Matinee (BLU-RAY)

A 1989 meta-slasher in the tradition of Fade to Black and Popcorn, Matinee opens with a savage stabbing at a small-town cinema, forcing its closure. After two years, the case has gone cold and the Paramount theater is allowed to reopen. But as the lights go down, tensions rise, and the Halston Horror Film Festival once again becomes a deranged killer’s cinematic stalking ground. A hard-bitten cop (Ron White) leads a frantic search among a sea of red herrings. Could the murderer be the local bad boy (Jeff Schultz) or his girlfriend (Beatrice Boepple of A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child)? Perhaps the theater manager (Twin Peaks’ Don S. Davis) or the creepy filmmaker (William B. Davis, the Smoking Man of The X-Files)? And how many people will die before the curtain falls? Also released as Midnight Matinee (to avoid confusion with Joe Dante’s 1993 comedy), Matinee is a Canuxploitation classic and a horrorphile’s delight.