Full Moon Cineplex Is a Shrine to All Things Horror

At Full Moon Cineplex, it’s always Halloween. When you walk through the front door of the former Courtyard Cinema 8 in Hermitage, you’ll be greeted by life-size cardboard cutouts of horror icons and walls covered in movie posters and memorabilia. Ben and Stacey Dixon’s creepy campus is a shrine to all that is spooky. 

And it is indeed a campus. In addition to the old-school, dine-in movie theater, the Full Moon complex features an on-site tattoo shop and, from late September through early November, longtime local haunted attraction Slaughterhouse.

“It’s probably the only tattoo studio/haunted house/movie theater in the country,” says Ben. On Friday nights throughout the year, Full Moon offers dinner-and-a-movie service, with popcorn and a soda included. During the fall, you can also add on a ticket to the haunted house for an almost all-in-one experience — the Dixons say no one has landed the quadruple axel yet by also getting a tattoo the same day.

Ben and Stacey purchased both Slaughterhouse and the ex-theater in 2014. The building had sat empty for 13 years by that point, so it took some work to get it up and running. After the haunted house and the tattoo studio were built out, the couple decided to convert the remaining screen into a functioning movie theater in 2016. Naturally, they wanted the programming to highlight classic horror films. Stacey cites the 1985 vampire chiller Fright Night as an influence on her love for scary movies, while Ben thinks back to ’70s classics like The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror.

“Going to a movie theater and seeing your favorite films like The Crow and Batman … Pulp Fiction, seeing them here and then one day we’re owning it, that was kind of surreal,” says Ben, who like Stacey has a long history in the Hermitage area.

The two also share a love of filmmaking, specifically makeup effects. Ben graduated from the Joe Blasco Makeup Artists School in Orlando, while Stacey studied at legendary artist Tom Savini’s Special Make-Up Effects Program outside of Pittsburgh. In fact, the two met on a film set. Ben was directing an independent horror film titled Wolfsbayne when Stacey, who also acts, was brought on as a makeup artist. Stacey even helps with the makeup for Full Moon’s haunted house each year.

Another shared skill for the Dixons — tattoo artistry. Every spring, they combine their love for film and tattoos by hosting the Full Moon Tattoo and Horror Festival, which saw its 23rd iteration in April. 

“We used to open the haunt for the festival, and that was just too much,” says Stacey. “We would do it for one night of the festival, and I was just like, ‘This is a production within a production within a production.’ Not again.”

Fall is when Full Moon’s calendar is at its busiest, but the couple programs season-specific offerings year-round, like My Bloody Valentine in February or Jaws in July. 

“One year we even did New Year’s Evil, and that was really fun,” says Stacey. “We opened the haunt up, and then we had the movies going, and then at midnight we did The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We did a head-drop.” 

This year for their scary season slate, the Dixons stuck to “the great ones,” which has proved to be a literal murderers’ row. Since mid-September, Full Moon has screened classics spanning nearly 100 years of cinema, including Dracula, Alien, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Poltergeist, with heavy hitters like Halloween, The Exorcist, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Scream still to come. They even show films on Saturday nights during the Halloween season, something they refrain from during the rest of the year. 

“I think this time around, we kind of went back to all the greats,” says Ben. “Some years we’ve ventured out and played different stuff, but this year we just were like, ‘Let’s load it up.’” 

And Full Moon champions horror of all kinds, not just the classics. As independent filmmakers themselves, the Dixons hold space for other independent outings like The 3 Killer Pigs, a micro-budgeted 2026 release that screened earlier this month. Local filmmakers also rent out the theater for screenings.

With the added Saturday night showings and haunted house upkeep, it’s hard not to burn out this time of year, especially with such a small team. The tattoo studio is open seven days a week, and Slaughterhouse runs on the weekends. During the Friday night dinner-and-a-movie service, Ben and Stacey — who have three kids, including one who is a tattoo artist at Full Moon — even cook the meals themselves. 

“During the rest of the year, when we’re just doing Friday nights for the dinner and the movie, people are like, ‘Why don’t you do Saturdays?’” says Ben. “Well, because we want to do something on a Saturday night too. We want to have some fun.”