A short time ago Rish moved away from his ancestral home to pursue his fortunes in a land apart. Since that time Rish and the tyranist have only managed to watch a single horror movie together and that was a furtive experience late in the night. So when Rish returned to the place he was born for a week and a half to celebrate the 1999 holidays with his family, there was only one thing they could do. Watch as many horror movies as possible in the shortest amount of time. Thus was born the first Holiday Horror Film Festival. Who knows if it will ever happen again, but at least it happened once.
The beginning of the festival. We went out and rented a stack of five videos (courtesy of our local video store's 5 videos, 5 bucks, 5 nights promotion). While we were out, we realized that five was not enough and we stopped in at the local DVD purveyor where Rish purchased the A Nightmare on Elm Street DVD. He was going to buy it anyway, why not tonight?
Children of the Corn (1984) - Being Stephen King fans Rish and I periodically try to check out the films that have been made based on his work. There are so many of them that we have never gotten to all of them. In this case we had the added impetus that someone emailed us and asked why we had completely ignored the Children of the Corn series. Since we didn't have a good excuse, we opted to correct the error. Originally, Rish wanted to rent all six of them and watch them straight through, but saner minds prevailed and we only picked up the first two.
Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1993) - It is a very good thing that we only picked up two, because as soon as this one started, I started to blur it into the first one. In the end, however, it worked out and seeing as how both movies are pretty good, this started the festival quite well.
The House of Usher (1988) - Both Rish and I are devotees of Poe and we love to watch movies based on his work so when we saw a sample starring Donald Pleasence we absolutely had to pick it up. Of course, the fact that it was the last movie on the first night of the film festival means that we were pretty tired when we watched it. Too bad. This quickly became acknowledged as the worst film in the festival. If we had to give out awards, this one would get most of the bad ones.
Night two of the festival rolled around and we still had a stack of videos to work through. It was at this point that we also brought out Rish's copies of Army of Darkness and Aliens even though they wouldn't make the list until later in the festival. So with a short list of videos to get through that night we started with a classic.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - After spending a large portion of the afternoon exploring the Nightmare on Elm Street DVD boxed set's eighth disc (The Nightmare Encyclopedia), we were really in the mood to watch the original. Of course, we had also developed a taste for understanding the movies more than just through the theatrical release. For this one we turned the director's commentary on. This made it less of a film and more of a class, but Rish and I are into that sort of thing.
The Unnamable (1988) - With Wes Craven class over, we decided to hit the roots of a lot of modern horror and watch an H.P. Lovecraft piece. This one was rented originally because, hey, Lovecraft. Plus, it has a cool monster on the cover, which simultaneously intrigues and pisses both of us off.
The Brood (1979) - Can you believe that up until the end of the second night of the festival, we had never watched and reviewed a Cronenberg film for the Horror Film Compendium? Well, we hadn't and we weren't too sure about this one. Once again it was late and a lot of weirdness would probably have been a little too far out of bounds. Still, it surprised us and you will likely see more Cronenberg reviewed in the future.
For night three we had to take our first stack of five back and get five more. Unfortunately, our second trip in three days to the video store proved difficult. We wandered up and down the horror aisle for a good fifteen minutes before even one video was picked up. Eventually we got around the dilemma by deciding to rent four more movies (we had already picked up New Nightmare) that had the dirtiest sounding blurbs on the back.
New Nightmare (1994) - After our viewing of both A Nightmare on Elm Street and the Nightmare Encyclopedia we decided we were morally obligated to review a Nightmare film that we hadn't before. On Rish's recommendation (since I had never actually seen it before), we picked up New Nightmare. You might find the progression strange, but we understood it.
The Forgotten One (1990) - This was the first of the hopefully "dirty" movies. We picked it up because a) the cover promised nudity and b) when I read the back it sounded a little like Angel Heart which we all know was controversial for some of the sex scenes. Of course, Rish kept whining, ". . . but, Kristy MacNichol . . " until we were out of the store.
Witchcraft V: Dance with the Devil (1993) - If you're looking for dirty movies, you can't go wrong with the Witchcraft series. They have the dirtiest covers in the normal section of the video store and they pretty much deliver. Rish and I debated whether we should get entry 4 or 5 (since this particular local video store only has those 2) and ended up getting 5 because . . . you probably won't believe this . . . the plot sounded better. Wow. I think we're the first two people to ever debate the importance of a plot in a Witchcraft movie.
