Roxy Midnite, host of Violet Crown Cinema’s The Roxy Horror Picture Show Credit: Image courtesy of Violet Crown

You can’t talk about the history of horror hosts without women. The first ever anchor for late-night fear features on TV was Vampira, who became a legend after KABC-TV debuted The Vampira Show in 1954. While it seemed like every city had their own cartoonish curator of the macabre, no one matched Cassandra Petersen’s campy titillation as the hysterical host of Elvira’s Movie Macabre. In Austin, Terror Tuesday – the Alamo Drafthouse’s long-running deep dive into obscure and underground horror – was originally established in 2005 as Terror Thursday by Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched director Kier-La Janisse. Now a new face joins the scary sisterhood as Roxy Midnite opens the coffin lid on the Roxy Horror Picture Show, a new monthly series of horror classics at Violet Crown Cinema.

Who is Roxy Midnite? According to the self-described everyday maven of nightmares, she’s a “Southern Gothic chick who loves to sling horror flicks.” Influenced by those legendary hosts, plus Austin cable access’ own ghoulish advice show, Ask Livia Live, the new series is a nightmare come true for her. “If you’d asked me in the seventh grade what I wanted to do, I would have said, ‘Host a cable access horror TV show,’ and getting to do this has that exact same vibe.”

Horror hosts are undergoing a revival. Chicago-based Svengoolie has become America’s adorable uncle of fright with his Saturday shows on MeTV, while B-movie revivalist Joe Bob Briggs has reclaimed his exploitation crown via The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs on streaming service Shudder. Austin’s resident wizard-for-hire Saul Ravencraft regularly hosts his Vault of Horror at both Mr. Tramp’s and Doc’s Drive-In, and the shriek-masters at Garth Manor are now teaming up with We Luv Video as “The Horror Section” for weekly screenings every Thursday at the movie-loving nonprofit’s North Loop location. Meanwhile, Terror Tuesday still sends ’em running in fear up in the aisles of the Alamo.

Programmed by Violet Crown’s resident horror historian and One of Us podcast network co-founder Christopher Cox, the Roxy Horror Picture Show will run every third Sunday of the month, spotlighting true cult classics and modern favorites with Midnite providing what she called “a little bit of bloody good insight.” It begins with Demons, the movie-within-a-movie demonic possession shocker from three Italian horror legends: director Lamberto Bava (Macabre), producer Dario Argento (Suspiria), and a score by Claudio Simonetti (Profondo Rosso), “and as we all know, Italians do it better,” Midnite purred. “I’m as tickled as if you threw me into a vat of spiders to start the series with this.”

The Roxy Horror Picture Show

Oct. 15: Demons
Nov. 19: City of the Living Dead
Dec. 17: The Autopsy of Jane Doe
Violet Crown Cinema, 434 W. Second
austin.violetcrown.com

This article appears in October 13 • 2023.

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The Chronicle's first Culture Desk editor, Richard has reported on Austin's growing film production and appreciation scene for over a decade. A graduate of the universities of York, Stirling, and UT-Austin, a Rotten Tomatoes certified critic, and eight-time Best of Austin winner, he's currently at work on two books and a play.