Horror Movie Marathon

So finally went to the horror movie marathon. And what an experience! I thought I will just pass out today morning, completely zonked out. I realised my limits this morning and I will surely take note of this before planning to do any thing like this in future. But one thing surprised me. The attendance. I was expecting it to be some small affair with a group of zombies and horror nerds but it was actually a massive gathering with lots of "normal" looking people in attendance too. Although I didn't find any Indian face in the crowd. Other than films there was costume competition (Edward Scissorhands won), a burlesque horror carnival and fashion show and some live rock music played by some band called "Mucus".

Anyway, here's a brief write-up on some of the films. Sorry, if things don't make much sense, for obvious reasons!

The show started with the silent German classic of 1920's, Nosferatu ("A symphony of horror"). The most interesting part of the screening was the live organ music that accompanied the screening. The music box theatre has a music box in the auditorium and a rather professional sounding organ player plays it before the screening of the film. Anyway, the film was great although it would surely have been of more interest to film students than casual horror fans! I enjoyed it. The print was good and the live music effect was something new too.

The next film was Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse which started off pretty well and now that I think of it, even ended pretty well (I love apocalypse!) but in the middle I lost interest. I will write about the film in detail in some other post. It even had some social message as well - as in how technology and latest innovations in the means of communication are utterly useless in the face of human disconnection and solitude, which runs really, really deep. But as I said, more on that later.

The most important film of the night, which pretty much sealed everything, was Nacho Cerda's Aftermath (no links from this blog to this film, I refuse to defile my blog). This was a short, spanish film (although it had no dialogues) and easily the most sickening and frightening film I have seen. The film wasn't cheap, on the other hand the production design,camera work, special effects were rather brilliant and it did make some larger, philosophical point (it's some kind of Bunuel for the generation of horror-punks), but it's definitely not something I will recommend to even the most devoted horror-geek. The film is banned in many countries and rightly so. I am not going to tell you what the film was about and would sincerely advise you not to google or read about it anywhere and if at all you do so, please desist from renting the dvd. Please.

There were many other attractions too. One was made for TV film called Incidents from On and Off the Road which I really liked. Then there were countless trailers of B-movies from 60's and 70's and several short films by Chicago filmmakers. One of them was even present in person to attend the screening of a film that he made in London in early 70's. The film was reasonably good (it's called Death Line) and I liked it even though it had cannibalism and sentimentality (two things I don't like, even in horror movies!).

And then there was David Cronenberg's Scanners. But it started around 2 in the morning and by the time the first head exploded I was completely jaded and zonked. And Aftermath had spoilt the mood anyway. So I just slept through the last half-hour of Scanners and the whole of the next film. In the last film (I think it was some cheap film produced by Dario Argento) I was just waiting for dawn to break so that I could catch the first train back home. Which I eventually did. And now in the evening when I have slept through the entire day, I feel not much better than last night. Totally Sick and Alone.

Monday Evening Update: I feel better now. I have already forgotten most of the details of Aftermath. Feelings of despair and disconnection are going away too.