As has been my tradition for at least fifteen years, on the Friday before Halloween I gather the kids and start throwing monster movies at the screen until everyone gives up and goes to bed. This year having seen the passing of Roger Corman, I chose the movies with a tribute in mind.
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) – (Roger Corman executive-produced, and his brother Gene produced.) There’s something in the swamp, and it’s sucking people’s faces off! Well, no, there wasn’t the budget for that… but it’s leaving huge gashes on their necks and faces, and keeping them stashes in an underwater-access cave to drain slowly over days. Actually, there are a few of them, realized by men in primitive suits, but it’s still not the worst “SCUBA diver as underwater monster” costumes I’ve ever seen. In between monster attacks, there’s a backwoods soap opera going on — in fact, that’s usually more interesting than the monster parts.
Day the World Ended (1955)- (Roger Corman produced and directed.) Another soap opera, but this one slow and drawn out — seven people (and a burro) who find themselves at an isolated prepper’s home on the day the bombs drop. (Never addressed: How the hell did most of them find themselves so far off the grid?) The two women are a washed-up stripper and the prepper’s fresh-faced daughter, so the virile geologist and the shady mafioso (sometime squeeze of the stripper) vie for her affections. The other men are the old prospector who’s already in love with his burrow, and the guy who’s already mutating because of THAT’S NOT HOW RADIATION WORKS.
And there’s another mutated creature outside who’s cannily kept from the cameras because… well, his eventual appearance provoked loud guffaws (and cries of “A fren!” from my daughters).
Piranha (1978) – (Roger Corman executive-produced.) By this time, the audience was suspicious of my choices: “Is the next one actually good?” Then I explained the whole idea of the “Roger Corman Film School,” and how Piranha was directed by Joe Dante, who went on to make Gremlins. (I also explained how everyone who worked for Corman around then made sure to include a role for Dick Miller.) Enjoyed by all, although I think most were surprised that children were actually put in danger — and worse, at least one was actually killed.
By this point, the main ask was, “Can we see one that’s actually scary/spooky?” So I jettisoned the other Corman movies I had had lined up (Creature From the Haunted Sea, The Raven, Teenage Caveman) and instead put on one of my favorite “dream-logic” movies, Phantasm 2 (1988). They were suitably impressed, although they didn’t seem to take the same delight in it as I do. I guess you have to have seen it for the first time during the decade in which it was made.
And that was that. We’ve been known to go as far as six movies for the marathon (or possibly seven, I’m to lazy to check), but I had perhaps erred by front-loading with bad (and, in the case of Day the World Ended, boring) features and thus wearing down everyone’s enthusiasm and energy. I shall remember that lesson for next year.
I always look forward to these posts. My daughter and I don’t do marathons, but we did watch the two Kuchisake-Onna films, titled “Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman” and “The Scissors Massacre” for American release.