After Dark Presents the Monster Mash: Hidden Gem Midnight Movies to Watch This October

From meat-packing hillbillies to vampires with office jobs, these throwback cult films redefine the killer — just in time for Halloween.

Welcome to IndieWire After Dark, where we pick a new theme for our midnight movie programming every month!

Join us Friday nights at 9:30 p.m. ET to explore the best in fringe films — available at any hour in the streaming age.

Whether you’re working in the lab late one night or going to your favorite repertory theater after hours, now’s the time to do the Midnight Movie Monster Mash. This October, we’re honoring the Halloween season with a carousel of killers so unusual their beastly mugs would make Lon Chaney quake — and he’s been dead for 100 years.

Ancient beasts predate humans, and monsters have always stalked our campfire stories. But in cinema, the monster movie has mutated into an uncontainable genre behemoth all its own. From B-movie creature features to chilling portraits of serial killers, the terrors of the big screen we choose to call “monsters” are as colorful and varied as the doors a certain Pixar flick would have them walk through.

A multi-headed archetype that encompasses a sprawling taxonomy of characters, monsters can be just as hard for audiences to classify as they are for victims to escape. Any human antagonist — but particularly those in horror — can be labeled a metaphoric monster if they’re evil enough. Hannibal Lecter? Monster. Annie Wilkes? Monster. Ryan Murphy’s true crime Netflix anthology? That’s “Monster,” but same idea.

With Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, Wolf-Man, and more staple characters in its menacing menagerie, Universal Studios cornered the American market on so-called “classic” monster movies decades ago. But that didn’t stop the booming world of Kaiju from exploring a slew of misunderstood entities on its own — setting in motion the global rise of Godzilla and more skyscraper-shaking giants. Those mammoth movie stars would eventually cross paths with Universal likenesses in films such as 1965’s “Frankenstein vs. Baragon.” (It should perhaps go without saying that Boris Karloff was not involved in that effort.)

To complicate matters further, plenty of filmmakers toy with perspective to show us just how wrong we can be when naming something or someone a so-called “monstrosity.” Just look at Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance.” It’s one of the best films of the year and yet hugely divisive — pairing body horror with a deeply tragic portrait of one woman’s unfathomable suffering. Is a monster anything or anyone that disgusts us? Or is it anyone who would label another’s pain “disgusting”?

Narrowing down such an enormous field to four films for just four Fridays in October 2024 was tantamount to torture. (Somehow there’s no Rick Backer on here?!) Still, when it came time to put bolts in necks, the name of the game was the same as always: gut(s). The following focuses on lightning-in-a-bottle monsters that have peers in other places — but who broke through their own cinematic cages in a uniquely midnight manner with these films.

Stay tuned for a month that will gift us not just some especially brutal cannibal hillbillies and a pair of quietly lovable fist-fighting colossi but also an interview with a genre-favorite final guy and “Bloodsucking Bastards” star Fran Kranz. Plus, we’re giving you an excuse to eat up every last second of director Mark Herrier’s “Popcorn”: a 1991 slasher spoof so good, it’s almost scary we haven’t slain it yet.

IndieWire After Dark publishes new midnight movie and cult film recommendations (that’s THE BAIT)… and our spoiler-filled reactions to them (that’s THE BITE)… every Friday at 9:30 p.m. ET.

Happy Halloween! Here’s what’s ALIIIIIIIIVEEE in October 2024:

“The War of the Gargantuas” (1966)

Directed by: Ishirō Honda
After Dark on Friday, October 4

Technically a loose sequel to the aforementioned “Frankenstein vs. Baragon,” writer/director Ishirō Honda’s 1966 monster movie follows up his earlier film with the story of two ape-like humanoids born of Frankenstein’s monster’s genetic material. (If you watch the English dub that is… the English subtitled version swaps every instance of “Frankenstein” for “Gargantua.”) The brown, land-dwelling Sanda faces off with the green, semiaquatic Gaira after he learns his estranged brother has been gobbling up the people of Tokyo. They’ll battle across the city in a story that’s as quietly melancholy as it is a recommendation of mass destruction depicted through miniatures.

“Motel Hell” (1980)

Directed by: Kevin Connor
After Dark on Friday, October 11

Starring Rory Calhoun and Nancy Parsons as an especially screwed-up sibling duo, 1980’s gory “Motel Hell” is a wonderfully schlocky outing that’s best remembered for its infamous “field of heads” imagery. The horror comedy came earlier than 1989’s “Heathers,” but it takes the croquet nightmare scene we all know and love from that movie to the most ridiculous heights of hicksploitation. The tagline tells you all you need to know: “IT TAKES ALL KINDS OF CRITTERS TO MAKE FARMER VINCENT’S FRITTERS.”

“Bloodsucking Bastards” (2015)

Directed by: Brian James O’Connell
After Dark on Friday, October 18

Scream Factory gives “Cabin in the Woods” star Fran Kranz his own “Shaun of the Dead” with this ludicrously maligned vampire epic told by way of a more modern “Office Space.” Is it (A) Quietly hilarious? (B) One of Pedro Pascal’s sharpest performances? (C) Hiding some of horror’s silliest anti-capitalist beats since “The Belko Experiment”? or (D) All of the above? Take your time answering, but remember… you’re on the clock. The biological clock, meat sack.

“Popcorn” (1991)

Directed by: Mark Herrier
After Dark on Friday, October 25

Multiple films-within-a-film and an ambitious representation of midnight culture make this meta slasher a must-see monster movie with a brutal behind-the-scenes story. Set inside a theater, “Popcorn” follows a group of film students attempting to save the location by putting on a unique program in the soapy shadow of a… serial killer? Just go with it. Starring Jill Schoelen, among others, this cult classic is packed with nods to the likes of William Castle and feels miraculous to behold when you learn just how exhausting the production really was. The makeup alone is worth the watch.

Revisit IndieWire After Dark’s Back to School Night from September 2024:

• How Ant Timpson and Tim League Made a Midnight Masterclass With 26 Horror Shorts in “The ABCs of Death”
• “Saturday the 14th”: It’s Jason vs. Julie Corman in New World Pictures’ Horror Spoof from 1981
• Teen Josh Hartnett Leads a Stacked Cast When Aliens Invade High School in “The Faculty”
• Want an Even Worse “Carrie”? Sean Byrne’s “The Loved Ones” Belongs on Your Dance Card