Music Box Massacre (October 14-15 2006)

Loud Organs, Old Demons, and Sticky Substances: A Film Series to Make You Go Mad, Mad, Mad …

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Published: October 25th, 2006 | 5:40pm

The cinema is usually the place I go to escape weekend crowds duty-bound on getting drunk after a hard week at work. So imagine my horror when the masses flocked to Chicago’s Music Box Theatre for the cinema’s second annual 24-hour horror movie fest, Music Box Massacre. Before I knew it, the aisles were strewn with empty beer cans and pizza boxes, and my sanctuary had been transformed into a drunken free-for-all. Horror, however, was the currency that the Music Box was dealing in that weekend, so there was nothing left for me to do but join the festivities.

As evidenced by the program curated for the Music Box, the role of the horror genre in cinematic history has often been to provide a form of unique social commentary, rather than to petrify its audience. The central theme of these films usually revolves around humanity’s own propensity for madness and self-destruction, proving, for the most part, that the horrors inherent in humankind are far more terrible than the threat of outside forces.

The Massacre opened at noon with the silent German classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), featuring live organ accompaniment from the Theatre’s in-house organ grinder. Caligari was one of the first films to set the genre conventions for horror. And its chilling questioning of the authorities we trust in was pretty unheard of at the time. Moving through historically, the next item on the program was Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a film by director James Whale, who utilised Mary Shelley’s story and adapted it to comment on being gay in an oppressive society.

As is the case with most genre films, the lines that delineate horror from sci-fi are sometimes rather thin, which meant that 1953 B-movie It Came From Outer Space, made in 3D, was able to sneak in. Like all good 1950s science fiction films, It Came From Outer Space is another slice of Communist Era social commentary, although it seems more intent on challenging American perceptions of communism than falling in line with the view that they posed a real threat, as evinced in the scene where lead character John Putnam (Richard Carlson) remarks to the town Sheriff (Charles Drake) that Americans destroy everything they don’t understand.

By far one of the most entertaining parts of the Massacre was the Joe Dante (Gremlins) double bill featuring his 1978 Jaws-esque horror Piranha, as well as the cinematic debut of Homecoming (2006), his most recent endeavour and a part of the Masters of Horror series. Homecoming is an anti-war zombie film drawing heavily on George Romero’s Dead trilogy and Abel Gance’s J’accuse! (1938) and it’s about American soldiers who fought in the war on Iraq (although it’s never explicitly stated as such by Dante) returning from the dead to get their vengeance on Republicans by voting in the next presidential election. While the acting often verges on television melodrama, Dante’s film and its sledgehammer politics are hilarious and it’s one of the best examples of anti-war cinematic propaganda there’s been in quite a while.

If John Cassavetes were to make a horror film, it might resemble something like John Hancock’s Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971), an underrated work with a cult following which provided most of the real scares at the Massacre. Building a real aura of suspense, and set in a creepy rural location somewhere in New England, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is a surreal film which effaces the distinction between madness and reality.

At midnight, the waning crowds huddled back into the auditorium for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). Following a group of scientists in the Antarctic, The Thing revolves around an unknown alien entity that can take the form of any man it snares, creating a great sense of paranoia among the team, with each man not knowing whom to trust. Kurt Russell delivers a particularly notable performance, and the tension and suspense are incomparable.

As the early hours of the morning rolled in, horror comedy and slasher pics took over from social commentary, with trashy ‘80s teen genre mash-up Night of the Creeps and Italian horror master Lucio Fulci’s Zombi II (1979) followed by my last film of the marathon — Friday the 13th Part II (1981). This sequel to Friday the 13th (1980) sees the return of Jason in another slash and dash fest, where a group of promiscuous teenagers are picked off one by one.

At this juncture, my desire to make it through to the end to see An American Werewolf in London (1981) gave way to my desire for sleep in a comfortable bed, so I stepped outside into the icy Chicago morning, and hailed a taxi.

(Photo's from top: Bride of Frankenstein, Homecoming, Let's Scare Jessica to Death)