WolfNC17 wrote:
The link above did not work for me, so I'm going purely from memory. But I think my all-time favorite will always be my first: 1996 (SF10?) at the Riffe Center. Alien and Aliens bookended, Blade Runner played that year, and the premieres were City of Lost Children, Tremors 2 and Cemetery Man. Correct me if I'm mixing some things up, but that's the way I remember it. Feel free to fill in the blanks as well.
I'll never forget watching Alien (for the first time on the big screen) and hearing people applaud enthusiastically for the names of Sigourney Weaver and Ridley Scott in the opening credits. That's when I knew I was among like-minded souls. I don't think I had ever seen an audience cheer for a director before! I think that was the year of the Godzilla incident as well, I wasn't far from the stage when that happened. Strangely enough, that only made me love the marathon more.
My least favorite marathons are the ones I was unable to attend, and usually was stuck at home wishing I was there. I can't think of one where I hated every single film (though last year came close) and had a really awful time. I always prefer the lineups that are mostly good films (like my first), but I've learned to appreciate the cheese as well. I just don't want an entire marathon full of it.
Anyone see this week's South Park? Heavy Metal should definitely play some year...
Your memory is correct. And yes, SF10 had a very exciting lineup! Here it is if you still can't get the link to the history page to work:
Alien
The City of Lost Children
Queen of Outer Space
Tremors 2: Aftershocks
Forbidden Planet
Cemetery Man
Blade Runner
Strange Invaders
Brazil (U.K. Release Version)
War of the Worlds
Aliens
A fantastic mix of classics and neo-classics with a sprinkle of not too shabby premeires. I have always liked marathons with the thematic book ends.
Here is a bit of trivia for this lineup: it was mostly decided by the audience. For the tenth anniversary of the marathon, they wanted to plan something special (and they weren't crazy enough to add 12 extra hours like the Boston marathon did for it's 10th anniversary!), so what they did was hand out surveys to the audience. We were asked to name our 10 favorite Science Fiction films of all time, and the plan was to get the top ten vote getters for that year.
I don't know how many of those actually made it onto the schedule, Bruce would have to answer that question. But judging from the lineup, I would say quite a few were probably on a ot of people's lists, not counting the three premeires.
Another bit of trivia:
Cemetery Man made it's U.S. debut here with it's newly christened title (instead of the much more interesting foreign title
Dellamorte Dellamore). It was supposed to have been shown at the final Night of the Living Drexel in 1994 and was even on the flyer, but for whatever reason fell through. With the demise of the Drexel North came the demise of the horror marathon, so that's why this intriging zombie flick starring a young Rupert Everett was shown here.