Comb your goddamn hair.

It was Saturday October 19th and I was at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles for the 2019 All-Night Horror Show and I was worried that all the good seats would be taken by the time I got in. But considering that tickets to this event sold out in mere seconds, I thought to myself "Hey, at least I have a ticket, good seat or not".

I define a good seat as one with quick access to the aisle, that way I wouldn't have to inconvenience my fellow moviegoers by doing the whole "excuse me pardon me sorry excuse me pardon me" thing all night every time I needed to go to the restroom to snort a line or two. Luckily, I found a good seat despite having a guy with bedhead sit in front of me, which meant that every once in a while he would sit up straight, his wayward strands sticking up through the bottom of the screen every which way but loose, resulting in me watching the films as if I were viewing them through a creepy cornfield -- which kinda added to the whole Halloween vibe, he said while trying to make a positive out of the overwhelmingly negative.

The night began with an intro by host/programmers Brian Quinn and Phil Blankenship; they gave us a quick rundown of what to expect: six horror films -- all secret surprise picks of which we would not know until they played -- and as is the custom with the All-Night Horror Show, the movies would not be old or new favorites that are often seen around this time of year, they would all be films that were rarely screened in this neck of the woods, that is, if they were ever screened at all. Brian credited Phil for doing ninety percent of the work for the last couple All Nighters; Phil then said to us that if we loved any of the films shown tonight, they were his choices, if we hated any of the films, it was all Brian.

The lights went down, and we were treated to a Mighty Mouse cartoon called "The Witch's Cat", about a witch flying around town on a broomstick, looking for mice to feed to her cat, who is also along for the ride. They find a group of Halloween-celebrating mice, and the chase begins. Now it's been nearly a month, so my memory is kinda hazy, but I think that at some point Mighty Mouse eventually came in to save the day.

Following that, we watched a trailer reel that included the films Meat Cleaver Massacre, Deadly Games, He Knows You're Alone, Silent Scream, and The Final Terror.

The first film turned out to be 1988's Edge of the Axe directed by Joseph Braunstein, which is a funny way to spell Jose Ramon Larraz. Senor Braunstein helms this movie about a mask-wearing axe murderer going around axe-murdering all the ladies in a small woodsy town somewhere up there in the mountains -- and good luck convincing the sheriff about these murders, by the way. He's more concerned about keeping the pristine reputation of his town, so if, let's say, a woman's rotting corpse is discovered hanging upside down from the attic of a bar, well, that there is clean-cut case of suicide. Say, wasn't that part-time hooker found dead near the train tracks with multiple wounds that look to have been done with an axe? Nope, that there is just another everyday case of someone walking onto the tracks and getting hit by a train.

But I can't blame the sheriff. I can only blame the people who go along and enable his bullshit, like the owner of said bar and the conductor of said train and the deputy who picks up evidence with his bare hands before taking it to get dusted for fingerprints. Most of all, I blame the people who voted for this man to become sheriff in the first place. They should've seen this coming, but no, they liked him because to quote one of these assholes in an anecdote I just made up, "He speaks just like I speak".

If you like giallo-ish movies that make little to no sense and feature laughable dialogue and performances, then give Edge of the Axe a try. It was a hit with the crowd, getting big reactions from scenes like the one where the hero's love interest tries out his fancy computer -- a computer that has the ability to speak in an echo-y voice that sounds like a bored narrator -- and she types in a question. The hero asks her what question did she ask the computer, and she replies "I asked it if you were gay."

A fair question to ask, because considering how shitty the women get treated in this film, all the men in this town must either be super gay or ultra hetero -- that's right, kids, here no penis resides in the middle.

The answer the computer gives to the love interest's gay question, by the way, is "Data incomplete", and that's why I miss the 1980s. Because nowadays you don't even have to ask your computer, it's already volunteering those answers to you whether you want to know or not.




After a trailer reel that included Dracula: Prince of Darkness, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Gorgon, Night of the Blood Monster, Frankenstein Created Woman, The Mummy's Shroud, Twins of Evil, and Hands of the Ripper, the second film turned out to be a rare Technicolor print of the 1967 Hammer production, Quatermass and the Pit (or as it was known in the United States, Five Million Years to Earth), which takes place in the land of free healthcare and bad teeth and evidently worse public transportation, because a bunch of these Brits have to deal with the temporary closure of one of their subways.

You know how it is, it's the same everywhere; every year these different city departments want to ensure they get the same (if not more) amount in their yearly budget, and if they haven't spent it all, they won't get it. So down they go, tearing up perfectly fine places while leaving the areas in need of fixing alone. Well, these clowns are in for a surprise, because they end up finding the skeletal remains of, get this, ape-men.

Yeah, right. I don't know about you, I didn't come from some ape. I came from the first two humans placed here on this planet by God -- and their names were Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! Yeah, that's right, I heard about you. I asked the computer and it told me everything I needed to know.

You know who would probably agree with me? (About the ape-men, not your sexual preference.), Professor Quatermass, who is pretty sure these supposed ape-men are actually aliens from five million years ago, and he's probably right on account of the giant metallic vessel they end up digging up. Gradually, weird and crazy stuff happens, and at one point -- if this is a spoiler, then you have clearly discovered the time travel and you need to go back 52 years to when this movie was new -- Martians get mixed up in the plot, and when you see them during a sequence that involves recording someone's deeply hidden psychic thoughts, well, it's not quite the video log from the Event Horizon. Based on some audience members reactions, I wasn't alone in thinking, how, uh, quaint these Martians looked.

OK, fine, they look like grasshoppers. I don't mean the drink, either, I mean like the insect Johnny 5's stupid ass crushed before realizing he couldn't reassemble it. Hey, I mentioned the drink just a sentence ago and speaking of drinks, there's a part where one dude working at the pit starts losing his shit, and so this lady pulls a flask out of her bag to give this guy a shot of Calm The Hell Down. I want to party with this chick, who's more down with the spirits than Quatermass, who prefers not to drink before noon; he sounds like a man who's never had the pleasure of a 7am beer, if you ask me. Ah, there's nothing like a 7am beer -- except a 7am beer while taking a shower ohhhhh

I had never seen the BBC serial this all originated from, but I have seen the previous Quatermass films, The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II: Electric Boogaloo, and I got a kick out of them.  They're all so properly British while everything around them gets increasingly nutty. I liked this film the most, and if you like ultra-serious, deliberately paced sci-fi films with touches of horror here and there, you might dig this too. Or check out the 1985 Tobe Hooper movie Lifeforce, which I see as an unofficial Quatermass film that's doped up on cocaine, mescaline, and Ecstasy.



Before the third film, we were treated to an episode of The Beatles television cartoon series from the 1960s, which included a story about a mad scientist who tries to force Paul to marry a vampire bat woman, and another story where the Fab Four are messing around in a wax museum. I didn't even know The Beatles had a television series, and I wish I could tell you that it was good, but aside from the use of actual Beatles songs on the soundtrack, it was really nothing to scream about, not unless you were a teenage girl in the 60s who would scream for anything Beatles related.

That was followed by a trailer reel that included The Beast with Five Fingers, Attack of the Giant Leeches, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, the original Little Shop of Horrors, The Thing from Another World, and White Zombie.

After the trailers, we watched a short subject titled "Intimate Interviews", about a lady by the name of Dorothy West -- not to be confused with the Harlem Renaissance writer of the same name -- who goes to interview Bela Lugosi in his back yard. They discuss his Hungarian background, his study of American slang, and other things, before Bela suddenly stares off at the middle distance and says "I'm coming", which creeps Miss West out and she runs away.

We all had a good laugh with that one, before settling in for 1943's The Mad Ghoul, about a college professor named Morris who in between teaching pre-med students and future Big Pharma types about chemicals and their chemistry, likes to do things like kill innocent monkeys with nerve gas. This asshole didn't even come up with the recipe for this gassy concoction himself, he took it from the ancient Mayans -- as opposed to the modern Mayans -- who would use the gas to kill their sacrificial victims, before taking the sacrificial victims' heart out as part of some dumb ritual that is supposed to appease their stupid gods.

So Morris ends up using the gas on his big strapping lad of a student, Ted, on account of the good doctor having a thing for Ted's girlfriend, Isabel. The way it works is, he gassed this dude, effectively killing him. But then he juices him up with fluid from the hearts of the recently deceased, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make yourself a mindless zombie who will do your bidding. By day, Ted -- more like Dead, am I right, people? -- is pretty much in regular person mode, still trying to work things out with Isabel, and by night, he is the titular Mad Ghoul, going on a killing tour with Dr. Morris, who instructs him to murder various people in order to continue with his experiments.

When he's in Mad Ghoul mode, Ted reminded me of the mind controlled assassins from the first Naked Gun film; I know they were referencing The Manchurian Candidate with that movie, but I wonder if maybe, just maybe, there wasn't a little subconscious pull from this movie as well? Or did the filmmakers behind The Manchurian Candidate take from The Mad Ghoul? Or maybe they didn't see The Mad Ghoul, but maybe Richard Condon, the author of the novel "The Manchurian Candidate", maybe he saw this film and stole from it, in between stealing from the Robert Graves novel "I, Claudius"? Or maybe I should just move on?

So, you hear Isabel sing a couple times during the film, and it reminded me of how lame music used to be until they invented black people. Don't get me wrong, her singing is pretty, I'm just saying it's the kind of singing that goes well with mayonnaise and watercress, washed down with a weak cup of tea. Is this the time period certain people refer to as to when America was Great? If so, are these the same people who talk about "taco trucks on every corner" as if that were a bad thing? Because that would make sense, I mean, what I'm saying is, I can see those same people growing up in New Hampshire or wherever the fuck they all come from, these Dartmouth attending fucks -- the men in plaid suits and straw boater hats, the women in tennis dresses and saddle shoes -- and they're all strolling down the streets snacking on toasted cheese sandwiches while snapping their fingers because everything is Mighty Fine?  Is that what we are supposed to want to come back to?

I don't know, man. I don't even like watercress.

While no unforgettable classic, The Mad Ghoul is an entertaining "programmer" -- to use the parlance of the times -- and it's good times in a second-half-of-a-double feature sort-of-way, and if you're the kind of person who has Turner Classic Movies on all day in the background, you'll probably like this movie. I am that kind of person, and so I did.



During the intro to the next film, Phil told us that with only three movies left, we would be watching the three best Ghoulies films, he then told us, all kidding aside, that the film we were about to watch would also be first ever repertory screening, and that it took some legal wrangling in order to pull it off. We watched a trailer reel featuring Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, Urban Legends: Final Cut, and Don't Say a Word, followed by a U.K. print of the fourth feature of the night: The 2000 film Cherry Falls, and this is where I give out a long sigh because this stars the late Brittany Murphy, who honestly should still be here with us being goofy and adorable and talented as hell and all that, but she isn't, what are you gonna do? Well, for starters you can remember her by watching some of the better movies she was in, such as this one. Murphy plays Jody, your typical small town teenager living your typical teenager small town life, except things are getting decidedly non-typical when someone starts murdering her fellow typical teens for the sin of not sinning. What I mean is that this wacko is killing virgins.

