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Happy Birthday Retrofantasma!
In today’s tough economy, it’s hard to get the value out of one’s dollar. It’s equally difficult to find a local theater that offers programming of films from outside the Hollywood mainstream. The Carolina Theatre in Durham and it’s monthly Retrofantasma shows are the solution to both of those problems.
This is part of what makes Retrofantasma at the Carolina Theatre so special. The crew at the Carolina Theatre work hard day in and day out to bring Retro audiences a wide array of classic horror films all year long. Audiences from the Durham area are treated to monthly double features of some of the rarest 35mm horror prints around.
Jim Carl, the program director, states that “Retro was born in November 1998 with a single showing of Friday the 13th Part 2. More than a decade later, we’re now one of the longest-running monthly genre film series in the United States!” The spectacular programing is no accident as anyone that talks to Jim can tell you. He is as big a fan of the genre as one will find.
Retro crowds make every show a treat.
This week marked Retrofantasma’s twelfth anniversary of bringing classic horror and cult movies to the Durham area. The reason for its continued success is simple, Retrofantasma is programmed for the fans by a fan. A quick glance at the list of titles that have played in 35mm at Retro over the past few years reveal just how much Jim and company love genre films: Alien, An American Werewolf in London, Black Christmas, Creepshow, The Exorcist, Friday the 13th, Friday the 13th part 4, Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell, The Thing, Monster Squad, Hellraiser, Spider Baby, The Shining, The Howling, Army of Darkness, Night of the Creeps, A Nightmare On Elm Street III: Dream Warriors, My Bloody Valentine, Lifeforce, The Story of Ricky, Jaws, The Road Warrior, Race with the Devil, Prince of Darkness, Pieces, and Killer Klowns From Outer Space.
To celebrate their twelfth anniversary, the Retro team hosted a double feature of slasher classics from the hey day of the genre. Fans may have plunked down their hard earned $8 for tickets to see Happy Birthday To Me and Alice Sweet Alice but what they were treated to was much more than a simple show – it was a party. Balloons, obscure lobby cards and rare one sheets lined the halls to the theater. The crowd was treated to bits of cake on skewers in honor of the infamous shish kebob kill featured on the one sheet for Happy Birthday To Me. On this night, no one was trying to ram the skewers down the crowd’s collective throat – although they were heavily encouraged to sign up for the door prizes which included DVDs, movie passes to the upcoming B-Movie Weekend Marathon and even a pair of tickets to the all but sold out John Waters Christmas show in December.
Congested traffic delayed a lot of the Retro Regulars from making it to the show on time – so Jim and Co. held the curtain for an extra half hour to give everyone time to make it to the show. That gave the crowd more time to fuel up on beer and cake prior to the start of the Retro Ring. For those that are unfamiliar, the Retro Ring is the video montage that opens every Retro show and is comprised of chase scenes, boo scares, and kill scenes from over one hundred movies. As soon as the Me First and the Gimme Gimme’s start their rendition of “Science Fiction Double Feature”, the fans know that they are in for a night filled with more thrills and chills than you can shake a boomstick at!
This weekend, Retro did not disappoint as they played Melissa Sue Anderson’s horror debut Happy Birthday To Me from the only surviving 35mm print and then closed it out with Brooke Shield’s horror and movie debut from 1976 with Alice Sweet Alice. As if these classic slasher films alone weren’t enough to satisfy the raucous crowd, they were also treated to trailers from the respective time periods and then during intermission a new In Memoriam played featuring clips of the celebrities that have passed away in the previous months.
Most moviegoers would be numb from the excitement of watching two classic horror films back to back but the Retro crowds are always energized at the end of the show. The crowd spills out into the night time plaza with a blissful white noise hum filling their heads from an evening that only Retrofantasma can provide. Most would feel fatigued at the prospect of now having to drive home after midnight – but the Retro crowds always leave with a pep in their step and a smile on their faces. They know that they just witnessed a rare event and look forward in great anticipation to next month’s show – or in even greater anticipation to one of the many fantastic weekend festivals coming soon from Carolina Theatre whether it be the Nevermore Film Fest, the Escapism Film Festival or The Groovy B-Movie Weekend Marathon.
