Last Updated: 10/12/26

ALL SECRET CINEMA PRESENTATIONS ARE SHOWN IN 16mm (or larger!) FILM ON A GIANT SCREEN (NOT VIDEO...NOT EVER!)

Since 1992, the Secret Cinema has been the Philadelphia area’s premiere floating repertory cinema series, bringing hundreds of unique programs to nightclubs, bars, coffee houses, museums, open fields, colleges, art galleries, bookstores, and sometimes even theaters and film festivals. Drawing on its own large private film archive (as well as other collections), the Secret Cinema attempts to explore the uncharted territory and the genres that fall between the cracks, with programs devoted to educational and industrial films, cult and exploitation features, cartoons, rare television, local history, home movies, erotic films, politically incorrect material, and the odd Hollywood classic. As long as it exists on real celluloid, that is—Secret Cinema screenings never use video/digital projection. While mainly based in Philadelphia, the Secret Cinema has also brought programming to other cities and countries.

Science After Hours event “Fright Nite”

at the Franklin Institute

Friday, October 16, 2026
7:30 pm until 11:30 pm
Admission: $$40, $35 Franklin Institute members.

The Franklin Institute
222 N. 20th Street
Philadelphia, PA
215-448-1200

On Friday, October 16, the Secret Cinema will again participate in the Franklin Institute's multi-dimensional event Science After Hours. This popular series features programming for grown-ups that combines science demonstrations, a d.j./light show, rooftop stargazing, music, food, drink, and once more, a film screening, all throughout the museum's historic galleries. The theme this month is (naturally) "Fright Nite."

Doors open at 7:30 pm, and the event ends at 11:30 pm.

Admission is $40, and $35 for Franklin Institute members.

The Secret Cinema portion will consist of an approximately 90-minute program of spooky shorts, to be shown twice. We'll select short films from our archive featuring Halloween-themed cartoons, horror movie trailers, documentaries on the supernatural, and even some gory surgery footage...and more. All projected from rare 16mm film prints, on the spectacular big screen of the museum's Franklin Theater.

More details here.

Halloween screening at Allens Lane Art Center

Friday, October 23, 2026
8:00 pm
Admission: $15.00

Allens Lane Art Center
8:00 pm
Admission: $15.00

On Friday, October 23, the Secret Cinema will present a special Halloween screening at a new venue for us -- the Allens Lane Art Center, in the heart of Philadelphia's Mt. Airy neighborhood. Featured will be the vintage Boris Karloff horror film The Man They Could Not Hang. A concise and creepy chiller with no wasted frames (in the tradition of 1930s-40s B-movies; it only runs 65 minutes!), we'll fill out the program with some surprise, spooky short films from the Secret Cinema archive.

There will be one complete show at 8:00 pm. Admission is $15.00.

A description of the feature follows…

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939, Dir: Nick Grindé)
Boris Karloff stars in this under-appreciated chiller from the actor's B-movie middle period. He plays Dr. Henryk Savaard, a scientist who has invented an artificial heart for reviving patients whose own heart has stopped. His assistant agrees to be used as a test subject, but the police burst into his lab before the operation is completed, and when the assistant dies, arrests the doctor for murder. Found guilty and sentenced to death by electrocution, he manages to secretly survive his own execution with his invention. Savaard, previously laboring to help all humanity, turns insane and vengeful, devising a plot to gather the district attorney, judge and jurists into a trap where they will all die, one by one!

Boris Karloff (nee William Henry Pratt) signed to a five-picture deal with Columbia Pictures -- and all of them featured "mad doctor" roles for the star. The first three, all directed by Grindé, had near-identical plots about returning from the dead! The Man They Could Not Hang, their first collaboration, was the best of the group, with a somewhat larger budget that shows in the detailed laboratory scenes and relaxed pace that allows Karloff to shine in an impassioned courtroom monologue. The film then provides perhaps guilty pleasure, as the darker, post-execution Dr. Savaard reveals the twisted, clever variety of ways he has planned to dispatch his enemies. Surprisingly, this part of the story was echoed in the plot of Agatha Christie's most popular novel, And Then There Were None...which was published almost three months after the premiere of The Man They Could Not Hang (and years before Christie's book was adapted for the screen).

FUTURE SECRET CINEMA EVENTS (more info soon):