Hallowe'en 2008
OK, enough politics! I still haven't posted about Halloween. Which was a great one. If we'd been able to get a few more people to go with us, it might be the all-time best, but as it stands, I'll have to give it second place to Evil Dead at the Egyptian in '01.
I posted the pics--I was Crazy Racist Republican and Bobbie was a rollerderby queen. Getting Bobbie across Farifax on the skates was actually the scariest part of the night.
The event, of course, was The Tingler at the Silent Movie Theater. Packed house, lots of people in costume. One guy had a perfect Rorschach outfit (well, the blotches didn't move, but other than that it was perfect). We sat next to a couple dressed as Eraserhead and The Girl in the Radiator, complete with Eraserhead baby. As we were taking our seats, they were showing an old children's halloween safety film from the early 70's. I kinda think I may have seen it when I was a kid. Then they showed this incredible dental hygiene film called The Haunted Mouth, filmed entirely in horror style. It starts with a trip through a spooky mansion, ending in a room where the invisible narrator rocks in a chair and introduces himself as "Plaque. B.Plaque. The B stands for Bacterial." (God, I just had to go to Google to figure out whether plaque has a c in it.) The narrator desvribes all the evil he does to teeth. Then he's like "I'll even give you a sproting chance. I'll tell you everything you need to do to get rid of me...AND YOU STILL WON'T DO IT!" The voice wasn't exactly doing Vincent Price, but that seemed to be the general inspiration. I kept thinking I recognized the voice, but couldn't place it. At the end, the credits revealed that it was Caesar Romero.
Next was the cartoon Skeleton Frolic, and finally The Tingler. Now, I think this is the third time I've seen The Tingler. I saw it a while back on TV, and it completely pissed me off, just because the basic premise (a giant slug that feeds off your fear, but you can kill it by screaming, and it lives in everyone's spine, but nobody's ever seen it) is so fucking stupid. I saw it on TV again last year, with no expectations, and was better able to appreciate the sheer loopiness of it. But The Tingler is not a movie to be watched on TV. It's an experiential work of art, one meant to be seen with a live audience. And boy, does it work. I couldn't even tell you for sure whether they had the Percepto working. Everyone was screaming, so who knows which ones, if any, got buzzed? But the movie is designed so that, during the climax, Vincent Price is directly interracting with the audience, egging them on. The movie was not only filmed (well, exterior shots anyway) at the same theater we were sitting in, but it actually had two characters based on the original owners of the theater. Really a strange experience.
Oh, and they had these huge cupcakes, although I thought they had a little too much icing.
I posted the pics--I was Crazy Racist Republican and Bobbie was a rollerderby queen. Getting Bobbie across Farifax on the skates was actually the scariest part of the night.
The event, of course, was The Tingler at the Silent Movie Theater. Packed house, lots of people in costume. One guy had a perfect Rorschach outfit (well, the blotches didn't move, but other than that it was perfect). We sat next to a couple dressed as Eraserhead and The Girl in the Radiator, complete with Eraserhead baby. As we were taking our seats, they were showing an old children's halloween safety film from the early 70's. I kinda think I may have seen it when I was a kid. Then they showed this incredible dental hygiene film called The Haunted Mouth, filmed entirely in horror style. It starts with a trip through a spooky mansion, ending in a room where the invisible narrator rocks in a chair and introduces himself as "Plaque. B.Plaque. The B stands for Bacterial." (God, I just had to go to Google to figure out whether plaque has a c in it.) The narrator desvribes all the evil he does to teeth. Then he's like "I'll even give you a sproting chance. I'll tell you everything you need to do to get rid of me...AND YOU STILL WON'T DO IT!" The voice wasn't exactly doing Vincent Price, but that seemed to be the general inspiration. I kept thinking I recognized the voice, but couldn't place it. At the end, the credits revealed that it was Caesar Romero.
Next was the cartoon Skeleton Frolic, and finally The Tingler. Now, I think this is the third time I've seen The Tingler. I saw it a while back on TV, and it completely pissed me off, just because the basic premise (a giant slug that feeds off your fear, but you can kill it by screaming, and it lives in everyone's spine, but nobody's ever seen it) is so fucking stupid. I saw it on TV again last year, with no expectations, and was better able to appreciate the sheer loopiness of it. But The Tingler is not a movie to be watched on TV. It's an experiential work of art, one meant to be seen with a live audience. And boy, does it work. I couldn't even tell you for sure whether they had the Percepto working. Everyone was screaming, so who knows which ones, if any, got buzzed? But the movie is designed so that, during the climax, Vincent Price is directly interracting with the audience, egging them on. The movie was not only filmed (well, exterior shots anyway) at the same theater we were sitting in, but it actually had two characters based on the original owners of the theater. Really a strange experience.
Oh, and they had these huge cupcakes, although I thought they had a little too much icing.
posted by Chris Oliver at 6:52 PM
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