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So, what did you do this past weekend? Did you curl up with a Netflix rental? Attend the World Series? Spend money on the latest “Saw” entry? Whatever you did, I doubt it was cool as anything the folks at Exhumed Films did, which was put together the first ever Exhumed Films 24 Hour Horror-Thon. For only $20, Exhumed Films was showing an awesome array of horror films (with a MYSTERY LINEUP) for the most dedicated of gore fans, sliding thirteen movies into a full day slot for the die-hards of the genre. You’re not going to get much better bang for your buck than that, and for anyone who was in the vicinity of Philadelphia this weekend who didn’t attend, well, I hope you’re not destitute, because otherwise you just don’t like good things. 

I’m a rookie to the Exhumed Films screenings, so I didn’t know what to expect, though I was aware that they had a no-frills setup and for what ended up being the greatest horror marathon since God used the ninth day to make “Starship Troopers”, they came ready for business. No C-List star appearances. No wimpy extended breaks for those uncomfortable in the seats. Just pure horror awesomeness.
They were filthy liars about one thing, however. When we arrived at noon, we were expecting to enjoy thirteen straight movies, with bits of trailers in between some of them. Well, those dishonest bastards, they actually did a last minute schedule revamp and instead decided to show us fourteen!  Such bastards! 

At the start, they handed out programs that included hints as to what the lineup would be.  Before the start of the first film, they gave us a taste of what we were getting into with five old trailers, starting with “Fright Night”, “Yor: Hunter From The Future”, “The Twilight Zone: The Movie”, “Creepshow” and, getting one of the day’s biggest applauses, “Army of Darkness”. You know you’re with a pretty neat audience when there’s silence towards Steven Spielberg’s name in “Twilight Zone” but a near standing ovation for “Yor: The Hunter From The Future”. 

Considering the reputation of Exhumed Films, I expected obscurity, so when the first film was announced as a “Slasher classic” I blindly assumed it would be “Maniac”, but, to the audience’s delight, it was John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN. Like the rest of the films in the festival, this was an original print, and as such, it was beaten, scratched up, and featured many threading and soundtrack issues. Which, of course, is to say it looked glorious. 


I'm off for a pee!

I had recently rewatched an old VHS with a taped-off- television version of “Halloween”, edited and compressed and featuring tons of alternate takes and odd pacing issues. Consider me pleased that I could revisit the classic here, in all it’s glory. It’s just plain scary, but the fact that history refers to it as a great horror film neglects the power of John Carpenter’s vision. Entire essays can be written about the film’s masterful tracking shots, the exploitation and self-critique of the male gaze, the film’s analysis of the role of female sexuality- there’s a lot to chew on, which is a trait a lot of current horror pictures do not share, sadly. Though I still don’t get Donald Pleasance in this one- why does every scene with him play like he’s just running off from pissing in the bushes? 


HOLY SHIT, IT EXISTS.

The trailers followed the movie, and oh, what a collection it was. Beginning with a short film distillation of “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” (scary- I’ve never seen this, but I probably should now), they went into a batch of previews that included “Equinox”, “The Omega Man”, “Cat O’Nine Tails”, “Jaws”, “The House That Vanished”, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, Christopher Lee’s “Dracula”, “Death Ship”, “My Bloody Valentine”, “The Beast Within”, “Friday the 13th”, “Beyond The Door 2”, “Deadly Blessing”, “Prom Night”, “Humanoids From The Deep”, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (The Kaufman version), and a completely bonkers ad for a double feature of “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Odd Couple”. Though my favorite was the absolutely bewildering “Son Of Dracula”, which the trailer billed as “The First Ever Rock’N’Roll Dracula Movie!” This sucker had the star wattage of Nilsson, and… um… Ringo Starr! The entire audience honestly wondered if this movie really exists. 

The next film promised was a “Giant Monster Movie”, which I guessed was a Godzilla movie. Appropriately, it was GODZILLA VS. THE COSMIC MONSTER, which featured, according to my limited Man-In-Suit knowledge, the first ever appearance of Mechagodzilla. It’s a delicious piece of work, and Godzilla really throws down here- I’m pretty sure he even brushes dirt off his shoulder at one point. However, I was surprised to learn that the film carried its own weight quite well when we were forced to spend extended amounts of time with the humans. It turns out that an alien race has studied Godzilla enough to build a machine version, which they will use to then destroy some mythical, sheep-like totem living in a mountain somewhere. The aliens turn out to be half-monkey types who say things like, when bragging out their Godzilla research, “Doesn’t it make your mouth water?” I’m not up to date on my Godzilla watching, but if the other Godzilla films are half as awesome as this one, then this is the greatest franchise ever created by humans. 


