Spooky season is almost upon us, and you know what that means. It's time for horror movie fans to gather en masse at Cineworld and celebrate the re-release of some spine-tingling classics on the big screen.
From stealth alien invasions to bloodsucking, lovesick vampires, a gaggle of loveably fiendish witches to hordes of invasive phantoms, we've got horror fans of every stripe covered at Cineworld this Halloween.
What's even better is that each movie is being released in a lustrous new 4K version, meaning that the terror will look and sound better than ever before.
Scroll down to discover what's on and when. Will you be watching all of them? It may be time to start clearing some space in the diary...
1. Bram Stoker's Dracula 4K restoration (released October 10)
Dracula has been treated to innumerable big-screen iterations, but he was never as swooningly handsome as he was in Francis Ford Coppola's blood-curdling romantic horror.
Working with Coppola, the ever-versatile Gary Oldman reimagines Bram Stoker's groundbreaking creation as a lonely creature of the night crying out into the void for his lost love. The quest for Dracula to be reunited with his deceased Elisabeta, now seemingly reborn as Mina (Winona Ryder), is a journey marked with gore, hallucinatory visuals and a raft of scene-chewing performances.
Coppola dismissed the notion of using any CGI effects, instead relying entirely on sets, optical illusions, and practical costumes and creature designs. The end result is a horror movie with tangible practicality and an oppressive atmosphere, adorned by Eiko Ishioka's striking, Oscar-winning costumes and a churning Gothic score from Wojciech Kilar.
Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant and Sadie Frost round out the cast. How can you possibly resist such a beautiful nightmare in its restored 4K iteration?
Click here to book your tickets for Bram Stoker's Dracula.
2. The Lost Boys 35th anniversary 4K restoration (released October 17)
Looking for an altogether different kind of vampire movie? Then opt for the late Joel Schumacher's rebellious, quintessentially eighties and endlessly quotable horror-comedy, which made a star out of a young Kiefer Sutherland.
The Lost Boys re-imagines the typical bloodsucker as a leather-clad, motorbike-driving, rock-loving bad boy. Said group is spearheaded by Sutherland's insidious and creepy David who has designs on young Sam Myerson (Corey Haim), newly arrived with his brother Michael (Jason Patric) and mother Lucy (Dianne Weist) in the California town of Santa Clara.
With its dynamic soundtrack (INXS, Echo and the Bunnymen and more), smoke-and-neon visuals and timeless lines ("Do you like worms, Michael?"), The Lost Boys still sports a singular character and sense of attitude.
Why hang out in castles when you can form a vampire den under a boardwalk? Such witty reinventions of vampire lore have helped keep The Lost Boys fresh and invigorating after all these years. Just imagine how good it will look and sound in its 4K presentation.
Click here to book your tickets for The Lost Boys.
3. Poltergeist 40th anniversary 4K restoration (released October 24)
"They're heeereeee..." Haunted house movies don't come more rollickingly entertaining than this classic collaboration between Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and popcorn maestro Steven Spielberg.
Opinions continue to differ as to who, in fact, directed Poltergeist. But the power of the end result can't be denied. When the unsuspecting Freeling family notice things starting to go awry in their pre-fab American suburban house, they cannot begin to imagine the terror that will ensue. And it's the angelic young daughter Carol-Anne (the late Heather Rourke) who unlocks the power of the supernatural activity via the family's TV set.
That's just one of the unforgettable moments in this landmark chiller, one that's graced by an Oscar-nominated score from Jerry Goldsmith that vacillates between balletic innocence and flat-out terror. Goldsmith's score gains added traction and resonance in the film's new 4K presentation, as does the film's inventive cinematography and production design that turns an ordinary home into a veritable house of horrors.
Click here to book your tickets for Poltergeist.
4. The Thing 40th anniversary 4K restoration (released October 31)
John Carpenter's paranoid and harrowing sci-fi horror was trounced by Steven Spielberg's E.T. upon its initial release. Critics derided Carpenter's movie as too grotesque, too bleak and too cynical for mainstream consumption, but time has been kind to The Thing, which is now regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made.
The Thing is that rarest of beasts: a superior remake (of 1951's The Thing from Another World), and a movie that hews closely to its source material (John W. Campbell's novella Who Goes There?) Carpenter brings the claustrophobic horror of Halloween to bear on an isolated Antarctic research base that is besieged by a shape-shifting alien organism, one that can imitate any human or animal it comes into contact with.
This includes Kurt Russell's impressively hirsute helicopter pilot Macready; Russell leads a strong cast that also includes Keith David and Wilford Brimley, all of whom convince as team members who begin to turn against one another.
The Thing triumphs on two levels: as an implicit suspense vehicle and an explosively nasty body horror extravaganza that gives full rein to Rob Bottin's outlandishly grisly make-up effects. (These are set to look even more wonderfully horrible and slimy in the new 4K print.)
For once, the reveal of the monster is as frightening as the moments where the creature is kept off-screen, exposing man's physical and psychological vulnerability at the same time as it questions our place in the universe.
Click here to book your tickets for The Thing.
How will you be scaring yourselves senseless at Cineworld this Halloween? Don't forget that with a Cineworld Unlimited card, you can watch all these masterpieces and more, from just £9.99 a month.
Find out more about Unlimited in the following video and sign up here.
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