“BAR TRASH is the best cinema experience in London. Impeccable vibes, brilliant hosting, programming fascinating things the likes of which you’ve never seen!” (Audience Review)
Weekly cult film show BAR TRASH is “London’s most fun and informative film night” (Sean McGeady) and one of Time Out’s “50 fun things to do in London for less than the price of a pint” (our most popular ticket is just £3.50!).
Hosted by cult film fanatic Token Homo and friends, we are stupidly proud to announce our 12th sensational season, and it’s a mind-blowing DOUBLE FEATURE!
SATANIC PANIC! at Finsbury Park Picturehouse (in their Club Room), Beer Merchants Tap, and a new Saturday night venue (watch this space!) will populate your weekends with spine-tingling tales of witch hunts, scapegoats and pop-culture hysteria from the 1970s and ’80s, when the world lost its mind and blamed Satan for our sins. SATANIC PANIC! screens on some Saturdays and every Sunday from 18 January to 12 April 2026 (opening night is booking now). Tickets remain £5 to £8 + fees.
Then, in a cinematic hookup for the ages, I’m collaborating with the amazing Zodiac Film Club to present GIRL TRASH! at Genesis Cinema every Wednesday, a sensational explosion of bikes, dykes and fights as we celebrate the women, non-binary, and gender non-conforming filmmakers of trash and exploitation cinema and the sub-genres they made their own!!! GIRL TRASH! screens on Wednesdays from 21 January to 15 April 2026. Tickets £3.50 + fees or save ££ on your first beverage with a cocktail combo. Opening night will be on sale soon…
SATANIC PANIC!
Back at the launch of BAR TRASH Season 6 — VHS USA — I made (some) people cry with my tales of growing up gay amidst the moral panic of the 1980s ‘video nasties’ furore and the global outbreak of HIV/AIDS. This was a violent time when societal decline, death, and disease were blamed collectively on VHS tapes, the ‘gay plague’, and single mothers, a triple threat that felt distinctly personal (love you Mum!!!).
40 years later, queer and trans communities find ourselves on the receiving end of another conservative crusade that uses a startlingly similar playbook: blaming outsiders and their cultural habits for society’s ills (although, this time single mothers have been replaced by trans women and drag queens on the right wing battle front).
For the twelfth season of BAR TRASH, I wanted to look over my shoulder at how the slanderous ‘myth of harm’ (a term explored by Sarah Cleary in a brilliant book with the same title) can spread like wildfire through popular culture. Self-styled moral crusaders of the 1980s found Satan lurking in our heavy metal music, role-playing games, and Saturday morning cartoons, blaming societal shifts on the (not-so) secret social lives of the young and dispossessed. Worse still, hysteria spread – amplified by irresponsible press reporting and entitled policing – to make unfounded accusations of Satanic abuse, dark conspiracies of child sacrifice and cannibalism sending innocent American kindergarten teachers to prison.
Like now, conservative campaigners sought to stigmatise anyone living beyond the 1950s ‘traditional family values’ they sought to reinstate (single mothers, artists, queer and trans people etc), establishing their reprehensible playbook of witch hunts, scapegoating and blame, fuelled by long-since discredited ‘recovered-memory’ therapies. Of course, all of this served to deflect attention from the invidious power of the one true evil: the patriarchy.
Opening with THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN on Sunday 18 January 2026 at Finsbury Park Picturehouse, BAR TRASH: SATANIC PANIC! takes a sideways look at these turbulent times, channeling the unholy trinity of films that inspired so many — THE EXORCIST, ROSEMARY’S BABY, and THE OMEN — whilst spreading the gospel of ungodly trash that would (surely…) send us all to hell. I can’t wait to see you there!? THx
Programme at Genesis Cinema supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery.
