ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company has been a reliable locale for grabbing a beer, seeing a movie and eating a gigantic slice of pizza for years. Since October 2025, Cagney Larkin has made the theater the go-to spot for a good scare, too.
Death of the “rep” screening
For two decades, Asheville Pizza was a second-run experience, bringing movies back for another run on the big screen a few weeks after their theatrical windows. Then, in 2021, the “Brew-N-View” transitioned to a first-run format. Rather than selling $3 movie tickets to films three months removed from their debut, the theater would show new movies at standard prices, allowing Asheville Pizza to compete with bigger theaters in a more significant way.
While the first-run upgrade was an exciting new chapter for Asheville Pizza, it had an unfortunate side-effect. In addition to showing second-run films, the theater had a regular rotation of old movies on tap. These “repertory screenings,” or movies exhibited years or decades after their initial release, were an opportunity for film fans to see their favorite flicks on the big screen, often for the first time. However, with the pivot to first-run screenings and the advent of streaming services, cult movies were cut from the Asheville Pizza program.
Night of the living cult movie
It was almost four years to the day of the theater’s first-run debut – the James Bond film “No Time to Die,” first shown Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021 – when Cagney Larkin, a trivia host and horror movie aficionado, hosted a game-changing event. At 7 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025, Cagney’s Cult Classics debuted at Asheville Pizza.
“At first, it was just trying to get a community event going for the holiday of Halloween,” Larkin said. “Like, we have the space. Why not show some mystery spooky movies to get people to come in?”
Every Sunday that month, Larkin showed a free screening of a mystery horror movie. Audiences would arrive around 6 p.m., settling into seats in the Asheville Pizza “game room,” a theater-sized chamber outfitted with arcade machines, a bar and its own silver screen. At the stroke of 7 p.m., Larkin would take the podium below the screen, welcoming the crowd and sharing bits of trivia about the forthcoming flick. The lights would go down, the projector would start up and a room full of horror fans would be treated to a surprise showing of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” “Evil Dead II,” “Dead Alive” or “The Thing.”
“It really popped off all of October,” Larkin said. “We were basically ‘selling out’ every Sunday.”
The free screenings proved so popular that come November, Asheville Pizza president Mike Rangel suggested Larkin continue to hold them.
“It was his idea to keep it going weekly. He offered it. We named it Cagney’s Cult Classics, and I was actually pushing for, like, I didn’t want to try to take too much. I was pushing for once a month,” Larkin said. “He’s like, oh, let’s just do it every Sunday. I was like, hell yeah, my friend. Let’s do it every Sunday.”
Three months on, Cagney’s Cult Classics is going strong, with 40-50 people turning up every week.
Conjuring a horror fan
Larkin has been a fan of horror movies since he was a kid, a passion he shared with his grandmother.
“I actually do specifically remember a first horror film at my grandmother’s house, when I was a kid. It was a Troma film called ‘Mother’s Day,’ which I was probably way too young to watch, but she had a VHS tape copy of it,” Larkin said. “My grandma loved horror. I think that’s where I got my love for it, because I was always at her house watching random horror movies all the time. Like, she loved the ‘Friday the 13th’ series. I think she really got off on seeing bad kids get punished.”
In his newfound role as a horror movie programmer, Larkin brings that curatorial spirit to the films he picks for the public. He enjoys introducing audiences to his favorite horror films as much as watching them.
“The coolest thing about this has been seeing these old films that you would never get a chance to see in a theater with an audience that’s excited to see it,” Larkin said. “You get to hear their reactions, hear their responses. For example, in ‘Dead Alive,’ when I introduced the movie, I told the people, ‘Probably the only film you’ll ever see where somebody uses a lawnmower as a weapon,’ and as soon as he came in and delivered the line and cranked a lawnmower, people cheered for 60 seconds. I got goosebumps.”
As he prepares his next batch of secret, spooky Sundays, Larkin has nothing but appreciation for the people who continue to attend them.
“I thank people every week when I come in. I’m like, ‘Thank you guys for coming out to watch a movie when you have no idea what the f– it’s about to be,'” Larkin said. “It’s fun to be part of that community. People are really stoked on it.
The response has been awesome.”
Cagney’s Cult Classics begin at 7 p.m. every Sunday at Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company, 675 Merrimon Ave., Asheville, N.C.