It's enough to make you scream... A horror-themed late-night Halloween film festival which is: FREE for students!* Includes a FREE beer or glass of wine!

FREE Introductory Student Membership to the Phoenix Picturehouse cinema!

A bar that stay opens until way beyond the 'witching' hour!

And it all starts in just three days time!

Yes, on Monday, October 27, starting at 11.30pm, CREEP SHOW, Oxford's very first week-long scare-fest, launches with the big screen presentation of that classic horror chiller An American Werewolf in London.

The festival then continues with: Dawn of The Dead (real nasty). Oct 28 Rosemary's Baby (creepy as Hell). Oct 29 The Shining ("Here's Johnny...."). Oct 30 Halloween double bill of Friday The 13 and Halloween (slasher Heaven). Oct 31 Saturday night double bill of Psycho — Hitchcock's original — and The Thing (see a dog get turned inside out...). Naturally, all the films are 18 certificate, and the festival is only those for those of a strong disposition — particularly if the thought of watching someone's guts spill out in a shopping mall proves too much for you.

But relax, it's not all horror and frights. There'll be prizes for the best fancy dress (nothing fancy, just bottles of fizz and some posh chocolates) and the chance to get together with friends to scream and wet your pants (we're all for audience participation).

So what about the films themselves?

This week, from behind a big cushion, we'll look at American Werewolf, Dawn of The Dead, Rosemary's Baby and The Shining.

On production of a valid student card (we've got to know you're a real student, right?) and a copy of that day's Oxford Mail (it's just 35p, and don't worry, we'll be there with a whole load of them in case you forget).

HALLOWEEN (18): The 2007 remake of the 1978 slasher classic that turned Jamie Lee Curtis into a star and made anyone called Michael Myers a suspect (even if just for shoplifting). Directed by the appropriately monikered Rob Zombie, it's essentially a 're-imagining' of John Carpenter's original, and as such features a well-developed prequel section (essentially the first half of the movie) in which child killer Michael Myers' back story is established. In the second half, it's basically business as usual — Myers escapes from his high security mental institution and returns to Haddonfield, Illinois, and to the house where, as a 10-year-old, he first murdered his sister and her boyfriend...

FRIDAY THE 13TH (18): MOST famous now for featuring one of Kevin Bacon's earliest roles (and one of cinema's bloodiest deaths), it was made in 1980 for $550,000 but went on to gross more than $39.7m. And that was just in the United States. Indeed, it currently stands as one of the most profitable slasher films ever made, leading to a long series of sequels and a remake currently shoed-in for release next year. The story revolves around Camp Crystal Lake, on Friday, June 13, when one by one, each of the camp's counsellors get bloodily picked off. Perhaps the film's best death is the axe in the face, but the slit throat and cleaved head of Mrs Voorhees are pretty memorable too. However, it is the film's shock ending that leaves most movie goers screaming and squealing with delight ...

PSYCHO (18): YES, the film with the shower scene. And yes, the film where Norman Bates says he likes stuffing birds. And yes, the film where Norman claims "a boy's best friend is his mother". It's all there — the screeching violins of Bernard Herrman's music score, Janet Leigh's strip as she's watched through a peephole, Martin Balsam's fall down a flight of stairs, and best of all, the Bates Motel itself. Directed by Alfred Hitchock in 1960, the film still continues to disturb, with its grim matter-of-factness and dreary fatality; after all, Marion Crane, the film's short-lived heroine, isn't so much murdered as slaughtered in a scene that, if released today, would still provoke controversy. Incidentally, the sound of the knife stabbing Marion's body was created by plunging a knife into a melon...

THE THING (18): This 1982 science fiction horror classic contains more goo, blood, intestines and brains, torn, ripped, and spilled out on to the floors and walls of its Antarctic setting than maybe any other film. And really, that's not meant to put you off. Although when the film was first released, that's precisely what happened. Cinema goers who had just cried and wept their way through Spielberg's ET, found themselves repulsed just weeks later by the shape-changing terrors of director John Carpenter's other worldly visitor. American critic Roger Ebert called the film's special effects "among the most elaborate, nauseating and horrifying yet achieved" and referred to the film itself as "a great barf-bag movie"...