Horror on Hill Street: Vampires, Ghost Pirates, and High School Aliens. Oh, My!

The Southampton Playhouse celebrates all things spooky and scary with Horror on Hill Street, our ongoing series dedicated to the horror genre and its many forms.

Our inaugural edition of the series is tied to the release of Ryan Coogler’s Southern Gothic vampire saga Sinners. In addition to featuring a special conversation on opening weekend, the Playhouse will showcase two additional stories of communities coming together to combat an otherworldly threat: John Carpenter's The Fog (1980), which will be preceded by an introduction from veteran film journalist Anne Thompson, and the high school alien invasion thriller The Faculty (1998), which has been selected for our audiences by Coogler as a key inspiration for Sinners.

Full details and showtimes are listed below.

The Fog

Help kick off our very first HORROR ON HILL STREET series with a classic of creepy filmmaking from genre maestro John Carpenter, who was recently inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Veteran film journalist Anne Thompson will join us before the film to discuss her early days as a unit publicist on the set of Carpenter's atmospheric work, in which a small coastal town faces ominous forces after a mysterious cloudy mister engulfs their entire community.

Carpenter reunited with recently-anointed Halloween scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis as well as her mother, Psycho legend Janet Leigh, and Hal Holbrook for a masterful ghost story with a lot on its mind, including a dark past that gradually bubbles to the surface. That premise is also at the center of the new vampire epic Sinners, helping us set the stage for the upcoming IMAX release later in the week.

Thursday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m.

Sinners: A Conversation About Music, Community, and History

The Southampton African American History Museum joins forces with the Playhouse for this special conversation following opening night of the new IMAX release Sinners, which stars Michael B. Jordan in dual roles as twin brothers fighting a supernatural threat in the Jim Crowe-era South. Laced with a galvanizing blues soundtrack and the rousing story of small-town survival against menacing and oppressive forces, Sinners is an absorbing meditation on historical memory. Set in 1932, the same year that the Playhouse opened its doors, the movie provides a starting point for exploring powerful bonds unique to the African American experience in the midst of the Great Depression. Our opening night screening will take place in partnership with our neighbors from the SAAM, with a conversation about the importance of music and community after the screening.

Friday, April 18 at 7:30 p.m.

Ryan Coogler Presents: The Faculty

Acclaimed director Ryan Coogler (Black Panther) selects a key film that inspired his new IMAX release, the Southern Gothic vampire saga Sinners, with this special one-night-only presentation of The Faculty. As with Sinners, Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 horror movie is a modern-day riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time with an ample dose of teen dread. As a group of high schoolers gradually realize that their teachers have been overtaken by alien invaders, they must join forces to survive the night – and possibly save the world. The ultimate ‘90s nostalgia trip thanks to a cast of heartthrobs early in their careers (including Jordana Brewster, Josh Hartnett and Elijah Wood), The Faculty is an underrated gem about the inherent paranoia of small-town American life, and the uncertainty of the teenage mind as it faces the ominous mysteries of young adulthood.

Thursday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m.