The Setup

Fresh brains roasting on an open fire, zombies chewing off your nose-

It all began when they ate the whole choir; they’re even eating poor old Joe…

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Zombies: A Book of Zombie Christmas Carols

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, and those still yet to be determined, It’s that time of the year once again! The time where we put away ghoulish things, crack open the Eggnog, and look forward to a cheerfully adorned sleigh full of toys, a Dradle, or some other chipper thing that signifies whatever winter holiday you celebrate to close out the year. Us? We get Christmas axes, and evil cookies that will stab you in the eyes. Different strokes for different folks, eh?

Much like the Halloween celebration in October, rather than focusing on a singular sub-genre of schlock cinema, we instead focus on the season. For example, last year saw us feature Nightmare Before Christmas , Jack Frost, and Silent Night, Deadly Night.

While the first is a family film that doesn’t really fit our regular groove, it was still a hit with the audience. The second was the original non-family friendly movie about a homicidal snowman rampaging in a small town, and was a blast. Though we have to unfortunately admit that Silent Night, Deadly Night was so bad (and downright offensive) that we almost set fire to the disc right then and there. It was so hated that it actually led to the creation of our system to “vote a movie off the island” so we would never have to sit through something like it again. Yet somehow they ended up making 5 of ‘em!

Oh well, moving on…

The Menu

At every event, our menu is always supplemented by what the guests bring to share, and we’re going to rock that at the holiday event more than ever. Oh sure, we’ll still have booze and chips, but we want to see what you have to offer! ‘Tis the season for giving, after all!

Drinks: Black Santa

Last year we had spiked eggnog and nobody touched it. So this time we’re going to go in a different direction for the booze. This mixture of peppermint schnapps, vodka, and Kahlua sounds entertainingly festive (and we already have the supplies!)

The Movies

This year we’ve taken our lessons learned from not only that event, but also the dozen or so we’ve had since then and put together a fantastic selection of films.

Long Kiss Goodnight (1996): Geena Davis as an amnesiac schoolteacher/assassin with a penchant for big knives and even bigger guns?  Samuel L. Jackson as her wise-cracking private detective sidekick?  …Ok.  This bridge from Girls With Guns has plenty o’ holiday cheer mixed in with a ludicrous story, action that gets beyond comical, and-oh yeah: EXPLOSIONS.

Gingerbread Man (2005): Gary Busey as a homicidal cookie with a sharp tongue and an even sharper knife? Seriously, you had us at “Busey”.

And our alternate, should either fail to entertain:

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964): Do you really need to ask why we selected this one?

Suggested Alternatives

Santa’s Slay (2005): The killer Santa movie we should have watched last year. Did you know Santa was actually a demon that used to slaughter people until he lost a bet with an Angel? Me either. The terms were such that he had to give up killing and deliver presents for a 1000 years. Well, time’s up, time to die.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (2000) : C’mon, the first one was so much fun, don’t you want to see what happens next?

Ladies and gents, now that we’ve wrapped up our second annual Halloween event, it’s time to start thinking about Event 19! Since November is bracketed by both the October Halloween and December Holiday months, we use this opportunity to show movies that we don’t feel like having to bridge. In other words, tricky little themes. After hearing a large number of suggestions shouted out at the last event, and a few slung in our email box by contributing editors, we’ve compiled the following list for you to choose from. Remember, the films referenced below may not be the final films selected, due to availability:

Action: Girls with Guns

Simple formula that became VERY popular for a while. Take a standard action movie script that nobody wants to film. Change the protagonist’s gender from male to female (and if you can somehow make it work, a prostitute). BAM: Box-Office Gold. Frank Miller would later turn this into a religion in almost all of his creative work.

Yes Madam! (1985): Michelle Yeoh’s 3rd film, and the first that put her on the map. Co-starring Cynthia Rothrock, who would later go on to be a direct-to-video action maven. Plot involves a microfilm, kicking people in the face, oh…and shooting them.

Angel (1984): High school student by day, hooker by night! What’d we tell you? Yeah. They made 3 of these, continuing plotline being she turns out to be a cop or something. Did we mention hookers?

Sci-Fi: Space Western

Yeah that’s right. Space-freakin-cowboys. You love ‘em, we love ‘em, everybody loves ‘em.

Moon Zero Two (1969): Space Salvage. Space Miners. Space Ship Robbers. Space Gun Fights. Space Yee Haw!

Galaxina (1980): Dorothy Stratten is a lifelike, voluptuous android named Galaxina who is assigned to oversee the operations of a deep-space freighter with an incompetent captain. Westernish hi jinks ensue.

Horror: The Blob

The Stuff (1985): Weird yummy goo erupts from the earth and is discovered by a couple of miners. Turned into a profitable foodstuff, it unfortunately turns people into zombies!

