Get Out

Electric Palace is putting on a horror double bill on Saturday 31 October, pairing Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017) with the blaxploitation classic Blacula (1972). It's a Halloween night of two films that both put Black voices at the centre of the horror genre, and they're showing them back-to-back.

Get Out is the one most of us will know. Jordan Peele's horror-satire stars Daniel Kaluuya and grossed more than $225 million worldwide. It won Peele the Academy Award for best original screenplay, making him the first African-American screenwriter to win, and the BFI calls it a modern genre classic. Blacula takes us back to 1972 and follows Prince Mamuwalde, an 18th-century African prince turned vampire who awakens in 1970s Brooklyn. He's played by William Marshall, a classically trained Shakespearean actor who reshaped the character from the film's original title, Count Brown's in Town.

The screening is presented by the Electric Palace in collaboration with Anna-Maria Nabirye and Afri-Co-Lab as part of their 'Blackity Black' strand, which they describe as a space where Black and global majority audiences can watch such films without feeling bothered by their blackness. It's a double bill that works as a conversation between the two films, one a recent hit and the other a blaxploitation staple, both dealing with Black identity within the horror tradition.

It all starts at 7.30pm at the Electric Palace, 39a High Street, Hastings Old Town, TN34 3ER, with Get Out and Blacula running as a double bill on the same night.