Paramount Theatre Gets Spooky for Panic at the Paramount

Bring the whole family! Austin-made horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 screens this Halloween season as part of Panic at the Paramount, the Paramount Theatre's annual season of scary classics.

Austin may still feel like it's about to spontaneously combust, but Halloween is still just around the corner. So even if the weather isn't getting you in the mood, the Paramount Theatre is getting ready to shake those bones with their annual tricks and treats, Panic at the Paramount.

The two-week celebration of scary cinema comes loaded with double bills, lost classics, and even a family favorite. The mini-season kicks off Oct. 15 with a double feature of scary movies about going to the movies, before wrapping up on Oct. 28 with another double (including a mystery secret screening) from filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.

Tickets are available now at austintheatre.org. Now here's the fun and fearful lineup ...

Oct. 15: Theatre Double Feature

7pm: Demons Italian horror maestro Lamberto Bava goes berserk with one of the most utterly baffling and mindbogglingly gory films of the era, as the audience for a secret screening faces the hordes of the bottomless pit.

8:45pm: Popcorn Terror in the aisles part two, in the only feature from director Mark Herrier (better known as Billy from the Porky's movies), working from a script by Alan Ormsby (Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things), a slasher-style remake of The Phantom of the Opera set in a film festival.

Oct. 17: Apartment Double Feature

7pm: Rosemary's Baby Paramount+ may be giving us a prequel this Sept. 27 with Apartment 7A, but it's hard to imagine it can come close to Roman Polanski's original tale of the neighbors from Hell, starring Mia Farrow as a woman who really needs to set boundaries with the folks next door.

9:30pm: Candyman British filmmaker Bernard Rose took a short story by British horror writer Clive Barker, transferred it from Britain to the projects of Chicago's Cabrini-Green neighborhood, and made one of the all-time masterpieces of American urban Gothic. Tony Todd's performance as the hook-handed killer plays with your emotions, weaving from sympathy to fear.

Oct. 19: The Fun Ones Marathon

Two double bills celebrating the point in a beloved franchise when they changed from flat-out horror to something funnier, weirder, and wilder.

The marathon kicks off at 2pm with Halloween III: Season of the Witch, followed at 3:50pm with the hilarious The Return of the Living Dead.

Come back for round two at 7pm, starting with the film that turned Freddy Krueger into a pun-happy practical joker, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and wrap up at 8:50pm with the splatter comedy of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, in which director Tobe Hooper got to show his funny side.

Feeling bold? If you attend both double bills, you get a $5 discount on your combined ticket.

Oct. 20: Family Film / Hyperreal Double Feature

3:30pm The Nightmare Before Christmas: What's this? Blur the lines between scary season and the season of giving with Henry Selick and Tim Burton's glorious stop-motion musical.

7pm Hyperreal Double Feature: Horror and high camp mix, courtesy of Hyperreal Film Club, as Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep take on plastic surgery culture in the gut-busting Death Becomes Her, followed at 9pm by high school homicide in 1999's Jawbreaker.

Oct. 28: Robert Rodriguez

Just in time for sunset, break out your best vampire-killing kit for From Dusk Till Dawn at 7pm, followed at 9:30pm by a mystery second feature. But what will it be? Predators? Alita: Battle Angel? Shorts??? You'll have to be there to find out.