Before the Cap'n goes to bed, I thought it'd be fun to share the experience of impromptu marathoniness.
In the Mouth of Madness and Dead Alive were punctuated by episodes of Invader Zim and a trailer reel I put together at HQ. (The Zim episodes, for those curious, were "Dark Harvest", "Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy", and "Room with a Moose"). While turnout wasn't ginormous, the people I thought would be there did in fact arrive and they seemed to enjoy Madness.
Dead Alive went over much better, but Dead Alive is always going to win in a heads up match with In the Mouth of Madness. I forgot how quaintly nineties Madness is in the beginning, which makes the slow burn a little harder to get into for folks who didn't see it the first time around. Once John Trent (Sam Neill) gets to Hobb's End, the movie settles in and I could tell people were starting to follow the movie. I don't think it creeped anyone out as The Haunting might have, but it did serve as a good set up piece for vintage Peter Jackson.
It turns out I might have undersold the degree of gore and generally disgusting bodily fluids in Dead Alive, because despite my warning about the custard sequence, people were still covering their eyes, turning away, or walking halfway out of the basement. Not that I blame them, and we lost a few people (mostly to exhaustion) before the movie was over. And yet, as it always does, the strange charm of the "goriest movie ever made" managed to win over people who'd only heard of it before tonight.
When I got home, Liz came over to watch 1408 as I had promised and delivered upon. Surprise, surprise: it still doesn't really hold up. The movie starts out all right, things kick into high gear when Cusack enters room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel, and then it stumbles.
What I'd forgotten was just how unnecessarily long the dream sequence is, and how patently clear it is he's still in the hotel room the entire time. Worse still is another alternate ending (where he does die but his dream sequence manuscript makes it to agent Tony Shaloub) that makes the "Enslin lives" theatrical ending look almost tolerable.
I take that back, because showing the "Enslin lives" ending reminded me of how much of a cheat it is considering the steps 1408 takes to remind us there is no escaping. Of the three endings I'm still taking the "director's cut", which is at least melancholy, but by that point 1408 isn't so much looking to be redeemed as it is salvaged.
Tomorrow I'll pop something on while I'm setting stuff up, wait for Ad-Rock to get here, and the rest should arrive between 7:30 and 9 for the main attraction.
For anyone not aware, Saturday is daylight savings time, so we get an extra hour of Horror Fest, which none of you are likely to complain about.
Stay scared,
The Cap'n
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