The Ohio Sci-Fi and Horror Marathons

While we wait for Joe to chime in I would venture a guess of Howard the Duck (For Sci-Fi) and Popcorn (For Horror)

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"If you have GHOSTS you have Everything" - Papa Emeritus II GHOST B.C.

Benevolent? HA!

But seriously, this is a more difficult question to answer than you might think. Mainly because of the vast array of titles that people have requested or suggested over the years. I always get a laugh out of the annual wish list thread because it eventually degenerates into posters throwing out large lists of titles that almost never overlap with those of other posters. So in effect, the wish list ends up being single entries of hundreds of films!

There are always pockets of the audience who want to see a particular title or two. But I honestly can't pick out one title that has come up that much more than another in discussion. Tim and a few others bring up FRIDAY THE 13th, but then I'll have another pocket of the audience who hates F13 and most slashers in general. I'd like to chalk it up to the incredible diversity of the audience that no requests stick out in an obvious manner. Hell, I could probably tell you more about what the audience DOESN'T want to see....although even that would be a very small list, as you guys are usually game for just about anything.

The titles that Tim mentioned are a good example. HOWARD THE DUCK has been mentioned for awhile, but mainly from a very small group of Marathoids. Same with POPCORN (which, by the way, I'd love to show...but only if we could replicate some of the gimmicks in the film.)

And what makes all of this that much more difficult is the evolving audience demographics. As shown in the Facebook thread about repeating titles from a few months back, there's a good chunk of the audience that has only been attending for ten years or less. And many of them would love to see titles that veterans watched at Marathons of yore, mainly because they haven't seen them. The ALIEN/ALIENS bookends from SF32 are a good example. Some vets complained about having seen them at multiple Marathons, but we also had quite a few younger Marathoids who were excited to see them in a theater for the first time. And we had a larger than usual chunk of the audience stay until the end for ALIENS. So yeah, it's alllll complicated.

I would hazard a guess that, at least at one time, Star Wars was one of the most heavily requested films for the Sci-Fi Marathon, largely because of the fact that the legal hurdles to jump to show the film were immense.

It's hard to think of a great many classics of film from the respective genres that haven't played yet.

Of course, I'm just old-fogie enough that I'd love it if some more of the old classic Universal monsters were to appear at the Horror Marathon. We've shown all of the original classics (Frankenstein, Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man), except for the original Lugosi Dracula - but it's been years for some of them. I think they could easily return to much acclaim. But then, I kind of miss those very early year line-ups where the first 6-10 hours were mostly older films and often more family-friendly.

I understand the realities of film distribution, and the fact that premieres are now expected to air early in the event, so that isn't always possible. But I still miss the way it was.

Hey now, you're still pretty spry for an old fogie!

This brings up one of the more interesting aspects of the Marathon evolutionary cycle. Which is, basically, the passage of time and how it's broadened the definition of classic (and possibly altered the definition of family friendly.) Even though they were wide releases, in their day many of those Universal classics scared the bejeebus out of audiences and were often very controversial (think back to the once-excised, since-restored "Now I know what it feels like to be God" and child-tossing scenes in FRANKENSTEIN.) It's harder to think of films from the last 20 years or so that are considered both family friendly and transgressive in that manner. As you point out, even by the 1989 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DREXEL the first have was becoming more mixed, with the somewhat graphic PUMPKINHEAD playing second. Plus, the passage of time has only broadened the scope of films from which we can select (and which people enjoy.)

This also ties in with the topic of most requested titles for these events. One constant topic of discussion is the gap that sometimes exists in the lineup between, say, the early to mid-90s and the present. Obviously, there are good and great horror films from the 00's and beyond. But it never seems like we have huge demand for any one of those titles. And at least in my eyes, the increasingly niche nature of film fandom has meant that there are less genre films that truly resonant with a fairly mass audience. There's also the continued popularity of the 80s horror revival (spurred in part by the excellent work of Scream Factory) to consider. I regularly run into people in their 20s who regard that decade as holy ground, one of the last times that subversive horror broke through to the mainstream on a regular basis. Which isn't to say that we disregard films from 1995-2010. But the nature of fandom has definitely changed, and it no longer seems like not featuring those years is an automatic demerit against the lineup.

As side note to that previous post: I vividly remember reading the ads for the first few NIGHT OF THE LIVING DREXEL Marathons, and the mention of unaccompanied children being asked to leave after midnight (when things became more graphic) certainly added a alluring whiff of the verboten to the proceedings. But that also quickly went away. From what I've gathered over the years, there was a bit of a CYA factor in making such pronouncements, as well as an acknowledgement of the kid-centric nature of some of the audience. Anecdotally, we haven't had a large child contingent at either event for years, which also probably accounts for the evolution of the first half of the lineups.

The horror marathon is an "R" rated event, even if G, PG or PG-13 films are in the lineup.

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"If you have GHOSTS you have Everything" - Papa Emeritus II GHOST B.C.

Especially if Kevin Carr takes his shirt off.

The interesting question there, for me, is how much of that is chicken and how much of that is egg?

I've been wanting to bring my kids for at least the first 10-12 hours of the marathons for a few years now, but haven't considered the early films in the line-up to be suitable.

I'd love to see more kids at the marathon, because I think that is what is going to be required for the events to continue to live and breathe on. And it's easier to get them hooked when they're little.

I think a lot of that comes down to the individual parent and what they find to be appropriate for their children. Which is not a knock on you at all; I wouldn't deign to tell any parent what should be appropriate for their child when it comes to the Marathons. But history also shows that those family friendly first halves of the Horror Marathons were few and far between. The 3rd NIGHT OF THE LIVING DREXEL featured NIGHT LIFE, JACOB'S LADDER, and BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR in their first half, the 4th had THERE'S NOTHING OUT THERE, CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, NEAR DARK, SOCIETY, etc. etc. And there was still a healthy contingent of younger kids attending back then (wait.....including you, ya old fogie! ) But in some ways, Tim is right: the Horror Marathons have always skewed toward a more adult-oriented programming philosophy.

Here and there we have attendees mention the prospects of bringing their kids (and yeah, as a professional huckster, I highly endorse starting them early!). And more often than not, the reason for not yet bringing them that we most often year is pure economics: they're not ready to spend $40 for a ticket that might possibly only cover the portion of the event that their child can (or will want to) attend. And by "can" I mean the can make it through without sleeping. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot we can do about price point right now, especially with film rentals continuing to rise (you'd be surprised how much some rights holders will charge just to clear a Blu-Ray screening.)

All this being said, one of the highlights of SHOCK-O-RAMA for me was the three 12 and under kids that were in attendance. I know that one left after the first film (mainly due to fatigue) and one slept through the second (and has already had some quality Marathon training *cough*KevinCarr*cough*). I didn't see the third young man until he was leaving after ARMY OF DARKNESS, but man he seemed like one happy camper. That might make me a bad parent (although don't worry, there are no spawn of Neff...yet.) But it also brightened by black soul just a bit.

My kids didn't appreciate The Man Who Fell to Earth in prime time earlier this year, but only because they thought it was boring and stupid. I would have personally preferred that they could have seen (and appreciated) Fantastic Voyage earlier in the lineup. This isn't necessarily an argument against graphic content, I just feel a classic like that being relegated to the wee hours didn't "feel" right for a marathon.
You don't have to repeat your arguments for why you placed things where you did. It just goes to show you how difficult decisions can be.

That being said, my boys still enjoyed themselves immensely and actually asked me without prompting if we could go back again next year.

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Aliens? Us?
Is this one of your Earth "jokes?"