COME GET A TASTE!

After a raffle, in which they gave out copies of “Rapturious” and a wicked smart “Evil Dead” t-shirt (which I won- THANKS EXHUMED FILMS), another block of trailers began. Amongst this collection was “War Between The Planets”, “Death Race 2000”, “Inframan”, “Message From Space”, “Dracula’s Dog”, “Island of the Damned”, and the awesome “They Came From Within”, which I believed advised you to seek therapy, provided you weren’t scared. Odd.. The third film promised was a “Creepy, beloved made-for-television movie”, and again, my knowledge doesn’t stretch too far in regards to TV-movies, so I assumed “Salem’s Lot”. It turned out to be DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, a sparse horror film about a wife who is terrorized by a gang of fiendish, freakish trolls in her new house. With the television standards, it’s definitely not gory, but it was surprisingly elegant and more than a little scary. With a horror marathon audience, you’re bound to get ironic types, so few people really got into this bloodless tale of mystical creatures, but I think most of them thought differently about the nooks and crannies of their own houses/apartments/brown boxes. 

After this, we launched immediately into the next film, a “gruesome favorite that doesn’t easily fall into any particular genre”. I had no clue what this was, but it turned out to be everybody’s favorite, HELLRAISER. Still gross after all these years, “Hellraiser” packs a strong visceral punch. Unfortunately, a bit too much for those behind me, who soldiered through a sophomoric discussion on the themes of the movie while clearly drunk out of their minds. Though they left soon after, I would soon find myself floating in a pool of my own booze to keep awake during the night. 


B CARFUL WIT MAI BOX LOL

After this was a dinner break of an hour. I munched on some pizza while they played a collection of extremely old trailers from the fifties and sixties, the highlight for me being “The Terror” pitting an over-the-hill Boris Karloff against a superyoung Jack Nicholson. “Sort of living dead but not exactly” classic spurs conversation that it might be “Dead Alive”, but it turns out to be PHANTASM, which is an audience favorite. Bizarre and often hilarious, it earns the audience’s first out-and-out gore celebration, when the first victim squirts blood out of his head like a fountain after an encounter with that naughty Phantasm ball. Great stuff.

More trailers followed, with “Schizoid”, “Last House On The Left”, “Twitch of the Death Nerve”, “Vampire Circuis”, “Countess Dracula”, “The Devil’s Wedding Night” (SO MUCH BOOBAGE IN THIS ONE), “The Bat People”, “House of Seven Corpses” and “The Mutations”. After that, a clip started playing of a woman with perfect nude breasts was being dragged out of a swimming pool by a hooded figure, before the projectionist stopped. It was the wrong reel, but it still left us all puzzled as to which movie was the “Sleazy/infamous/absurdist slasher guilty pleasure”. Soon, it begins, and in “Boston, 1942” we see a young boy putting together a jigsaw puzzle picture of a nude girl. His mother walks in and is outraged, yelling at her son for his “depravity” and demanding he fetch a garbage bag to clean up his filth. As the boy leaves the room, she begins to clean up, muttering to herself about the smut her young boy is into. After about a minute, she turns to her returning son who greets her with a FACEFUL OF AXE! As he bludgeoned her to death, it was clear the audience was really caught off guard by PIECES. 


And you don't have to go to Arby's for a delicious steak sandwich!

“Pieces” eventually turns out to be a chainsaw massacre film set at a Northeastern college, and it doesn’t at all disappoint. Each line of dialogue is hysterical, each reveal is preposterous, and each kill is far over the top. The film’s trump card are both the ridiculous gore- body parts are thrown all over the place- but also the sumptuous women, which is rare for the early eighties- seriously, name a single hot chick from the early 80’s. It builds to ridiculous whodunit heights, especially as the most likely suspect, a slovenly, fat janitor, is an actor who nearly cracks up as he shows up at the murder scenes pretending to be inconspicuous. And oh, that ending- completely nonsensical, but what a great jump scare. Maybe the hit of the festival.

