September 03, 2024
Screenshot/Neon/YouTube
Theaters like the Philadelphia Film Center have sold out showings of summer horror movies like 'Longlegs.'
The line outside the Philadelphia Film Center wrapped around the block, crackling with energy from the excited couples and friends swapping speculation. It was 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, and they weren't queuing for a Marvel movie or another "Dune." They were waiting for a second sold-out advance screening of "Longlegs," a movie made for under $10 million with only one big-name star — who was deliberately hidden from the movie's marketing.
The demand took even the people who planned the screenings by surprise. Trey Shields, the director of programming for the Philadelphia Film Society, remembers his disbelief when they sold 446 tickets a week and a half before the screening — a feat "just unheard of" for their advance showings. They added the 10 p.m. show expecting a runoff of 50 people, but it also sold out before the day was through.
The last time PFS had that big of a sellout was when it screened "I Saw the TV Glow" at its SpringFest. Weeks after the "Longlegs" screenings, it would sell out the theater again with another one-night-only advance showing of "Cuckoo."
What do all three of those movies have in common? They're horror movies, and indie ones at that. But Philadelphia has long catered to a robust horror audience searching for scares outside the month of October.
Though horror films are sometimes dismissed as cheap or tawdry genre flicks, they're hardly a niche interest. Since the summer began, "A Quiet Place: Day One" and "Alien: Romulus" have crossed the $200 million mark worldwide. "Longlegs," which made waves with its buzzy marketing campaign disguising a ghoulish Nicolas Cage, became the highest-grossing indie horror movie in North America in the past decade. Numerous conventions and festivals are devoted to the genre, including Chester County's own Blobfest. And clearly, someone is showing up to watch all 13 parts of "Halloween."
That appetite for thrills and chills is obvious in the wider Philly area. It has long benefited from its proximity to Exhumed Films, the horror exhibitor that pops up at venues across the city. It also programs a 24-hour movie marathon and an exploitation movie festival each year at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, its fifth home base in two decades. (The first theater to host them, Harwan Theatre, is now a Walgreens.) Founded in 1997 by four friends working a South Jersey video store, Exhumed Films prioritizes 35 millimeter film prints of everything from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes." It has also spun off a successful home video shop DiabolikDVD, which boasts six employees and a warehouse.
"While we do get people that travel from all over New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to come to our shows, we do have a real core crowd of people from Philadelphia," said Jesse Nelson, co-founder of Exhumed Films. "There's a lot of familiar faces, people that I've been saying hello to for 20 years that come out to these shows. I know people that have met and married at these shows."
Many of the venues that host Exhumed Films also boast horror programming of their own. PhilaMOCA, for instance, regularly runs low-budget slashers during its twice-monthly Psychotronic Film Society screenings. Eric Bresler, the venue's director of programming, started the in-house film club in 2016 after getting to know some of his regulars. He pitched the idea to them like this: What if we took turns picking cult or exploitation movies to watch together?
The concept caught on and has attracted roughly 300 "full-fledged members," with about 40 lifers who attend every screening. Though the club will show the occasional Lifetime or Christian fundamentalist movie, its selections lean heavily on obscure horror. Its last pick was a Japanese film called "Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead."
"The PhilaMOCA programming brought in people who were looking to see this kind of genre cinema that wasn't really being showcased regularly elsewhere in the city," he said. "There's always been horror screenings. The Exhumed guys have been holding it down since I was in college. But there aren't a lot of like nights where you could just casually go out and see something weird. So PhilaMOCA kind of filled that gap."
PFS has more room to play in the scary movie sandbox, too, after a post-pandemic overhaul. According to Shields, he received "carte blanche" to screen whatever second-run movies he pleased at the Philadelphia Film Center as the group came back online. Though the PFS repertory programming spans all genres, Shields says horror classics like "Poltergeist" do very well and can provide an entry point to lesser-known companion picks. Good relationships with studios like Neon, which released "Longlegs" and "Cuckoo," have also helped PFS land advance horror screenings offered to just a handful of cities.
"I think the audience has certainly expanded," Shields said. "They're open to having that experience with people because if it's a horror film, your senses are already on alert. And it's so much fun to watch a film on alert, aware of people around you experiencing this. It just hits a lot harder."
That urge to scream with strangers shows up in other places around Philly, too. City dwellers with a car can journey to Mahoning Drive-In, the Carbon County theater that welcomed "Dawn of the Dead" back for its 45 anniversary earlier this year. (It also frequently collaborates with Exhumed Films, including on the summer "Camp Blood" series.) The genre even spills into dining, as seen in Monster Vegan, the Center City restaurant that serves a themed, meatless menu and hosts regular movie nights in its private dining room.
Despite their strong numbers, horror fanatics are often called to explain themselves. Why, concerned family members wonder, would you want to watch something bloody, terrifying or just plain nasty? The leaders of the Philly community have a few theories.
"I think the initial seeds are planted when you're young and your parents prevented you from watching certain things, like horror films," Bresler said. "I think that that immediately sparks an interest in your young brain. And then, as you get older and just start to get more glimpses of this, let's say this genre of horror films, I think it becomes more intriguing and more appealing."
Nelson said: "100% a scary movie is best seen with an audience. There's this shared trauma and fright and everyone reacting to each other. And the same goes for, sometimes we'll show an intentionally bad movie, something that's just so goofy and dumb. And watching that with an audience, and even if it's a horror movie that's not supposed to be funny, but people are keying in on how goofy this movie is, it's always so much more fun to watch that with a group."
Shields said: "There's that immediate satisfaction of thrills. I think with being online all the time ... (people) want immediate satisfaction. And the cool thing about horror films are they offer that immediate visceral jump, scare, shock. And it kind of awakens you and makes you feel more alive for that moment, that second, or the entire two-hour runtime."
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