CULT CLASSICS RETURN TO MONSTER FEST
The latest horrors might get most of the attention, but at MONSTER FEST we also feel the need to pick up a shovel, strap on a head lamp and go excavating into the crypts of genre cinema, unearthing cult favourites, exploitation oddities and celluloid sleaze to once again splash across the big screen.
Some have been selected to accompany documentaries celebrating the filmmakers and effects artists who created them. Others were simply impossible to resist when assembling a festival dedicated to Satan, possession, demonic children and assorted acts of cinematic blasphemy.
From cheerleaders worshipping Satan and John Carradine creating synthetic killers to Demi Moore battling parasites in the third dimension, Linnea Quigley dancing in a funeral parlour and Sam Neill growing up to become the Antichrist, these are MONSTER FEST 2026’s repertory screenings.
SATAN’S CHEERLEADERS
Satan and cheerleaders – the ham and pineapple of cinema toppings.
Greydon Clark’s wonderfully disreputable 1977 exploitation favourite begins with four high-school cheerleaders, a horny janitor and an ill-advised road trip before finding its way to Satanists, sacrificial rituals and supernatural powers.
Starring John Ireland, Yvonne De Carlo and John Carradine alongside a squad of extremely seventies cheerleaders, SATAN’S CHEERLEADERS sits somewhere between drive-in exploitation, occult horror and sex comedy – precisely the sort of cinematic cocktail that turns an innocent afternoon into something altogether less respectable.
With MONSTER FEST already opening the gates to Satanic cinema, leaving this one buried would have been downright irresponsible.
Give me an S.
Give me an A.
Give me a T…
You know where this is going.
ASTRO-ZOMBIES
Before there was good taste, there was ASTRO-ZOMBIES.
Ted V. Mikels’ legendary 1968 slice of bargain-basement science-fiction horror stars John Carradine as a scientist attempting to create superhuman beings using the brains of murderers, with predictably disastrous results.
Featuring skull-faced killers, mad science, espionage, go-go energy and the unmistakable presence of Russ Meyer icon Tura Satana, ASTRO-ZOMBIES became one of Mikels’ most enduring cult creations and a perfect example of the kind of independent genre filmmaking that thrived far away from respectable Hollywood.
Its return to the Monster Fest screen also comes with good reason.
ASTRO-ZOMBIES plays alongside TURA!, the documentary celebrating the extraordinary life and career of Tura Satana – giving audiences the chance to see one of her most notorious films where it belongs: enormous, ridiculous and up on the big screen.
PARASITE 3D
Long before Ghost, Indecent Proposal or G.I. Jane, Demi Moore was battling a genetically engineered parasite in post-apocalyptic America.
And it was in 3D.
Charles Band’s PARASITE arrived in 1982, starring Robert Glaudini as a scientist infected by one of the deadly organisms he helped create and a young Demi Moore as the woman who becomes his unlikely ally.
But we’re not just bringing PARASITE back because watching slimy creatures burst towards your face is an extremely good use of three-dimensional technology.
It accompanies FULL MOON RISING: THE CHARLES BAND STORY, Sarah Appleton’s documentary charting the extraordinary career of one of independent genre cinema’s great showmen.
Band has spent decades producing monsters, puppets, killers, tiny terrors and movies that frequently sound like they were conceived during arguments that began with the words “You know what would be cool?”
PARASITE 3D takes us back to an earlier chapter in that story – and gives Monster Fest audiences the chance to experience some vintage Charles Band mayhem.
NIGHT OF THE DEMONS
With RUBBERHEAD: THE LIFE & MONSTERS OF STEVE JOHNSON celebrating the life and extraordinary career of special makeup effects legend Steve Johnson, we couldn’t resist pairing it with one of his most beloved creations, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS.
Kevin Tenney’s NIGHT OF THE DEMONS remains one of the great party-horror movies of the 1980s: ten teenagers, an abandoned funeral parlour, a Halloween party and a demonic infestation that turns the evening into a spectacular showcase of practical effects, gore and gloriously excessive supernatural carnage.
