Don’t Go in the Sewers Film Series Introduces Its Own ‘Underground’ Lineup

Everyone loves a good film festival, but what if the featured movies were all thematically related in the most fun way possible? Don’t Go in the Sewers at Metrograph’s Lower East Side theater aims to do just that, and Den of Geek is giving away free tickets to the New York screening of your choice! Den of Geek will even be on hand to help introduce one of the creepy and often humorous offerings our lucky winners can expect to see.

New Yorkers are no strangers to rumors of eerie happenings beneath the streets, and the films collected in Don’t Go in the Sewers reveal shocking truths about our waste disposal systems. The underground tunnels are clogged with toxic waste and are crawling with mutated — possibly teenaged — reptiles, and of course, everyone knows about the tragic results of the flushed pet alligator epidemic.

How can you win tickets to the event, you ask? All you have to do is follow Den of Geek on Instagram, like the post regarding Don’t Go in the Sewers (coming next week), and tag a friend in the comments. Winners will be chosen at random and notified via direct message, at which point they will get to choose which movie they’d like to go see. There’s something for everyone at this film festival, and even if you don’t win, you can buy your tickets here.

Titles include Alligator (October 11 & 12), The Blob (October 25 & 26), The Host (October 11 & 13), Super Mario Bros. (October 18), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (October 26 & 27), and a secret 35mm screening about “dwellers in the sewers” (October 19 & 20). If you’re unfamiliar with any of these sewer-based classics, find descriptions below for each of the movies being screened at Don’t Go in the Sewers.

Alligator (1980)

Director Lewis Teague, working from a sharp, clever screenplay by John Sayles, weaves the stuff of urban legend into a stylish and resourceful thriller tracking the ferocious fallout that follows a Missouri family’s decision, fresh from a Florida vacation, to dispose of their new baby pet alligator by way of the toilet. Flash forward 12 years and that baby, lurking in the city’s sewage system and surviving on animal waste from experiments with an illegal growth formula, is all grown up… and absolutely ravenous, leaving the unlucky detective Robert Forster racing to figure out what exactly is happening to the local wastewater treatment operators.

The Blob (1988)

At the risk of courting controversy, director Chuck Russell’s The Blob is the rare remake to improve upon its original, taking the basic premise of the 1958 drive-in classic—a meteorite crashes to earth, unleashing an acidic gelatinous creature that quickly gets to work devouring everything in its path—and adding an element of military-industrial complex conspiratorial paranoia, some of the juiciest and most insidiously creative kills in the annals of ’80s horror, and Kevin Dillon’s gloriously archetypal loner rebel in a pulse-pounding sewer motorcycle chase that includes a bitchin’ “wall of death” evasion. Put quite simply, The Blob rocks.

The Host (2006)

Part family drama, part monster movie, part social satire, Bong Joon-ho’s big breakout gets going when a beastie bursts out of the polluted waters of Seoul’s Han River and wreaks wanton havoc, kidnapping the daughter of a dull-minded snack bar manager, and creating a crisis among the relations left behind. Manohla Dargis from the New York Times calls it “a loopy, feverishly imaginative genre hybrid about the demons that haunt us from without and within.”

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Before the 21st-century video game-to-film adaptation boom, there was 1993’s Super Mario Bros., a critical punching bag and box-office catastrophe at the time of its release which, after years in which the “video game movie” formula has been codified and homogenized, now can be seen for the daffily charming, eccentric, and technically innovative piece of work it is, and has been accordingly adopted by a loyal cult following. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo play the intrepid Brooklyn plumbers, plunging into the underground world of Dinohattan to save Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis) from the clutches of the ruthless King Koopa (Dennis Hopper) in a film so loathed and loved that it can never be forgotten.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

The live-action feature adaptation of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s cult comics that, along with the animated series which had begun airing a few years previous, launched an IP empire. A co-production between New Line Cinema and Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest, director Steve Barron’s film is a jocular knockabout kung fu actioner featuring the sewer-dwelling Heroes in a Half Shell, superbly costumed by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, a new jack swing and hip-hop-heavy soundtrack that spawned the hit single “Turtle Power,” and Elias Koteas giving a disarmingly committed performance as vigilante Casey Jones. A bodacious, bitchin’, gnarly, radical, wicked, hellacious, and even totally tubular good time.

Secret Screening

Want to know the mystery film in the Don’t Go in the Sewers lineup? Here’s a hint: this infamous, acronym-titled sci-fi chiller from 1984 illustrates the unfortunate side effects of a program of dumping green radioactive sludge in New York City’s subway tunnels — namely, the mutation of part of the city’s homeless population into cannibals whose ravenous rampaging poses a grave threat to the ruthless gentrification of Manhattan. A ringing indictment of corporate corruption that has, unfortunately, lost none of its relevance, featuring a remarkable rogues’ gallery of New York character actors, impressively stomach-churning practical effects, and underground atmospherics thick enough to stop up your nostrils.

Remember to enter for your chance to win free tickets to Don’t Go in the Sewers by following us on Instagram, liking our post next week about the Metrograph In Theater event, and tagging a friend in the comments! Or simply join the fun by buying your tickets to the NYC event directly for the date of your choice from October 11th to the 27th. Either way, this festival is sure to bring a heaping helping of slimy, sludgy subterranean terror that will change the way you look at manholes forever.