THE HAUNTING OF HEIGHTS THEATER
Set aside your killers, your monsters, and your outer space aliens, nothing is scarier, or more elusive, than ghosts. What can you even do with a ghost? You can't kill them, you can't run from them, and their motives seem at odds with any other adversary. For ghosts can bring terror and mayhem, but they can also be funny, romantic, melancholy... in short, ghosts capture the range of human emotion like no other creature in the world of cinematic horror. The Heights Theater celebrates this ectoplasmic star of the silver screen with five classic films that run the gamut from horror to romance, and everything in-between.
PORTRAIT OF JENNIE
Oct. 10, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
35MM PRESENTATION
When down-on-his-luck painter Eben (Joseph Cotten) meets a little girl in Central Park, her charm and fascinating clothing intrigue him. At home, he paints her portrait, one of his best works which later attracts the eye of an influential art dealer. Soon, he begins to see Jennie regularly, but she has now grown into a young woman (Jennifer Jones), whose daily experiences seem to have taken place decades earlier. Though not a scary film, Portrait of Jennie is a lush examination of death and the afterlife, a box-office failure in its day but since regarded as a classic fantasy.
35mm print courtesy Swank Motion Pictures.
DEAD OF NIGHT
Oct. 17, 2019, 7:30 p.m.
DIGITAL CINEMA PRESENTATION
This British "anthology film" features four ghost stories, ranging from the funny to the downright creepy. When an architect heads to a country cottage to consult the owner, he finds the assembled guests are all people who have come to him in various dreams. Though each segment is a thoroughly entertaining ghost story, perhaps the most famous involves the ventriloquist's dummy Hugo, whose evil drives the puppeteer (a brilliant Michael Redgrave) to madness and influenced horror films and TV shows from The Twilight Zone to Child's Play.
DCP courtesy Rialto Pictures.
