Audio By Carbonatix
In the mood for a double dose of low-camp spine-tingle? The Denver Art Museum’s Monster Chiller Horror Theater series will unspool an unashamedly low-budget, high-entertainment-value double feature early next week, just in time for Halloween.
British director Arthur Crabtree’s Fiend Without a Face (1958) has a suitably ghoulish title, for the premise of this 74-minute cult favorite imagines a race of brain-shaped demons that kill human beings for food; the famously gruesome finale, made for the price of your popcorn, remains one of the most masterful sequences in the horror genre. If you haven’t had enough, stick around for the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960), an enduring quickie directed by B-movie king Roger Corman in just three days on a budget said to be $27,000. Spoofy and wry, it, too, features a man-eater: a greenhouse plant that’s always demanding “Feed me,” which drives its goofy owner into murder. The oft-noted bonus here is the appearance of a very young Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient who can’t wait to get into the chair. Remade, to lesser effect, in 1986.
The films will show Tuesday, October 26, beginning at 7 p.m., at the Starz FilmCenter in the Tivoli building on the Auraria campus. For information, call 720-913-0105
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