The Blob (1988): The original amorphous movie monster in his unoriginal amorphous movie remake! In all honesty, this movie is pretty f***ing awesome, what with people getting dissolved in a giant 50-foot blob.

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Poll Closes October 24th!

To say that we love zombies is akin to saying water is wet or fire is hot. It’s no accident that our very first Cavalcade event was Zombies, or that we’re returning to them again at the upcoming Event 18 happening in just under 2 weeks. Zombies are the extra chunky gore-butter on our fleshy-french toast in the morning.

That said, we’re unbelievably jacked about the 2nd Annual Silver Spring Zombie Walk coming on October 24th. What is a Zombie Walk? Well, it is, quite simply, a bunch of people dressing up like zombies and going a-monstering through a town, in this case downtown Silver Spring. It’s a whirligig-o-wacky-fun, and an altogether fantastic way to spend an evening.

The plan thus far (from their website):

• 7:30-8:00 PM Meet at Quarry House
• 8:01 PM Drink beer, eat tots (and brains)
• 8:12 PM Start playing “Thriller” on the jukebox
• 9:00 PM Rally the undead
• 9:10 PM Leave Quarry House on proposed walk path
• 9:15 PM Begin attacking people on Ellsworth Drive
• 9:30 PM Sneak into McGinty’s for Zombie Shots
• 9:40 PM Arrive at AFI Silver Theatre
• 10:00 PM “Shaun of the Dead” begins at AFI
• 12:00 AM After Party at McGinty’s Public House

We just managed to make last year’s event, and had a blast. Pics from the event below:

We’ll definitely be talking more about this event in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

The Setup

With the Halloween Event clearing the decks, and the Holiday Event right around the corner, we were left with the uniquely free month of November. Being unencumbered by any need to bridge the previous theme or setup the next, we elected to go for the underrepresented subject of Witches. This proved to be both interesting and difficult, as there aren’t a whole mess of movies to choose from. Especially since we ruled out anything with The Blair Witch right at the start. Full Moon has two full “Witch” series, but “Witchboard” doesn’t really involve witches at all, and the “Witchcraft” series has basically become soft-core porn. But let’s get back to the actual subject at hand, shall we?

For the purposes of our event, we’re really only looking at two kinds of Witches:

The Devil’s Concubines

(Suspiria, The Naked Witch, Warlock)

These women (and men) have made some kind of deal, usually through some kind of sex act in the more exploitative pictures, with El Diablo in exchange for powers both great and unnatural. Usually the price for such things involves Beezebubba’s favorite bit o’ the currency: Souls. However, sometimes other deals are struck, like having his baby.

The Wiccans

(Blair Witch [possibly])

Instead of acquiring power through devilish means, these witches commune directly with the spirit of the earth itself. Well, a spirit, at least. Gaia apparently has middle-management just like everybody else. Frequently these women are actually the protagonists of the pictures, unless they get jiggy with the wrong earth spirit and get all corrupted with power. But that only ever happens in every story.

The Formula

Wether the witches in said picture are the heroes or villains of the tale, the stories start off the same: Always in a quaint suburban setting, with a lot of trees and hills. It’s an idyllic town, by which of course I mean that everything is perfect on the surface, but a quagmire just beneath, such as in your average Tim Burton or David Lynch picture.

Teenage witches have to deal with all the high school story tropes: They’re an outsider, picked on and downtrodden by the usual assortment of jocks, popular kids, and bullies. Though frankly, that’s just about *any *movie with teenagers in it. But adult witches also tend to have similar stories. Considered unremarkable until infused with magical sensuality.

Then we have the “superhero” section of the film, where our characters revel in their power, taking advantage of it at every opportunity. This keeps on escalating until “The Turn”, where somebody goes to far-causing pain and liking it. The only difference between the films where the witch is the hero or villain is who takes the turn, in the former case it will be a close friend.

To be fair, lest you think these films are completely formulaic, a large section of devil’s concubine witches did their evil turn before the picture even started, and are thus only after souls or precious bodily fluids.

The Menu

The Booze:Witches Brew, Magic Hat no.9

While there are admittedly more than a few beers in the “witch” theme, we really wanted to have something we could stir up in a cauldron. Because we at the Cavalcade embrace stereotypes rather than flee from them.

The Food: Deviled Eggs, Black Cherries

We were a bit lost on the food, to be honest. However one of our guests had the inspired notion to bring a large bowl of Black Cherries, which was a direct reference to a scene in one of our selections for the night. This of course provides an excellent segue-way for…

The Movies

The Craft (1996): A fairly typical teen horror movie, only this time with witches! Scarily enough, this movie was a primary inspiration for the seven years worth of jiggly-goodness that was Charmed. It falls distinctly in the “wiccan” class of witch movies, and was actually one of the earlier movies to do so. You could call it a trailblazer in that sense, if only it wasn’t such a stupid film.

