When Nature Takes Over

Tonight's marathon is all about nature taking over mankind in greater numbers than anyone could ever imagine. These animals begin by starting small with birds and spiders then evolves into something greater with the end result being dinosaurs and gorillas conquering all thanks to scientific experimentation. The humans in the movies are in a thrilling race for survival as they not only attempt to fend off the species that are taking over but also trying to understand the reasoning behind such a phenomenon. It's a marathon that's purely driven by suspense, imagination, and nostalgia. All of these movies received critical acclaim upon their respective releases with some ranking among the finest summer blockbusters ever made as well as some of the most thrilling animal attack films to ever grace the screen. We have on our thrilling menu for this evening:

The Birds 1963, Arachnophobia 1990, Jurassic Park 1993, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes 2011, and Jurassic World 2015

      This feels like a very strong and fitting marathon based around the theme of survival and nature taking over. Each movie gives the audience human characters that you come to care about and hope for their survival as the animals begin to take charge of the environments surrounding them. The twist with this theme and lineup is although you find yourself rooting for the humans to survive, you can't help but also root for the species to prevail on the inside. That's one of the great unintentional feelings you get from watching films like this. Each one of these films has the same theme told throughout all the films but it's really the filmmakers vision for each film that makes them standout and ultimately become memorable. For The Birds, it's Alfred Hitchcock's masterful touch with taking simple animals such as the birds and making them one of the most terrifying animals to ever grace the screen. For Arachnophobia, it's producer Steven Spielberg teaming up with director Frank Marshall to show a dangerous species of poisonous spiders taking over the human race. For Jurassic Park it's Steven Spielberg himself showing an extinct species such as dinosaurs breaking out of their natural habitat and taking over an unopened themed park, making it's tourists become prey. For Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes, it's Rupert Wyatt showing the rise of an advanced species of apes taking over the world. For Jurassic World, the story of Jurassic Park comes full circle with the original parks creators wishes coming true in which a new park would be built and reopened to the public so they can experience the resurrection of dinosaurs before the same events with the original park begin to unfold again. It's essentially the perfect marathon with science becoming the driving force for the terror as the movies go.

      The first movie of the evening is Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 classic titled The Birds starring Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren. The story centers around a wealthy San Francisco socialite played by Hedren, who ends up pursuing a potential lover to a small North California town. While their relationship begins to warm up, their plans become interrupted when birds from all walks of life begin to multiply in the town and slowly begin to attack people in increasing numbers with each attack becoming more vicious. The Birds was Hitchcock's first movie after the tremendous success of his 1960 thriller Psycho which opened to both universal and box office acclaim. While The Birds didn't reach the same level of success or critical acclaim as Psycho, it still left a huge impact on audiences during it's release and has become one of the definitive monster attack films in movie history. The key to the success of Psycho and The Birds as great horror films, is that they both build up the suspense and anticipation of what's going to inevitably come with both movies ending on a powerful note of loss and reflection.
      The second movie of the marathon is the 1990 box office smash and thrilling horror flick titled Arachnophobia starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman. The film centers around a species of South American killer spiders being brought to the United States while being hidden in a coffin and beginning to breed and kill people in large numbers. Frank Marshall noted at the time of this films release that he crafted the movie based off the built up of suspense seen in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, making Arachnophobia a worthy successor to that film in this lineup. Whereas the first film of the night centered around the rise of birds, this one centers around the rise of spiders. While Arachnophobia didn't achieve the same kind of critical success that The Birds received upon it's release, it still generated praise for paying endless tribute to Hollywood's classic creature films.
      The third movie of the marathon is Steven Spielberg's defining blockbuster film of his career titled Jurassic Park starring Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Samuel Jackson, and Wayne Knight. Nominated for three academy awards, the story centers around a group of dinosaur experts being brought to an unopened amusement park full of extinct dinosaurs brought back to life in the form of a tour in hopes of getting an endorsement to sign off the opening of Jurassic Park. The tour goes well until the power in the theme parks begins to shut down allowing all the cloned dinosaurs to break free from their perimeters and take over the park while hunting for it's human inhabitants. Jurassic Park is a film that doesn't need much explaining in regards to it's plot because it's a universal story that's been witnessed by millions of people since it's release. The film has become one of the defining movies in both box office and pop culture history. It's generally considered one of the most thrilling movies of all time with the suspense and anticipation of the dinosaurs taking over being done in the same style as The Birds and Arachnophobia. The film featured advanced special effects for it's time and brought dinosaurs back into the public eye in a way it was never seen before. The film spawned two more sequels to it's original trilogy titled Lost World Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park lll, both of which made large sums of money but never achieved the same kind of critical acclaim or cultural impact as the first one.
      The fourth movie of the marathon is the surprise summer blockbuster of 2011 titled Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes starring James Franco, John Lithgow, Tom Felton, and Andy Serkis. The story centers around a substance that helps the brain repair itself, giving rise to a super-intelligent chimp that leads an ape uprising against humanity.  Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes was constructed as being a relaunching of the popular Planet Of The Apes series with the end result of it becoming a surprise summer blockbuster. The film's greatest strengths range from the stylish directing of Rupert Wyatt, a strong performance from Andy Serkis as the lead ape named Ceasar, and the high energy that brings a fresh new take into an already long running franchise. It works as a far better successor to Jurassic Park than The Lost World of Jurassic Park or Jurassic Park lll. The success of Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes spawned an bigger successful sequel in summer 2014 titled Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, showing the aftermath of the apes takeover.
      The fifth movie of the marathon is the epic conclusion and finale to the marathon that essentially feels like the perfect sequel to Jurassic Park titled Jurassic World. With Steven Spielberg handing the directing hat over to Colin Trevorrow and taking the role as executive producer this time, Jurassic World brings a fresh new perspective to the Jurassic Park series. The storyline of JW takes place 20 years after the events of the first film and deals with a brand new park built after the events of the first movie on the same island. It carries out the intended dream of the first park with tourists traveling to the island and seeing the animals in all their glory as a working zoo. The park goes well until it's newest attraction, a genetically modified giant stealth dinosaur, escapes from containment and begins a killing spree that leads to the park being overrun by the creatures that overtook the first park. Jurassic World is hands down the one true sequel to the classic original film that actually works. It can be watched back to back with Jurassic Park and there would never be the need for any of the sequels in between ever again. It currently stands as the third most successful film in worldwide box office history behind Avatar and Titanic.

