ARGENTA FILM SERIES: ‘THE AMERICAN SCREAM’
7 p.m. Argenta Community Theater. Free.
It’s October, which means that in addition to all the free candy to be potentially scored by your young’uns (“C’mon kid, it’s a partnership! I’m the wheelman, you’re the Face!”), many peoples’ thoughts will turn to decorating their house for our most tooth-melting of holidays.
But there’s stringing a $2 bag o’ webs across the porch and throwing some plastic spiders in it, and then there’s obsession: people who literally spend months and thousands of dollars preparing to turn their yards into houses of horror come Oct. 31, with lights, Styrofoam cemeteries, animatronic figures, elaborate mazes, and costumed actors.
In the documentary “The American Scream,” presented by the Argenta Film Series, director Michael Stephenson lifts the shroud on the Frankenstein-ian labors of love of three men in Fairhaven, Mass., as they try to create the ultimate old-fashioned scare from nothing but paper-mache, house paint, castoff lumber, and junk.
With Halloween drawing nigh, it looks to be a heck of a lot of fun at the movies. Stephenson takes his film to the Hot Springs Doc Fest, where it screens at 9:30 p.m. Friday.