It's such an inspired premise; usually these slashers are about the punishment of deviants who lay down with the demons of drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex, but in this film, it's the chaste who are getting chased and once the town sheriff played by Michael Biehn discovers this, he's faced with quite the conundrum. I mean, how does one tell the entire town that a serial killer is targeting virgins, and if so, will you even get taken seriously, and if one is taken seriously, what then? Will this mean all the non-experienced are gonna running out the door in some kind of wanna-bang frenzy? You'll have to watch the movie to find out.

Personally, I think you'd have to tell everybody this, not just to save lives but because as someone who owns stock in both Durex and Trojan, I would appreciate all the extra money I would make off of all these kids. In fact, I think if I had the wherewithal to do this, I'd fund some tactical assassinations in small towns all over this great country of ours. You'd find the virgins through Reddit and 4Chan and trick them into thinking they're gonna get some, then you'd give 'em all Colombian neckties, and spraypaint the word VIRGIN on their chests so there'd be no mistake. No one would miss those kids except their fellow miscreants and maybe their parents. And how the money would flow.

As the trailers that preceded this alluded to us, Cherry Falls is very much of-and-from the glut of teen slashers that came out post-Scream in the late 90s to early 2000s, but it's also one of the better post-Scream-ers. It's closer to that Wes Craven joint in tone, in that there's just as many laughs as there are scares. But while it's very much a smart-ass satire at times, there are also very strong and sincere dramatic moments that might catch you off guard; for me, it was specifically an exceptionally acted scene between Murphy and Candy Clark taking place in a library that reminded me: Oh yeah, this is from the director of Romper Stomper.

But by the time of the -- ahem -- climax, the film pulls out all the stops and based on the reactions from the audience, they were digging it as much as I was digging it. It certainly seemed to wake them up from what I could sense was a bit of slumber time with the last couple deliberately paced films. I realized how lucky we were to get to see Cherry Falls in a movie theater, considering that it didn't even get a theatrical release in the United States, where instead it premiered in an edited-for-television version on the basic cable USA network; reportedly, it was a toxic combination of a change of distributors plus the United States Senate shining an unwanted post-Columbine spotlight on teen violence in movies that sinked it. That's too bad, because I think among all the Scream wannabes out there making tidy profits, Cherry Falls coulda been a contender.



We were then told that there were free doughnuts outside the theater, and I decided not to partake as a way to demonstrate to myself that I did indeed have willpower and that I was indeed a man of strength. That, and I also didn't want to risk the sugar crash that would make it tougher to get through the night. It was a noble experiment that resulted in failure, when after holding out for the entire break, I went ahead and grabbed a delicious old fashioned before the next trailer reel began.

Before the lights dimmed, we were told by Brian and Phil that the last two films would play back to back, with no intermission between them, as there had been between the previous films. They then thanked the projection staff for keeping things running smoothly, as well as the audience for keeping up with all the craziness of the evening. Then we watched old previews for the films Mark of the Witch, The Witch's Curse, Simon King of the Witches, and The Exorcist, so it wasn't too hard to guess that the next movie was going to involve witches and devil shit.

Sure enough, the fifth film of the marathon, the 1975 Spanish production Demon Witch Child, also known as The Possessed or La Endemoniada, involved both subjects. Man, this movie does not mess around; it lets you know how hard it intends to play right from the very beginning, as we watch an old lady walk into a church and proceed to knock things over as if she were a common house cat, then she steals a chalice and walks over to a statue of the Archangel Michael slaying the Devil, where she leaves a candle next to the dark lord, as if he needed any more fire in his life.

See, this old lady is an evil Satan-worshipping witch who is getting all set up for a good ol' human sacrifice for her master, and she makes no bones about her intentions. The witch gets taken in by the police, they give her the third degree because said human sacrifice is a local baby she kidnapped! They even bring in the baby's mother to beg and plead for her son's return, and the witch calls her a bitch, straight out telling her that it ain't gonna happen, and that baby's as dead as my faith in humanity. And while the witch's faith in her master is strong, it's evidently not stronger than sodium pentathol, and upon finding out that the cops are gonna dope her up with truth serum in order to get the boy's location out of her, she exits stage right  -- right out the window and falls to her bloody death.

This news does not go well with the deceased's fellow witches at the coven; after the sacrificing the baby -- I told you this movie doesn't mess around -- they end up giving the police chief's daughter Susan a necklace that allows the spirit of the dead witch to possess her, leading Susan to raise proverbial havoc. First she starts off nice and slow by talking back to her family, then she moves on to playing some of The Exorcist's greatest hits like levitating and swearing up a storm -- she's particularly fond of using pejorative terms for people your computer would identify as gay -- then she moves up to expert level tricks like changing her appearance so instead of looking like the Spanish version of Young Briony Tallis from Atonement, she looks more like the ugly balding witch who resides within, before chopping a dude's penis off and sending it to his lady in a container.

There are a lot of surprisingly harsh moments in this film, and they all sound shocking when described, but the movie goes about them in such a goofy low-rent manner, I mostly laughed through all of it. On top of that, the English dubbing is just as goofy and low rent, and for all I know, watching it in the original language could improve the overall film. But really, I don't think it could improve it by that much. But the important thing is that it's never boring, and that's all you can ask for when watching anything, really. By this point in the marathon, there were quite a few snorers in the audience, so maybe it wasn't as entertaining for them as it was for me.

By the way: if you're predisposed to be snoring, how about you just leave? That's assuming you're by yourself at this marathon -- if you have a friend with you, and he or she is awake, then I'm even angrier that they didn't wake your loud ass up. I usually go to these things with a buddy who does snore, and I am so on top of that shit it's not even funny. I'll start with a nudge, then a shove, then I'll punch you in the arm if that's what it takes, because you are not going to intrude upon the audience's enjoyment -- or mine, for that matter. The rest of you solo snorers and snore-enablers, on the other hand, I'll punch in the fucking face if I had the money and the clout to get away with it.

That's why I have to give it up to the gentleman who sat a couple seats down from me; he started with that snoring during this film and despite being a stranger, I got up and nudged, then shoved him awake. He was up for a while, then he started nodding off -- but he caught himself. So he then got up and left for the rest of the film for what I can only assume was some fresh air, coffee, or a bump, because he came back before the next film and was back to being bright eyed & bushy tailed. At least until he nodded off again and then just took off for good. As he should.




After a sci-fi remake trailer reel that included John Carpenter's The Thing, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Jim Wynorski's Not of This Earth, and Chuck Russell's The Blob, the sixth and final film of the night turned out to be 1993's Body Snatchers, the third adaptation of Jack Finney's novel about humans being replaced with alien duplicates hatched from pods. This version of the story takes place in an Army base and focuses on teenage girl Marti (played by young adult Gabrielle Anwar), who along with her dad, her stepmom, and her half-brother, are new to the whole place.

While Dad's out literally testing the waters on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, Marti's doing the out-of-place youngster thing: not being cool with her stepmom (played by Meg Tilly), making friends with fellow teenage girl Jen and making googly eyes at dreamy helicopter pilot Tim, the entire time trying not to get too weirded out by the occasional odd sight and strange behavior among the soldiers. It's already a creepy enough place knowing that Forest Whitaker is stumbling around the place.

The audience applauded quite a bit during the opening credits, because plenty of genre favorites were involved in the making of the film: among the screenwriters you have B-movie legends Larry Cohen, Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli, and frequent Abel Ferrara collaborator Nicolas St. John, which makes sense because Abel Ferrara directed this film. What doesn't make sense is that Abel Ferrara directed this film.

If you're not familiar with Mr. Ferrara, he is definitely someone I feel comfortable calling an auteur, because his films are very much in a class of their own and they always leave you wanting to take a shower after watching them. He's probably best known for the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant and remains a legend in the independent filmmaking scene and so it's very interesting that Warner Brothers hired the guy to make this mainstream horror movie for them. Based on accounts by Mr. Ferrara, it went about as well as expected, which is to say, not well at all. And in the end, it got thrown away by the studio and remains, in my opinion anyway, criminally underseen.

Of its many qualities, I feel the look of the film is one of them. The cinematographer was Bojan Bazelli, who had shot Ferrara's previous films and this appears to have been their final collaboration, which is too bad because they made beautiful visual music together. It's all creepy shadows mixed with shafts of lights coming in through window blinds or cracks in doors, and the widescreen compositions have this way of making me feel claustrophobic, where even wide open spaces leave one feeling like there's nowhere to escape.

Which is the whole point, right? It's like one pod person says to some humans attempting to escape: "Go where?" Body Snatchers has such an overwhelming sense of doom to it, where perhaps the aliens have a point and they're not bullshitting when they tell you how screwed you are, because there's nowhere to go because it's happening everywhere, so why not just give up and let it happen, baby.

And the messed up part is, maybe they're right? I mean, look at us. Really, look at us. We fight over everything. We fight over politics, we fight over parking spaces, we're shooting each other at schools and stabbing each other for chicken sandwiches. Why not let the aliens take us over so we'll all finally be one happy family! Well, minus the "happy" part, because these pod people don't do emotions. But hey, I'm too emotional anyway, so let's pod me up so I can be rid of these pesky feelings!

The film is deliberately paced (in other words, slow) and I can see that being tough on a sleepy audience around six in the morning. But that's also kind of the fun part, trying not to fall asleep during a film where characters are warning others not to sleep, because that's when the pod people take you over. It's pretty much broken into two acts, with the first act being all creepy setup, then at the midpoint there's a real banger of a scene featuring Meg Tilly's character, and as that concluded, some of the audience couldn't help but applaud because the scene is that good and Tilly knocks it right out the park! From that point on, the second act is quite the ride and it's fun to watch what Ferrara is able to pull off with big studio money and big studio drugs.

I had seen this film once before on Cinemax back in '94 or '95, and I enjoyed it, but it was a lousy pan-and-scan transfer that really hurt the film, because a lot of the inherent creepiness of this movie comes from the way the shots are composed. Watching it in its full aspect ratio in a dark theatre during the transitional period between night and day, well, it really amped up the chills for me and it was like watching it for the first time, only better.




After the film, it was straight to a Disney cartoon short, "Trick or Treat", starring Donald Duck as a miserable asshole who pranks his trick-or-treating nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, rather than give them candy. I get it -- it's a choice, right? It's right there in the phrase, "trick or treat". But who actually goes with the "trick" option? Miserable assholes, that's who. Thankfully, there's a witch who witnesses all of this and she decides to help the three little ducks out in doling out some much needed payback to that son-of-a-bitch.

