Halloween Movie Marathon 2019

In my long tradition of doing this with my children, this year’s move marathon was the most ill-attended.  Jason (lives elsewhere) and Emma (lives at home) didn’t show up for it at all; Jason was in a performance of Mamma Mia and then had to be up at 8am to take the ACT, and Emma had a play practice directly after school, from which she went directly to a Halloween party — she was pooped when she got home.

So Sariah and I sat down to…

Night of the Living Dead (1968) – Gotta wait until children are mature enough to get it before you show it to them, you know — you never want your enjoyment of the greatest independent movie ever to be interrupted by some kid whining, “This is boooring!”

Alex and his girlfriend arrive for the last fifteen minutes or so (Alex had to work until 7 pm), so they caught the end of that, then we broke out the hummus, dipping veggies, and various cheeses, and got into…

Masque of the Red Death (1964) – Because we gotta include Vinnie, right?  It’s a pretty sumptuous and expansive production for a Corman flick, and the script also had to expand plentifully off Poe’s original short story of less than 3,000 words into a feature-length movie.  Kinda meanders, truth be told, but some lovely tableaus nonetheless.

Then Alex and co. left ten minutes into the next feature:

The Fly (1986) – Because we watched the original last year. It still holds up beautifully, both in technical terms (the scenes which would most definitely be accomplished with CGI these days are actually simple things, like the baboon bounding out of the telepod into Jeff Goldblum’s arms, or the fly annoying the baboon) and as a disturbing piece of body horror, the genre for which director David Cronenberg is rightly known.

And then Sariah knocked off because she had to work in the morning, and it’s not like I’m gonna enjoy an endurance marathon on my own, so the entire exercise ended before midnight.

Pfft. Some “marathon”…