Yeah, there were a decent amount of complications with the schedule this year. We had Caligari, House of the Devil, Goke and Flesh booked for the last five months, so as other films were added, we were still beholden to those first four as well.
One of the big questions was about pacing, because a decent amount of the films are somewhat deliberate in their sense of action. Flesh for Frankenstein is a gory hoot in many ways, but it's also a bit slower than many of you might remember, so we were hesitant to stick it late at night. We also through it would be cool to follow last year's Psycho/Dressed to Kill double dip with a similar combo, hence Bride of Frankenstein's billing with Flesh.
I love House of the Devil, but it's also very deliberate in its pacing. My big fear in scheduling it for late at night was that any Nightmarathoids who haven't seen it might doze off or be too tired to appreciate its charms. So it landed in the mid-afternoon slot.
Aside from the aforementioned reasoning for placing Serbian Film at 9, there's also the fact that we've scheduled the most extreme features of the first two Shock Around the Clocks (Irreversible and Martyrs)around the 9-10pm hour. The producers of Midnight Son asked us to play it before midnight, so that also played a role in the scheduling. Originally, I had Midnight playing at 9 and Serbian at 11, but Bruce and I ended up agreeing that playing Serbian earlier would give anyone who wanted to abstain a better time frame in which to do so. In a similar fashion, we wanted to follow the two fairly serious/disturbing premieres with something lighter, hence Goke at 1am. For context's sake, know that I originally thought about Goke playing in the first two or three films, but the premiere situation complicated things a bit.
It's always a challenging process, especially with the rarity of some of these films; cutting them for pacing might mean not playing them again any time in the near future. For the record, I've always been a proponent of trying to construct a lineup that helps attendees stay awak in the wee hours. The execution of that philosophy is never easy, but I hope that the strangeness of Goke and relentless drive of Hitcher will help some of you.
|