Because nothing makes one feel more patriotic about the United States than watching a piece of shit named Donald get a well-deserved punishment, the marathon then concluded with a film of "The Star Spangled Banner" that included on-screen lyrics.

Then the lights came up, and another All-Night Horror Show had come to an end. Before stepping outside to the bright morning light, we were each given a special drink coaster for making it through the night. I grabbed yet another doughnut for the ride home, a glazed. It was now about seven on a Sunday morning, which meant that there was only one thing left for a God-fearing man such as myself to do on a Sunday morning. 

It's the only thing a God-fearing man could do on a Sunday morning, and the only thing a God-fearing man should do on a Sunday morning: I went home and slept.

To Cathie, who unfortunately was once again unable to attend the All Night Horror Show

October 15, 2016



Dear Cathie,


How are you? Oh, what am I talking about -- I know how you're doing because I know you just recently celebrated a very special anniversary. Yup, it's been one year since you received a letter from me about the New Beverly Cinema's yearly horror movie marathon! Please keep your composure, it is a very emotional time for all of us, I'm sure. But I will try to keep the tears of joy from flowing if you can do the same.

Circumstances beyond your control with all of the control going to the powerful cold mistress of Fate kept you from attending this, the 9th Annual All Night Horror Show, and I fear that next year perhaps someone else will be writing me about the 10th. I say this because this year's tickets were sold out online in under a minute -- 45 seconds, if I heard correctly from marathon hosts Brian Quinn and Phil Blankenship -- and so it has gotten to the point that by next year, seats could go to someone else aside from yours truly if for no other reason than I was a millisecond too slow on the trigger.

But that is to worry about next year! For now, let us -- let me -- tell you how it went down last Saturday.

Quinn/Blankenship welcomed the packed house and asked us how many were attending this thing for the first time, and I swear nearly half the place raised hands/cheered, which was cool because that meant so many people were going to have this new experience and hopefully they would enjoy it. But then there was this other dark part of me that didn't want them to like it, anything that would cut down on ticket competition for the following year. A purely selfish thought to have, I know, but I shook it off immediately and remembered that "you can't always get what you want", to quote a song by a world famous band that's made millions upon millions of dollars and made millions of fans and are loved everywhere and have gotten everything they -- YOU KNOW WHAT? THE ROLLING STONES CAN KISS MY ASS WITH THAT BULLSHIT ALONG WITH THAT ARBY'S HAT WEARING SON-OF-A-BITCH PHARRELL WITH HIS "HAPPY" SONG.

Rather than focus on films that have been screened/seen ad nauseam around this time of year, Quinn/Blankenship picked stuff that hadn't been screened in L.A. for at least ten or twelve years, or never made it out to the city at all, or if they did, they were very limited releases, or they went straight to video and never had an official theatrical release. We wouldn't know the titles of the six films chosen until they played on screen. (Phil: "I will give one hint, though: there are *six* Police Academy movies.")

We were given a way to guess the films via the trailers screened before each one; before the first film, we saw trailers for Lucifer's Women, Rosemary's Baby, To the Devil a Daughter, Satan's Cheerleaders, and House of the Devil. It had to be something involving Ol' Scratch one way or the other, and sure enough the first film of the night was 1975's Race with the Devil, about a couple of Texan Men taking their Texan Ladies on a road trip to Aspen, Colorado.

To be real with you, I would've been fine watching a movie about these characters going to Aspen and back, and I don't think it's necessarily because the characters are so interesting but because the actors playing them are Peter Fonda and Warren Motherfucking Oates. Clearly I'm not alone in this thought because those two starred in three films together (the others being The Hired Hand and 92 in the Shade), but this one not only has them, it also has Loretta Swit and Lara Parker and Satan worshippers and a sweet RV so this movie is filled with all kinds of Right On.

No joking about that RV; even in its dated state nowadays, I found it impressive. It had a color TV with a good antenna and the sound system had four channels! People in the audience laughed at that the way people now laugh when Argyle in Die Hard goes on about the limo having "everything" like a CD player, CB radio, analog television and a VHS player. Me, I get wistful for a time when we were just as scared shitless then as we are now, only now we know how the past worked out so it looks much better in retrospect.

VHS and square televisions might have gone out of style, but bringing uninvited guests will always be in fashion. Por ejemplo, Oates is showing off his RV to Fonda and then we hear a noise -- it turns out Fonda and his wife brought along their dog for the ride. What fucking balls to do that -- to plan out a road trip with your homie and the motherfucker never thought to let you know about the four-legged stowaway until it was too late. It wasn't even a real dog, you know, a big dog like a German Shepherd or a Boxer or a Phoebe, it was one of those little dogs but not too little. Small enough to get easily smooshed but not small enough to carry in your purse, where it would presumably shit all over your gum and tampons.

This movie would make a good double feature with Judgment Night; both are tales about why you shouldn't drive your RV off the beaten path on the way to your destination because it will result in you and your people witnessing something you shouldn't have seen which then means you're going to be chased by those who prefer to remain unseen. In the case of this flick, our Texans witness a human sacrifice and because this was a White girl and not some illegal border crosser, this is a bad thing to them. This bad thing gets worse because even though they get away and report the incident to the cops, the rest of their trip is now tainted with traces of Fucking Unsettling. Every stranger is now even stranger-er and the film does a great job in making you feel that everyone our characters run into could be Satanists as well.

I like how the film starts out as a good ol' boy fuckaround, goes into horror, shifts into a paranoia tale, turns back into horror, then goes straight out 70s car-crash actioner in the final stretch. Regarding that last section, the audience would frequently burst into cheers and applause. I think it was both seeing the baddies getting theirs while also seeing some genuine old school Holy Shit car stunts done by real stuntmen, probably some real Hooper types, you know? Like, I bet there was a lot of drinking going on after every shooting day with these stuntmen. I imagine a lot of bottles were shot at too in their off time, and no one gave a shit or called the cops because guns in 70s Texas were probably like iPhones in L.A. -- who *doesn't* have one? Well, me, for one. I roll with an Android, but I think you get what I'm saying, right?

Race with the Devil was written by Lee Frost and Wes Bishop, which meant nothing to me back when I first saw this in 2007 at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, but a few months later a series of double-feature DVDs came out called "Welcome to the Grindhouse" (remember that brief period in '07 when we all thought the movie Grindhouse was gonna be huge and suddenly you had DVD sets like that one and "The Grindhouse Experience" and other similar attempts at cashing in?) and it seemed like half of those movies were written & directed by Frost and Bishop.

They had a pretty good run with these 70s exploitation joints and Devil is really a big-budget studio version of those kinds of films -- and it would've been more like those kinds of films if Frost hadn't been fired as director. The studio ended up bringing in Jack Starrett (aka that asshole Galt from First Blood) who I feel doesn't get enough love as a director, at least it seems that way to me. I think only Tarantino (of course) has sung his praises for flicks like this and The Gravy Train aka The Dion Brothers, which I went to see back in 2007 at the Aero Theatre as part of a double feature. That film was written by Terrence Malick under a pseudonym, but the second film, Race with the Devil was written by Lee Frost and Wes Bishop -- IT'S ALL CONNECTED, MAN!



A raffle followed and prizes like comic books, shirts, collectibles, and Blu-rays were given away. We then watched a classic Popeye cartoon called "Ghosks is the Bunk" followed by another trailer reel: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Muscle Beach Party, Psycho Beach Party (featuring Amy Adams!), Blood Beach, The Beach Girls and the Monster.

I started putting two and two together with the beach parties and monsters and began to get a sinking feeling. I whispered said sinking feeling to my friend and my fear became reality when the second film of the evening turned out to be The Horror of Party Beach from 1964. My reason for sinkin' was that I had seen the film before on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and so I assumed it was going to be one of those Manos: The Hands of Fate situations where it would be even tougher to watch a terrible movie in its un-riffed state. But hey, at least the print looked really spiffy! I said to myself.

So you have all these young gals and guys doing the beach thing in the East Coast (somewhere not too far from New York), dancing to a group called The Del-Aires and/or fighting on the sand over women who are just not worth it. Meanwhile, this town must have a 60s equivalent to Terry Silver living nearby because a bunch of radioactive waste is being dumped into the water and all over the skeletal remains of what I'm assuming was someone who snitched on the local mafiosi long ago -- anyway, the toxic sludge-plus-skeletons-plus-whatever else was living under the sea end up forming into a new kind of life: walking bug-eyed scaly creatures with super-sized sausages permanently taking up residence in their wide-open maws. I'd feel sorry for these ugly/awkward things were it not for their taste for human blood.

Because this is a monster movie made long ago, these creatures prefer their blood to come from women and for the most part I think the movie has a little bit of the "eh, these bitches were asking for it" attitude. Like, this entire slumber party gets attacked and this was after we see them tee-hee'ing about the prank they were gonna pull on some visiting boys. Then later in the film we follow three independent Noo Yawkah types as they drive into town in their convertible and flirt with the poor gas station attendant who ends up ejaculating his sexual arousal all over the place except this is a movie and they can't be literal about that shit, so instead it's done with him accidentally pumping too much gas into the car and spilling it all over.

At the beginning of the film, we're introduced to our main dude Hank, and he's just about had it with his girl Tina for having fun. They argue, she tries to get him pissed off by getting some other dude's attention, a fight breaks out between the two dudes, then the two dudes go their separate ways, leaving the lovely lady in the lurch. So off she goes for a swim to, I don't know, find something out there to keep her nether regions occupied. Well, honey, I hope you like hot dogs because here comes a monster with a mouth full of them. Much screaming and bloody pawing ensues.

In this movie -- and hell, most of these kinds of movies -- if you are a girl who busts some dude's balls or intends to in any kind of way, you're gonna be punished for it. On the other hand, if you are a nice girl who needs a man, you'll probably do OK and live a nice long life like our chick Elaine. Tina's body is not even cold and Elaine is telling her scientist father about how she feels all weird because suddenly she's catching feelings for her late friend's boyfriend and ol' Dad straight up hits her back with "Because he's free now?" and holy shit we all laughed out loud in the audience.

Hell, we laughed quite a bit throughout this one; I'm happy to report that the movie is entertaining enough on its own without Mike and the Bots making quippy comments towards it. It's a goofy low-budget movie -- like many of its time -- but also features some surprisingly nice visual compositions and editing every once in a while. Also, there's the housekeeper Eulabelle who has more sense than anyone else in the movie and as far as I'm concerned is the goddamn hero of this movie, since she pretty much is the reason the scientist finds a way to kill the monsters.

I'm just bummed for poor Tina, a girl after my own heart -- she liked to party and then she'd give you some alone time when you needed it. Sure, she would spend that time in the arms of another man, but hey, they can't all be perfect.



