The Ohio Sci-Fi and Horror Marathons

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"Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you." ~Klaatu

Cut off one of the heads and it will grow back! HAIL HYDRA!!!

It might be time for Jeff Neff to split off the "Not" discussion to it's own thread. This one has been officially hijacked..........

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Long Live the Orson Welles Cinemas

We were just having some fun. I'll get back on topic. I'm SUPER excited that It Follows will be playing (especially since when I first seen it, three knuckleheads kept talking through out the movie!!) Most of the talking at the marathons is different. It's "talking with STYLE", when people say things worth hearing. Also super excited for Night Of The Creeps!! In my opinion, the best era of Horror movies is the 80's.

I am also excited to see It Follows. More so because I really never had interest in seeing it before watching the preview at Shock-o-rama. I let a few people's bad review keep me from even checking out the trailer, which I rarely let happen. I'm sure it won't be my favorite but the thon setting looks to be the best environment for this type of film.

I would have to say the films that I am most anticipating are Deathgasm, because New Zealand seems to be really hitting the mark whenever meshing horror/comedy, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne, because it is pretty much a complete unknown to me. Sometimes going into a film with zero impressions can leave the biggest impact. Especially when I saw that Udo Kier was in it.

I remember when I was younger going into the cheap theater and The Cell was playing. I hadn't even seen the trailer and had no idea what it was about going in. Then shit went all psycho bananas and it left me thinking about it for days. I know I wouldn't have had that same feeling if I had known prior what to expect.

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"Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you." ~Klaatu

A lesson I learned is: never, ever let anyone else tell you if you'll enjoy a movie or not. Bearing that logic in mind, movie critics don't work. It's a failed concept. Just because someone ELSE liked a movie doesn't mean YOU will, and just because someone ELSE hated a movie doesn't mean YOU will. The only surefire way to know if you will enjoy a movie or not is to see it. Reading or hearing reviews about it really does nothing (but potentially spoil it for you). Speaking of spoilers, I agree with you that avoiding trailers is a great idea that everyone on Earth should do, unless they simply are not sure if they even want to see a movie. Take "The Avengers: Infinity War Part 1" for example. There is DEFINITELY a 100% chance of me seeing that in a movie theater when it comes out, no matter what. Because of that, I will avoid trailers for it like the Black Plague because I truly hate spoilers. I'd rather know nothing about a movie then to know of a single spoiler for it.

I just bought my tickets. I hope that I get a poster with them in the mail. My desk at work needs updating!

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"Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you." ~Klaatu

I think the biggest problem some people have had with It Follows is that they read the reviews first. For example, you might hear some yahoo like me say that It Follows was my favorite horror film of this century. When some people read something like that, they get an idea in their head of what It Follows might be, and what might make it awesome, and then when they watch the movie and it's not that at all, they're disappointed.

Too much hype, too many spoilers, too much information (as mentioned above). Those things are usually the enemies of movies.


That, and of course, horror movies can have very different styles and attitudes about them. I love all of You're Next, The Conjuring, Cabin In The Woods, What We Do In The Shadows, and It Follows. But those are generally all very different movies. You could watch all 5 of those in a row, and each one would feel fresh.

And on that point, it seems like we've got a fairly balanced lineup this year. I wouldn't say there's too much old, and I wouldn't say there's too much new. Deathgasm looks pretty different from Twin Peaks or The Killer Shrews.

So as usual, props to Joe and Bruce and anyone else who helped program the marathon.

People say this all the time (and admittedly, it can be true). However, it is far more common for people to be disappointed because a movie doesn't meet what they EXPECTED the movie to be - having read reviews or not. IT FOLLOWS and EX MACHINA are the two best reviewed indie genre films of the year, yet, they largely fell flat with the wider American public. They simply didn't conform to what most people expect when they see a "Horror film" or a "Sci-Fi flick". CABIN IN THE WOODS is a another recent example. The meta-satire went largely over the heads of Joe Horror-Fan.

So, while it's great to hear stories of people who stumbled onto something without having read much about it - it simply isn't a great marketing strategy. And, with social media word of mouth is really the gold standard in selling a movie. But, hopefully, that word of mouth accurately describes the tone and tenor of the movie in question.

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Long Live the Orson Welles Cinemas

The movie Green Inferno comes to mind...

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"Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you." ~Klaatu

How in the universe Eli Roth is gonna top the ULTRA realistic gore and cannibalism in the original Cannibal Holocaust is anyone's guess.

If I could, I would want to see every movie knowing nothing about it beforehand. That's a near impossibility, even more so these days with the internet. I'm at a computer for my job so while I won't read reviews before I see a movie, it's really hard to avoid the headlines and advertising blurbs. You get a sense for whether or not something is being well received or not. In the case of It Follows, I didn't read any reviews before hand but had certainly picked up on the fact that critics were loving it.

The movie is the movie, with or without any hype. But we're human beings and it is hard to completely detach oneself from those impressions. Not to mention, as LA pointed out, we have our own built-in expectations a lot of times already no matter what other people are saying. Sometimes that may be a lot of expectations, it may be a little, but I'd wager there is almost always something we're thinking about when the lights go down ... That's just livin' life and experiencing movies.

There's a nice flipside to that too -- those instances when your expectations are low and something soars above it (You're Next, as a recent thon-specific example, for me).

I will say, though I do think It Follows is a little over-hyped (again I LIKE it, just don't LOVE it), the reason I think that is because I had a couple of issues with the movie itself. Issues that I still would have had if I'd seen the movie knowing absolutely nothing about how others were enjoying it. I'm not a contrarian. I love to love movies. I just didn't love It Follows.

But there's already a thread for that.

I just ordered my ticket last night on Paypal!

Excited to see The Keep & Deathgasm!

Totally stoked to see Dawn of the Dead & Night of the Creeps on the big screen! 2 of my all time favorites that I was too young to see in theaters.

Thanks Joe & Bruce for another solid lineup!

It's the B+W teaser image for the front of this year's flier! Full-strength, two-sided version coming next week!