A Valentine’s Day brunch with the Astoria Horror Club.
By MARYAM RAHAMAN
ASTORIA — Love — and jumpscares — are in the air. Visitors in search of both made their way past the bar at Shillelagh Tavern through a set of dark curtains. On the other side, a back room filled with horror fans greeted them. Audience members voted to watch “The Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge,” a low-budget ’80s slasher loosely inspired by “The Phantom of the Opera”. The ambience was akin more to a very large friend group on a couch making quips and offering commentary than that of a movie theater.
The event was the Valentine’s Day themed “Horror Brunch on Sunday,” a movie marathon hosted by the Astoria Horror Club. Founded in 2021 by married couple Mary Snow and Tom Herrmann, the club regularly meets for movie screenings and book club meetings. Though the event was “BYOB,” or “bring your own brunch,” a table brimming with several kinds of cereal, coffee, and pastries was also available to all audience members.
The club was founded after Herrmann posted on the Astoria subreddit asking if anyone would like to watch horror movies at a bar. He was itching to expand his social circle as lockdown restrictions eased up. Though other meet-ups existed, they felt less personal. His post gained over 100 comments, with people offering to volunteer time and venues right away. Even in record-low temperatures, the event brought out about two dozen people.
“It’s a niche right? Not everybody likes horror, but the people who like it typically love it,” Herrmann said. “We have a pretty strong queer community at the horror club community, and I think that has something to do with feeling misunderstood, out of place, different. I think that horror speaks to that.”
Outdoor screenings at Astoria’s Heart of Gold bar have produced such enticing laughter that non-horror buffs have converted. “We’ve also had people who’ve come, who said that they came even though they don’t like horror because they could hear us,” Snow added. “They’re like, ‘They’re having fun. I want to go have fun.’ And now they’re regulars.”
The first movie followed teenager Melody after the supposed death of her boyfriend Eric in a mysterious fire. The Valentine’s Day tie-in? While Eric is revealed to be alive and taking revenge against those responsible for his death, Melody is falling in love with Peter, the reporter investigating it. Chatter among attendees and commentary from a Liverpool match being played in the main bar spilled into the movie room. But the sound of the speakers soon drowned it out as the undead Eric took the life of his first victim. The sweet smell of nutella crepes, one viewer’s choice for brunch, accompanied the death scene .
Overall, the movie provoked more laughs than scares. The first time Eric took off his mask, an audience member jeered, “Leave it on!” The crowd responded with a collective “Ew” at Melody and Peter’s celebratory kiss at the end, after Eric and all other villains had been eliminated.
“Horror isn’t the first genre people associate with Valentine’s Day, but there are a lot of great horror movies that deal with romance, love, affection, loss of a loved one,” Herrmann said.
Married couple Mary Snow and Tom Herrmann bonded over their shared love of horror films. Photos by Maryam Rahaman.
Snow and Hermann themselves bonded over a Halloween theater reboot early in their relationship. The pair got married on Friday the 13th, in a wedding that included references to slasher films.
On Sunday, Blaxploitation film “Sugar Hill,” followed the previous slasher. The main character Diana took vengeance against her fiancé’s killers with the help of a voodoo priestess. Unlike the bursting laughter the first film generated, the vibe during the second was more subdued. Nightmare Sisters,” a B-movie Herrmann described as “barely a movie” was the third and final edition of the screening.
Snow emphasized that Horror Club is a community space “open to everybody,” but that one of three main rules is to “let people watch the film.” Viewers are free to joke around during more fun films, but should be more respectful during serious ones. Viewers must also be good guests to the venues hosting, and are expected to hang out and talk to someone new every time. Though the last isn’t a hard-and-fast rule.
To learn more, check out @astoriahorrorclub on Instagram. All Horror Clubs events are totally free, but the couple also hosts low-cost screenings under the banner Zero Vision Cinema to access venues with better facilities and to promote local artists and films.
In the upcoming weeks, Snow hopes that the group can contribute to community organizing. Currently, the pair is working on pairing with groups organizing against ICE. After Trump was inaugurated, they said they felt a sense of “hopelessness” in the community. As many movie theaters are struggling, the Astoria Horror Club hopes the bonds created laughing, screaming and crying together at screenings can offer some respite.
“We believe in the community of cinema,” Herrmann said. “To be able to create spaces where people can come together with a common interest in horror and be able to just interact with strangers or people they might not super well is a really great thing we can give to the community. And we feel very lucky to have such an excellent community around us.”