One more raffle followed and I didn't win anything so of course BOO All Raffles, right? The following trailer reel consisted of Clive Barker joints: Hellbound: Hellraiser II; Nightbreed -- and that's when I thought "Cool, I wonder which Clive Barker film we're gonna watch?" Then the trailer for Midnight Meat Train came up. "OK, so I guess not that one. Maybe Lord of Illusions? Or Candyman? Or maybe one of the other Hellraisers? Hopefully the first or second." Candyman and Lord of Illusions were the next trailers. "Uh, hmm. Well maybe it'll be the third Hellraiser, that wouldn't be so bad. Hell I'm willing to accept the fourth one or even the ones that went straight to video. I mean as long as it's not --"

When the title Rawhead Rex filled the screen I found myself shouting FUCK! in my mind while most of the audience applauded and cheered even though they cheered for every movie because everybody's all happy to be there. Let's freeze frame on my disappointed face and go back in time to explain why:

So I'm at work, right, and as per usual I'm listening to a podcast through my earbuds because for some reason my co-workers love talking to me about the every day bullshit going on in their lives. I never asked for that but there we go. The day before the marathon I had been listening to an episode of the Outside the Cinema podcast and they just happened to be reviewing Rawhead; they trashed it mercilessly. I was familiar with the film, having seen bits and pieces of it on local television years ago while I was playing with my Ninja Turtles or something. I don't remember giving much of a shit; I only remembered the titular monster looking both cool and goofy at the same time, oh and I remembered reading about how Clive Barker wrote the screenplay to the film (based on one of his "Books of Blood" stories) and hated the final result. Later I found out that this was the second time director George Pavlou directed a Barker screenplay; the previous was a film called either Underworld or Transmutations and Barker hated that one too. Holy shit. Fool you once, Clive....

So now let's get back to me at the New Bev and un-freeze frame that shit to me shouting FUCK! in my mind while everybody else around me cheered. I thought: OK, here we go, a movie I recently heard about being terrible but let's just keep an open mind and maybe we'll get through it all right and hell, I might just like it. 

The movie takes place in a town in Ireland where some guys try to knock over this huge stone pillar, unaware that the pillar wasn't just sticking out of the ground, it was keeping our titular pre-Christian demon underground where he's been stewing, man, just stewing over having his big time spot taken by a couple of perpetrators named God and Jesus. Well, now he's out and about and is making everyone shout right before he claws them and bites their faces off looking like an 80s metal album cover on bath salts and I think the filmmakers missed an opportunity to get some band to compose the music score to this film, at least whenever Rawhead showed up. It would've been so cool to watch Rawhead burst through a door while some long-haired coked-out vocalist high-pitches his best over some hardcore shredding on the gee-tar.

Instead you have that oh-so-orchestral score as Rawhead knocks over tables and shelves all half-assed like Tommy Wiseau at the end of The Room, and when he's not doing that he stalks all around town because you know he's automatically attracted to humans -- he just starts killing them. It's like a magnet. Just kill. He doesn't even wait. And when you're a powerful demon god, they let you do it, you can do anything. Grab them by the neck. You can do anything.

Even though the hero in this is some dude who kinda looked like Steve from "Married...with Children", my favorite character has to be this priest named Declan who is introduced leading his parish in hymns and looking very much like someone going through the motions. Then he puts his hand on the altar which apparently doubles as a griddle (for pancake breakfast fundraisers, I reckon) because some asshole forgot to turn it off so now not only is Declan's hand filled with burning pain but his soul is filled with the unholy ghost -- and his mouth should be filled with soap for all the swearing he lets loose with throughout the film.

Yup, Declan is all about the Rex-Dawg now and it's fucking hilarious. It's like watching Rev. Lovejoy in "The Simpsons" when he was convinced the Movementarians were "the real thing" and suddenly he's not about The Jesus anymore. Like Lovejoy, he gets rid of his clerical collar. Unlike Lovejoy, Declan allows his new God to baptize him R. Kelly style, all happy about it. Later on, Declan's boss, the good Reverend Coot, finds out about his new alliance with Rex and asks him something like "What is he going to do with you when he's finished with you?" and Declan responds with "KILL ME! (then he closes his eyes and gets all tingly inside) I HOOOOOPE!" because this is what happens when you don't let priests get married. They get so hard up they're either diddling the altar boys or working up some pre-cum over the possibility that their new Pagan God boyfriend is going to murder them.

Hooray for lowered expectations, because I found this watchable. Would I watch it again? Fuck no. But it didn't hurt during those ninety minutes. The monster has funny eyes and I can see why Barker was the opposite of pleased with the cinematic look of his literary creation -- or the cinematic everything of his literary creation. There are some good lines here and there, and there are elements that certainly feel Barker-esque (like the Declan character), but except for the nutty climax it all feels like it's being performed in the key of Blah.



We saw a Laurel & Hardy short called "The Live Ghost" where our boys play a couple of fuckin' crimps who make some money shanghai-ing sailors and we all laughed as the unconscious sailors were dumped into the cargo hold, one on top of the other, and you know that shit was real and bones were probably broken but fuck 'em -- they didn't have unions on set in those days, I bet.

Then we saw a trailer reel that had me guessing this was going to be a Mario Bava joint because the trailers were all for Mario Bava joints: Black Sabbath; Evil Eye; Baron Blood. Then the last two trailers -- Friday the 13th parts 1 and 2 -- helped me narrow my guess for the fourth film of the night, and so I whispered the title to my friend, who at this point was fucking DONE with the hot fetid breath of the douchebag next to him hitting his ear: the 1971 Italian film A Bay of Blood (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve aka Carnage aka so many other akas). Phil told us that he had been wanting to screen this film for the marathon for nine years and it took that long to find the absolute best print for it and it sure looked fantastic.

People who kill people are the killing-est people in the world -- that's the name of the game here. The film takes place in and around a property off the bay; you have this old rich lady in her wheelchair looking lonely, but don't cry for her, she'll have plenty of company soon in the afterlife thanks to some dude who suicides her. That dude then gets stabbed to death and the rest of the movie is just one person after another getting taken out hard -- in one case, literally hard, as he and his lady are skewered while doing the horizontal mambo.

You know what, if I was suddenly killed right now I would be deserving of it for using "horizontal mambo", but don't get me wrong, I'm not Declan from the last movie, I'm not hoping for that to happen to me so allow me to apologize for that, Cathie -- just in case you have the same kind of inclination to Bay of Blood the fuck out of people who annoy you.

I don't remember where I first saw this -- I want to say it was late at night on some UHF channel back in the day, maybe it was that "Horror Kung Fu Theatre" program hosted by The Nightshadow? -- I just know I've seen it before. A Bay of Death Carnage is brought up most of the time in movie geek circles as the grandfather or godfather or much older pervy uncle to the slasher genre; some of the kills here were in fact straight up jacked and used in the first two Friday the 13ths, which is why we saw trailers to those movies in the reel. When I finally caught this film I had already been well-acquainted with how Jason Voorhees got down, so I was surprised with how effective -- no, *more* effective the murders were here. Mainly it's because Mario Bava is a much better director than Sean S. Cunningham or Steve Miner -- in addition to the stylishly shot kills, homeboy is great at atmosphere and tension and all that.

(To be fair, I don't know if Bava could've made My Father the Hero or Forever Young any better than Miner, but even if he couldn't, it would've been an impressive effort given that Bava would've already been dead for over twenty years by then.)

In addition to atmosphere, I think there's also how music is used differently between Blood Twitch Nerve and Friday the 13th; in the latter you have Harry Manfredini's famous ki ki ki ma ma ma whispers and heavy use of strings and stings underscoring the hapless camp counselors inevitable bloody fates whereas in the former you have, well, most of the time you don't really get anything music-wise from Stelvio Cipriani. I remember one kill that had some pulse-pounding chase music leading up to it, otherwise what little music there is usually won't cue up until after someone is dead, and even then there's nothing Horror about it. It's unsettlingly lovely, sounding more sad and serene rather than sharp and scary.

This movie belongs in the 70s Italian horror sub-genre I like to call Quiet As Fuck For The Most Part; I don't know if it's a result of being dubbed and not adding much foley work to the proceedings or if that's how Bava wanted it to sound but yeah, this is one of those where the only thing you can really hear in this movie is the dialogue in between the dim hissing in the background. It's the kind of movie that you'll probably raise the volume so you can hear what the characters are saying better and then suddenly glass will break and it will be the loudest glass breaking sound effect you've ever heard and you're frantically reaching for the volume control while cursing yourself for watching this in the middle of the night with your window open so now your nosy retired neighbor is already turning his light on and reaching for the ol' Ruger SP101 .357 Magnum.

The kills are good, the women look good, the music is good, and the ending is better than good -- it's fucking hilarious. Also, some asshole fisherman chomps on a fuckin' squid he just pulled out of the water and I bet it's some macho Italian thing, it's not enough for him to gobble up some calamaaaaaaar(i) at the local ristorante. Whatever. If you can only see one Mario Bava film in your life, then you are going to die having missed out on even more good shit out there.



I don't quite recall correctly, given that I waited too fucking long to write about this, but I think it was at this point that Quinn/Blankenship and company brought out donuts for everyone to enjoy. Tempting as it was, I ended up not partaking in all that sweet sweetness for fear of the eventual sugar crash before the end of the marathon. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, what helps me get through these marathons (which is getting tougher for me as I get older) is to keep it light in the food department and pace myself when it comes to caffeine and other stimulants.

So once I saw what we were all in line for, I got out of line to go outside and get some fresh air and that's where I saw a gentleman by the name of Andrew with a lady by the name of Elle (I will keep their last names secret out of a sudden irrational fear that overcame me just right now that somehow being associated with this blog will hurt them in their respective careers, because really, what kind of degenerate do you have to be to be connected to me -- right Cathie?). Andrew confirmed that she was indeed The Elle and so there we were.

Elle is the lady who bestowed the name "Princess Sparkle" upon me on Twitter years ago during EFC version 1.0 but I never met her until now -- then -- that night. I said Hi and then I said Bye and she was nice and he was nice and even in that brief exchange I overstayed my welcome. But it was good to see her and close another chapter in that particular book.

Quinn/Blankenship let us know that as per usual, the last two films would be presented back-to-back with no breaks. The trailers preceding the fifth film were all early 80s school slasher films like The Dorm that Dripped Blood (aka Pranks); Graduation Day; Final Exam; The Mutilator (aka Fall Break); and the spoof Student Bodies. Then the Vestron Pictures logo came up which caused damn near everyone to cheer because that's the kind of geeks we are, the kind who know Vestron means Good Times. The film was Slaughter High (aka April Fool's Day), which I had only seen the final twenty minutes of on TNT or TBS a long time ago, back when those channels used to show cool shit late at night. (Or maybe it was USA's "Up All Night"?) Since then, I've only heard about it mentioned by horror geeks on horror geek websites and such, so it was cool to finally watch the whole thing.

