Friday, November 1, 2013

Nick's House of Horrorthon

Post-holiday depression. While suicide rates skyrocket during Christmas/New Year's, to me no part of the year is as down as the days immediately following Exhumed Films 24 Hour Horrorthon. Knowing you have to wait a whole twelve months until the best/most intense weekend of your calendar year can only be assuaged in one of two ways: self-induced coma, or programming your own fanciful lineup. Why let jocks monopolize fantasy scenarios? Without another sentence of preamble (excluding this one of course), I present, my curated 24-Hour Horrorthon:


Martin (1976)

We start things off mainstreamly (for this crowd anyway) with George Romero's psychological vampire drama. John Amplas plays a young (or unknowably ancient?) man who has a propensity for slitting wrists with razors and feasting on the blood of bored suburban Pittsburgh housewives. Cousin Cuda tries to guilt the vampire out of him. Romero himself and makeup legend Tom Savini appear as priests in my favorite non-Dead Romero film.


Slaughterhouse Rock (1988)

A guy dreams about the people who died in Alcatraz, visits it and his brother gets possessed by a demon and then people die. Whatever. The real attraction here is Toni Basil in a starring role and Devo's soundtrack, which makes it worth it (to me) to see on a big screen with an audience. Like I said, it's fantasy. Let me have my fun.


Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (1973)

They've never shown a Hammer film at a horrothon and have had far too little Cushing, and this would be a nice remedy. The last of the British studio's Frankenstein cycle, the mad doctor becomes the head of a sanitarium so that he can carry on his experiments on the inmates, left to his own devious devices. Aside from another usually great Cushing performance this one has a genuinely creepy exhumation scene, a ton of extras wandering around as Victorian-era mental patients, the Bond series' original M, Bernard Lee, and the beautiful Madeline Smith. Bonus points for a pre-Vader Dave Prowse under that gonzo monster makeup, but then again, I'm guessing that wouldn't mean much to the Exhumed crowd.


The World's Greatest Sinner (1962)

A few films in, now things can start to get weird, courtesy of Renaissance Man Timothy Carey, with his directorial debut about an insurance salesman who decides to get into the politics/religion racket, specifically by declaring himself God. According to him, humans are have unlimited potential and the capacity for immortality.

He runs on this political platform (for some reason God needs to be president?), sports a cutout goatee and puts on rock shows to spread his message, but how do the Real God and Devil feel about this affront? Also, Frank Zappa scores his first film!