We only get one short this time, a truncated version of “Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein”, before we head into the “comedy/monster movie favorite”. I think I was too on-the-nose with my prediction of “Monster Squad”, though it turns out to be the beloved AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, a nice way of bringing us through midnight, and a solid checkpoint for the halfway portion of the festival. Early on, festival programmers noted that the earlier films were going to be mass favorites, and past midnight, they were going to start to get obscure, though if they kept going the popular route, it didn’t seem like it would be a problem, considering their picks so far. “Werewolf” is a lot of fun on the big screen, and the audience is really into it, particularly the giant car smashup of the finale. Lots of warm, knowing laughter, too- the Slaughtered Lamb portions were highly appreciated. 


Oh, Jenny...

And now it was time for Exhumed Films to get their freak on with Movie Number Eight. “Vampire Cult Classic” suggested to me that the selection would be of the Hammer brand, but it turned out to be the wholly underappreciated BLACULA. Sexy, slinky and fun, “Blacula” is a movie that deserves more love. William Marshall is particularly classic as the sly Mamawalde, the romantic hero with the fangs of funk. Not a whole lot of gore, but the style and the music really carry the day here, and it’s hard to forget Marshall’s hilarious, “Aaaaarghhhh!” when he digs into someone’s flesh. Also, forgive a Blacula fan, but, pre-credits, when the actor turns Mamawalde and proclaims him (dramatic pause) “Blacula!” the audience hooted and hollered generously. 


Bitch, please!

More trailers arrived. “The Scars Of Dracula” followed by “Horror Of Frankenstein” really seemed to hint at something. “Tower of Evil”, “Beast of the Yellow Night” (Asian horror of indeterminant origin- and very weird), “Carnival of Blood”, “Curse of the Headless Horseman”, “Twins of Evil”, “Hands of the Ripper” and “The Creeping Flesh” were the features, leading into the “Sleazy/infamous/absurdist zombie guilty pleasure”. Unfortunately, this was BURIAL GROUND.

“Burial Ground” was, at points kind of a hoot. Most of the time, not really. It’s a standard zombie chase film where a bunch of couples (surprisingly older, considering the genre, though still buxom on the wives’ side) arrive at a villa only to be stalked by flesh eaters. The novelty here, I suppose, is that these zombies have been eaten away so much that their skulls are poking out, and by skulls I mean rubber masks that the close-up seems to LOVE. It’s slow and uneventful, though things pick up when we learn that the terrifying-looking twelve year old son (who could pass for 41) has a strong affection for his chesty fortysomething mother. As the carnage increases, the originally uninterested mother starts to warm up to his advances and… oh, how could I spoil that surprise? It was fun enough to make me try the tequila I had snuck in straight up- EEEGAH! I drank enough to make the zombies start floating in circles, but nothing more. 


The moon never turns red in this movie.

By 4 AM, film ten had arrived, the one everyone was speculating about. The description was maddening- “A real obscurity that you won’t think is a horror movie until its final moments, at which point you’ll say to yourself, ‘Jesus Christ, this is the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life. These nightmarish images are forever burned my brain. I cannot believe what I have just been subjected to. Damn you to hell, Exhumed Films!” Rampant speculation, natch, led to question marks and puzzled looks until the screen opened up to a sea of race cars jostling for position. A racing movie, we all thought. This should be fun.

Instead, it ended up to be TEENAGE MOTHER, a teensploitation film from the sixties about a group of teens going through puberty and awkward feelings. The arrival of a foxy Swedish sex education teacher doesn’t help, as she faces scrutiny from the town just as the young lads and ladies start to experiment with their emotions. As the film nears the end, the teacher finds herself answering for the debauchery of the teens, and her offices are raided, where a video is found of what exactly she is teaching the kids. And in the closing moments of the film, we sit through the entirely of the video, a close-up C-section of a birthing mother. Moans and groans all over the place, lighting up the 5 AM hour. 


Saucier than a C-section!

