After getting the bad news out of the way, let's move on to happier times, shall we? After last year's Horror Fest: A People's History, wherein the Cap'n collected memories from folks who attended the first seven Horror / Summer Fests, I thought that to follow it up with my own favorite moments.
Summer Fest was always designed to be more on the "fun" side: we'd watch horror comedies, focus less on being scared than being entertained, intentionally or otherwise. The atmosphere at Summer Fest is designed to be looser, less regimented. I like to put a list of movies out there, and adhere to it slightly - that way, you never know what you're going to see on a given night, which gives you incentive to come every day of the fest.
It's traditionally where we'll try out some kind of new "gimmick": field trips, 3D, guest bloggers, or one of the five moments listed below (that happened after the oral history came into being). They slowly transformed from being all night affairs to include afternoon mini-marathons, as was the case at Summer Fest 3. Listed below, in no particular order, are four memories from Summer Fests 1-3 that stick with me. Many of them are film related, and even the one that isn't directly tied to a movie is an experience I'll never forget (or live down).
4. The First Field Trip - What often gets lost when discussing The Happening's role as our first "field trip" screening was the film that followed it when we got back to The Apartment of Solitude: Plan 9 from Outer Space. The experience of watching The Happening was a jovial one, save for one major issue - the air conditioning was so loud that half of the group couldn't hear the film. While that may sound like a godsend, considering how bad The Happening is, it doesn't help convey just how awful the film is without the wooden line delivery.
Most of the negative reaction to The Happening comes (I think) from the second time I screened it, during Horror Fest III - it was an unannounced surprise, following the already bad Paul Lynde Halloween Special, and being exposed to something so terrible less than six months later was a bit cruel. That said, I think that during Summer Fest 2, following The Happening with Plan 9 from Outer Space gives you a much better idea of how the Cap'n views M. Night Shyamalan's "B-Movie." The idea was to convey a disasterpiece in its classic and modern forms, and had I not dropped The Happening in out of context four months later, it might not be as infamous as it is now.
Or not.
3. Late Nights / Early Mornings - What sticks with me about the first Summer Fest, beyond The Happening, was that it was the last time we consistently watched movies from dusk till dawn. I have vivid memories of being half-awake, watching Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and Friday the 13th Part 2 with Neil and the Cranpire at six in the morning. We'd nod off a little, wake up, nudge each other to catch some unforgettable moment (and there are many in Shark Attack 3), and then try to go on as long as we could before passing out as the sun came up.
As I get older, it gets harder and harder to stay up all night, and we usually peter out somewhere between two and four a.m., and agree to regroup the following afternoon. During Summer Fest 3, we actually started Saturday at 2 in the afternoon, watching a quadruple feature of Phantasm III, Cheerleader Camp, The Gate, and Thankskilling, then took a dinner break (more on that next) and continued well into the night. Alas, the Cap'n and compatriots aren't as young as we used to be, and no amount of caffeine has been able to alter our curmudgeonly ways. Before too long, I'll be hosting Horror Fest Early Bird Specials, so we can all be in bed by 9. In that respect, it's nice to look back at those barely awake moments of shocks and laughs, aided by sleep deprivation.
2. The Great McGangbang Experiment - Okay, so I don't think I gave her proper credit at the time, but the Rianimator (and at the time, Dominator) brought the concept of the McGangbang to my attention during Summer Fest 3. They insisted we read an article from Cracked.com about "food for failures," which was so funny that their insistence we try the McDonalds catastrophe seemed like a great idea. There were a handful of intrepid McTaste Testers, and after the matinee feature, we went to get the necessary materials to rock a McGangbang.
I mentioned this in the original coverage (which has pictures), but the unholy combination of cheeseburger and McChicken sandwich wasn't all that bad. At first. The combination worked, in some illogical way, until your stomach caught wind of what was going on upstairs. Then rebellion began, and with the exception of our intrepid junior Summer Fest attendee, Chris, everyone who finished their McGangbang spent the next two hours in their own personal digestive hell. We had an extra one, thanks to a snafu about who was going to pick them up, but none of the people who arrived after the challenge wanted any part of it, mostly because they could see how miserable we were.
Luckily, iron stomach Chris took the last one home, secretly hoping that we could try the Taco Bell variation some time soon. It's the first food challenge we've ever had at a horror fest (if you don't count trying to drink Bud Light with Clamato or our Wild Irish Rose mixed beverages a challenge), and I don't know if there will ever be another one. If so, it would have a lot to live up to.
1. Discovery, discovery, discovery - I'm not even sure where to start with this one. My main goal with the Blogorium is to expose people to films they've never heard of or have never considered before. Horror and Summer Fests are an opportunity to move beyond just writing about it and to actually watch those movies with and audience. Sometimes, it may be a film we've seen before that takes on a life of its own (like the Night of the Lepus screening at Summer Fest 1 that became a twenty person version of Mystery Science Theater 3000), but more often it's about films that I've heard of and save for a fest, often without watching them myself. Better still are movies that someone brings to a fest that knock everybody off of their feet.
I mention Blood Car and Terrorvision a lot on the Blogorium, but would have never known they existed without Neil and Dr. Tom (respectively) bringing them to my attention. That they stand out at their respective fests (Summer Fests 1 and 2) is saying something, considering just how many great movies played those weekends, but it's so. I'd also like to highlight Teeth, The Giant Claw, Fido, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, ThanksKilling, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Drag Me to Hell, and Basket Case, which I hadn't seen to that point. The lost, forgotten, and obscure gems are what keep these festivals interesting to me, or we'd just watch our favorite horror movies over and over again (which we sometimes do).
In that spirit, if there's a Summer Fest this year, I have many films that I'd never heard of prior to 2011 that should be fun to watch, including The Boogens, Abby, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, Rubber, Bug, and From Hell It Came that should provide hours of enjoyment. I also have ideas for new "theme" nights, although they might be split up over the next few years, devoted to blaxploitation films, animals gone wild films, and marathons based on actors from Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who (would you believe that I'm working on finding horror movies for as many of the twelve doctors as I can?).
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