This is a movie that takes place in a strange high school filled with people who are so scholastically challenged that they've been held back over and over for at least ten years, which would explain why they would do something as stupid as prank the everlasting fuck out of the nerd-in-resident, some schmuck named Marty. It wasn't enough that they leave him with blue balls after making him think he's gonna get some from Caroline Munro (playing one of the assholes, not as Caroline Munro), they also pull some extra heinous shit that ends with him getting even more hot and bothered, only in a literal-type way, as he ends up getting a little acid fire action. Dude ends up getting plastic surgery for about six months or so, meaning he's gonna have an even harder time trying to get laid.

I couldn't tell you if that ever happens for him, because the movie doesn't tell us. Instead it flashes forward to the high school whatever-year-reunion -- the students are probably in their mid-forties by now -- and as we re-meet all of these assholes, we (me) notice a couple things: first, most of them carry with them a heavy air of The Best Years of My Life Were Ten Years Ago (with the exception of Munro's working actress character), and second, they don't have the best grasp on their fake American accents.

That's probably because this was a British production that tries to fool us by planting American flags around the campus, but they might as well have kept the Union Jack up on those poles because everyone to varying degrees of un-success will end certain words with a different inflection than most of us Yanks are accustomed to. My favorite example doesn't involve the students but the rockin' DJ on the radio who pronounces "weekend" with a kind of gap between "week" and "end" which is something I've noticed my cousin-in-law and first-cousins-once-removed do.

See, I have family from the U.K.; my cousin married an English girl and has been living over there for twenty-something years. Nowadays when he speaks he sounds kind of like the actors in this movie, only that's because the English accent is creeping into him, not out of him. At most, he has that Richard Lester expat accent, where he still sounds Murican like 70-80 percent of the time. He wasn't full of shit like Madonna back when she was Mrs. Guy Ritchie, who after two seconds across the pond came out speaking The Queen's like a born-and-bred fish & chipper. Didn't Elijah Wood pull that shit for a little while too after filming a movie there? C'mon Frodo, you're better than that, bro.

Oh yeah, so, these assholes are back and they notice that the school is run down and closed down and nobody else is there except the caretaker (he's always been the caretaker) and one classroom full of food and drink and each of their lockers containing their old gear. One of these morons picks up a Pabst Blue Ribbon, downs it, and then his stomach explodes because only hipsters can stomach that swill, not former jocks like Guts Man over here. Something's up, and it might have to do with the masked creep wearing a letterman jacket and jester hat stalking the halls and c'mon, we know it's Marty getting revenge -- not that he actually has to do anything, because these idiots who are lucky to have made it this far in life without winning a Darwin Award set themselves up in death traps like washing up in bathtub filled with acid, or my favorite, getting it on on a bed that just happens to be there even though friends are dying all around them.

The movie doesn't take itself seriously -- Jesus, at least I hope it wasn't -- and while it's tempting to call this a "bad" movie, I feel this was exactly the movie the filmmakers wanted to make. At times it feels like a more restrained Troma production. The three (three!) writer/directors know what you want -- to see people die horribly -- and they give it to you while making no bones about not giving a shit about any of the characters. These are terrible people, all of them, and even though my sympathies were mostly with Marty because of all the shit that was done to him, he takes out the caretaker who to my knowledge wasn't involved in the pranks. That means Marty is really all about getting revenge for himself, rather than cleansing the Earth of mean-spirited fuckwads (which I would be down with) and he'd probably consider the caretaker collateral damage. Marty can go fuck himself too.

Aside from that, this is a fun and nasty ride worth a look-see; this was the theatrical version, meaning the gore was cut down but it still did the job of making us in the audience react audibly to it. I understand the DVD and streaming versions reinstate it, so I'll probably check that version out next Halloween season.



Immediately following Slaughter High, we saw a trailer reel where all the films had one thing in common -- they were all released in 1993: The Crush; Man's Best Friend; Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday; Leprechaun; Return of the Living Dead 3. I then went to the restroom to do to the urinal what Rawhead Rex did to Declan and I thought I heard the trailer to Warlock: The Armageddon, but don't hold me to that.

The sixth and final film of the night turned out to be Ticks (aka Infested), directed by Tony Randel (Hellbound: Hellraiser II) and starring Seth Green who Michael J. Fox's it the fuck up in his role as a misunderstood kid named Tyler who is forced by his concerned dad to join some kind of group camp retreat for fellow troubled teens. Thankfully Tyler isn't an asshole, the way young protagonists are in these movies. Alfonso Ribeiro, on the other hand, plays a character named Panic ("...'cause I never do!") who has a higher asshole quotient because he's one of these guys who tries to show you how hard he is to others. While I had no problem buying Green as a put-upon kid with some issues, it took me a few minutes to buy Carlton from "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" as a muthafucka from the hood.

What I liked about their relationship is that it turns into a kind of grudging "You ain't that bad yourself, bro" kind of deal. It didn't turn into what I expected to be Panic constantly fucking with Tyler and pushing him towards some kind of moment where he'd have to Stand Up For Himself or something. That also goes for the relationship between them and the other problem children along for this ride into the woods -- a blonde bimbo, a brown himbo, an quiet Asian girl, Ami Dolenz -- they pretty much get along and they're led by some lady and Peter Scolari from "Bosom Buddies", a program he starred in with Tom Hanks, who by this time was winning accolades and Oscar buzz for his role in Philadelphia.

So off they go, into what I thought was the Northern California woods. I'll be honest, I got up a couple times to get some coffee refills so I missed some details here and there. Maybe it's supposed to be Southern California, and I think I got confused because there's a whole subplot about marijuana farmers and I associate that stuff with the Emerald Triangle up north. All I know is that Panic gets all upset and runs off to hitchhike back to Los Angeles after his canine companion dies after getting all swollen up and jello-jiggly because of being infected by giant steroid'd ticks. So I don't know how long of a ride he's got ahead of him.

Not that it would matter anyway. He won't get far, nor will anyone else in this film. Because of the titular ticks, you see. They're giant because fuckin' Clint Howard wasn't paying attention while trying to soup up his killer strain of Kush, he didn't notice the ticks were getting some of those good-ass 'roids until it was too late. A giant egg lands on his face and it looked familiar to me, that moment, and that's when I realized that this clip was part of the montage MTV put together for their tribute to Howard when he received his Lifetime Achievement Award at the MTV Movie Awards, joining fellow awesome recipients like Jackie Chan and Chewbacca. Howard was so genuinely touched by the honor that MTV discontinued it after, feeling there was no way to top that.

Anyway, he gets a fuckin' egg to the face and spends the rest of the movie infested internally by these bloodsuckas. The ticks get loose and oh woe is you if you're infested too. It's not so bad if they just bite you and inject some of that sweet sweet toxin in you, because then you start tripping LSD-style. But most likely you're gonna get pregnant behind the middle school from these things and then it will be very bad. It's all very gross and a mite disturbing but this is what movies like Ticks are all about, right? Grossing you out and shit? That's probably why sadists like Quinn/Blankenship scheduled this movie last, so close to breakfast.

This feels like a 90s version of a 1950s-60s creature feature, the way it starts off kinda slow and serious and the characters are even painted a slight shade of Human but then after the ticks show up, it all goes out the window and suddenly you have not just these things skittering about (which would occasionally bring about the occasional yelp and scream from a female audience member somewhere near the front), you then have these half-dimensional cardboard villains (marijuana farmers) and that's when it starts getting goofy and chaotic. The kind of movie they used to make -- like The Horror of Party Beach.

Clearly it's a low-budget film, but the practical effects are cool and there's even what looks to be front-projection and matte effects thrown in. If this were made today, it would be produced by The Asylum and it would be charmless and cynically thrown together with the amount of effort it would take to just upload footage into a fuckin' hard drive. These kids today, they miss out on shit like this. Everything has to be fuckin' Sharknado now.



As the end credits began to roll, Quinn showed up and told us not to leave yet because the night wasn't officially over yet. So we sat back down, most of us, anyway -- some still left and some like my friend would stand in the aisles -- and we waited until the very last frame of the Ticks print. A Bugs Bunny cartoon called "A Witch's Tangled Hare" followed, and after that, the same National Anthem film that always closes out the marathon.

As far as the 9th Annual All Night Horror Show is concerned, we made it. My buddy and I then walked down a few blocks to a restaurant called BLD; I'd heard about it while watching a rerun of "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" on the Cooking Channel. This one chef, Aida Mollenkamp, raved about the Ricotta Blueberry Pancakes there -- and I have to agree. They are pretty damn good, Cathie. If you make it to the next All Nighter, you should give them a try.

Oh I almost forgot! Right after the marathon, we were each given a gift in the lobby for making it through the night: a pair of sunglasses to help our walk into the morning light. The glasses were legit, and they most definitely fit. I wore them the rest of the day even though I have a pair of prescription sunglasses, but I was so tired I forgot about those until I was driving down the freeway and noticed things weren't as clear as I was used to seeing them. That was a fun drive. I don't know if my friend felt the same way.

OK, that's it. I have plenty of things to do. These votes aren't gonna tamper themselves and these e-mails aren't gonna be leaked on their own. Take care and be well, comrade.


Всего хорошего,


EFC


P.S. I suggest that you [REDACTED] [REDACTED] when they start to [REDACTED] everyone while the [REDACTED] [REDACTED] before the [REDACTED] in [REDACTED]. Just looking out for my friends!

To Cathie, who could not attend the All Night Horror Show this year

November 5th, 2015

Dear Cathie,



Long time, no write, eh? I hope this letter finds you well, given recent events in your life. The man to whom I've given this letter told me that you had to go visit one of your mines overseas because of some kind of "uprising" that you had to "neutralize". These people with their weird business terminology! Anyway, I'm sorry you were unable to attend the latest All Night Horror Show at the New Beverly Cinema last Friday (Oct. 30th).

Yeah, I can't believe it either -- they brought it back to the New Bev! I liked last year's all-nighter at The Cinefamily, and I like that theater, but I always associated this marathon with the New Beverly and it's nice to see it back "home". I don't know if a change of venue resets the count of how many of these have been thrown, but if it doesn't, then I believe this makes it the 8th All Night Horror Show.

As with previous All Nights, programmers/hosts Brian Quinn and Phil Blankenship were there; I went ahead and decided to make things awkward by introducing myself to Mr. Blankenship, thereby closing yet another chapter in the I Hide Behind My Blog book. (First chapter was you Miss Cathie, and the last chapter will be me looking in the mirror with a razor blade.) By 7:30pm, they both came down to welcome the audience; they talked about going over to Cinefamily for last year's all-nighter but now they're back to a place that has a little more room, is a bit more spacious, and with slightly more comfortable seating.

