Graveyard Shift: CAST A DEADLY SPELL

Welcome to the Graveyard Shift — where night owls come together to enjoy some of the best horror movies ever made. From the classics to unknown gems, every month the Alamo Drafthouse will pick out a favorite from the vault for your enjoyment. The Graveyard Shift isn’t just a simple screening, though — it’s an event. Once a month we’ll bring you games, giveaways and surprises of all shapes and sizes. If you’re a horror fan living in Houston, the third Saturday of the month is reserved for the Graveyard Shift.

This month: Special free screening of Cast A Deadly Spell (1991)

This month, the Graveyard Shift is taking you back in time to 1991 — a time before digital projectors, DVDs or the ability to watch a postage stamp-sized version of a movie on your cell phone. That’s right, we’re talking about the age of VHS!

Martin Campbell has been a very busy man over the last 20 years. While his big screen adaptation of Green Lantern may have fizzled out at the box office, you can forgive him that misfire. He did, after all, revamp and revitalize for modern audiences both Zorro (The Mask of Zorro) and James Bond twice over (GoldenEye and Casino Royale). But before he was a go-to guy for action spectaculars, Campbell directed one of the best films you’ve never seen.

A made-for-television movie produced by HBO, Cast A Deadly Spell is a modestly budgeted, impressively produced horror noir set in the ‘40s. Fred Ward stars as H.P. Lovecraft, a hard-boiled detective who lives in a world full of magic. From vampires to werewolves to gremlins, the LA that Lovecraft works out of is running rampant with the supernatural. Worse than the things that go bump in the night, though, are the mobsters trying to raise Cthulhu and his legion of elder gods, a race of monsters so nasty they’ll devour the Earth as an appetizer. Julianne Moore and Clancy Brown co-star in this little seen but not quite forgotten classic.

Since the movie has never been released on DVD and a 35mm print is almost certainly non-existent, we’re screening the film the only way possible — straight from a VCR. Celebrate the format that first introduced movie fans to the concept of affordably priced movie collecting with this special screening. Oh, and as an added bonus, HBO has given us permission to screen the film absolutely for free!

We’ll have the usual assortment of games and giveaways. Show up early, though, because since you can only pick up your tickets at the box office, this screening is first come, first served.