As those of you who followed or attended our 2009 Mill City Mayhem event know, the Lowell Film Collaborative has a soft spot for horror films. This weekend, we are getting the chance to indulge in our guilty pleasure at not one but two unique events easily categorized as “cult horror.”
The ghoulish fun began last night, April 30, when we attended a production of Evil Dead: The Musical at MIT’s Kresge Little Theater. This clever little sing-along horror show was brilliantly conceived by a group of young people in Toronto to pay homage to a trilogy of Sam Raimi horror films (Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn, and Army of Darkness) considered by some to be the best horror series of all time. Debuting in Montreal in 2004 at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival, EDTM eventually made it to Off Broadway in 2006 and later went on to become the longest running Canadian show in Toronto in over two decades.
With hilarious musical numbers like “Do the Necronomicon” and “All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons,” EDTM is simultaneously a tribute to the Evil Dead films and to everyone’s favorite cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It’s also bloody as hell, with chainsaw beheadings, hand-held entrails, and explosions of blood that usually soak the first three rows of the audience, known as the Splatter Zone. Guess who was sitting in the center of the front row! (hey, I said we love horror) As proven by the “blood” stains covering our entire upper bodies following the show, Evil Dead: the Musical was a bloody good time.
And if you think that sounds weird, wait until you see what we’re relishing in at the Brattle Theater tonight. It’s everyone’s favorite cult Japanese uncategorizable psychedelic horror trip, House! Inexplicably conceived by Nobuhiko Obayahshi in 1977, House tells the story of a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home, only to come face to face with evil spirits, bloodthirsty pianos, and a demonic housecat. Never before released in the U.S. and never available on home video, House seems like it was beamed to earth from another planet. Which, of course, means it’s right up our alley! It all makes for a glorious horror-themed weekend!
lowellfilmcollaborativema.org 