All October long, we'll be bringing you an awesomely curated selection of horror flicks from the past 50 years! Quinn's, Harry's Hot Sandwiches, More Good, Stock-Up, Dogwood and Ella's Bellas have all donated their spaces for screenings, so whether you want to revisit an old favorite or check out something new, join us for some scary movies!
One year ago, Story Screen moved from showing the occasional awesome flick to something far more desperate, far more careless, far more monstrous, to the point of straight-up-fool-hardy nonsense: we decided to show two horror movies a week, all throughout Beacon, for free. No set screen. No set location. If you love horror movies this month - the way we love them all year round- you’d come.
And it worked, far more than we ever could have “nightmared.”
Because of the success of the Beacon HorrorShow, Story Screen was able to move out of the solitary (yet, still, totally cool) confines of certain settings throughout Beacon and into the larger audience we so desperately wanted to entertain. After a year's worth of awesome programming, genuine crowd appreciation and head-first experimentation, we arrive back at the beginning. Horror movies. We screened 9 timeless scary flicks last year. This year we bring you 13.
Last year we hoped to spread the love of both little known horror films, as well as some classics we all wanted to see on the big screen with a crowd screaming around and with us. This year we curated our schedule around a more specific question: what makes horror movies so damn interesting?
Our answer (at least for this year) is metaphor.
The greatest of the horror flick icons are those immortalized by mask and name: Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Charles (Chucky) Lee Ray, Freddy Krueger, etc.
These movies all share a metaphor for the loss of innocence: doing something you shouldn’t, breaking the rules, in a sense, being an asshole, in one way or another. Drugs. Sex. Alcohol. Whether you’re babysitting or running a camp, for goodness sake, will you just do your job?!! Because if you don’t, a guy shows up and kills you and all of your friends.
A good metaphor lies right in plain sight but is clouded by the story, characters, setting and tone of the film you are watching. When it comes to horror films, any of those attributes can be highlighted or buried to express the intended “lesson” you are meant to learn. Like all ghost stories, even horror films have a lesson. Each and every one. Even those super weird ones on Netflix.
This month we delve into metaphors for grief (THE BABADOOK, PET SEMETARY), obsession (SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE, SLITHER), isolation (THE GUEST, THE CRAFT) and much, much more.
We hope you’ll join us for these screenings of classic and new films from the horror world for our month-long BEACON HORRORSHOW PART II.
Mike Burdge
Founder of and programmer for Story Screen. Lover of stories and pizza in the dark. When he isn't watching movies, you can find him reading things about people watching movies. He lives in Beacon, NY with his cat who is named after Kevin Bacon's character from Friday the 13th.
