The All-Nite Scream-o-Rama at Tucson’s the Loft Cinema was so awesome and horrifying I had to wait a full week (and some change) to write about it.

In past years, I have been kind of a wuss and left after about three movies. The first year had to do with some not so friendly texting from my now ex-wife as well as the general level of line shouting drunken belligerence from the crowd and the second year was mostly just because I was very sleepy. This year I decided that I would leave all that nonsense behind me and stay all the way through until the end. This was much more difficult than I thought.

I thought, you know, I work overnights and am used to being up all night long. I go in to work at 9:00 pm, the same time the festival started, and it ended just a couple of hours after I usually get out of work. And I love watching movie marathons. I thought 12 hours worth of horror movies would be no big deal. What I didn’t count on was the diminishing quality of some of the movies severely challenging my attention span nor did I really think about the effects that popcorn, nachos, candy and a variety of beverages would effect my overall sense of physical well being over such a protracted length of time. I think I would have been better served had I kept up with slices of pizza instead of whole boxes of candy. During the last two films my stomach felt like I had swallowed a box of razors.

Still, even with my gastrointestinal hardships, I managed to make it to the very end where I was rewarded with a goody cauldron and got to take part in a group picture of survivors. I was impressed by how many people made it to the end. I had been certain that there would only be a handful but there were many of us amongst the ranks of the dedicated. Leaving was a trip. I have always thought it was disorienting going to a movie when it was light out and leaving when it was dark. Going in when it is dark and leaving when it is light is about 70% more disorienting.

So to commemorate the Herculean task of staying awake through the entire 7 movie and one improve scream pageant I thought I would give a run down of my impressions of the films since this was the fist time I had seen most of them. There is usually a loose theme for the movies and this year it was cannibalism.

The Howling (1981)

I talked about this one a bit already in my 10 Best Werewolf Movie article but for a recap the Howling is special for its cool werewolf costumes and its awesome hydraulic based transformations. It is also special for preposterous half man half wolf sex scenes and enormously corny acting. When I saw this as a kid I thought it was one of the coolest things ever. Seeing it again I enjoyed it for how silly it was. It is also pretty cool to see Robert Picardo, the hologram doctor from Star Trek Voyager or the smarmy second in command in Gremlins 2 depending on your level of geerkery, be a crazy werewolf serial killer. Fun movie all around.

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