Slashing Into Medical Horror

Film Series at The Screening Room with the Canadian Museum of Health Care

This February, the Canadian Museum of Health Care, in partnership with the Cinema Society of Kingston, invites audiences to explore that unsettling question through Slashing Into Medical Horror, a chilling three-part film series at The Screening Room.

Each Sunday afternoon, the series dives into a different era and anxiety surrounding medicine, identity, and the body. Before each screening, Museum curator Rowena McGowan and film scholar Dr. Dan Vena will introduce the film, unpacking its medical, cultural, and historical context. Select real artifacts from the Museum’s collection will also be on display, offering audiences a rare chance to connect cinematic fear with real-world medical history.

From Cold War paranoia and experimental science to identity, transformation, and moral ambiguity, these films reveal how medicine has long reflected society’s deepest fears. As McGowan notes, medical history and the macabre have often walked hand in hand—and cinema provides a powerful lens into why.

This series is perfect for film lovers, horror fans, history buffs, and anyone curious about how medicine has been imagined, misunderstood, and feared across decades of storytelling.

⚠️ Content Advisory: While thoughtfully curated, all films are part of the horror genre and include depictions of violence, death, and sexuality. Viewer discretion is advised.

Film Schedule
• Sunday, February 8 at 4:00 PM
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963, dir. Roger Corman)
• Sunday, February 15 at 4:00 PM
The Face of Another (1966, dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara)
• Sunday, February 22 at 4:00 PM
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971, dir. Roy Ward Baker)

Event Details

📍 Location: The Screening Room, 120 Princess Street, Kingston
🎟 Cost: $10 per screening (tickets available at The Screening Room)
🕓 Time: Sundays at 4:00 PM

Enter the operating theatre of horror, where scalpels cut deeper than skin and the real terror lies beneath the surface.