The Ohio Sci-Fi and Horror Marathons

With 2 marathons in my backyard this year. I gave myself some leeway to not feel guilty about missing some films. The original Music Box Massacre organizers must have had some falling out with the Music Box as they have parted company and now hold their events at the Portage theater, which is another single screen old movie house that seats about 1300. So the crowd was at least the size of last week's Music Box of Horrors (if not bigger-about 750) but it didn't feel as claustrophobic. So I didn't get to this event until about 5pm due to seeing Ghostbusters at a different theater earlier in the day (that won out over The Black Cat and Curse of the Werewolf at the marathon).

Apparently I missed a lot of projection problems during the first couple of movies which delayed the marathon and allowed me to see the last hour of Witchfinder General aka The Conqueror Worm. This played at the Studio 35 marathon over a decade ago and I remembered the ending being more graphic for some reason. Kind of a boring film but another great performance by Vincent Price.

Next up: Spider Baby with Jack Hill as guest. I love this odd little movie. Perfectly deranged psychosexual cannibal tale from a time when nice people didn't make films like this. Jack Hill was a really great and humble guest. Great print too!

Return of the Living Dead with Linnea Quigley as guest. Always a blast, but I think I can shelve this movie for a few years-I don't want to get burnt out on it yet. Linnea was a lovely guest with some great stories about prosthetic crotch pieces.

Phantasm 2: This isn't the greatest movie but it was a highlight for me. Maybe it's because it was unavailable for so long on DVD that I'm not overly familiar with it but it was a blast on the big screen. The print was gorgeous.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3 the Dream Warriors: An absolute blast!!! We were a little behind schedule so it was drifting into sleepy time for me but I managed to make it with minimal head snaps.

Hausu: There was no way I could make it through this one at 2:30am. So I went to a late night very loud bar to wake up over a beer. It worked and I was able to stay awake for the next 2 films.

Nightmares: I'm surprised and embarrassed that I'd never seen this anthology before. The first story was actually pretty effective. The story with Emilio Estevez as a punk rock listening arcade junkie was pretty silly but fun. A solid little 4am movie.

Prince of Darkness: At 6am, this was a tough one but I managed to stay awake for it. Not one of my favorite Carpenter films, but it was pretty nice to look at on 35mm.

By the time this ended it was 7:45 and I decided to call it a day. Dead Snow is fun, but I've seen it a the theater just a couple of years ago. Also, subtitles weren't going to help the cause. Frenzy, was sure to knock me out though I'm curious to see it again as I haven't seen it since I had to write a paper on it for film school 18 years ago...

My biggest disappointment is that I missed Halloween 2. That would've been nice to see on the big screen, but even that's not a masterpiece. I just couldn't make it trough 3 and a half more movies to get there. I'm guessing that due to the projection delays that I missed, the marathon probably ended a little late. Regardless of the fact that I left both marathons early this year, I'm proud that I was able to see more than 30 hours of classic horror films on the big screen this year.

_________________
"I came here to chew bubble gum and kick a**. I'm all out of bubble gum."