Brian and Phil then gave us a quick rundown of what to expect: six feature films in 35mm (and I believe on in 16mm), along with trailers, raffles, and other bonuses. Just like they did last year, all six films would be kept secret up until they came up on screen. The idea behind this is to try to keep the audience's interest throughout the whole night, people are more likely to stick around for all the films -- or at least up until the opening credits of the sixth film. This worked last year at the Cinefamily because the night ended with the house in 80-percent capacity which is pretty damn good. Keeping the films secret also serves another purpose, said Phil: it allows him and Brian to show movies the audience doesn't want to see.

And so the night began; a trailer reel featuring sequels to The Amityville Horror, Child's Play, Return of the Living Dead, and one non-sequel, Fright Night (the original). This led up to the first film of the night, Fright Night Part 2 (again, the original) from 1989 and once again starring Roddy McDowall and Herman's Head and I had never seen it before except for the first 20 minutes or so waaaaay back in the day at a sleepover. Yeah, sleepover, that's how long ago it was. Still not convinced how long ago it was? The movie we watched before it was An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West, and I guess all those animated mice and cats dozed me out before I could properly enjoy the vampire flick.

The sequel picks up some time later after the events of Part 1 with Herman's Head having gone through three years of therapy (Pumbaa from The Lion King!), and has now convinced himself that the fanged bad guy who kidnapped his girlfriend and turned his boyfriend was not a vampire but instead some kind of crazy creepy cultist serial killer. Now he's in college and he has a new girlfriend (the old one now batting for the home team) played by Traci Lind, who I remember having a crush on from Class of 1999 and My Boyfriend's Back. I can't recall whether the crush was returned or not.

So he's in college and is pretty sure that the vampire thing never happened and McDowall's horror film star Peter Vincent is still hosting his late night creature feature program and everything seems fine and dandy BUT -- who is this enchanting enchantress showing up at Herman's door? She is Regine, played by Julie Carmen (raza!) and it turns out she is the sister of Chris Sarandon's vampire baddie from the first film, but what's even scarier is that she's a performance artist. Hitching along with Regine on the revenge/fuck-with-his-head ride is Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite and the Night Slasher from Cobra, so you know the odds are stacked against our boy Herman's.

I liked how Vampire Chick's revenge plan is to make Herman's her slave for eternity, while Peter Vincent gets a lesser punishment -- she gets him fired and takes over his show, which I figure to a guy like him might as well be Hell on Earth. Somewhere along the way she hooks up with Herman's Head's friend and/or roommate, played by the late Merritt Butrick aka Admiral Kirk's Son, and I bring that up because Butrick was also in a film (Death Spa) from the previous week's marathon over at the Aero. But it doesn't stop there, lady and...uh, just lady (forgot I was writing a letter here!).

This sequel was directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (who also co-wrote) who also had a film play at the Aero Dusk-to-Dawn Horrorthon (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), making it two horror film marathons in a row that opened with one of his joints -- and no wonder, he makes good flicks for the season. They also look good; they were both shot in Scope and have this atmosphere and texture that seems to be missing from film nowadays. Now is that because those were shot on film and everything's shot digitally now? I'm not ready to mount my flagpole onto that particular trailer hitch yet, so I'm just going to say it has to do with the talents of Wallace and his cinematographers (Dean Cundey and Mark Irwin). Maybe it's an 80s thing too; lots of foggy sets in this joint and I'm just a sucker for that look. Anyway, the movie looked great and I'm glad I saw it this way for my first time; it looks like there's no official Blu-ray for it and the DVD is pan-and-scan garbage, so if you see it playing on some HD channel, DVR that sucker on the double-quick!

I was pleasantly surprised by how much Fright Night Part 2 holds up against the first film. It's a good follow-up that despite a change in writers and director manages to maintain the same kind of tone and style of the original -- just the right amount of chills, laughs, seriousness, and goofiness. Now to guys like Leonard Maltin, who gave it two stars against the original's three, this is considered "more of the same" in a negative way. I prefer to look at it as "more of the same" in a positive way. Sure, it doesn't take Fright Night to another level, but it doesn't drop some levels either. It's only disappointing if you're expecting Coppola or Cameron levels of sequeltude.


Following a trailer reel for the first eight Friday the 13th films was the second film of the night, Messiah of Evil -- or as it was titled on this print, Dead People. Phil and Brian called this one of the best horror films of the 70s -- a stone cold classic! -- and I wholeheartedly agree having now seen it three times. The first time was a few years back on one of those 50 Horror Films DVD sets that cost ten bucks and carried mostly garbage but also had a few gems hidden throughout -- and this film was one of them.

I had come home around 3:30 in the morning and was still pretty faded so I popped this movie in while hitting the Vapor Genie (RIP) and waiting for the gallon of preemptive-strike hangover water I just drank to settle. It was a shitty/squeezy pan-and-scan job, and I figured it'd be Trash Movie good times but hell no! I ended up getting the Code Red Blu-ray and it was even better the second time around because it was cleaned up and presented in its full Techniscope ratio. But watching a beat-up print (complete with the weird theme song that was removed from the Blu-ray) in a packed house with plenty of newcomers to this tale might've been the best viewing yet.

The film starts with Walter Motherfuckin' Hill getting his throat slashed by a girl who figured she was saving him from working on Supernova in the future, but never mind that because then we meet Marianna Hill (no relation) as Arletty, some chick who drives into an underpopulated California beach town called Point Dune that is supposed to be an artist's colony. I don't know why I wrote "supposedly", because after you see the weirdos that occupy this place, you would definitely call it a place full of artists. Arletty stops at a gas station and finds the dude working there firing his revolver at something out there in the distant darkness. He sees her, puts the gun away, wipes his hand with a rag before asking "Fill 'er up?" and telling her he was shooting at stray dogs but you just fucking know there's more to this than just some fuckin' dogs. Then later he strongly whispers "GET OUT" and she's like Whatever.

Arletty's looking for her dad, and instead she finds a diary he left behind at his groovy pad. Turns out this is one of those creepy diaries where each entry gets increasingly unnerving while the reader is demanding more inquiries. More and more information is given to her (and the audience) about what the hell is going on in this book, and God forbid that anyone in these kinds of movies actually reads the entire diary in one look, rather than every few hours or day by day. Understand what I'm trying to say? If you put me in a situation like that I 'd read it cover to cover in one sitting, because I need to know the ending in case there's some lifesaving shit in there or something.

If there's a theme to this movie, it's probably not the theme I came up with: Stop Acting So Cool And Disaffected About Increasingly Weird And Freaky Shit, Or Else The Weird And Freaky Shit Will Become Horrifying Abominable Shit And Then It'll Be Too Late Because It'll Be Gnawing On Your Pancreas And You'll Be Too Busy Going AIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!

Sorry to write that last part like a Spike Lee tweet, but I feel strongly about the lack of reaction throughout most of the film by the main character . Some of the people she runs into also suffer from the same low-key symptoms, specifically some Portuguese motherfucker named Thom who dresses all 70s natty-like and has two foxy ladies with him at all times. He's one of these rich bored assholes who spends his money traveling around and paying hobos in booze for some stories he can record on his reel-to-reel. You know the kind. And he's such a languid son-of-a-bitch too. Wait, what am I saying? They're ALL languid sons-of-bitches!

No joke, mostly everyone here seems too doped up to react to all this weird shit in town -- and if this were a bad movie, that would be an issue. But it's not. It's pretty damn great, this movie. Maybe the actors were directed to underact that way or maybe those were the best actors they could get for the money, actors with names like Joy Bang. But along comes Elisha Cook Jr. for one scene (which I'd reckon is all they could afford with him) and he's the most animated in this film, albeit a kind of dialed-down animation because he's probably been directed/medicated by the filmmakers too.

I know one group of actors who had good reason to appear down and listless; the extras in this film, mostly made up of middle-aged unemployed aerospace workers. They look like they got lost on their way to their real jobs, and snatched up by a van filled with casting department personnel. I try not to think about it too much or I get sad. Fucking Randolph worked hard, went to school, got his degree, got his aerospace gig, gave the company TWENTY FUCKING YEARS OF HIS LIFE and then here comes the pink slip. His son doesn't even look at him with fear and respect anymore -- he looks at Randolph with worry. Is this what's left for Randolph? Chewing on raw meat at a supermarket in front of a camera for a bunch of long-haired liberal peacenik fucks?! Randolph used to believe in this country. Now he only believes in himself -- and he's losing faith fast.

This is one of those movies where you can tell they didn't have much to work with budget-wise, location-wise, everything-wise, but they made the best of what was available -- like the beach house that belonged to Arletty's father. I don't know what the deal is with that place, if it's a real house or a set, but either way it's impressive. The bed hangs from the ceiling and has a record player on it. I freak out if I find out I slept with my phone on the bed. The place is covered wall-to-wall with paintings that would be terrible to look at in an altered state of mind. All of this is shot beautifully by Stephen Katz who frames his shots in a way that treats the backgrounds (like those paintings) as if they were characters as well. The color scheme is what I'd call American Argento, which I understand is also the name of an 80s movie starring Mitch Gaylord?

The whole thing has this dream feel to it -- this takes place in a universe where there is no such thing as Logic -- but for long periods it feels like the kind of unsettling dream where you're not in control and you're not entirely sure if this is going to be one of those good dreams where Genesis Rodriguez is beckoning me to her bedroom for cookies and milk, or one of those bad dreams where Paul Rodriguez is beckoning me to listen to his stand-up while fucking me in the ass. Please don't get that last part wrong; I'm not afraid of getting fucked in the ass. I'm just not a fan of his comedy.

(I mean, I respect him for being a Latino comedian and all that, but after a certain age his stuff started to sound hacky to me and I'm thinking, maybe it always was?)

OK, so. Messiah of Evil -- it's got some eerie stuff going on and not much of it makes sense, but that's part of the fun. It's not really a BOO! scary-scare-scare kind of flick, it's more like the slow kind of scared you feel, little by little, until it's all over you and you're ready to climb out of your skin because you're riding with some strange driver who talks funny and then pulls out a rat and chomps on it but he's willing to share it with you -- which is what happens in this movie, by the way.

This was written & directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who've since gone on to work with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on various projects. They also went on to direct films like Best Defense and Howard the Duck, but even with better actors and bigger budgets they were never able to match the quality of their first film. Maybe if those films featured stuntmen jumping through skylights then eating shit on the way down as they slam against the narrow walls bordering said skylights, like they do in Messiah of Evil, they would've had better luck.

After the break, Phil told us that there were four movies left and coincidentally there are four Ghoulies movies. Oh man, what if? What if that's what the rest of the marathon played? Oh man. Thankfully, that wasn't the case -- after a raffle where DVDs and figures were given away, Brian introduced the third film of the night by telling us that it was a black-and-white film from the 1950s that was one of his favorites and that Phil had never seen it. Before that, we saw a trailer reel consisting of the first Return of the Living Dead, Army of Darkness, and Pet Semetary.