Here's to twelve more great years at Retrofantasma!
For twelve years, Retrofantasma has been bringing North Carolina the best in genre entertainment. Through good economies or bad – Jim and the staff at the Carolina Theatre have worked hard to bring you your money’s worth and then some. You need only ask any of the Retro Regulars that make the show a part of their monthly routine and they’ll tel
l you that if you’re in the Durham area, nay if you’re in the Carolinas period, it is ALWAYS worth the drive to the historic Carolina Theatre in Durham for an evening at Retro! There’s only one way you’ll get to see the famous Retro Ring and that is by laying down $8 for a night at Retro that comes with a ticket for two movies but brings a priceless night to remember.
Posted 1 year, 5 months ago at 10:16 pm. Add a comment
From Fangoria.com: DVD content information as well as cover art for the supersized NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET documentary NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY have been revealed, and you can see them after the jump. The two-disc set will street May 4, just in time to tie in with the NIGHTMARE remake.
CAV Distributing sent along the info on the double-DVD package, which will contain the four-hour NEVER SLEEP AGAIN and another four hours of bonus material. The documentary, directed by Daniel Farrands and Andrew Kasch, written by Thommy Huston and hosted by franchise star Heather Langenkamp (pictured above with Wes Craven), will explore all eight movies from Craven’s original NIGHTMARE through FREDDY VS. JASON, featuring new interviews with cast and filmmakers and never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, FX tests, photos, production and promotional art, publicity material, etc.
via “NEVER SLEEP AGAIN: THE ELM STREET LEGACY” DVD art/details.
Posted 2 years, 1 month ago at 1:58 pm. Add a comment
From FEARNet: WB provides us with a look at a new A Nightmare on Elm Street banner today. The Platinum Dunes reboot of the Wes Craven classic hits theaters April 30th 2010.
via New ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Banner – FEARNet.
Posted 2 years, 2 months ago at 2:02 pm. Add a comment
From Fear.net: Making a horror movie can be a surreal experience. You spend long hours performing terrifying atrocities in front of the camera. Then the director yells “Cut!” and suddenly you’re headed over to the snack table to have a cup of coffee with the person you just disemboweled.
But sometimes, the line between making a realistic horror film and finding yourself knee-deep inside one gets a little too blurry and bloody for comfort. Here are ten of our favorite examples:
PEEPING TOM (1960). Here’s the good news: you get to star in your own movie. Here’s the bad news: the director likes to film his stars as he kills them, so he can capture their true expressions of fear. Talk about method acting. But hey, a gig’s a gig
DEMONS (1985). This Lamberto Bava/Dario Argento production is an example of how even watching a horror movie can get you in trouble. A late night crowd enters a cavernous Berlin movie theater to enjoy a special midnight screening of a new horror film. However, thanks to the presence of a cursed mask from the set of the movie, the monsters of the film come alive inside the theater itself, where they bypass the popcorn and start gnawing their way through the audience.
WES CRAVEN’S NEW NIGHTMARE (1994). ”One, two, Freddy’s really coming for you!” While filming the next installment of the lucrative “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise, the actual actors and crew members (Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, director Wes Craven, etc. all playing themselves) discover they’re being stalked and killed by what appears to be a real life Freddy Krueger in Craven’s mind-bending twist on the creative process.
See the rest at the link below.
via FEARnet’s Top 10 Horror Movies Inside Horror Movies – FEARNet.
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 7:22 am. 6 comments
From ShockTillYouDrop: While just about every major horror franchise has gotten a videogame (NES gave us the legendarily hard Friday the 13th and “4 Player” Nightmare on Elm St. games in the late ‘80s; Atari had Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre… things they called games), Saw is possibly the only one that would contextually make sense in video game form. Half of the genre games released nowadays start off with someone trapped somewhere without knowing why (like most of the Saw films have), and the series’ locales are the same sort of burnt out warehouses, dungeons, and dilapidated houses that most survival games take place in anyway. In short, it’s no surprise Saw: The Video Game exists, only that it took this long to hit consoles.
