For the past thirteen years, the Coolidge Corner Theatre has celebrated Halloween weekend with a grueling/exhilarating (take your pick) twelve hour marathon, running from midnight on Saturday to noon on Sunday. It’s terrific fun, but also daunting; twelve hours is a long time to do anything, especially when, as per tradition, the bulk of the line-up is kept a secret until the day of the show. For those of you who have viewed the event with curiosity, but could never quite make the commitment, here’s what you missed:
The festivities began with the Misfits-y horror punk stylings of THE MANGLED DEAD, backed by a video collage of appropriately trashy fright scenes (I recognized the 1967 drug scare film NARCOTICS: PIT OF DESPAIR, but there were countless others). This was followed by the vaunted costume contest in which dozens of revelers took to the stage in some of the most ambitious and obscure costumes they could come up with, from THE EVIL DEAD’s Ash Williams to the monsters of the cult NES game RAMPAGE. Top prize this year went to four men dressed as children disguised as two very tall men (think THE LITTLE RASCALS), with runner up prizes given to Gozer the Gozerian from GHOSTBUSTERS and a startlingly convincing Sgt. Slaughter (sadly, my girlfriend’s and my Ralph and Virginia Merrye from SPIDER BABY failed to place).
Once the last of the costumes had shuffled off the stage, it was time for the marathon to begin in earnest. The headliners this year were the double feature of PSYCHO (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974, dir. Tobe Hooper), both inspired by real-life serial killer/necrophile/mama’s boy Ed Gein. At first blush, the two films seem to be polar opposite takes on the material; where Hitchcock’s masterpiece is justly revered for its precision in storytelling, CHAIN SAW appears to be ragged and almost stream-of-consciousness. However, repeated viewings reveal a surprisingly complex and thought-out logic to the demented Sawyer clan’s brutal dynamic, from Jim Siedow’s conflicted father figure to Leatherface’s weird gender issues (keen eyes will notice he changes his outfit to match the occasion, from butcher to grandmother to suit and tie). The first time you see it, you’re too busy screaming to make sense of it all; that it holds up to repeated viewings speaks to the artistry of Hooper and his crew.
Following the double feature came the usual mass exodus of people who didn’t feel up to the challenge of the full twelve hours. I have never been able to understand this. Sure, it’s hard not to be tired after four to five hours of pure sensory onslaught, but even at my most exhausted, I would much rather sit and be entertained for a few hours than try to navigate my way home at four in the morning. Nevertheless, dozens decided enough was enough, and left without delving into the secretive rest of the lineup.
The first surprise was A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984, dir. Wes Craven). Much has been written about how Craven turned the slasher game on its head in the late ’90s with NEW NIGHTMARE and the SCREAM franchise, but it’s easy to forget that he did it here first. Arriving almost halfway through the franchise-heavy ’80s, NIGHTMARE stood in stark relief to its competition. Rather than a silent, faceless killer, Freddy was funny and charismatic. The death scenes aim for surreal grand guignol rather than the usual pointy-object-of-the-week. And Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy, alternately sucking down No-Doz and coffee and rigging up booby traps to turn the tables on her tormentor, has more in common with ALIEN’s Ellen Ripley than the average, passive “final girl”. Of course, the endless parade of increasingly cartoonish sequels have somewhat dulled Freddy’s edge, but the original still stands as a remarkably smart and lean little thriller.
Next up was the original 13 GHOSTS (1960, dir. William Castle). The main attraction here is “Illusion-O,” the latest innovation from gimmick-meister William Castle. Audiences of the original theatrical run were given “ghost viewers” (here replaced with standard red-blue 3D glasses lovingly handed out by the Coolidge staff); adventurous viewers would look through the red lens to the ghosts in all their glory, while moviegoers “who don’t believe in ghosts” could look through the blue lens and see the actors reacting to nothing. It’s a neat gimmick and one that holds up surprisingly well even though it’s tough to imagine the person who would go to a movie called 13 GHOSTS and opt not to see the ghosts. As for the story itself, I will admit that I nodded out for much of the film – but really, how much does plot matter when there’s a headless lion-tamer ghost on screen?
I maintained consciousness through the entirety of THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981, dir. Lucio Fulci), but I think I comprehended even less of its plot. A family moves into a house once inhabited by “Dr. Freudstein” (no, seriously) and there’s a creepy little girl who warns the son not to go in the house. And also there are zombies, or something. As is usually the case in a Fulci film, plot takes a back seat to periodic scenes of over-the-top gore, including a ridiculous run-in with a bat that must be seen to be believed. Set in “New Whitby, Boston”, which beyond being hilariously made-up seems to be under the impression that Boston is a state.
The next film, starting, appropriately enough, around dawn, was NEAR DARK (1987, dir. Kathryn Bigelow). NEAR DARK could accurately be described as “TWILIGHT with balls” if not for the fact that its director, Kathryn Bigelow, would go on to become the first woman to win Best Director. Here, the vampires are all mean, bar-fighting SOBs, including the ever-grizzled Lance Henriksen and a dialed-to-eleven Bill Paxton. The central love story gets a little soapy, but it’s worth it for such badass showstoppers as the scene where the vampire clan calmly takes out a bar full of bikers to the strains of THE CRAMPS’ version of “Fever.”
Finally, the projectionist came on the intercom to announce that, after some number-crunching, the staff realized they could squeeze in a rare seventh movie. And what a movie they chose: BRAIN DAMAGE (1988, dir. Frank Henenlotter) plays something like slapstick Cronenberg or maybe TRAINSPOTTING through the eyes of early Peter Jackson. A blue, wormlike parasite escapes from an elderly couple’s bathtub and attaches itself to their young, schlubby neighbor Brian. The parasite, portrayed alternately via stop-motion and puppetry and voiced with hilariously erudite bravado by TV horror host John Zacherley, injects Brian with hallucinatory blue goop in exchange for access to fresh brains to feast on. It’s grimy, druggy, and gleefully perverse – the perfect note to send us all back into society.
http://youtu.be/Y6uBO0Jrz98
That moment, as we all stagger out into the far-too-bright sun, deliriously trying to recount our favorite scenes of the night, has become as much a part of Halloween to me as dumping out my candy at the end of trick-or-treating. It may be physically grueling and mentally numbing, but short of mainlining melted candy corn, I can think of few purer ways of celebrating the holiday. If you’ve got the fortitude, I highly recommend hunkering down for twelve hours with a roomful of like-minded individuals and letting the Halloween marathon wash over you. Just watch out for blood-bats.