Witches of Eastwick (1987): Another silly one, but seeing as how it’s a comedy, it’s allowed to be. Featuring Jack Nicholson doing what he does best: Riffing on himself as the devil, the movie also features Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pheiffer, and a before-she-got-scary Cher as the suzy-homemakers who spread their legs for Jackie-boy. An enjoyable romp that put a whole new spin on “Have another cherry.”

Suggested Alternatives

The Witches (1966): After a run-in with some tribal witch-doctors, a school teacher accepts a position with a private school located in the quiet English countryside and run by a brother-sister team who seem nice enough. Of course, they aren’t all that nice after all, and before you know it there’s a dead kid and a voodoo doll.

Warlock (1989): Playing fast and loose with the witch-mythos, this strangely beloved B-movie developed quite the cult following for a while and generated 2 sequels that had pretty much nothing to do with the original. Featuring Julian Sands as the titular Warlock, it’s got time-travel, Satan worship, and tongue-biting. Quite the gore-fest actually.

The Setup

Flying high after the fantastic Giant Monster event and rumbling into the month of October like a great steam engine, we took a look around to see what great thematic choices we hadn’t hit yet. With the horror-themed holiday that October is known for, we decided to do something a bit different than locking onto a particular creature for the month and instead celebrate the glorious day that is Halloween itself.

With origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain-a celebration of the end of the harvest season and a time when the borders between the land of the living and the dead disappeared-Halloween as a holiday has since been turned into a silly night for children to dress up like ghosts and goblins, and blackmail adults into giving sugary “treats”, or else face an egg-based “trick” being set upon your house.

But this is the night when evil walks, and the masks are there for your protection from evil spirits, not games. Unless of course, you’re a certain vampire slayer; then it’s your night off.

Since we’re temporarily abandoning the standard singular theme of the monthly features in favor of a random selection of titles, we are skipping the “two types of movies” section and jumping straight to the Formula.

Formula

The movies for this month have a few things in common. Indeed, all horror movies of this ilk tend to have these very same things in common:

• Teenagers: Every generic slasher/monster movie is going to center around a batch of  Teens. The great thing about Teenagers in movies is that they are an infinitely renewable resource. Additionally, since nobody actually likes teenagers (including other teens), nobody minds if they get stabbed in the face.
• 1 innocent will die, the rest will more or less-”deserve it”: Serial slashers have to establish their street cred by gettin’ stabby with some nun/mother/otherinnocentbystander. Once that’s done, they tend to be fairly puritanical in their choice of victims. Participate in the following, and you’re dead:
  • Pre-marital sex
  • Underrage drinking
  • Mockery of the protagonist
  • High-school sports.
  The same can also be said for generic movie monsters. Either some innocent is killed as a sacrifice to summon the monster, or the person’s death is avenged by the summoning of said monster. Then they tend to follow the afore-mentioned victim selection matrix.
• They’re never dead when you think they are: Seriously people, if a monster/serial killer is after you and you think you’ve killed it: SET THE CORPSE ON FIRE JUST TO BE SURE. Then-use dynamite.

The Menu

Since we’re rocking with the holiday, the food and drinks were fairly easy to come up with.

The Booze: Pumpkin Martini , Harvest Moon

Pumpkin booze is the order of the day!

The Food: Candy Corn, Ghost faced Marshmallows, and assorted Halloween Candy

Told you it was easy!

The Movies

Halloween (1978): The classic slasher film that launched the careers of John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. You’ve got Michael Meyers, a gaggle of teens, and a sharp knife-what more could you ask for? But..is this deliberately paced film a good choice for the Cavalcade? Wait and see!

Pumpkinhead (1988): A dark fairy-tale of loss and revenge starring Lance Henricksen. Directed by the late mechanical effects legend, Stan Winston, the film has gone on to become a cult-classic. But how well does it fare against a drunken mob ready to strike?

Idle Hands (1999): A last minute addition that has a very young Jessica Alba and a more normal-aged Vivica A. Fox and Seth Green (who, as near as we can tell, has been the same age for more than 15 years), this is a romantic tale of a stoner-slacker who’s  so damn lazy his hand gets possessed and starts killing people-eventually causing him to get it on with his neighbor. What? That’s not romantic to you?

Evil Toons (1992): Not on the original docket, but it got added on as fans were eager for more! Fantastic sexploitation flick featuring an animated demon!

Suggested Alternatives

Anything that floats your boat! It’s an open month people, have fun with it!