Jason goes to about half of a 24-hour horror movie marathon

The good folks at Indiefest, just days off the end of Docfest put on a 24 hour horror movie marathon following the formula from Eli Roth. I didn't make it to the whole thing, instead I watched my San Jose Earthquakes play hard but fall 1-0 to the New York Red Bulls in the first round of the MLS Playoffs. It's a home-and-away series so they need to beat New York tomorrow by more than 1 goal to advance. Anyway, I went straight up to the city to Cellspace right after the game. WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? was playing, and I have a thing about jumping into movies halfway through, so I stayed out and chatted with some friends for a while before starting with ERASERHEAD. A quick rundown of the films I saw (and somehow I managed to catch all films I've already seen, and missed the few I hadn't seen before):

ERASERHEAD: Love the look, love the giant-faced woman in the radiator stepping on the giant sperm. Love the joke at the end that his head is actually made out of eraser. And I "get it" in as much as it's a nightmare about the fear of sex/growing up. But goddamn if it doesn't confound me every time.

SUSPIRIA: Dario Argento's classic, and builds on the dream-on-screen feel that went maybe a bit too far in Eraserhead. I've seen it several times, but this is my first time seeing it since actually visiting Freiburg. And...it makes no difference.

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST: This actually brings me full circle. When I first moved to the Bay Area I learned about the Roxie when they played it as part of the 20th anniversary re-release and national tour. After watching it for the first time on the big screen after several times on video (I've now seen it a few more times on the big screen), I swore I had to keep track of what plays at a theater cool enough to play CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. The next February there was something called "Indiefest." I took a chance, figured out it was possible to see everything, and became a film (and film fest) addict. And even after all these years, the turtle-butchering scene is still worse than the penis-severing.

THE EVIL DEAD, THE ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE IN GRUELING HORROR: Damn right I'll use the full fucking title! Maligned for years by people who preferred the more slapstick sequel (and who don't acknowledge that the first one is also intentionally funny). Most of the haters (at least through the 90's) either never saw the original (only heard it sucked) or saw it on a really bad VHS copy. Thankfully years ago it was released on a great DVD print and people are getting to learn that it was great in its own right. And now it has the honor of being the 365th film I saw on the big screen in 2010. Woo hoo! Guaranteed an average of over 1 movie per day. I wonder if that's something to be proud of?

AUDITION: Great movie, but hardly anyone was there at this point. And it'll never be the same as when it was first released, and art-house audiences were drawn in to the drama not knowing that it would seriously fuck you up at the end. Now everyone knows it's horror, but it's still a great movie.

And then, by mutual agreement of the very few people who were left (all but me working for Indiefest) we decided to end without showing TORSO. I'd say that's a shame since it would've been the one movie I hadn't seen before. But I really needed sleep by then anyway.

Total Running Time: 482 minutes

My Total Minutes: 214,028