For St. Patrick’s Day, the Leprechaun franchise tends to be the easy choice for holiday horror viewing. The holiday began as a feast day to honor Saint Patrick on the anniversary of his death and has evolved to become a celebration of Irish culture involving parades, food, the color green, and a whole lot of drinking.
It’s with the latter in mind that we curate a whole new viewing selection for St. Patrick’s Day. There’s no need to leave your couch for this pub crawl through some of horror’s best pub and bar scenes. Seventeen memorable genre stops for the 17th of March, to visit at your leisure!
Demon Knight
The Collector, like many cinematic demons, is perceptive at discovering the vulnerability in humans. For Uncle Willy, The Collector targets his addiction to alcohol, presenting him with a fantasy bar explicitly tailored to his tastes featuring a lot of nude women and liquor. The Collector plays the role of a plucky bartender to perfection, and Uncle Willy becomes a converted lesser demon to wreak havoc on his fellow survivors.
V/H/S: “Amateur Night”
“I like you.” These three small words marked one unforgettable anthology segment that inspired a spinoff feature film. For three pals that embark on a bar-hopping spree in the hopes of luring women back to their hotel room to secretly film amateur porn via hidden camera, well, karma is monstrous. Clint encounters the timid and awkward Lily at a bar, and she only ever utters those three little words. Clint and his friends won’t find out the reason why until it’s far too late.
The Bar
In Alex de la Iglesia’s dark horror comedy, an unseen sniper traps a group of strangers in a downtown Madrid bar. It becomes clear that they’re being quarantined due to a diseased patron, prompting paranoia to surge through the group. When they find a drainpipe in the basement that leads to the sewers, well, things get pretty gross. This movie has a nasty mean streak and takes a very non-traditional approach to the bar setting.
Jennifer’s Body
For poor BFFs Jennifer and Needy, a trip to their local dive bar to see their fave band Low Shoulder perform comes with permanent consequences. Unbeknownst to them, Low Shoulder chose the tiny town of Devil’s Kettle to sacrifice a virgin in trade for fame. They think Jennifer to be that virgin. The bar going up in flames offers up enough chaos and confusion to begin their plan, which goes catastrophically awry.
The Wicker Man
Police Sergeant Howie Neil travels to a remote island in search of a missing girl. He quickly discovers his Christianity doesn’t fit in with the free-spirited residents, and this bar scene is one of the earliest indicators. The moment he walks in, the jovial crowd goes silent, though they burst into song and dance just as quickly. The crassness of their lyrics and dance is in direct opposition to his stuffy demeanor; it’s only the beginning of Howie’s nightmare.
My Bloody Valentine
Thanks to the potential resurgence of Harry Warden, and a string of murders in his wake, Valentine Bluffs’s town mayor Hanniger and police chief Newby decide to cancel the Valentine’s Day dance. The youthful protagonists gather at the local bar to lament the cancellation and plot a party of their own. The bartender, Happy, overhears and delivers a strong warning. The tale of Harry Warden isn’t enough to stop them, though, so he plots a prank meant to shake the group to their core. Naturally, he’s murdered before he can enact his scare, but both Happy and his bar remain memorable nonetheless.
Grabbers
When tentacled and man-eating aliens invade a remote island in this Irish creature feature, it eventually becomes apparent that the aliens have an aversion to alcohol when the town drunk miraculously survives his attack. Enter this critical third act scene, in which our heroes round up the villagers and get them completely drunk at the local pub to keep them safe. Hilarious drunken battles with aliens ensue.
Death Proof
Quentin Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse kicks off with a bar scene that seems lighthearted and straightforward at first glance. A group of women gathering to celebrate a birthday, and lurking in the background is Stuntman Mike holding conversations of his own. But this dialogue-heavy scene holds far more depth than meets the eye; it’s here that we meet our charismatic villain and learn all that we need to know about his modus operandi.
Frenzy
Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film doesn’t get enough attention. The plot involves a serial killer brutally raping and murdering women, and the police suspect the wrong guy. In typical Hitchcock fashion, it’s incredibly suspenseful; the audience is forced to watch in terror as the killer preys upon unsuspecting victims. Truthfully, much of the plot centers around the pub, but it’s this bone-chilling scene that features the protagonist’s girlfriend Babs that packs the biggest punch. An employee of the pub, Babs arrives intending to collect her and her lover’s things, but she’s intercepted there by the killer. What plays out is wrought with tension and heartbreak.
Feast
When the entire film is set within a dive bar, the inclusion of the ultra-fun creature feature Feast might feel like a cheat. While you could take your pick of memorable moments from this gross, gory, and gnarly movie, we’re going with the fantastic opening that presents each character intro with a card that shows their survival odds, then quickly shatters them. It’s a hell of a way to get things started.
The Shining
Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic, accepts a job as the Overlook Hotel caretaker during the off-season in an attempt to get his writing and family life back on track. After being accused of abusing his son Danny, who’d earned nasty bruises after wandering into room 237, Jack winds up in the Gold Room bar. He relays his marital woes to the bartender Lloyd, who offers up a sympathetic ear as well as a glass of Jack Daniels. Never mind the fact that the hotel is technically empty of both staff and booze. It’s the point of no return for Jack and the haunted Torrance family.
An American Werewolf in London
At nightfall, backpackers Jack and David pop into a local pub, the Slaughtered Lamb. The locals are a strange bunch, but things are going okay until Jack asks about the pentagram on the wall. The crowd turns hostile. Jack and David opt to leave, and the locals send them off with a warning, “Keep to the road, stay clear of the moors and beware of the full moon.” Do the Americans listen? No, they veer off the road and onto the moors. A werewolf attacks. Moral of the story? Pub locals might be weird, but it’s best to heed their drunken warnings.
Gremlins
This iconic scene perfectly encapsulates the mischievous spirit of the pint-sized green terrors that take over the small town of Kingston Falls. From taking a spin on the ceiling fan, playing poker, and indulging in every possible lousy vice and behavior, these menacing monsters give poor Kate the worst shift a bartender could ever have. Much to our delight, of course.
Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Wright delivered one of cinema’s most iconic pub scenes of all time with this beloved ZomCom. For Shaun, his best friend Ed, love interest Liz, and their friends and family, they seek refuge in the Winchester bar during a zombie outbreak. The jukebox kicks on, playing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Cue the synchronized battle for survival.
From Dusk Till Dawn
Granted, the entire second half takes place within the Titty Twister bar. Still, it’s the iconic scene that introduces the seductive Santanico Pandemonium and her subsequent lust for Richie Gecko’s bleeding hand that sparks a vampiric feeding frenzy. Santanico’s arrival marks a pivotal scene that transitions the narrative from action film into full-blown horror.
The Fly
Seth Brundle and Ronnie Quaife’s budding romance dies quickly when his experimentation with teleportation pods leave him permanently altered. When she refuses to enter his teleportation pods, he leaves her and heads to a nearby bar to find a new companion willing to undergo the experiment. He sets his sights on a bar patron to bring home, but not before giving another one gruesomely painful bone fracture in the process. Even more horrific, this is only the early stages of Seth’s transformation into the grotesque Brundlefly. As Ronnie puts it best, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Near Dark
Caleb Colton thinks he’s wooing a pretty lady, Mae. Instead, she turns him into a vampire. The leader of her vampiric clan gives him a week to prove himself, and this fantastic bar scene marks the beginning of his initiation. Moreover, it demonstrates just how ruthless these vicious vamps tend to be with their prey. Severen sadistically taunts his food while encouraging Colton to explore his heightened strength. Bill Paxton proves to be the ultimate scene-stealer here. “It’s finger-lickin’ good!”