We kicked off night four of the festival a little early knowing that we had four movies to get through and one of them was the special edition of Aliens. It was basically mid-afternoon when we popped Army of Darkness in and with breaks for dinner and drink runs and what-not, it was 4:00 AM when we went to bed.
Army of Darkness (1992) - This is one of Rish and my favorite films. So when Rish came back from the land of the lost with the Limited Edition DVD set, we had to spend at least a little time with it during our festival. For this viewing, we watched the Director's Cut with the commentary turned on. It's a slightly different movie than the US Theatrical version, plus we had Bruce Campbell, Sam and Ivan Raimi to keep us company that way. All in all a great way to kick off day four.
The Lair of the White Worm (1988) - I had seen most of this once and loved what I saw, but Rish is notorious for instantly hating this kind of movie. So when I picked it up in the video store, I tried my hardest to make it sound very dirty. Since I knew that I could at least guarantee someone gets naked in it, I got my way and we rented it. Surprise, surprise when we both loved it.
The Burning (1981) - Rish picked this one up and read the back to me. It sounded pretty much like every other movie in its little sub-genre, but at least it had Jason Alexander in it. Well, knowing that this particular sub-genre loves to get just a little dirty, we took it. Plus, I was still really happy that he let me get The Lair of the White Worm.
Aliens (1986) - For some almost inexplicable reason we failed to watch this many times. It isn't that we don't like the film. On the contrary, both of us love it. I guess the time just wasn't ever right. Well, finally on the fourth night of our film festival and knowing that we were going into a break, we dared the 2 and a half hour movie. Surprisingly, even though we were in our fourth night of movies, it was very late, and both of us had seen this before neither of us had any problems staying awake for this one. At last.
You may be wondering about the two day break in the festival. And you should. I mean of all nights to stay up late New Year's Eve is it. Unfortunately, other prior commitments meant that I was out of state for a day and a half and in no shape to watch more movies when I got back. So we declared a short hiatus in the festival that allowed us to rest up a little (if you call partying on New Year's Eve resting up--of course, I did get to bed earlier) and finish strong.
Rish Note: While tyranist was away, I watched both The Mummy (1999) and Scream 2. There's no rest for the wicked, you see.
When we finally got back together again to continue the festival, Rish had rented another five videos, this time without me. Not actually a bad thing because now I can blame him for the bad ones. I think that he actually did a good job considering that he was renting in the post-New Year video store vacancy. It seems that everything gets checked out at this time of year. Oh . . . and these were the first movies we saw together of the new year (not millenium since we all know that it doesn't start until 2001)
In the Mouth of Madness (1995) - When we were watching New Nightmare on the third night of the festival it featured a trailer for In the Mouth of Madness and since both of us wanted to see it, Rish finally rented it for us. Plus it seemed to fit the mini-Lovecraft mania we were going through.
Cthulhu Mansion (1990) - This was the last of three Lovecraftian movies featured in the festival. Of course, that was what we were thinking when it was rented. After watching it, I can assure everyone out there that it had little or nothing to do with Lovecraft. Rish has been wanting to rent this one for a while, perhaps because we've seen so many good Lovecraftian films.
Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1992) - Rish raved about the first Basket Case when we watched it and I avowed to never see any of the sequels . . . ever. So when he found himself alone at the video store, picking out videos for the festival, he couldn't pass this one up. Of course, we ended up stopping it halfway through to watch South Park.
Finally, the sixth and last night of the film festival. We only had two videos left from the last batch that Rish had rented and we didn't want to try to press our luck with more. We could have watched any of a number from our personal collections, but somehow, just two seemed about right since that brought us to eighteen movies even.
The Babysitter (1980) - I know exactly why Rish rented this one: William Shatner. We then looked it up in the movie guide and discovered that it was a made for TV movie. We watched it anyway. I suppose if Bill Shatner is your guide . . .
Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh (1995) - Rish wasn't around when I rented and watched Candyman a couple months back, but he still bowed to necessity and rented the second volume in the series for the closer of our festival. This was probably a good one to do it with too, since it is a smart, kind of scary movie that is much better than a lot of the movies we watched.
And that was the festival. Eighteen movies in six nights. All of them horror. Hopefully we can do it again for you some time.