Stanley Library Calendar: October 2020

A genetically engineered, shape-shifting creature with extraterrestrial intelligence adopts the form of a beautiful woman to mate with humans and unleash a brood of offspring that will destroy mankind. A team of experts must band together to stop her--it--from accomplishing its diabolical mission.

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR relegated its intergalactic grudge match to Antarctica, keeping most of humankind gleefully ignorant. This time around, though, the destruction takes place in suburban America, and those who have been waiting for it finally get to witness facehuggers, alien hybrids, and the dreadlocked Predator wreak some homeland havoc. Ex-con Dallas (Steven Pasquale), Iraq War vet Kelly (Reiko Aylesworth), pizza delivery boy Ricky (Johnny Lewis), high school heartthrob Jesse (Kristen Hager), and sheriff Morales (John Ortiz) have their own separate encounters with the creatures.

The invisible creature from another world is back - but this time seeking out heat and conflict - is drawn to the gang-ruled and ravaged city of Los Angeles, 1997. The detective-lieutenant and his police force set out to capture this brutal murderer, ignoring the warnings from a mysterious government agent to stay away.

A group of hardened killers are hunted on an alien planet in producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimród Antal's entry into the popular sci-fi action franchise. Mercenaries, murderers, gangsters, and convicts, they were the most feared men on Earth. But now they're a long way from home, and when the predators become the prey, fearless mercenary Royce (Adrien Brody) prepares for the fight of his life. And he's not alone, because Mexican gangster Cuchillo (Danny Trejo), Israeli Defense Forces veteran Isabelle (Alice Braga), notorious mass murderer Stans (Walton Goggins), Russian Special Forces operative Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov), RUF death squad member Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), and sword-wielding Yakuza Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien) are all armed to the teeth, and out for blood. The odd man out is Edwin (Topher Grace), a once-prominent physician whose career came to an end following a big scandal. When the motley crew encounters Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a resourceful human who has somehow managed to survive on the alien's hunting grounds for some time, they prepare to take the ultimate stand against the most powerful Predators yet.

A hard-drinking policeman and a young, by-the-books detective team up to protect a sleepy Irish fishing village from tentacled alien invaders, and discover an unusual means of making the locals unappetizing in this spirited horror comedy. Erin Island is a tight-knit community where the citizens earn their living from the sea. Located just off Ireland's coast, it's the kind of place where every face is familiar. So when local fishermen begin vanishing without a trace, and whale carcasses begin appearing on the shoreline, boozy cop Ciarán O'Shea (Richard Coyle) decides it's time to investigate. With the help of Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley), a no-nonsense detective from the mainland, O'Shea realizes that something sinister lurks in the area waters, and it seems to be growing stronger. Their suspicions are confirmed when a lobster fisherman returns to shore with a tentacled creature of unknown origins caught in a trap. Upon learning that the predatory extraterrestrials have a particular aversion to alcohol, everyone, including tea-totaling Detective Nolan, attempt to get as hammered as humanly possible while waging war against the strange invaders.

Six courageous young women who venture down a deep, deep cavern in the Appalachian Mountain range. They are expert rafters and rock climbers--particularly the leader, Juno (Natalie Mendoza), and Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), who is still getting over the death of her husband and daughter the year before. Any healing and bonding is scuttled fast, however, once a cave-in cuts off their return route, forcing them deeper down into the darkness, their flashlight batteries dwindling with every wasted minute. The horror builds, the passageways get tighter and tighter, and then Sarah thinks she have seen something moving in the distance, something that looks almost human....To give away any more would be a crime, but let's just say horror film lovers should find plenty to love here: there's gallons of gore, jump-in-your-seat shocks, and sly references to other films. The women characters are strongly etched, and excellent editing makes it possible to always know what's happening to whom, even as the flashlights are going out, the darkness is moving in, and the unholy screams are echoing off the cavern walls.

After a virus turns most people into zombies, the world's surviving humans remain locked in an ongoing battle against the hungry undead. Four survivors -- Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and his cohorts Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) -- abide by a list of survival rules and zombie-killing strategies as they make their way toward a rumored safe haven in Los Angeles.

Young entrepreneurs Sean (Emile Hirsch) and Ben (Max Minghella) meet stranded travelers Natalie (Olivia Thirlby) and Anne (Rachael Taylor) at a hot Moscow nightclub. Their whole world changes in an instant when an alien attack devastates the city and everything goes dark. Joined by a Swedish businessman (Joel Kinnaman), the youths emerge from hiding days later and must somehow fight back against a nearly invisible enemy that could find and disintegrate them at any moment.

Unable to accept the fact that her daughter is dying, Rose (Radha Mitchell) decides to take the girl to a faith healer. On the way, the pair drive through a portal in reality, leading to an eerie town called Silent Hill. The town is surrounded by a potent darkness, and the human survivors fight a losing battle against it.

Under cover of night, vampires engage in an age-old battle with their sworn enemies, the Lycans, a clan of violent werewolves. Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a vampire orphaned in the wake of a bloody Lycan attack, works for the vampire clan as a trained killer. When the Lycans take a mysterious interest in Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman), an exceptional mortal doctor, Selene struggles to save him from Lucian (Michael Sheen), a ruthless Lycan leader hellbent on ending the vampire bloodline

After a meteor strike releases an amoeba into the atmosphere, mutations and extreme violence take place, so several friends have to battle across Los Angeles to make it to safety.

In the early part of the 21st century, an unknown deadly virus is spreading among the population. The planet becomes infested with a new threat unlike any other The Undead. Three compelling video diaries chart the beginning of the plague through the last days of the apocalypse. In the first, a documentary film crew traveling the countryside becomes caught in the outbreak and are forced to survive at all costs. In the second, a husband and wife flee London and meet a mysterious hitchhiker, scavenging the remnants of dead towns where shadows lurk at every turn. In the third, a group of survivors escape the virus, making their way to a farm for refuge, only to find themselves attacked by the creatures who now rule the night.

