The Parkway Theatre has assembled one heck of a great horror marathon for the Halloween weekend that they are calling Days of the Dead. Starting at 5:30 on Friday October 30th and running through Sunday evening The Parkway will be screening numerous horror films and other oddities for those of us who are into that sort of thing. As if that isn’t enough, each screening will have a corresponding drink/food special at the neighboring Pepito’s restaurant or at The Parkway’s concession stand. And if that isn’t enough, the entire marathon costs a mere $10. That’s right, a single ticket will get you into each and every film being shown during the entire weekend. One important note, starting at 7pm you must be 21 to attend any of the screenings due to the allowance of alcohol in the theatre.
If you haven’t made it out to The Parkway yet, this is as good a time as any to make the trip to this fantastic south Minneapolis movie theatre.
Full Schedule (drink/food specials)
Friday, Oct. 30th.
5:30 Frightmare ($1.00 off any size popcorn)
7:15 Blood Suckers (two for one beers and half price burritos)
9:00 Blood Thirst (two for one beers and half price nachos)
10:30 Blood Orgy of the She Devils (two for one beers and half price nachos)
I decided several weeks ago that I would get into the Halloween spirit by reviewing a horror film next week. So I did careful research and selected an interesting unknown Czech horror film that looked rather promising, but somewhere along the way I decided that I was possibly over thinking things. Sure a film that blends live actions with stop-motion animation as it delves into the struggle with sanity while delving into works by the Marquis de Sade and Edgar Allen Poe sounds deliciously fascinating and horrific, but this is Halloween we are talking about.
So I scratched that previous film (Don’t worry, it will be back) in favor of something a bit more fitting, gore. Specifically gore is direct relation to an HP Lovecraft film. And what goes better with HP Lovecraft then Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs? That is why next week I will be reviewing From Beyond.
It’s almost Halloween. While this is wonderful news to someone like me, it’s terrible news for my wife who is once again subjected to a plethora of horror movies in my attempt to show her all of the movies she had been missing out on before she met me. It doesn’t help matters much that I can clearly remembering watching movies like Halloweenand The Fog before she was born. Anyway, in order to be a little different, this year’s movie queue has been littered with a lot of new unseen movies, such as The Objective(I’m convinced there was an amazing idea somewhere in that mess), The Strangers (who knew being attacked by three creepy people in masks could be so…dull?) and many others not worth mentioning. It’s been pretty bleak. Just when I was giving up hope, along came a movie that made up for all of the disappointments.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is an excellent example of horror deconstruction in the 21st century, up there with other recent cinematic examples like All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, and literary examples like Joe Hill’s “Best New Horror”. When I find myself talking about the film with others, inevitably the Screamtrilogy is mentioned by others for comparison. And while it’s easy to lump Wes Craven’s franchise with Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, I’d argue that the former spent more of its energy desperately trying to convince a new generation that horror is, like, cool, whereas the latter simply reminds the rest of us why we loved horror in the first place. (more…)
The young people of today may not realize just how scary the word Satanist used to be here in the United States. You see, being a Puritanical society most people had a fear of God. But if there was one thing that could scare them even more then God it was Satan. And thanks to Hollywood hits like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby those fears were suddenly rationalized in celluloid.
Yes those kindly old neighbors are trying to stealthily allow Satan to rape you in your sleep. And yes, the reason your daughter has started cursing and crab walking everywhere is because she is possessed by a demon. And yes, that scary blind man constantly sitting in that chair in the attic is guarding the gateway to Hell. (more…)
I always had a soft spot for John Carpenter. As a kid, he was the first director whose name meant something to me. Seeing his name flash across the screen for the commercials for The Fog when I was a child left an impression that I’m still trying to shake off today. More than any other director, Carpenter appeared to be making movies just for me. Halloween and The Fog were there when I was first discovering horror movies. Escape from New York, The Thing andStarman arrived when I was exploring other genres. When I discovered Stephen King, Christine arrived at the video store. When I stumbled on martial arts movies, he gave meBig Trouble in Little China. When I became interested in science, Carpenter churned out the underrated Prince of Darkness(a pessimistic and claustrophobic End of Days story offset by the optimism of quantum physics). And when I started to question authority, along came They Live (a movie remembered more for its excess than its restraint). Looking at Carpenter’s work from The Fog (1980) to They Live (1988), not only is it an impressive resume, but it is a body of work that perfectly reflects the paranoia, glut and cynicism that was the Eighties.
Sadly, the Nineties would not be a good time for Carpenter, and this, like many of us, is when I started to lose interest in his work. Memoirs of an Invisible Man, while inventive at times, is painful and never quite understands what kind of movie it wants to be; all of this is made worse by the fact that many scenes practically scream studio intervention.
So when I saw the trailer for 1995’s In the Mouth of Madness, I tried not to get my hopes too high. The good news was the movie ended up being pretty good, and the bad news was that it would be Carpenter’s last good movie.(more…)
The Parkway Theatre has assembled one heck of a great horror marathon for the Halloween weekend that they are calling Days of the Dead. Starting at 5:30 on Friday October 30th and running through Sunday evening The Parkway will be screening numerous horror films and other oddities for those of us who are into that sort of thing. As if that isn’t enough, each screening will have a corresponding drink/food special at the neighboring Pepito’s restaurant or at The Parkway’s concession stand. And if that isn’t enough, the entire marathon costs a mere $10. That’s right, a single ticket will get you into each and every film being shown during the entire weekend. One important note, starting at 7pm you must be 21 to attend any of the screenings due to the allowance of alcohol in the theatre.
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