Exhumed Films Week: Memories

Exhumed Films week idea "borrowed" by the great people over at Dr. Terror's Blog of Horrors

This week brings us two momentous moments for localized horror: it is Exhumed Films 14th birthday and this coming weekend is their 5th annual 24 hour Horrorthon, the latter being an event that many cannot shut the hell up about. It must really suck for some of non-horror fans(I have one friend in particular who booed me the other day for bringing it up for the umpteenth time).
To celebrate the two grand occasions, I have decided to chronicle a few my own personal highs & lows of my past experiences with the events, and not just the horrorthons, but all the double features I've gone to since 2008.









                    













-Interestingly enough, my first experience with Exhumed FIlms happened on my own birthday, back on March 7th, 2008 with their "DON'T" double feature of Don't Open The Window & Don't Go In The House(http://ihousephilly.org/oldsite/exhumeddontmiss.htm). I remember it was raining really bad that night, and neither myself nor the people I was going there with knew where the International House was located, despite writing down all the important info. Now because of all of this, we had missed most of the first feature(WINDOW). EF's very own Joseph A. Gervasi let me know this info as I bought my ticket. I stated that I was only interested in the 2nd feature, to which he replied by grabbing me by my collar and angerly letting me know that the first feature, in his words, "was a goddamned masterpiece!". Or maybe he just mentioned it was a really good movie and my annoyance about being soaking wet made it seem that harsh? Who the hell can remember.
We sat in the I-House's original famously uncomfortable seats and watched the end of Don't Open the Window. The only thing that stood out from that was my friend Sean saying that one of the zombies looks like Pete Townshend, which had me in hysterics for quite a few minutes.
As for the the follow-up feature, Don't Go in the House, this movie had very few funny moments, if any at all. The slightly out-of-place disco soundtrack was amusing, as was the scene with the main character buying a disco suit. I let out a purposely forced loud as hell laugh when you see the first girl get roasted, which kinda creeped out my friends.
All in all, my first experience with Exhumed Films was a very positive one, but for some reason, I would not be back for another showing until the second Horrorthon on November 1st, 2009.

-This leads into my next favorite EF memory, and that would would be the entirety of the 2nd annual Horrorthon. In my opinion, it's still the best line-up they have yet to put together, from the craziness of Wicked Wicked, to the sleaziness of The Boogie Man, I had fun with every movie.
The opening movie was John Carpenter's The Fog, which I had never seen before. Now, there is a certain level of excitement that comes with the EF Horrorthon, and that is because all the movies are kept secret. So when The Fog started, it has a great three minute "cold open" with John Houseman telling a ghost story to children around a campfire, all before the credits, so I had no idea what movie this was. It was thrilling.
Later on, after midnight, EF showed Island of the Damned, which is a creepily effective "evil children" movie that is about as ballsy as any movie I've ever seen before it. Experiencing such a movie at this event left a lasting impression on me.
Finally ending the Horrorthon with Return of the Living Dead was the perfect "exclamation point" on the end of a really fun ride.
I will say that the event was not entirely perfect, as some nimrod came to the event all "punked out", right down to the ridiculous spiked mohawk. He sat down right in front of me during one of the movies. Thankfully he did not stay long.

-I don't have many regrets in life, but one of them definitely is me waiting so long to start going to these semi-monthly events way back when I first read about them in the local paper. If not for that one show landing on my birthday, I might've never gone. Thank you, gentlemen, for all the great memories I've had and all the great memories I've yet to experience.

Happy 14th birthday, Exhumed Films! Heres to 14 more!