I can't remember where, it might have been before this film or the next film or maybe they split them between these films, but I remember seeing the short film Bambi Meets Godzilla and a Little Rascals short called "Spooky Hooky". Let me ramble a bit about the latter; Alfalfa, Spanky, Porky, and Buckwheat are like Fuck School and decide to leave a forged doctor's note on the teacher's desk so they can go to the circus the following day. Turns out that the teacher is taking the whole class to the circus on that day, so the boys decide to break into the classroom that night to take the note back. My favorite thing about this short is this kid Porky, who at least in this episode comes off as an agent of chaos who does things for the lulz, like scaring his friends by putting a sheet over himself and playing as a ghost, even though I'm sure he knows that on this dark and stormy night the last thing his friends want to deal with is a ghost.

The third film turned out to be a nice print of the 1958 film I Bury the Living, starring Richard Boone and directed by Albert Band. Band was the father of Charles Band, who ran Empire Pictures in the 80s and then Full Moon Pictures in the 90s and onward. I used to follow Charles on MySpace and he always opened up his updates with "Dudes!" and it always came off desperate to me but then I recently listened to the audio commentary on the Trancers Blu-ray and he throws off "Dudes", "Dude" and variations of it so much it was clear that he really does talk like that (or tries really really hard to talk like that). He also threw a couple gay jokes in there for good measure. Oh, and during the end credits, Tim Thomerson mentions doing coke back in the day, and based on his distance from the microphone at that point, I don't think he knew he was being recorded.

What does that have to do with this film? Absolutely nothing, but this is a short movie so I figured I needed to pad it out with something. So anyway, this film is about Boone's character, Kraft, who's the new chairman over at some department store and I guess part of the breaking-in period for new chairpeople is to watch over a cemetery. It doesn't seem so bad because all the actual hands-dirty work is done by this old Scotsman named McKee, who is kinda like what Groundskeeper Willie would be like if he ever grew old and out-of-shape and calmed down and began working at a cemetery. So I guess that means he's nothing like Groundskeeper Willie, except for being Scottish. Anyway, McKee seems more than OK with his job and even though he's been told by Kraft that it's time to retire and live off a pension, he's not in a rush to find someone to replace him.

I get that, retirees wanting to stay busy so they end up finding part-time jobs or begin doing volunteer work. I just don't feel it, because it's weird for me to want to do that, but that's because I'm a genuinely lazy fuck (notice how it's taken me days to write this letter to you, Cathie?) who would love nothing more than have a pension to collect while I sit back watching movies and doing nothing else. I'm probably a minority in the minority; there are more people out there like McKee who are taken aback by the idea that they're supposed to just take the money and not work. Also, I'm not Old old, I'm more like I'm Not 20 Anymore old -- maybe if/when I become an old man I'll change my tune. And the tune will sound like "Sentimental Journey" because that's old music and I'd be an old man.

Another thing McKee does that seems alien to me is giving the impression that he's made peace with dying. He shows Kraft a big map of the cemetery on the wall inside the caretaker's office; it displays all the plots with the names of the people who own them. On the plots are pins; the white ones mean the plot is empty but owned by someone, and the black pins mean they're occupied by the owners, if you know what I mean. Well, McKee shows Kraft his particular plot and with the tone of voice that he uses, you'd think he's talking about the place where he's going to do all his fishing when he retires. I guess -- I hope -- that kind of peace comes with age, because at my particular age I am scared to death of dying. Cathie, no joke, I'd sell so many people out, I'd throw so many under the bus -- literally throw them under a bus! -- if it'll extend my time on Earth. I'd throw YOU under the bus for just one more day.

So things seem OK enough at this cemetery and both McKee and Kraft get along with each other and all that. But then that clumsy scatterbrain Kraft accidentally places black pins on a newlywed couple's recently purchased plots, and later that day the news comes in that they died in a car accident. It creeps him out, but not enough to pay attention to where he places his pins because he does it again -- lousy numbskull -- putting a black one on an empty purchased plot and whaddya know? The owner of that plot drops dead later that night! Kraft slowly begins to realize that this eerie coincidence is becoming more coincidental each time he puts a black pin on a plot that should have a white pin on it, and it starts weighing heavily on his soul and his sanity. HE BURIES THE LIVING! (but only after killing them)

I first caught I Bury the Living late at night; I left the television on and the pounding score by Gerard Fried woke me up and I ended up watching most of it before sleep took me back. (Notice how all these movie discovery stories begin with me coming home late at night or waking up late at night.) Having now watched it in its entirety, I can say that I liked it. It felt like an extended above-average Twilight Zone episode, right down to what looked to me like a lower production value more suited to television; it's not a particularly flashy film and most of it takes place inside the groundskeeper's office. But it's got enough style to get you into the decreasingly stable mindset of the main character, who seems to be a decent enough dude so you end up feeling bad for him as this situation becomes more and more of a living nightmare that he cannot escape. HE BURIES THE LIVING, CATHIE! FOR GOD'S SAKE! And if you still don't get that things are getting more messed up for him, the music score will remind you.

Before the next film, we were shown a trailer reel featuring some of the late Wes Craven's films like Shocker, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Deadly Blessing, Deadly Friend, and if there were others, I missed them or I can't remember. What I can remember, unfortunately, was that the fourth film of the night turned out to be Screams of a Winter Night from 1979 -- where it belonged and should've remained.

This movie, Cathie. I just can't. I just can't waste my time but here I am, wanting to ramble about everything shown that night. This wins the Spookies award for Worst Film of a Horror Marathon -- so it makes sense that this film and Spookies were the fourth films of their respective marathons. I'll give it this, though: I like the title, which I like to think is a play on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. Oh, how I love the films of Ingmar Bergman, and oh, how I couldn't fucking stand this one. I would've rather watched the extended cut of Fanny and Alexander in the place of this film, even at that time of night. That's not a slam against Fanny, no ma'am, that film is fucking great.

Look. I give all movies a chance, in fact I was kinda excited about this one when the title came up because I almost caught it a few years ago when it screened at the New Bev during that two month period back in '07 when Tarantino was promoting Grindhouse by screening a bunch of grindhouse joints (I'm sure that's when it screened). But I missed it, so I tried watching it through less reputable sources (Lord forgive me) and I ended up only catching the first ten minutes before it got all corrupted. I was left thinking "Hmm, those opening credits were kinda awesome and the following ten minutes were pretty amusing, after that I'm sure things really got good!"

CUT TO: Me at the New Bev watching the first ten minutes of this award winner and thinking the same thing -- for another 30-40 minutes.

OK, so this movie starts with a group of people who I'm thinking are supposed to be in their twenties but look like they're in their late thirties (just like Spookies!) heading off in their van to a cabin in the woods for whatever it is these kids do up there in them cabins in the woods, like drinking the alcohol, having the sex, and perhaps a cigarette or two containing the devil reefer. Or maybe they are in their twenties; I'm sure you've seen old high school yearbook photos, where the further back in time you go, the older those kids look. By the time you get to the 1960s, you got these 17-year-old boys looking like unemployed aerospace workers on their way to the set of Messiah of Evil.

On the way to the cabin, they stop at a gas station manned by a no-fucks-to-give attendant (young Herman's Head!) and some weirdo backwoods types; they're warned about some Native American legend and blah blah blabbity blah blah be careful blah don't go up there blah that'll be eight bucks blabbity blah. So they're in the cabin, this motley assortment of regular looking folk (my favorite is Geek Supernerd with his squinty face and Rick Moranis-in-Ghostbusters gait) sit around and entertain themselves by telling old urban legends and campfire tales. Yeah, that's the movie: three stories I'm sure you've heard before, but played out on the big screen. Oh, and these versions suck.

The first story is a variation on the one about a car getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, so the guy half of the couple goes out for gas while the girl half stays to get spooked out. Here it's boring and way too drawn out. The second is about three dudes staying overnight at some haunted house as part of a frat initiation over at what must be the University of Fathers because these mothers look old. Boring and way too drawn out. The third is about some wallflower type who of course would turn me down, so who does she end up with? Some beefy fuck who won't accept No for an answer, so in its place he must accept getting killed. The girl gets away with it and then goes off to Mom College where she and her equally middle-aged-looking roommate are, like, total opposites. That particular story wasn't too boring or drawn out, so I guess that's the best one in the film.

I thought it was a pretty clever touch to have the actors telling the stories in the cabin also play the characters in the stories themselves. It's almost like that's what the characters telling/listening to the stories are picturing in their heads. It's also a way to save money by eliminating the need to cast more actors. I missed the intro before the film, but according to a helpful audience member (who in the movie of her life would be portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in glasses), Brian and/or Phil warned everybody that this movie was a little "kooky" or "goofy" or whatever term was used to prepare us for this burned-out s'more of a film.

I'll admit there are quite a few funny moments throughout, unintentional or otherwise (one character is named "Jukie" and another character straight up cops Steve Martin's old "Excuuuuuuse me!" bit). Also, the last five minutes are the best thing next to the opening credits sequence (which is basically the ending played out over black screen), and it's all scored to what sounded like rejected tracks from 70s television sitcoms and dramas. But goddamn all that decency is spread way too thin, all the amusing stuff is few and far between this interminable slog. Screams of a Winter Night would make a good condensed 5-minute YouTube clip, but I'm not putting one together, I wasted enough time on this shit.


Just like Spookies in the last marathon, this piece of shit drained me of way too much energy and made the rest of the night a bit tougher to get through. I went outside and tried my best to let the fresh air and nicotine do its magic, then returned to find Phil introducing what he called "the very very very Phil movie of the night...oh my God, so fuckin' inappropriate". He said that this film was directed by a woman (which got applause) and that the print featured more footage than the official VHS release. Brian told us that this film went straight-to-video back in 1990 and that this screening would be it's West Coast theatrical premiere. One more raffle, followed by a final warning that the next two films were going to be played back-to-back with no breaks, and then it was on --

The fifth film of the night was Blood Games, directed by Tanya Rosenberg, starring a bunch of actresses who I can't remember by name (but I can certainly remember their shapes GRRRROOOOOWWWLLL I'm a sad pervert), Ross Hagen, The Devil from Snoop Dogg's "Murder was the Case" aka Mac's Dad from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", and George "Buck" Flower. It's not so much a horror film in a ghost/monsters/zombies/slasher sort-of-way, this is way fuckin' scarier than that pussy shit because we're dealing with Human Nature. The worst!

Of all the films shown tonight, this one had the best looking print. It looked beautiful! I felt like I was watching a Grindhouse-style throwback minus the scratches and film damage, like some film shot today but everyone was made up and clothed to look like it was 1990. Why would they do that? I don't know, but a man can dream. The sound -- specifically the dialogue -- had some issues though, like it hadn't been ADR'd and smoothed out yet. So you end up with parts of the film where the dialogue is drowned out by the background sound, or other parts where one side of a conversation has more ambient hiss or hum than the other side.