Based on the popular video game, Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez star as the leaders of a commando team who must break into "the hive," a vast underground genetics laboratory operated by the powerful Umbrella Corporation. There, a deadly virus has been unleashed, killing the lab's personnel and resurrecting them as the evil Un-dead. The team has just three hours to shut down the lab's supercomputer and close the facility before the virus threatens to overrun the Earth.

Psychologist Peter Bower's life is thrown into turmoil when he discovers that the patients he has been seeing are ghosts. Risking his own sanity, Peter delves into his past to uncover a terrifying secret which only he can put right.

This time, the Broken Lizard troupe--Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske--send up two genres at once, combining the spring break romp with the gory slasher picture. It's spring break on Pleasure Island, Costa Rica, and bikini-clad revelers have just landed to spend the next week partying their days and nights away. There's Dave (Soter), the drug-wielding DJ; Putman (Chandrasekhar), the ambiguously accented tennis instructor; Juan (Lemme), the diving guru; Sam (Stolhanske), the Fun Sheriff; Lars (Heffernan), the incredibly gifted masseur; and Coconut Pete (Bill Paxton), the flaky island guru. Then there is Jenny (Brittany Daniel), the gorgeous aerobics instructor, and newcomer Penelope (Jordan Ladd), who falls under the spell of Juan. Unfortunately, someone else has arrived on the island with a machete and a severe dislike for several of the camp's residents. As the blood begins to flow, and flow, and keep flowing, everyone becomes a suspect, until no one can trust anyone else.

Horror fiction is as popular now as it was when Edgar Allen Poe reinvented the gothic genre in the 1840s, and in the late twentieth century Stephen King is the most read American author ever. This anthology presents classic and contemporary accounts of modern gothic horror writing from Edgar Allen Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch, Stephen King, Barker and many other authors, as well as essays from current literary scholars, providing an essential guide to the genre and the variety of approaches possible when discussing the literature of terror.

Investigating the popularity of the low-budget tradition, Carol Clover looks in particular at slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Although such movies have been traditionally understood as offering only sadistic pleasures to their mostly male audiences, Clover demonstrates that they align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the females tormented―notably the slasher movie's "final girls"―as they endure fear and degradation before rising to save themselves. The lesson was not lost on the mainstream industry, which was soon turning out the formula in well-made thrillers.

An all original anthology from some of todays hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories of monster's from the monster's point of view. In most stories we get the perspective of the hero, the ordinary, the everyman, but we are all the hero of our own tale, and so it must be true for legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein's monster and the Wicked Witch of the West. From our point of view, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won't see themselves in the same light, and their point of view is what concerns us in these tales. Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing...these are the subjects of The Monster's Corner.

From vampire apocalypses, shark attacks, witches, and ghosts, to murderous dolls bent on revenge, horror has been part of the American cinematic imagination for almost as long as pictures have moved on screens. But why do they captivate us so? What is the drive to be frightened, and why is it so perennially popular? Why Horror Seduces addresses these questions through evolutionary social sciences.

In December 1975, George and Kathy Lutz along with their three children move into an elegant Long Island house. What they don't know is that the house was the site of a horrific mass murder a year before. They decide to keep the house and attempt to keep the horror in the past, but are now haunted by a murderous presence. This is until, George starts to behave weirdly and their daughter, Chelsea starts to see people. What follows is 28 days of sheer, unbridled terror for the family with demonic visions of the dead.

At a carnival in Germany, Francis (Friedrich Feher) and his friend Alan (Rudolf Lettinger) encounter the crazed Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss). The men see Caligari showing off his somnambulist, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a hypnotized man who the doctor claims can see into the future. Shockingly, Cesare then predicts Alan's death, and by morning his chilling prophecy has come true -- making Cesare the prime suspect. However, is Cesare guilty, or is the doctor controlling him?

Jaws is a 1974 novel by American writer Peter Benchley. It tells the story of a great white shark that preys upon a small resort town and the voyage of three men trying to kill it. The novel grew out of Benchley's interest in shark attacks after he learned about the exploits of shark fisherman Frank Mundus in 1964.

In this highly influential silent horror film, the mysterious Count Orlok (Max Schreck) summons Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen (Greta Schroeder). After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok's servant, Knock (Alexander Granach), prepares for his master to arrive at his new home.

On a wild and rain-swept late-November evening, somewhere at an empty stretch of road outside Ohio's merry Denton, blissfully-affianced, prudish, boringly-innocent young pair Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon) find themselves stranded on their way to visit an ex-tutor. Instead, the couple will inadvertently unearth the cross-dressing Dr. Frank-N-Furter's (Tim Curry's) spooky lair of inexhaustible oddities, just in time to partake in the out-of-this-world mad scientist's proud unveiling of his latest, delightfully extravagant, most daring creation: the ultimate male and the perfect sex symbol: the flaxen-haired Rocky Horror (Peter Hinwood).

Amy (Jena Malone), Stacy (Laura Ramsey), Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and Eric (Shawn Ashmore) look for fun during a sunny holiday in Mexico, but they get much more than that after visiting an archaeological dig in the jungle. Carnivorous vines try to ensnare the friends in their tendrils, forcing the group to fight for survival.

Though Kevin (James McAvoy) has evidenced 23 personalities to his trusted psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley), there remains one still submerged who is set to materialize and dominate all of the others. Compelled to abduct three teenage girls led by the willful, observant Casey, Kevin reaches a war for survival among all of those contained within him -- as well as everyone around him -- as the walls between his compartments shatter.