Fateful Attractions is a retrospective of six fantastic films, dating from 1932 to 1981, whose stories have been drawn from the vivid culture of the funfair, to which cinema has been inextricably linked since its origins. With their emphasis on the frightening, the extraordinary and illusion, funfairs, along with carnivals and circuses, have been a fertile source of inspiration for genre cinema, from Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) up to today’s unfailing stream of killer clowns.

The two worlds have much in common: neither like the ordinary and both revel in extremes, from the funfairs’ spectacular rides and displays of daredevilry to the unreal worlds of the fantastic, including the inherent anxiety of the horror film. Filmmakers have also capitalised on the funfairs’ shadowy subculture of unscrupulous scam artists, explicitly sexual sideshows and unsettling displays of animal and human deformations in such films as Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1924) and David Lynch’s Elephant Man (1980).

By the time the 1970s rolled in, the avant-garde heyday of iconoclasm and subversiveness of the legendary Hammer Studios had declined in the face of the decade’s new liberal norms. Hammer’s Gothic had drifted into mainstream and revivals. But their new generation of directors, such as Jimmy Sangster, Roy Ward Baker and others turned to making films that were more modern, increasingly violent and openly erotic. Hammer 70s presents seven of these rarities seldom seen today.

Giant monsters invade the Eccentric Night while clawing and furious stomping. The Cinémathèque française has assembled quite a bestiary: the shaggiest Yeti in Italian cinema, a grotesque kaiju and a real trained bear. In 35mm and vintage French versions, you’ll better appreciate the mock-ups, the costumes and the actors who wished they were somewhere else. A night of howling laughter, interspersed with ribcracking trailers, it will be a jubilatory XXL chaos.