It also happens to occupy an important place in Steve Johnson’s story. Johnson created the film’s memorable demon makeup effects and met star Linnea Quigley during production. The pair later married. Was it his rugged good looks? His boyish charm? Or was it the ingenious lipstick holder he fashioned for her on set? Some questions are probably best left unanswered.
EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC
Some consider it one of the worst films ever made. Others will tell you it’s a misunderstood masterpiece. Almost everyone agrees that EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is completely fucking bonkers.
Audiences in 1977 expected – perhaps even demanded – another The Exorcist. Instead, Warner Bros. handed the reins to John Boorman, the filmmaker behind Point Blank and Deliverance, who had famously turned down the opportunity to direct the original film. Given the chance to make its sequel, Boorman had little interest in simply repeating what William Friedkin had done before him.
What he delivered was something wholly original and totally bizarre.
Richard Burton investigates the lingering possession of Regan MacNeil, Louise Fletcher straps into a synchronised hypnosis machine, James Earl Jones turns up dressed as a giant locust, Ennio Morricone unleashes one of his wildest scores and Boorman sends the whole thing hurtling through psychic visions, African mysticism, swarms of locusts and a metaphysical battle between good and evil.
It was absolutely not the Exorcist sequel audiences thought they were getting.
How did this happen? What were they thinking? And, perhaps most importantly, why did anyone agree to it?
Questions that have followed the film since its debut are put to its cast and crew, alongside film historians, filmmakers and genre experts, in David Kittredge’s BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL. Do they provide definitive answers? Only you can be the judge. But there is one thing everyone seems to agree on: watching BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL leaves you with an overwhelming desire to immediately watch EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC.
Fortunately, that’s one service Monster Fest is only too happy to provide.
THE DEVIL WITHIN HER
Pregnancy is supposed to be a miracle.
Unfortunately, nobody told a horny carnival midget possessed by the green-eyed monster.
Joan Collins stars in Peter Sasdy’s wonderfully lurid 1975 British horror THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, in which a new mother’s enormous newborn son begins displaying behaviour suggesting there may be considerably more wrong with the little bundle of joy than sleepless nights and dirty nappies.
Also known as I Don’t Want to Be Born, Sharon’s Baby and The Monster, the film throws demonic curses, murderous infants, sinister dwarfs and Donald Pleasence into a particularly unholy blender of post-Exorcist occult horror.
Fifty years later, it remains a deliciously nasty piece of British exploitation and an irresistible addition to a MONSTER FEST going to Hell.
Because if there’s one lesson horror cinema has taught me – never trust a baby!
THE FINAL CONFLICT: OMEN III
The little boy from The Omen is all grown up.
And unfortunately for humanity, he’s now Sam Neill.
The third chapter in the original Omen series finds Damien Thorn no longer hiding beneath a schoolboy haircut. He’s now a powerful businessman, political figure and fully operational Antichrist, preparing for the final confrontation between the forces of good and evil.
Released in 1981 and directed by Graham Baker, THE FINAL CONFLICT gave Sam Neill one of his earliest major international starring roles and allowed him to attack the role of Damien with magnificent intensity. And with his recent passing, it feels like the perfect time to revisit one of the strangest roles of his early career and celebrate one of our favourite actors doing what few performers can claim to have done quite so convincingly – playing the Antichrist.
At MONSTER FEST, we’ve always strived to put films on the big screen that you don’t get the chance to see every day. Sometimes that means digging up something you’ve never heard of before. Sometimes it’s giving a notorious oddity another chance to find its audience. And sometimes it’s introducing you to a film that somehow passed you by, only for it to become the next entry in that sacred catalogue of comfort watches you’ve already seen a hundred times but will happily sit through a hundred more.
Because discovering a great old film for the first time can be every bit as exciting as discovering a great new one.
And if we can send you home with a new favourite – whether it’s a stone-cold classic that you just never managed to get around to, an underseen gem you’ve never heard of or a piece of absolute celluloid filth your local video store was too embarrassed to put on the shelf – then we’ve done our job.
MONSTER FEST 2026 runs October 2 – 10 at Cinema Nova, Melbourne.
Head to monsterfest.com.au for the full program, session times and tickets.