A week of terror on the big screen, stretching from now to Halloween

Why limit a popular holiday to one day? Halloween in Buffalo this year has been stretched out to a full eight days so as to cover two weekends.

On Saturday evening cult horror actress Debbie Rochon, who has appeared in more than 170 movies and co-hosts Fangoria Radio for Sirius satellite radio, headlines this year’s Fourth Annual Variety Club Fund Raiser for Buffalo’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital at the historic Central Terminal. WEDG-FM Radio personalities Shredd and Ragan are hosting the event, with live music from That 80s Hair Band, Johnny Smoke, and Equilibrium, and Rochon will judge a costume contest with a $2,000 prize.

“As an added bonus, director Greg Lamberson will air a short preview of his latest film, Slime City Massacre, at the event,” says organizer Paul Cambria. “Rochon co-stars in the film, which was shot at the Terminal’s abandoned postal annex.”

Rochon, who also appeared in the Buffalo-filmed Poultrygeist, says “I have always loved coming to Buffalo because I associate it with making really fun movies and the fantastic support of film from the horror community. There are so many talented people in Buffalo working in film! I just couldn’t be happier, especially after my Slime City Massacre experience, to be coming back for this charity event.”

Doors open at 6 pm and the party will run all night. Admission is $15 through Ticketmaster, or $20 at the door.

(Local horror maven Lamberson will also be signing his novel Personal Demons at Talking Leaves Books on Main Street 7-9pm on Wednesday, October 28.)

Also on Saturday night, Halloween week kicks off at 9pm at North Tonawanda’s regal Riviera Theater with a comedy filled Halloween burlesque show by the local troupe Eye Candy (www.myspace.com/eyecandydance). Next weekend at the Riv includes a Friday midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, preceded by a Rocky Horror party beginning at 9pm, featuring a DJ, dancing, cash bar, and a costume contest. There will also be performances by Eye Candy Burlesque and the “Ladies” from Club Marcella. Saturday night features a Halloween Ghost Hunt at 9pm presented by the Eastern Paranormal Society. For further information and tickets, call the Riviera Theatre box office at 692-2413 or order online at www.rivieratheatre.org.

If you’re south of the city, you can also catch the final appearance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Hamburg’s Palace Theater at midnight Halloween night. By all means get there early for the 10 pm feature, the 1964 cult classic Spider Baby. This indescribably odd horror comedy stars Lon Chaney Jr. (who also sings the theme song) as the caretaker of three siblings who suffer from a hereditary disease that makes them both childlike and murderous.

If you’re looking for something more family friendly, the McKinley Mall theater in Hamburg will be running a new 3-D version of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was written and produced by Tim Burton but directed by Henry Selick in the same stop-motion animation he used earlier this year in Coraline.

And if you just can’t get enough classic horror movies, the Screening Room in Williamsville has five nights of them this week, starting with the anthology Dead of Night (1945) this Friday. On Wednesday it’s George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead (1968), followed by Vincent Price in William Castle’s The House On Haunted Hill (1959) on Thursday. You can spend the night next Friday with two movies, the carpet-monster Z-movie The Creeping Terror (1964) and Devil Times Five (1974), with a selection of classic grindhouse trailers included. And Halloween night brings the worst movie ever made, Edward D. Wood’s immortal Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).