Blood Games opens with a softball game out in some small town in the woods and it's a bunch of sweaty rednecks versus sweaty hotties and guess which sweatiness I find alluring and which sweatiness I find disgusting. Yup, you guessed it: I find both hot! (Because it's heat the causes sweatiness of the human body, you see.)

The sweaty hotties are known as "Babe and the Ballgirls" which I think is kinda messed up because it's clear they are separating lead ballgirl Babe from the other girls, like she's special. But then I see that Babe is the coach's daughter, and everything is made clear. I mean, this guy coaches the team, drives the bus, handles the business end -- what he says, goes, and if he wants to put his little princess front & center, it's his right to do so. Yeah, it's a business, I think; I guess they go around to parties or get-togethers and play softball while looking hot. You know, I wouldn't mind doing something like that -- provided I'm not paying. But I can see convincing a friend to call up Babe and the Ballgirls for a bachelor party or something. Or better yet, forget the girls, forget the bachelor party. Let's just get together and read the Bible, hold hands.

In the case of Blood Games, Babe and her gals are playing against these rednecks for the occasion of Roy "Mac's Dad" Collins' birthday, which sounds innocent enough except these are Extra Strength Rednecks who love beer, ballcaps with stupid sayings written on them, giant Confederate flags that I'm sure in no way celebrate slavery, but most of all, treating women like the lesser species they see them as. It's an increasingly uncomfortable ball game that seems to go on forever, starting with the rednecks making inappropriate comments, moving on to touching them, and eventually straight out copping feels. Maybe they feel entitled to that shit because they're getting their asses kicked big time. Whatever the case, all that asshole treatment isn't doing it for our bad guys, so Ron decides to take it to the next level by elbowing one of the girls in the fuckin' face!

Man, the audience was like Holy Shit at that moment. But don't worry, dear Cathie, because Ron then gets his courtesy of a fastball to the nuts. As a man who loves karma, I thought that was awesome. But as a man with testicles, I couldn't help but get a little choked up for this piece of garbage Ron. Testicles unfortunately don't get to choose who they're attached to, they must accept all the good AND bad that comes with the man who carries them.

So you figure OK, getting hit in the nuts makes it even so let's move on. Nope. After the game, we find out that the coach made a bet with Ron's creepy asshole father and is trying to collect. Or maybe the Ballgirls were playing for free and Coach Dad decided to make a wager? Damn, this movie is intriguing. Whatever the case, would it surprise you that the father doesn't pay up what's owed? Next thing you know, Coach busts into the town watering hole to take what's rightfully his from Ron's father. A fight ensues and more disturbing than the violence that arose out of Ron's father's petty act of obstinateness is the plain and simple fact that Ron's father was on the toilet in the middle of taking a shit when this confrontation took place and hadn't had a chance to wipe or wash his hands yet. It was getting to be too much for me, watching that.

This all ends up leading to Babe and the Ballgirls running for their lives as All The Rednecks are after them through them redneck woods brandishing guns, knives, crossbows, and boners. Yup, what we have here is the makings of a chase movie and the end result is something approaching Deliverance if it were written and directed by Andy Sidaris. The girls are trying to make it to a safer area, at least one that isn't populated by crazed woman-hating good ol' boys -- I mean, I don't recall seeing a single female in this town aside from the ballgirls. Maybe this was some kind of weird colony where every vehicle is stocked with a full gun rack and the only people living there are all misogynist menfolk. Coach should've done a better job researching this area before booking the baseball field there.

It's ridiculous and at some moments laughable, but it still delivers the B-movie goods: boobs and violence. You cheer for the ballgirls and hiss the fuck out of the bad guys. Actually, that's my main problem with the film -- it does a good job making you hate the bad guys so much that you (me) want to tear the armrest from your (mine) seat, but when it comes time for these guys to get paid back in full for their evil behavior, it holds back. These guys needed to get PUNISHED and they only got punished in small letters. I mean, these dudes get rapey and for that we needed to see them get longer beatdowns, slower deaths, and overall more painful comeuppances. Don't give me shit for my bloodlust, you! This movie knew what it was doing when it worked it up in me, but it then committed the crime of not satisfying my need to see more BLOOOOOOOD.

I remember one part where the girls are beating some dude down and it was BASH BASH and that's all. He's dead. Nah, fuck that -- this guy's been chasing you around, resulting in one girl getting arrowed to a tree, another was raped, and you're just gonna give a couple lousy bashes? No way -- you keep on bashing until there's nothing left but white meat and red sauce! Pull up your sleeves and give this creep a little taste of Rosie the Riveter! Put your back into it, ladies! We can do it!

But hey, it ain't no major crime, it's more like a misdemeanor. Because Blood Games does a lot more right than it does wrong. Or did right/wrong. My use of tenses and proper grammar go out the fuckin' window when I'm on a tear.



There was a Stephen King trailer reel somewhere in the night, so I'm betting it was before the sixth and final film of the night/morning: 1984's Children of the Corn, which was greeted by cheers and sudden exits. I hadn't seen this film since I was a children of the corn myself so I stuck around. A lot of this was pretty much new to me in my old age; my childhood viewing reduced to memory fragments. The opening of the film, where the young'uns of Gatlin, Nebraska start murdering all the olds in town is pretty fucked up. The narrator is this little kid from town and he's just trying to drink his milkshake at the diner when all this slicin' and dicin' gets going. He's watching people drop dead from poisoned coffee, getting slashed up, chopped up, and some poor guy gets his hand shoved into a meat slicer!

Years pass and the town of Gatlin is all kid, all the time. Running shit is a child preacher named Isaac (the one responsible for The Kiddening) and he's got these kids' hearts, minds, and souls, selling them on some crazy shit about He Who Walks Behind The Rows. No adults left but one who helps lead over an adult or two into town for the children to sacrifice. Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated part of the film, we have Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton playing husband and wife on a road trip. We're first introduced to them in a motel; Hubby's got a doctor gig waiting for him in the city of Who Gives A Shit and Hamilton wants to bang him, but apparently he's suffering from I-Have-a-New-Job Dick and can't get it up because that's the only reason you're gonna turn down young Linda Hamilton.

You're not going to believe this, but get this -- Horton & Hamilton's path crosses with the Corn Children. They take a few wrong turns on the road and end up running over a kid. Isn't it weird how one of the most horrible things one could witness in real life is also one of the funniest things you can see in a movie? You can't blame Horton for anything but ensuring a closed casket; the kid was damn near dead already from being neck-slashed. Now where could that kid have been coming from? Could it be...Gatlin?!? DUN DUN DUN

The child cult stuff is far more entertaining than the Horton & Hamilton show (Monday to Friday, 7 - 9am, 790 KABC-AM), so of course more time is spent with the latter -- at least it felt that way. I think this movie is at its best once the cat's out of the bag and things finally move beyond the adult couple looking confused at everything, not knowing the whole story. But the stuff with Isaac and his right hand enforcer Malachi is fun to watch; the actor who plays Isaac, John Franklin, is great at being evil without having that gleam in his eye because Isaac sure as fuck doesn't seem to enjoy what he does, nah, he's got that fuckin' sour puss that only the most humorless and devout can display. Or long sentence short: he's good at being a crazy extremist. With Malachi, you get the feeling that he gets a kick out of using extreme force against betrayers and outlanders. You can tell he's already at that stage of his henchman lifespan where he probably looks over at his boss, this shrimp with the old face, and thinks to himself "I'd be a lot better at his job".

The poor kids get the worst of both worlds in this new world; music and games are forbidden, and you just fuckin' know that if they can't have that then junk food is also out of the question. Fun is a past concept long extinct in Gatlin. Isn't the whole point of an adult-free society to be able to do all the things they wouldn't let you do? (I wanted to be able to do everything as a kid -- now I just want to be able to get eight hours of sleep every night.) And it's so fucking bland in Gatlin too! Overcast skies and monochromatic clothing. They killed all the adults for this? How did these dumb kids fall for this garbage? Hell, how do we stupid humans fall for this garbage? Oops, my answer is in the question itself!

It was all right, this movie. I was tired by then, but the movie (and free coffee refills for the night) kept me up as I wanted to see how this played out, like, I remember the large bulge burrowing under the cornfields but didn't remember the context of it -- so it was cool to be see that part again for the first time. I honestly wasn't left wanting to see the twenty sequels they made for it, but I can understand why people would still be interested in the Parent-Killing God-Fearing Asshole Cult Kids saga, because it definitely is an intriguing concept -- as is most anything Stephen King comes up with. Speaking of which, I remember reading his thoughts on this particular film adaptation somewhere long ago. I don't remember exactly what he said but I do remember the word "rape" being used, so it's probably safe to say that there must be major differences between novel and film.


Following the last film, we were treated to a Woody Woodpecker cartoon which I'm sure I've seen before at a previous All Nighter. I don't remember the name but it was about Woody being chased around a mad scientist's castle by a feather-plucking robot. Then we had the National Anthem (this year's marathon had the most people singing along to it), giving the night a sendoff not unlike the way television stations used to end a broadcast day.

As we stepped out into the lobby preparing our eyes for the morning light of Halloween morning (about 7:30, as planned), we were each given a gift for surviving this, the (8th?) Annual All Night Horror Show:

I had a good time, just like the other times. I really liked seeing the All Night show return to its original home, and I look forward to next year's marathons -- both New Bev and Aero. (And anywhere else that wants to have them!) It's an interesting contrast of crowds at these things; the previous week's Aero Dusk-to-Dawn Horrorthon was more of a rowdy affair while the All-Night Horror Show feels more like hanging out with people who actually want to watch the film. At breakfast, I was talking to my friend about that and he said that he preferred the crowd at the Aero. Me, I'm more of a New Bev guy. So we agreed to disagree on that one thing but agreed on another: the IHOP on Sunset and Orange is no good.

Here's my friend's list of his most to least favorite films that night:

1. Children of the Corn
2. Blood Games
3. Fright Night Part 2
4. Messiah of Evil
5. I Bury the Living
6. Screams of a Winter Night

And here's my list:

1. Messiah of Evil
2. Fright Night Part 2
3. Blood Games
4. I Bury the Living
5. Children of the Corn
6. Screams of a Winter Night

Anyway, that's it for now, Cathie. I forgot I was writing a letter! Please get back to me when you have time. I know the diamond mining business is a tough one but according to the man in charge of your correspondence, you seem to have the willpower to see your plans through and the firepower to overcome all obstacles. Take care and be well.


Your friend in time,

EFC, esq.


P.S. Remember when I asked you to keep your voice down at the New Bev and you responded by pulling that butterfly knife out of your boot and putting it to my throat and then you said something about how "the only sight more beautiful than seeing the light go out in a man's eyes is the sight of tears coming out of them"? Here's my question: what movie was playing that night? I want to say it was Cabin Fever but my friend says it was Grease.