As longtime readers (all 1.5 of you) will know, our family tradition is to hold a movie marathon on the Friday before Halloween: I’ll just keep tossing fun horror flicks in until everyone throws in the towel.
Except this year, my wife and kids had so many overlapping activities and engagements on Friday, we held the marathon on Thursday. The kids didn’t have school on Friday, which also meant that my wife, who works in the schools, could sleep in. I was the only one who’d have to drag himself to work on Friday…
Except Thursday was not itself an unencumbered evening, so we didn’t get started until after 9 pm. thus, our “marathon” this time out consisted of only three movies:
The Andromeda Strain (1971) – Yeah, it was interesting… in a boring way. The pacing was glacial, the dialog was stilted, and the acting was more wooden than an Ewok village. It seems like an instructional video on how to isolate and deal with an extraterrestrial virus using circa 1971 technology. At about two-thirds of the way through, we fast-forwarded to see if the world was destroyed. It wasn’t. The end.
Eight Legged Freaks (2002) – Attention, all writers and producers for the Sci-Fi Channel (or SyFy, or PsiFai or whatever you’re calling yourself): This is what a fun movie about giant bugs looks like. Watch. Learn. Go and do likewise. (Favorite scene: Giant trapdoor spiders vs. a flock of ostriches.)
The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) – Oh, regional cinema, where would we be without you? This docudrama about a Bigfootish creature south of Texarkana — with at least half of the vignettes acted by the original participants — is the perfect movie for that giddy time of night. We about lost it when we met Herb, who limps because he accidentally shot off part of his foot in a boating accident. “I didn’t know the boat was loaded!”
Completely agree with you about Eight Legged Freaks.
Shouldn’t the title be Eight-Legged Freaks? As in: “the freaks have 8 legs.” Not: “there are eight freaks with legs.” That’s on Hollywood, not you.
Btw, I think you got ahead of yourself with the year. Or was there a bit of time travel involved? 😉
Ha! Yeah, everything I’m doing at work is for 2016, so I’ve no idea what year I’m living in.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Eight-Legged Freaks, mainly because to me it couldn’t decide if it was being an outright spoof, or something closer to Tremors. But perhaps after all the crappy shark movies I’ve seen over the past couple of years, it’ll look a lot better should I see it again.
I didn’t quite get to do a marathon, but I did watch several Chinese horror films over the course of the month: Kung Fu Zombie (kung fu/comedy/horror); Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave (more the same, but with 100% more Drácula!); Wicked Wife; The Beasts (sort of a Hong Kong I Spit on Your Grave/Last House on the Left); and Untold Story (a no-holds barred “true” crime story about murder, infanticide, rape and unintentional cannibalism).