QFT Announces A Ghostly October

The best way to celebrate Hallowe'en is to scare the absolute bejaysus out of ourselves, and facilitating that task this month will be the Queen's Film Theatre (QFT).

Apparitions: The Spectral Screen is a season of spooky cinematic greats playing from Saturday 22 to Thursday 27 October, as part of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen's.

The season features over 60 years of ghostly goings-on and opens on a lighter note on Saturday 22 October with the David Lean classic Blithe Spirit, in which Rex Harrison stars as a novelist who conjures up the ghost of his ex-wife, much to the anger of his current spouse.

On the same night, Stanley Kubrick's seminal The Shining sees Jack Nicholson give one of his best performances as portentuous writer Jack Torrance.

The following night (Sunday 23 October) sees the ghost story turned on its head in Carnival of Souls a uniquely creepy cult curio.

Emerging from the muddy water having crashed off a bridge, Mary starts to realise something is not quite right as she find herself experiencing bizarre hallucinations.

Named by Martin Scorsese as the scariest film of all time, The Haunting (Monday 24 October) evokes a creeping sense of terror as it follows a group of paranormal investigators who are staying in the house in a bid to uncover its secrets.

The Blair Witch Project on Tuesday 25 October is still scary 12 years on, while Guillermo del Toro's film The Devil's Backbone delivers from surreal shivers on Wednesday October 26.

The Apparitions season closes on Thursday 27 October with the original version of Ring, in which a grainy, enigmatic videotape has the power to kill people seven days after they watch it and a worried reporter has only a week to work it out.

Tickets for the Apparitions films at QFT are £6/£5/£4 and are available to book online at

www.queensfilmtheatre.com

(DW/BMcC)