I would guess that most of the articles that I have written for this site are horror movie related. I apologize; it’s hard for me not to talk about them. Ever since I was a wee lad I was constantly and voraciously watching whatever scary, gory, goopy movie that I could get my hands on, and there were many. When I grew up and went to college, they tried to instill a love of the finer films into me. Did it work? I suppose it did; I learned to love and respect obscure classics created by the likes of Andre Tarkovsky and Lindsay Anderson (if you haven’t seen his film “If” then I suggest you stop reading and get to your netflix account now!), but still, long after my graduation and well on my way to being “old” I still get a jones to sit down in front of the telly with no lights on in the house and get scared silly.

That’s why I am so excited for the 12 Hours of Terror movie marathon being held at the Capitol Theater on October 16th. What we have here is exactly how it reads; seven scary movies splattered over twelve hours for your delight. This is the first in what the people at Cleveland Cinemas hope will become an annual event and they have an impressive lineup to kick things off:

I was under the belief that summer movies were supposed to be light, fluffy, entertainment; something that allowed you to just turn off your brain for an hour and a half while the images roll across the screen. I apologize for my error in thought. I started getting the feeling that I was wrong about summer blockbusters when The Dark Knight came out in 2008 and opened the doors for serious summer movies that could combine action and story in a fluid way that can be thrilling and deadly serious at the same time. It never dumbed itself down or took an easy way out, instead it was multi layered and a completely rich filmgoing experience, satisfying to both the average moviegoers that just want to have an escape for a few hours and lovers of more thought provoking types of movies.

Now Christopher Nolan, the director of The Dark Knight, is back to stake his claim to summer movie ownage with Inception, an amazing piece of work that shatters the myth I bought into that all summer movies are cookie cutter action pictures. Some, like Inception, are epics that raise the art of filmmaking to new heights.

Splice is strange, very strange. But sometimes strange is a good thing and that is definitely the case here. Directed by Vincenzo Natali ( who directed the fantastic Cube a few years back), Splice is the story of Elsa and Clive (played by Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody respectively), two hot shot scientists that specialize in splicing DNA from various things like plants, birds and other animals into genetic mutations that may hold the key stopping certain diseases. So far their work has produced promising results in helping cure illnesses in cattle, but Elsa and Clive are looking at the big picture. They want to add some human DNA into the mix, ostensibly to break some ground in stopping cancers in people, but mostly just to see if they can.

Well, indeed they could, and the result is Dren, a hybrid of human, plant and animal DNA all meshed into a creature that starts life as a slug like thing, but soon grows into something more feminine thanks to a speeded up lifecycle. Clive wants to destroy Dren, but Elsa wants to study her. Before long the studying gives way to more parental instincts and the two scientists decide to raise the misfit of science as their own. This, of course, leads to some very interesting results.

Do you remember going to your local fair and seeing those shabby old trailers that promised you strange, exciting spectacles that would bewilder the eyes and turn the stomach? I remember them fondly. When I was younger, the Cuyahoga County Fair had exhibits for the worlds largest rat, a mermaid, and other oddities, and I always was lured into seeing them.

Well, its twenty odd years later and I swear that if I walked past the Cedar Lee theater or the Capitol theater this Friday or Saturday night I may be enticed by a straw hat wearing, pinstripe suited Carney trying to lure me into laying down my hard earned cash to gaze upon one of the weirdest, sickest things to come down the cinematic midway in a very long time: The Human Centipede (First Sequence).

We all know the story by now; Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a paraplegic soldier who travels to the planet of Pandora as part of a military operation that has been set up there in order to protect a mining operation. The mining company needs the militaries help because of attacks from the Na’vi; natives of Pandora that are blue, ten feet tall, and very angry that the miners are tearing apart their lands in search of the rarest mineral in the universe. Jake’s real reason for being on the planet is to take his dead brothers place in the mining corporations Avatar program. The Avatar program was developed to aid relations between the humans and the Na’vi and basically consists of a person shooting their mind into a human/Na’vi hybrid and sending them out into the jungles of Pandora to make nice with the locals. Jake, while not as smart as his late scientist brother, shares similar enough DNA for him to be able to use his brothers avatar and before long he is in the mix with the rest of the avatar group.

What better way than follow up the first story in what I hope to be a small franchise about horror films than to write about a sequel! Well, okay not really a sequel; more of an update really. Last article was all about George Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead and this one is dedicated to his masterpiece; Dawn of the Dead.

After Night of the Living Dead, Romero continued making movies in and around his native Pittsburgh and while the results were some very interesting films, none seemed to reach the heights that Night achieved. But Romero came back strong in 1978 with Dawn of the Dead, a movie that, like Night, pushed the envelope in terms of the ghastly things it showed on screen.

If Night of the Living Dead was dealing mostly with the social issue of what happens to a diverse society when confronted with a terrible situation (the dead rising and attacking the living), then thisone is all about what happens when society realizes it cannot win and begins to break down.

What turned you into a fan of movies? Was it the experience of being in a theater full of people? Was it the thrill that comes from watching epic films spread across a giant screen in front of yours eyes? Was it the getting lost in stories crafted by the masters of cinema? Those are all fine enough reasons to become immersed in the world of movies, but for me it was a bloodlust.

The year was 1978 and I was somewhere around seven years old when I snuck out of bed late one night to watch a little television. I no longer remember what I was so eager to see, but I do remember a commercial that was playing almost as soon as the tv switched on. As our console glowed to life, I saw an image of a human knocking over a parking sign. The human was grey in color and listless in its movements, and then the scene cut to a parking lot full of these characters. I wasn’t sure what to make of the vision before me, but I was definitely freaked out when the announcer said “…The dead will walk the Earth.” and the title announcing the film Dawn of the Dead appeared on the screen.

That’s what started my love of horror movies.

Okay folks, wanted to give you a little heads up into some interesting happenings in the world of film coming up in the next few weeks.

This is the time of year that the Cleveland International Film Festival is upon us. Like people gear up and get into the spirit of Christmas, it’s around this time of year I start getting visions of little film reels dancing in my head as I lye in bed waiting for the gift of offbeat cinema to hit Tower City Cinemas for a week. While the Festival showcases films from around the world, there are a few local films that are playing that really deserve to be seen and I figured since I have a bit of a voice with the radio gig and this little spot right here, I would showcase a few of them.

Pinned
Where: Cleveland International Film Festival
When: March 19th @ 4:45 PM
March 20th @ 11:20 AM
March 25th @ 7:15 PM (at the Capitol Theater)