Cigarette Burns | Silent London

Körkarlen or The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Fancy a drink? Cigarette Burns‘s monthly pub night is back on Monday, with a programme of occult horror. Top of the bill is Equinox, a 1970 American horror film that seems to be a sort of proto-Evil Dead, with a group of teenagers heading into a forest and stumbling across some very hostile demons.

However, we’re interested in the first course, which on this occasion is Körkarlen (1921), also known as The Phantom Carriage. This is a Victor Sjöström film, adapted from a novel based on a spooky legend that the last person to die in any one year, if they are suitably wicked, will have to spend a year driving the phantom carriage, picking up the souls of the dead. It’s a nasty business indeed, and should have you clutching your pint glass in terror.

This was Sjöstrom’s last Swedish film before he went to Hollywood, so if you’re going to see his The Wind at the BFI on Wednesday, you might like to watch this as a point of comparison. And to scare yourself silly, too.

The Cigarette Burns night is the Mucky Pup pub in Islington on the first Monday of every month. Körkarlen starts around 6.30pm, so get there nice and early. I hear there will be pizza.

A strange screening of a strange film. The monthly Cigarette Burns night at the Mucky Pup pub in Islington is fond of showing silent films to “warm up” the crowd before the night’s main attraction – a cult film, which as far as I can tell usually means zombies, trolls, gore, kung fu, spaceships and women in bikinis. I hear that Cigarette Burns always hosts a memorable night, whether at the pub or at the Rio Cinema in Dalston, and I’m particularly impressed by the artwork they put together for their screenings. Something tells me they’re serious about putting on a good show.

This month’s silent is The Lost World (1925), a film notable for its pioneering stop-motion special effects, which allowed director Harry Hoyt to stage fights between dinosaurs and his actors. Another treat is the appearance of Arthur Conan Doyle, who of course wrote the novel on which it was based, in a prologue to the film.

Top billing on Monday night goes to Star Crash, a late-70s sci-fi film starring David Hasselhoff, a space station shaped like a fist, lots of robots and the aforementioned women in bikinis. I get the impression that The Lost World’s special effects might put it to shame, but you never know.

I’ve not been down to the Mucky Pup before, so I can’t promise you that this will be a screening to please the purists, or indeed, that it won’t. But there will be food, drink, a silent film to watch and David Hasselhoff – all on a school night. You can’t really say fairer than that.

The Lost World will show at the Mucky Pup, 39 Queens Head Street, N1 8NQ. Entry is free, and the silent film will begin at around 6.30pm. For more details, log in to Facebook or go to the Cigarette Burns website.