Taking place between the first and second films, you play as Detective Tapp (Danny Glover in the first film, but looking/sounding like a much younger guy here thanks to Glover’s refusal to lend his likeness), who Jigsaw apparently took the time to save from his seemingly fatal wounds at the end of the first film. You wake up with a trap on your head, and once you get it off (not very hard), you begin a six to eight hour journey through the halls and rooms of an abandoned insane asylum, avoiding as many traps as you can while pursuing Jigsaw (whose identity is still unknown at this point in the Saw narrative) and occasionally rescuing other characters.
Read the rest of their review at the link below.
via Saw (Video Game, XBox)- ShockTillYouDrop.Com.
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 7:53 am. 1 comment
From FEARnet:
Sequels get a bad rap, and rightfully so – most of the time. The horror genre is especially rife with sequels, with many franchises so heavily spun-off that they have stopped being numbered. Not all sequels suck, and to prove it we found ten that are at least as good as the original – if not better.
Dawn of the Dead
The second of George Romero’s original zombie trilogy, Dawn of the Dead is inarguably the best of the three. A group of survivors take refuge in a shopping mall, but eventually decide to make a break for it. While not a sequel in the strictest sense, it is a damn fine movie.
Hostel II
A surprisingly good follow-up to the unimaginative original (which, in turn, was a rip-off of Saw), Hostel II focuses less on the slaughter of nubile coeds, and more on the men who buy the opportunity to do the slaughtering. While no less violent or gruesome, it offers a different perspective than most slasher flix.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
The seventh installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street series is a case study in twisted post-modernism. Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, and Wes Craven play themselves in the real world. Heather gets threats that echo Freddy Krueger’s M.O., and she needs to reprise her role as Nancy to defeat Freddy. Again. One of the most imaginative horror movies, sequel or otherwise.
via FEARnet’s Top 10 Horror Sequels – FEARNet.
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago at 9:22 am. 1 comment
Via Fangoria.com:
In the spirit of Halloween ’09, we’re breaking out reviews (some new, some old) of some Fall Frights you may want to work into your monthly viewing.
GOING TO PIECES – FANGORIA Archives: Originally Published 10/2006
When a documentary tackles a subject as specific, and with such specific appeal, as slasher films, the challenge lies in conveying that attraction to the unconverted while not simply feeding the fans a buffet they’ve already fully sampled. The Starz original GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM is more successful in offering devotees a gorenucopia of clips and talking heads (still attached to bodies) recounting the subgenre’s history than it likely will be in convincing non-fans that this grisly strain of cinema is a worthy one.
The hour-and-a-half show is based on Adam Rockoff’s book of the same title, which stands as the single best study of stalker cinema ever published. Weaving revelatory interviews with both luminaries (John Carpenter, Sean S. Cunningham) and the less celebrated (Joseph Zito, Tom DeSimone) throughout his text, Rockoff combines the enthusiasm of a fan with clear-eyed assessments of the individual films (it’s nice to find someone else who thinks that SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, for all its claims as a feminist satire on the subgenre, is no less formulaic and exploitative than many others of its ilk). The Starz adaptation, directed by Jeff McQueen, is less critical, but gives equal face time to the filmmakers listed above (including Carpenter, pictured) and others as it tracks the progression from HALLOWEEN through the many holiday horrors it spawned, the supernatural variations of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series and the resurgence in SCREAM and its own derivations.
The interviewees, who also include Fango’s own Tony Timpone (and who are frequently, for some reason, taped while walking toward the backward-tracking camera), relate a number of stories that will be familiar to die-hard fans, but a few fresh nuggets are shared; Paul Lynch, for example, reveals that Paramount was outbid for his film PROM NIGHT by Avco Embassy, inspiring the former studio to go after FRIDAY THE 13TH. And for those buffs, there’s an inherent appeal in seeing faces and voices put to names like MY BLOODY VALENTINE and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME producer John Dunning and GRADUATION DAY director “Rabbi Herb Freed.”
Read the rest by clicking the link below.
via Fall Frights: GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM (Film Review).
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago at 10:10 pm. 1 comment