Without the birth footage, and ignoring the super-rad early Fred Willard appearance, “Teenage Mother” is a fairly obvious slog to get to those supposed “horrific moments”. But, in a show of truly testing it’s audience, Exhumed Films brought out a “Ridiculously goofy/trashy monster movie guilty pleasure” that ended up being DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN. Oh, lord, “Dracula Vs. Frankenstein”. It’s one of those can’t miss opportunities that sucks because of its own innate infallibility. Being “Dracula Vs. Frankenstein” (DvsF) of course it gets into two or three totally unrelated stories that have fuck-all to do with Vladdy taking on the monster. There’s a lot of really terrible mood-setting psychedelic crap with thirtysomethings playing young kids and it all somehow ties into Dracula using a chesty over-the-hill babe as his bride, which Frankenstein (with a face mask that looks like fried butter) eventually objects to, leading to an all-out monster… shovematch. Consider it folly that SPOILER Dracula completely rips off Frankenstein’s arms with his bare hands ENDSPOILER but casting directors did the film no favors by bringing in the supremely uninterested Zandor Vorkov, who apparently had a zero career after showing up and sleepwalking here. Though, possibly new to the mythos- here, Drac has a neat decoder ring that vaporizes people, where he aims as the screen freeze-frames and the animated lazer shocks a frozen person. Great stuff there. 


Bearded Dracula?  NOT COOL.

After those three straight ass-testers, we had a half hour breakfast break where the good folks at Exhumed Films served up Boo Berry and Count Chocula cereal while an episode of “Night Gallery” played. A relaxing moment, and a good time for some shut-eye. A few trailers were welcomed, “Hellraiser” beginning a block that included “Dean of the Dead”, another “Humanoids From The Deep” spot, “The Girl Who Lives Down The Lane”, “Next!” (not the Nicolas Cage version, dur), and “Tales From The Crypt”. And that was it for the trailers- it was time to finish on a three-straight-movies kick.

“’Sort-of-living-dead-but-not-exactly’ cult classic” had us all guessing- I speculated we’d wake the audience the fuck up with a screening of “Dead Alive”, but I was secretly hoping that the whole festival would just be fourteen consecutive screenings of “Dead Alive”, so I was a bit biased. Much to my pleasure, it ended up being Lamberto Bava’s DEMONS. Pretty much a must for this type of festival, “Demons” concerns a movie screening (ruled over by a chrome-faced Michele Soavi, making his first of two festival appearances) where the audience is trapped in the theater with a film that turns them into bloodthirsty demons. Rowdy and nonsensical, “Demons” is the type of asskicking riot that this festival needed, particularly heading into the home stretch. 


I JUST WANTED TO BORROW SOME FUCKING MILK!

“Campy monster movie cult classic” suggested we were in for something a bit older, perhaps a “Robot Monster”, but it ended up being the pretty awesome “Alligator”. Pretty streamlined creature movie stuff- there’s an alligator in the sewers, and only burnt-out, slightly humorless Robert Forster can stop it. With these films, it’s not simply about using the genre conventions, and you don’t always need to subvert them- sometimes, it’s a matter of storytelling, and “Alligator” is a sturdy beast in that aspect in that it knows what moments to use to insert some interesting quip, moment or character. The best example of this comes at the halfway point, where we’re introduced to the poon-chasing hunter foolishly brought aboard the investigation, played by Henry Silva. Now, if you don’t know Henry Silva and want to know why the idea of him hitting on women is grotesque, here’s a picture of him… 


sex machine.

And finally, the closer. We cheered, hooted and hollered as Forster finally dynamite’d the subterranean croc, eager for the last slice in the pie. Most excitedly, the “Zombie movie that still makes me sick to my stomach every time I see it” offered an assload of promise, and instead of an obvious choice, we finish with a spectacular bang with Lucio Fulci’s GATES OF HELL. The plot, skimpy as per Fulci’s usual order, is fairly skimpy, and it hangs on a series of random harbingers beginning with the hanging suicide of a priest meant to foretell the opening of the GATES OF HEEEEEEELLLLLLLLL. Fulci didn’t much care for coherence or narrative substance, but what he did know was to register images and shots that hadn’t been done before, that would transport the viewer to an area of the mind never visited. The best bit from the audience reaction (and there were a surprising amount of seats filled for the fourteenth film in twenty four hours) was the excruciatingly slow vomiting up of a woman’s internal organs.

And like that, it was over. The powers that be promptly booted us as one of the most wicked horror film festivals came to a close. From Robert Forster fighting the ‘gator, to Blacula screaming the night away as if it was a werewolf bar mitzvah, from women vomiting up their intestines to Godzilla getting super pissed, it was the horror event to remember. My liver will never recover.