When a camera crew are sent to document hippie protests in Yorkville, Canada’s counter-culture capital, they are charmed by a group of misunderstood kids with their own ideas about what kind of movie to make.

In 1993, spectators at the last screening of a horror film at a downtown cinema fall one by one into the hands of a sadistic and ruthless killer.

A showman introduces a small coastal town to a unique movie experience and capitalises on the Cuban Missile crisis hysteria with a kitschy horror extravaganza combining film effects, stage props and actors in rubber suits in this salute to the B-movie.

Anthology of horror shorts.

In London, August 1914, Austrian star Elsa Duranyi (Gertrude Michael) and English matinee idol Alan Barclay (Herbert Marshall) are in love and plan an immediate marriage. But the War comes and Elsa mysteriously disappears. Alan’s ease in speaking German results in his appointment to the British Intelligence and, to aid his use as a spy, they announce he was killed in action. He takes the name and personality of “shell-shocked” Hans Teller, a German prisoner, and is sent into Germany on an exchange of prisoners.

At the local cinema, an audience watches a Spaghetti Western matinee. During the film’s on-screen climactic duel, a bullet is fired into a patron. With no leads and a theater full of suspects, police investigators lock the doors, put everyone back in their seats, and run the movie again. But will this shot in the dark reveal the real killer?

The Saturday matinee crowd got two cowboy stars for the price of one in this lavishly budgeted western serial starring former singing cowboy Dick Foran and Buck Jones. The latter contributed deadpan humor to the proceedings, making Jones perhaps the highest paid B-western comedy relief in history. The two heroes defend the Death Valley borax miners from an outlaw gang headed by Wolf Reade. An extraordinarily strong cast — for a serial, at least — supported the stars, headed by Charles Bickford as Reade, Leo Carillo, Lon Chaney, Jr., and silent screen star Monte Blue. Leading lady Jeanne Kelly later changed her name to Jean Brooks and starred in the atmospheric RKO thriller The Seventh Victim (1943). Universal claimed to have spent $1 million on this serial and made sure to get their money’s worth by endlessly recycling the action footage in serials and B-westerns for years to come.

As war looms on the horizon, a hopeful ingenue (Zoe Tapper) finds herself caught between the warring affections of a playwright (David Leon) and a director (Andrew Lincoln) in 1930s London. Director Julia Taylor-Stanley’s heartwarming ensemble piece features zesty performances by Anjelica Huston as an eccentric investor, Mark Umbers as a vain matinee idol, and Terence Stamp as a tart butler. And don’t miss the immortal Lauren Bacall in a small role.

The assistant stage manager of a small-time theatrical company is forced to understudy for the leading lady at a matinée performance at which an illustrious Hollywood director is in the audience scouting for actors to be in his latest “all-talking, all-dancing, all-singing” extravaganza.