My Frightarama Experience

The god-awful Wicker Man remake

So I'm a newcomer to the whole movie marathon thing, and this was my first experience with one, which was put on by the Phoenix Cinema in Leicester.
The Marathon comprised of five films, ranging from 70's classics such as "The Wicker Man" to recent favourites such as "Shaun of the Dead."
In this article I aim to give brief reviews of each of the five films, and give my honest opinions on the experience as a whole, so lets not waste any time and get right on down to it.

My bottomless coffee

So the night didn't kick off spectacularly for me, I arrived at the Phoenix at 8:30pm which was two hours too early for the actual programming. I then learnt that one of my favourite films on the scheduled listings which was BrainDead (Dead Alive to some people) had been removed due to some problems with copyrighting. However to my gleeful surprise it was replaced with Re-Animator staring Jeffrey Combs, one of my favourite 80's horror movies. Once 10:30pm rolled around, I sat down with my £2 bottomless coffee and adjusted myself for a film I had never seen before, The Wicker Man.

Christopher Lee as a woman!

The Wicker Man- So much to the shame and disapproval of many a horror fan, I had never seen this 1973 classic. Of course I had heard of and seen the Nicolas Cage remake which is god awful, and perhaps that had some part to play in why I had never sat down to see the original. Whilst I can't really call this a horror movie (perhaps it was scarier back in the 70's) but it was very creepy, chilling and intense. The story revolves around a police officer called to Sumerilse just off the coast of Scotland in search of a missing girl. Upon arriving there, nobody seems to know of the missing child, and the Paganism roots of the island soon show through, exploding in some weird sex scenes including a young woman gyrating against a wall and Christopher Lee dressing as a woman and doing some awesome sacrificial dance moves. I honestly think that Christopher Lee is the main reason as to why I enjoyed the film so much. From the 50's and the rise of the Hammer Horror Films, Lee was the greatest actor in Horror, and I honestly think this is one of his best performances. Whilst not being remotely scary, it was a very fun murder mystery film and a great way to ease us into the night.

A true horror classic

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre- This.. was a real treat. I am a huge fan of the original TTCM, so watching it in the original 35mm format was amazing. The crackling and the lines across the screen, the pops and crackles coming from the projector at the back of the screening room was almost too much to handle. It certainly adds to that "dirty" feel of the movie, and at several points, I actually felt like the heat was getting to me. Was I in Texas? No of course not, but the way in which Tobe Hooper made this film gets you so engrossed and involved and when characters are running scarred, so are you. The hook scene where a girl is pinned up is always a high point for me, it really got me involved this time, making me feel as though I was there watching it all happen. The storyline to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is rather simplistic, a group of teenagers go on a cross country road trip in search of there fathers old house, and whilst on their way, they are attacked by a family of cannibalistic killers, including Leatherface and the almost dead and decaying Grandpa. Still as creepy and fantastic as ever, this film again was great.

Lamberto Bava's gorefest

Demons- This was another film I had not seen before and whilst being a fan of Dario Argento's cut of the 1978 Romero classic Dawn of the Dead, I hadn't seen any other films that he was involved with. I had also read a few reviews on this film and whilst most cited the film as being fun, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. However this was definitely the type of film that was needed at this time of the morning. A really cheesy B-Movie-esque style that was full of great laughs throughout. The plot is wafer thin, comprising of little more than teenagers go to a movie theatre, and the movie theatre becomes overrun with the titular Demons. The plot isn't what matters here, what does matter are those old great practical effects, lots of gore and an interesting cast of characters, especially that unnamed pimp who with every single line had the whole audience gasping for air because he was that funny. However I think it has to be said that this film is not really for everyone, some people even left because this film was on, but its worth a shot if you like those really gory stupidly funny 80's horror films.

Shaun of the Dead- Who hasn't seen this film by now? Edgar Wrights comedic take on the zombie genre has now earned the adoration of almost anyone. People that don't even like the zombie genre cite this film as one of the funniest films they've seen. George Romero even added cameo's for Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright in his return to the zombie genre, Land of the Dead (2005) because the film impressed him that much, despite being almost a spoof of the genre that he created. The plot involves Shaun and his best friend Ed being caught in the middle of the zombie outbreak in Britain, and there attempts at winning back Shaun's girlfriend and holding out in their favourite pub, the Winchester. Whilst the plot in its conception is very simplistic there are a lot of events that happen in between the initial outbreak and the flame engulfed finale. The laughs come thick and fast in this self proclaimed  Zom-Rom-Com. A modern classic, I can't not recommend this film, so its really one that people need to see if they haven't already.

The zombie walk

At the beginning of Shaun of the Dead, the staff offered out cornetto ice creams to all of us, lovingly sticking true to Edgar Wrights Cornetto trilogy. After the film had finished they announced that it was breakfast time, and the staff lovingly dished out servings of bacon, sausage and vegetarian butty's. Then it was time to refill on that bottomless coffee one final time and enter into the final movie, Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator.

Who doesn't love Jeffrey Combs?

Re-Animator- I hadn't seen this film until recently, and it is already one of my favourite 80's horror films. Released in 1985 it had a lot of strong competition in the zombie genre at the time, with the third part in Romero's "Dead" trilogy, Day of the Dead being released around the same time and Dan O'Bannon's hilarious Return of the Living Dead being released in the same year. The story taken from one of H.P Lovecraft's many short novels, it follows the character of Herbert West, a young neurologist armed with a strong "Re-agent" which allows the brain to come back to life but with rather strange side effects. Trying to gain the help of his flatmate and make money from this Re-agent, Herbert is discovered by his jealous college professor who puts the product for his own demented means. I'm trying to find a word to express the amount of adoration I have for this film. I can't find one. Although not my favourite film of the three zombie romps of 1985, it most certainly is the strangest, and for that it deserves a lot of merit. I have heard this film described as a contemporary "Frankenstein" which I think is quite a befitting way of describing the film I feel. A true gem of the horror genre, that not a lot of people know about I don't feel. Definitely worthy of Frightarama.

Final Thoughts

Please show the Slashers some love!

Frightarama was really a great experience. I had been awake for 26 hours and was running on 9 cups of black coffee by the time I saw the crack of dawn. The films were awesome, the staff were amazing and treated is really well, dishing out sweets and badges and clapping as we left the cinema after the final screening. Whilst they were taking the picture to confirm that we had in fact survived the marathon, I looked around at the people I had just sat through 5 films with and everyone had the same expression that I did which was one of happiness and excitement. Maybe it was the coffee in us, or maybe it was the fact that most of us were dying to sleep but we continued to whoop and cheer even as we left the Phoenix to carry our weary bodies to our beds.

If I have any criticisms of the event, it would be to have at least one slasher film in the roster. Everyone loves a good slasher, ranging from the classic Halloween, to Wes Craven's Nightmare on Elm Street, these are films plainly for fun and I am sure one of them would have been greatly appreciated.