Preview: April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama

Those of you in or around the North Vandergrift area of Pennsylvania are in for a real treat this weekend! The second annual April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is slated for Friday, April 25th and Saturday, April 26th at the Riverside Drive-In.

Located about an hour northeast of Pittsburgh, the Riverside Drive-In will open its gates at 7pm both nights with a quadruple bill of classic horror films scheduled to begin at dusk. The prints are all 35mm and the lineup is as follows:

Friday, April 26th

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)–Loosely based on actual events, the film is set in 1946 Arkansas with a Texas Ranger hunting a hooded serial killer.

Carrie (1976)–Adapted from the novel by Stephen King, Carrie tells the story of a high school girl with telekinetic powers tormented by fellow classmates.

Suspiria (1977)–Dario Argento directed this bloody classic about a young student who attends an acclaimed ballet school only to realize it’s populated by witches.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)–Savages attack a family after they break down in a desolate area. An early Wes Craven gem!

Saturday, April 26th

Halloween (1978)–Michael Myers escapes from a psychiatric hospital and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield to wreak havoc on the residents.

The Beast Within (1982)–A teenage boy that was the product of a rape between a creature and a woman begins to exhibit strange behavior in this film inspired by the horror novel by Edward Levy.

Phantasm (1979)–Don Coscarelli’s classic featuring a boy and his friends who face off against an otherworldly tall man, his killer silver spheres, and an army of tiny creatures. On a personal note, THIS is the one I would really want to see on the big screen, then stay for…

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1973)–An acting company travels to a small island and perform a satanic ritual with a corpse named Orville in an attempt to raise the dead. A campy (and ultimately scary) venture from Bob Clark of Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Porky’s fame.

Ticket information can be found here but please contact them for confirmation on special events. If you have the chance to catch this eclectic group of fantastic horror films, take it! You won’t be disappointed.

Review: My Amityville Horror (2012)

In late 1974, the entire DeFeo family was murdered in their home in Amityville, Long Island, presumably by Ronald DeFeo, Jr., the sole survivor of the massacre and the most likely suspect. A little over a year later, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children moved into the home. Within a month, they fled the house after claiming to be terrorized by supernatural occurrences. Nearly 40 years after the incident, one of the children, Daniel Lutz, gives his account of the paranormal activities in the documentary, My Amityville Horror.

My Amityville Horror is an interesting look at a man deeply affected by both the strained relationship he had with his stepfather as well as the horrific events Lutz claimed to have experienced during the brief time he and his family lived in the house. Lutz still asserts that although skeptics have called many of the events into question, they did indeed occur and have traumatized him over the years.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of My Amityville Horror is the proposal that, at a young age, Lutz was more susceptible to suggestion and, therefore, his vivid imagination compelled him to envision events that never truly happened. Is it possible that his stepfather’s preoccupation with the occult invited something purely evil into the house or did Daniel allow false memories to add vivid episodes to a troubled childhood?

The Amityville Horror is a truly terrifying tale regardless of whether or not there’s any truth to it. However, as a result of what happened back in 1975, Daniel Lutz is a man still plagued by personal demons that he hasn’t been able to shake in nearly four decades.

And that might be the scariest thing of all.

My Amityville Horror grade: B-

[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”B00CERJIZA, B0008191WO”]

 

Review: Eaters by Michelle Depaepe

Eaters is a post apocalyptic tale of the dead returning to life to feast upon the flesh of the living. Of course, that’s the premise for thousands of zombie stories, so what is it about Eaters that differentiates itself from the rest of the pack?

Not a whole lot, really.

When Eaters begins, Cheryl and her fiance, Mark, are returning from a camping trip when the radio offers news of a possible epidemic. Resuming a normal life is short-lived, however, when they witness firsthand the devastation caused by the outbreak. Mark becomes infected and, to save Cheryl, arms her with a gun and sends her out into the world in the hope that she can find a way to survive among the starving undead. Cheryl eventually bonds with Aidan, another survivor, and they strike out together to locate a safe haven far away from the zombie hordes.

Again, that’s pretty standard stuff and what readers can look forward to for a little more than half the novel. Cheryl gets into a jam and escapes with relative ease. Lather, rinse, repeat. Eaters moves from one generic set piece to the other until the final few chapters takes it to another, more interesting, level as Cheryl and Aidan reach their final destination.

Cheryl could have been a more plausible character overall and there’s a glimmer of hope as Eaters progresses, but her development is erratic at best, especially within the novel’s timeline (which is only about a week). It’s difficult to believe that she would adjust that quickly given her lack of skills and abilities and, as a result, her constant methods of escape truly strain the tale’s credibility. In one particular scene, Cheryl and Aidan almost magically escape through a crowd of eaters, largely thanks to Chery’s efforts of using the barrel of a rifle as a makeshift spear:

“During her sophomore year in high school, she’d been on the flag team, where she’d twirled either a flag on a long pole or a fake wooden rifle painted white along with the band’s music at football games. She prayed that her muscle memory, after so many years, would still be there.”

While this is an unusual method of dispatching an eater, the action would have been better served by seeing her twirling a tent pole or something similar at the beginning of the novel to demonstrate she had this particular ability instead of telling us at the time of the incident. It’s a more efficient way to reveal backstory about a character without making it seem forced to the reader and, therefore, out of the blue.

Another off-putting aspect of Cheryl’s character is the “voice” she hears throughout the course of the novel. Granted, the voice is that of Mark, but it’s somewhat of a distraction as the story progresses and makes her more of a passive character than the active one she needs to be.

Apparently, Eaters is the first installment of a trilogy which might explain the extremely slow start to this particular story. There’s a nugget of an interesting idea here which is hinted at near the beginning and revisited at the end. However, the first 3/4 of the novel is little more than filler which ultimately leaves the reader empty. What would have benefited Eaters is to adhere to the old adage about writing, which is “kill your darlings“. By eliminating the unnecessary fat from the book, you’d be able to get to the real meat and, as a result, a more tasty, polished story.

Eaters grade: C-

*this review originally appeared on The Bookie Monster