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Thu, May 01, 2025
A scream is the same in every language.
Thursday, July 10, the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University will unleash a summer movie series presenting some of the finest international contributions to horror cinema over the past six decades.
Running through August 14, International Horror will spotlight films from countries revered for their suspense cinema, such as Italy and Japan, along with rarely screened treasures from locations including Sweden and France and a double feature of animated films from Chile and Czechoslovakia.
These movies are made for watching on the big screen, and horror is a genre that works best when it’s experienced with a crowd. To encourage group attendance among students staying on campus for the summer, admission to the series is free for all current Ohio State students.
Select screenings will be enhanced by introductions from Columbus film experts. And if you’d like to put a number on your tolerance for bloodletting, Wex Film/Video Curator and series programmer Chris Stults has rated each film on a “goreometer” of one to four.
As with the wildly popular summer program of international musicals that the multidisciplinary arts center screened last year, a series pass will be available this year to access all movies at a discounted price, and it comes with a Wex swag bag. A series checklist will be available to all to track individual attendance; anyone who sees every film will be eligible for a prize from the Wex and series sponsor Seventh Son Brewing. Seventh Son will also host a free launch party June 12 from 5 to 7 PM, where you can enjoy a beverage and learn more about the horror movie lineup from Wex curators.
Series passes are on sale now for $40 general admission, $32 for Wex members and adults 55 and over, and $24 for students. Single tickets are $10 general admission, $8 for members and adults 55 and over, $5 for non-OSU students with ID, and free for Ohio State students. A reduced parking fee of $2 is available with validation at the Ohio Union South and Arps garages. More information on parking is available at the ticket desk, and more details on the series and all Wex programming are available at wexarts.org.
The Orphanage, courtesy of Warner Bros.
Italy: Black Sunday(Mario Bava, 1960)Thu July 10 | 7 PMIntroduction by Hope Madden, author, filmmaker, and critic for Columbus Underground, Fox 28, and Maddwolf.com
Goreometer rating: 2 out of 4
The Gothically stylized debut film by Mario Bava changed the trajectory of horror movies in Italy and beyond! The iconic “Queen of All Scream Queens” Barbara Steele gives her signature performance as a 17th century witch who vows to get revenge on her tormentors as she’s condemned to death and makes good two centuries later. The lush beauty and lighting of Black Sunday have influenced everything from spaghetti westerns to A24 horror. (87 mins., DCP)
Great Britain and France: Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde + Baby Blood(Roy Ward Baker, 1972; Alain Robak, 1990)Sat July 12 | 7 PMDouble feature! Second film screens at 8:50 PM
Goreometer rating: 1 (Jekyll) and 4 (Baby) out of 4
From the legendary British Hammer horror studio comes one of the most original takes on the classic Jekyll and Hyde tale. The rarely screened Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde gender-bends the material so that Dr. Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates) now transforms into the beautiful but daringly brash and murderous Sister Hyde (the fabulous Martine Beswick). (97 mins., DCP) A forebearer of French feminist body horror films like Titane and The Substance, Baby Blood is a lost classic of the genre that’s been recently rediscovered and restored, about a young woman who becomes a killer when a hungry alien entity invades her uterus. The uncensored version of the film has never received a proper North American release, until now. And the few US audiences who’ve had a chance to see it are raving. (82 mins., DCP)
Spain: The Orphanage(J.A. Bayona, 2007)Thu, Jul 17 | 7 PMIntroduced by George Wolf, radio personality and film critic for Columbus Underground, Fox 28, and Maddwolf.com
Fueled by her happy memories of growing up in a seaside orphanage, a woman and her husband decide to purchase it and make it a home for disabled children. Shortly after they move in, with the aid of their clairvoyant seven-year-old son and a professional medium (the great Geraldine Chaplin), they discover that the building is home to a number of unquiet spirits. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, the tension-soaked film is the debut of J.A. Bayona, a recent Oscar nominee for Society of the Snow. (105 mins, DCP)
Czechoslovakia and Chile: The Bloody Lady + The Wolf House(Viktor Kubal, 1981; Cristóbal León and Joaquin Cociña, 2018)Sat July 19 | 7 PM Double feature! Second film screens at 8:30 PM
Goreometer rating: 1.5 (Bloody) and 2 (Wolf) out of 4
Widely considered one of Slovak animation’s crown jewels, the newly restored The Bloody Lady is an improbable and bewitching fusion of gothic horror and classic children’s animation, retelling a famous Elizabeth Báthory folk tale that is often cited as the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (77 mins., DCP) No matter how many movies you’ve seen in your life, you’ve never seen anything like The Wolf House! Based on the actual case of Colonia Dignidad, the dark post-WWII sect of German emigres that interned and tortured Chilean dissidents, the astonishing stop-motion film takes the form of an animated fairy tale produced by the leader of the sect to indoctrinate its followers. (73 mins., DCP)
Sweden: Hour of the Wolf(Ingmar Bergman, 1968)Thu July 24 | 7 PM
Goreometer rating: 1 out of 4
Filled with a Gothic air of nightmarish power and dreamlike effects, Hour of the Wolf features Bergman’s most iconic actors at the peak of their careers. Max von Sydow stars as a haunted painter living in voluntary exile on a Swedish island with his wife, played by Liv Ullmann. When the couple is invited to a nearby castle for dinner, things start to go wrong with a vengeance as a coven of sinister aristocrats hastens the artist’s psychological deterioration. (88 mins., DCP)
Japan: Pulse(Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)Thu July 31 | 7 PMIntroduced by Scott Woods, writer and Streetlight Guild founder
Goreometer rating: 3 out of 4
Like the J-horror classics Ringu and The Grudge, Pulse portrays a sense of dread that can be passed from one person to the next, in this case through the internet. Young friends devastated by the sudden suicide of one of their own become even more distressed by his ghostly reappearance in grainy computer and video images. Kurosawa is one of horror’s great masters of unnerving atmospheres. and with Pulse he taps into one of the greatest anxieties of the internet age: being quietly, eternally trapped in our own loneliness. (119 mins., 35mm)
Great Britain: The Innocents(Jack Clayton, 1961) Thu Aug 7 | 7 PM
One of the most influential supernatural Gothic films in cinema history, The Innocents stars screen legend Deborah Kerr as an emotionally fragile governess who comes to suspect there is something very, very wrong with her precious new charges. A psychosexually intensified adaptation of Henry James’s classic The Turn of the Screw, cowritten by Truman Capote, The Innocents is a triumph of storytelling, sound design, widescreen cinematography, and chilling atmosphere. (100 mins., DCP)
France: Trouble Every Day(Claire Denis, 2001)35mm print! Thu Aug 14 | 7 PMIntroduced by Chris Feil, cohost of the movie podcast This Had Oscar Buzz
The most controversial film by the great creator of Beau Travail and High Life, Trouble Every Day follows a moody scientist (Vincent Gallo) and his bride (Trisha Vessey) honeymooning in Paris. They soon move beyond lovemaking and fall into the nightmarish, vampiric world of a reclusive former colleague (Béatrice Dalle). Set to an exceptionally lush soundtrack by Tindersticks, the film intertwines sensuality with bloodlust to become a pioneering and unparalleled work of female-directed body horror. (101 mins., 35mm)
International Horror is made possible with support from Seventh Son Brewing.
Additional support for Film/Video programming is provided by Rohauer Collection Foundation.
