to cult seventies cinema with a lavish concoction of Morriconesque menace and Broadcast’s harpsichord-laden reverie. The first single from their latest critically-acclaimed album, Drag is a pitch-black psychodrama accompanied by its own video nasty, and their fully-fledged live show is bound to be an unforgettable experience.
Promising an all-out, nerve-shredding audio-visual onslaught, Dario Argento’s lurid Italian horror classic Suspiria is screened with the original soundtrack performed live by Goblin on Friday 4 November. Arriving at a prestigious dance academy in the Black Forest, an American ballet student stumbles on the supernatural background to a series of horrifying murders. Viciously violent and exquisitely shot, with influences as diverse as German Expressionism and Disney, Suspiria is a prime example of the gruesome, operatic ‘giallo’ thriller. Both film and soundtrack were hugely influential, and American horror maestro John Carpenter once admitted to Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti that he “stole” many of the Italians’ tricks.
Saturday 5 November brings a more wholesome seasonal event to the venue in the shape of Remember Remember: A Shadow Puppetry Workshop. Children and their families can discover the wonders of light and shadow by creating a variety of shadow puppets inspired by Bonfire Night.
Tickets for all events at the Howard Assembly Room are available from the Box Office on 0844 848 2727
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