Monster House 20th Anniversary!

Monster House returns to the big screen at the Paramount and Stateside Theatres on Sunday, October 18, for its 20th anniversary. It's a retrospective screening of the 2006 animated family film, directed by Gil Kenan and running 91 minutes in color. The movie follows three kids who claim a house in their neighborhood is a living creature out to do them harm—a premise that's just as weird and fun now as it was when it first came out.

If you missed it or haven't seen it in a while, the voice cast is a real draw. Steve Buscemi, Nick Cannon, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, and Fred Willard all lend their voices to the characters. It was a critical and commercial success when it arrived twenty years ago and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.

The screening is part of the Panic at the Paramount film series. The Paramount Theatre itself has stood on Congress Avenue in downtown Austin for more than a century: built in 1915, it's the city's oldest surviving theatre and a City and State Landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally a vaudeville and variety house, it still stages comedy, drama, music, dance, spoken word, children's programming, and films, drawing more than 200,000 patrons a year. It's one of the few remaining 'hemp houses' in America, still working with ropes and sandbags, and it's home to Austin's Moontower Comedy Festival. It runs alongside the State Theatre next door under The Austin Theatre Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

Doors open at 2:30 PM on Sunday, October 18, at the Paramount and Stateside Theatres, 1800 Congress Avenue.