It’s Halloween weekend, and few actors in cinematic history embody the spooky fun of the holiday better than Vincent Price, whose velvety voice and devilish smirk are as knowingly funny as they are unsettling. To celebrate this icon of the macabre, the Somerville Theatre on Friday welcomes the actor’s daughter, Victoria Price, to introduce a pair of her father’s favorite performances.
First up is William Castle’s gloriously perverse “House on Haunted Hill” (1958), in which Price plays a sinister millionaire who invites five strangers to spend the night in his allegedly haunted mansion. It’s followed by the lesser-screened gothic drama “Dragonwyck” (1946), which, while not a horror picture in the strictest sense of the word, is arguably the film in which Price cemented his villainous onscreen persona. The younger Price will be on hand between the film for a Q&A, sharing memories of her father and insights into the night’s features. If your only exposure to Vincent Price has been the spoken bridge to “Thriller,” consider this a perfect opportunity to fill the void.
On Halloween itself, the Kendall Square Cinema concludes its month-long Monster Madness series with the 1943 Universal production of “Phantom of the Opera,” in which Herbert Lom dons the mask and the beautiful Paris Opera House can be seen in glorious Technicolor. The Harvard Film Archive ’s Great Expectation series takes its exploration of post-war British cinema into eerie territory Saturday afternoon evening with two tales of murders and mayhem from 1948, Lance Comfort’s “Daughter of Darkness” and Daniel Birt’s “The Three Weird Sisters.” Also on Saturday night, the Somerville welcomes the Tesseracte Players back to its stage for a live shadowcast of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975). Even the Museum of Science gets in on the fun with Friday and Saturday night screenings of the cosmic horror favorite “Event Horizon” (1997) on the gigantic screen of the Mugar Omni Theater. And if you’re still not done celebrating, you can return to the Mugar on Sunday afternoon for a special Dia de los Muertos IMAX screening of the Pixar classic “Coco” (2017). For cinematic trick-or-treaters, there is no shortage of cinematic goodies.
In non-Halloween news, the programmers of IFFBoston return to the Brattle Theatre for round two of their annual Fall Focus series, with preview screenings of another baker’s dozen of the year’s most talked about films. Highlights this time around include “Rehearsals for a Revolution” (screening Friday), actress-turned-director Pegah Ahangarani’s essay film about growing up in post-revolution Iran; “Bitter Christmas” (on Sunday), the latest from beloved Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar; “Elsinore” (Monday), in which Andrew Scott delivers one of the most talked-about performances of the year as the late Shakespearean actor Ian Charleson; and Tony Gilroy’s closing night selection “Behemoth!” (Wednesday), starring Pedro Pascal as a renowned cellist at a crossroads. As always, Fall Focus is an essential primer as we enter prestige movie season; for the full schedule, be sure to refer to IFFBoston’s website.
Beginning Thursday, the Brattle kicks off a run of one of the most haunting and enigmatic independent films of all time, 1991’s “Begotten.” The feature debut of director E. Elias Mehridge is an expressionistic nightmare. To tell his dreamlike story of characters with names like “God Killing Himself” and “Flesh on Bone,” Mehridge shot on intentionally damaged and overexposed 16 mm film stock, then meticulously processed and reprocessed over the course of several years on a homemade optical printer. The resulting film looks like it was exhumed after being buried in a crypt for several centuries, at once out of time and vastly ahead of its own. After being unavailable for many years, the film has at last been restored, allowing a new generation to grapple with its mysteries.
Fall Focus doesn’t have a monopoly on exciting new releases; our local screens play host this week to a variety of under-the-radar premieres. On Sunday, the Somerville screens the noir comedy “Concessions” (2026), about a struggling independent cinema on its last day of operation, with director Mas Bouzidi and actor Jonathan Lorenzo Price in attendance for a post-film Q&A. On Wednesday, Arrow Street Arts hosts a very special screening of the music documentary “Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul” (2026), followed by a conversation between the late guitarist’s former managers Michael Lehman and Bert Holman. Lastly, on Thursday, the Boston Jewish Film Festival comes to the Brattle with the New England premiere of Jenny Lester’s tender coming-of-age story “Our Bodies and Other Shames” (2026), also featuring a Q&A with the filmmaker. All three films are well worth seeing in their own right, and seeing them with these special guests promises to be extraordinary.
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