From late-night talk shows and courtroom dramas to heavy metal lyrics and horror cinema, the Satanic Panic of the ‘80s and ’90s seized the American imagination. In this special Shocktober seminar, we’ll explore how ritual magic, conspiracy and mass media coalesced into a cultural phenomenon that blurred the boundaries between fantasy, faith and fear.

A bullied metalhead obtains a mysterious demo record of a recently deceased rock star with startling consequences in this heavy metal horror featuring cameos from Gene Simmons and the recently-departed Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne. Screening in 35mm

Steve Freeling moves his family into a new housing development — but when strange things start happening, what once felt like a benign presence begins manifesting in truly horrifying ways in director Tobe Hooper’s Steven Spielberg-produced generation-scarring frightfest.

This superbly crafted, epic thriller from director David Fincher follows the true story of the notorious serial killer who terrorized San Francisco throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s — and the investigators and journalists whose vows to uncover the killer’s identity became a decades-long obsession.

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his psychopathic alter-ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies in this transgressive adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s scorched-earth yuppie satire.

An American couple living in England fear they've given birth to the Antichrist when their young son commits shockingly evil deeds.

Director Tim Burton returns to the world of stop-motion animation with this adaptation of a 19th-century Russian folktale about a young man who mistakenly marries a corpse instead of his intended fiancée.

In 1630 New England, panic and despair envelops a farmer, his wife and their children when the youngest son Samuel suddenly vanishes. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, family members accuse teenage daughter Thomasin of witchcraft. A modern horror masterpiece from director Robert Eggers.

A teenage boy is haunted in his dreams by Freddy Krueger who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world in this iconically camp homoerotic sequel.