Finsbury Park’s Club Room is a welcoming, social event space with cabaret-style seating and tables, ready for you to enjoy a curated food and drink menu. Doors will open 30 minutes before your event’s advertised start time, leaving plenty of time to get comfortable and place any orders. Please be aware that table service will take place during your event, and that as each table seats four, you may be seated with other guests.

RIVER’S EDGE (1986)

• Director: Tim Hunter
• Cast: Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Dennis Hopper
• Film: 100mins | USA | Subtitles | Intermission
• Event: Doors 6pm | Intro + Film 6:30pm – 9pm [18+]

A high school slacker commits a shocking act and proceeds to let his friends in on the secret. However, the friends’ reaction is almost as ambiguous and perplexing as the crime itself.

“THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL FILM YOU WILL SEE THIS YEAR!”

BAR TRASH continues our 12^th sensational season — SATANIC PANIC! —— with Tim Hunter’s RIVER’S EDGE (1986) for its 40th Anniversary, a controversial and chilling account of disaffected youth towards the end of the ‘80s.

The ‘Satanic Panic’ of the 1980s sought to blame societal shifts on the widespread worshipping of Satan, imagining demonic cults cavorting behind closed doors and sensing the Devil’s corrupting influence in everything from Heavy Metal lyrics, to fantasy RPGs, and Saturday morning cartoons. Young people were deemed at particular risk. True-life horrors like self-professed teenage Satanist and Heavy Metal fan Ricky Kasso’s murder of fellow teenager Gary Lauwers added to the furore.

Lauwers’ unreported death — and how Kasso took other teens on ‘corpse tours’ to visit the abandoned body in the woods — shocked the nation, inspiring several film and stage adaptations, and ‘State of the Nation’ TV specials. Tim Hunter’s RIVER’S EDGE addresses a different real life killing — of Marcy Conrad — but features very similar circumstances. Regarded by Marc Spitz (Salon) as “the darkest teen film of all time”, RIVER’S EDGE explores the dissolution of family, proliferation of drug use, and disaffection of youth from the coldest and clearest of perspectives.

“No other film captures more accurately what it’s like to be dead inside during the end of the Cold War, the height of MTV, and the invasion of concerned but impotent parents.”

Marc Spitz, Salon

/// BAR TRASH is a celebration of cult and curious cinema, hosted by queer film fanatic Token Homo and friends. Films are served with introductions, intermissions, prize giveaways, and subtitles / captions where possible. Tickets £8 / £5 for PH members. Adults 18+ only. Follow @tokenhomo on Instagram for updates. More info at tokenhomo.com ///