Tags
all night horror madness, blue sunshine, bruce campbell, cameo cinema, evil dead, halloween, pieces, zalman king
The cameo is my favourite theatre in Edinburgh. They play great movies, have a nice little bar, and they host amazing events like this.
The marathon started at about 1130pm on Saturday night, and we weren’t on our way back until the sun was coming back out again the next morning, at 715am. I don’t pull as many all nighters as I used to, and it feels good every once in a while. Plus its a very social atmosphere and you’re meeting lots of new people at an event like this. The organizers even serve Bacon Rolls in the lobby to keep you going.
Compared with #1 and #2 (which I also went to), the lineup for #3 stood up quite well. The organizer likes to pull together a mix of well known cult classics and very niche films that only real devotees have seen. He polled the audience at the start and only a couple people had seen all of them.
All Night Horror Madness also uses old 16mm film reels instead of the now standard dvd versions – you get all the lines and scratches, and times when bits are cut off or off line. Its just like going back in time, and watching it in one of those old drivethrus because the films were all from the late 70’s and early 80’s and showed off that grainy quality.
Parts of this film are just so over the top or badly acted. Its not supposed to be funny, but turns out to be hilarious. It stars Zalman King, who directed and produced the softcore porn (Red Shoe Diaries and Wild Orchid) that many of us watched in high school.
The story revolves around Jerry Zipken, an odd man who is suspected of murder after his friend goes insane and goes on a killing spree. He spends the rest of film trying to find out why, and he stumbles upon a conspiracy involving a hopeful congressman.
King’s overacting is brilliant, and he somehow finds a way to be in almost every scene.
I think I was 13 or 14 when I saw this for the first time, and its still great no matter how many times I’ve seen it since. The part where Myers gets up still creeps me out
This is exactly like college in every way with the exception of the chainsaw wielding psycho trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle with human body parts. Its kind of a precursor to Silence of the Lambs.
I especially loved the professional tennis match, and that the campus has a water bed. They try to make the killer a bit of a mystery, but its pretty obvious for someone who has watched a lot of these slasher films. The cops are brilliant, they keep asking this college kid to help on the case for no apparent reason and even ask him down to the station to help them go through files. When they go to take the killer down, he even goes in with them. He never even signed a waiver – if he got cut up, they would have been in so much shit.
This is one of my favourite horror movies. I have a huge man crush on Bruce Campbell and his character Ash. I loved his book My Life as B Movie Actor and have seen the entire trilogy a bunch of times. Its so great because his character is not heroic at all, but does all of this amazing stuff. He also has some great one liners in the Evil Dead films.
It got me thinking about the Evil Dead musical that came to Vancouver a couple years ago.
Bruce Campbell is on Burn Notice now and gets some of the funniest lines out of the characters on that show.