Video Ferox

II. BEFORE THE SHOW

The friend who was friends with the friend of the hobbled friend was Samm of Axewound.com (which you should read every day until your eyes bleed from awesomeness and flawless grammar). Together we headed on over to the International House in Philadelphia’s University City district. While home to a large capacity theater, the building also doubles as a residential center for international students. (The occasional group of polite, well-dressed, young Asian professionals that would later drift past the skulking, red-eyed horror freaks in the course of the night certainly added a modicum of atmosphere to be well-appreciated by any J-horror fans in the crowd.)

As you can imagine, I was pretty grateful to be there. Just two days earlier I didn’t even have a ticket to the sold out show, and honestly I was only vaguely aware that this horror-thon was even happening. But now, thanks to some loose lips and a broken kneecap, I was at the I-house in the before-noon hours of Halloween Eve ready to watch fourteen feature length movies, a cornucopia of coming attractions, and probably one or two pretty mediocre shorts films.

By the time Samm and I arrived (which was more than an hour before the first picture started), the line to get into the theater stretched very far back. Samm hatched the idea of pretending we knew the people in the front of the line in order to avoid a long wait and I suppose just to generally prove how much better we were than everyone else. Though I considered taking the moral ground, I realized that the moral ground was at the end of a long line. Besides, it wasn’t too hard to convince myself that she was right: I write for a blog. If that doesn’t mean I’m better than everyone else, I don’t know what does. Our fearless demonstration of our superiority and aversion to waiting in long lines meant not only that we were two of the first people in the theater but also that we were two of the first people to get this year’s program.

Instead of simply telling us the titles of the movies we were about to watch, this program tortured us instead with vague clues that could pretty well describe any one of three million and five horror movies ever made. “Nifty, creepy horror anthology”? On a normal day you could probably recall the names of all of the three million and five nifty, creepy horror anthologies ever made. (All of which you’ve seen, of course.) Unfortunately, when the pressure’s on (I mean, a Blu-ray player was at stake!) and you’re standing in a line trying not to sound like a newb to all the kids wearing EVIL DEAD shirts within earshot, you’re only likely to remember one title that not only fits the category but also (most important of all) is slightly more obscure than it is watchable and thus very impressive to the guy with the DAWN OF THE DEAD tattoo on his face. So you lisp the name to your friend, see the guy with the BASKET CASE t-shirt nod with approval, and hope that the film’s not being screened under one of its alternate titles. Which of course it is.

The parenthetically mentioned Blu-ray player was the grand prize given to the soul who was able to guess (and I do mean guess) the most correct titles. Not a bad reward for simply writing down a couple of movies on a piece of paper. In my day, Exhumed gave prizes in the traditional “pull a ticket from a hat” manner without subjecting patrons to the inconveniences of having to spell legibly and correctly, or at all. What prize-winners won was usually a plush and cuddly Pinhead to love and to hold or some awesome DVDs to watch and to love and to hold. Never a goddamn Blu-ray player. And the fact that they didn’t exist back then doesn’t make me any less pissed that I never won one. I never won anything, actually — not even at the ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE/ALMOST HUMAN show where I was one of seven attendees, six of whom walked out of the theater with plush and cuddly Pinheads.

I doubted very much that this show would be any different. So just being there at the 24 hour horror-thon would have to be my surrogate Blu-ray player. That was prize enough, right? Especially if I was going to see the movie I was promised. (If overheard drunken gossip can be considered a promise, which it can). I quickly glanced over the hints, trying to find the one that best described it. And there it was. Movie #5. A simple elegant description, befitting such a masterpiece of cinema: “Zombie Movie.”

Finally the line started to move, and we snaked past the t-shirt booth where you could buy an Exhumed Films 24 Hour Horror-thon commemorative shirt. They came in all sizes but only in one color: yellow, the most commemorative color of them all. I did the economical thing and bought last year’s t-shirt for five bucks, instead of this year’s at twenty. A brilliant plan on my part. If they were slashing the price by over fifty percent after a year, why not just wait till next year to buy this year’s t-shirt at last year’s price? You don’t get rich buying brand new t-shirt at brand new prices. What I didn’t count on was them selling out of this year’s t-shirt before next year. Oh, well. All those people are going to go home and realize they spent twenty bucks on a yellow t-shirt.

I also took a moment to drool over the DVDs that Diabolik DVD was offering. I made a prudent decision, that I surely regret now, to save my money for food stuffs and coffee to keep me alive and healthy over the next 24 hours rather than spend it on movies to watch and enjoy again and again for the rest of my life.

One last stop before the theater was an interesting art showcase called Video Violence, displaying redesigned VHS boxes of popular horror/sci fi rentals. (This would be an opportune time to supplement this review with a photograph, but I forgot to take one. And unfortunately I don’t remember what any of the boxes looked like so I can‘t even replace real photos with dreadfully vivid and well written descriptions. So click on that link and look at somebody else’s pictures, or just stay here and move on to the next paragraph.)

Samm and I and our new friends poured into the theatre, reserving an entire row for ourselves and our adopted entourage. We plopped down enthusiastically, eager beyond all reasonable measure to sit in uncomfortable chairs for the next twenty four hours and pay a copious fortune of attention (paying until we’ve maxed out our metaphorical attention credit and the bank forecloses on our attention houses) to a large wall.

Upon this wall before the show started, a video montage with accompanying music called SUFFER THE SHARDS OF THE LOST CULT OF SILENCE was projected. The audio was a “Black Metal/Drone track” created by musicians Matt Moore (Woe/Absu) and Chris Grigg (Woe/Jackson Pollock 5). It was pretty cool, and I recommend it highly to anyone with an interest in Black Metal or montages. You can listen to the audio and even buy a copy of the complete film here.

As we listened to SUFFER THE SHARDS . . . we continued contemplating the hints for the movies we were about to watch. The hint for the first film was “silly slasher sequel” along with the redundant information that it was “not as good as the original.” Even though I was praying for SLEEPAWAY CAMP II, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the movie we were about to see. Samm, if I remember correctly, was certain it would be a FRIDAY THE 13th jawn.

When the house lights fell and the projector started up, we were both proven wrong.

But neither of us were disappointed.

To find out what we saw, stay tuned for PART THREE.

Or go back and read PART ONE because it makes you feel all tingly.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 7th, 2010 at 6:45 pm and is filed under Events, Horror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.