So what are these movies ultimately trying to say when you put them all together in a marathon? The message ultimately says that nature is a powerful force that should never be underestimated nor taken for granted. Sometimes the ability to bring back extinct species should not be granted because they are extinct for a reason. It is better to learn from past mistakes and move on from them instead of repeating the past which is a direct reference to the park being rebuilt and reopened in Jurassic World. Scientific experimentation can lead to the end of the human race if not handled carefully. To gene splice dangerous animals with another at random for economic gain can become very dangerous and life threatening for mankind. It's not a question of whether science can but more of a question of whether it should.

Our characters and their antagonists for this evening:









     





When Universal Monsters Arise

Tonight's marathon is almost like a karaoke session, except it's not music but rather a playback of all the great classic monster films of the early 20th century from the eras of the 1930's to the 1950's. Many of these iconic monsters in the genre of horror have gone on to spawn numerous remakes, adaptations, and have their literature taught in High Schools as a form of required reading like Frankenstein. These faces and the people behind the creation of their respective films have helped mold the monster genre of movies into the powerful form of art and filmmaking that it is today. Many filmmakers continue to draw direct inspirations from these films for future storylines. For tonight's glorious marathon, we have on the following menu:

Dracula 1931, Frankenstein 1931, The Mummy 1932, The Invisible Man 1932, The Wolf Man 1941, and The Creature From The Black Lagoon 1954

      Now this is a fun setup of monsters and faces that once they appeared would forever become engraved in movie history for generations to come. From 1931 to 1954, monster movies came out endlessly that became a stamp on the horror movie and science fiction genres. The trend Universal Horror, was a series of horror, thriller, and science fictions that began in 1923 and lasted until 1960 starting with films like Hunchback Of Notre Dame and The Phantom Of The Opera as being  released as silent films then began with talkie films such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, and Creature From The Black Lagoon. The three main actors who were used throughout these movies were Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney, Jr.

      The first movie of the evening is the 1931 horror movie classic titled Dracula starring Bela Lugosi and Helen Chandler. The story centers around the arrival of an ancient vampire named Count Dracula in England and his attempts to pray upon a beautiful young woman named Mina. Based on both the 1924 stage play and Bram Stokers novel, Dracula became a box office sensation much to the surprise of nervous studio executives, selling 50,000 tickets within it's first 48 hours and helping to place Universal as the pioneer of early horror cinema. The film eventually became the top grossing film of 1931 making $700,000 in profit.

      The second movie of the marathon opened to even greater acclaim with Boris Karloffs 1931 movie Frankenstein centering around an obsessed scientist successfully assembling a living being from body parts of exhumed corpses. Although his attempt to bring the dead back to life and make them walk succeeds, he also creates a monster that has to deal with being alive again and feared by society. When the monster kills a little girl in his innocence, the villagers round up to destroy the creation known as Frankenstein. The film inevitably was a huge success and outdid the performance of Dracula within the same year. It consistently finds its way onto the greatest movies of all time list namely AFI's 100 movies and 100 thrills.

      The third movie of the marathon is Frankenstein's actor Boris Karloffs The Mummy made a year after the success of both Dracula and Frankenstein. The story for Boris The Mummy focuses on a living mummy that stalks a woman who be believes is the reincarnation of his past lover. Much like the previous films, it was a huge success at the box office, particularly in England and spawned numerous remakes and sequels like the 1999 blockbuster directed by Stephen Sommers and starred Brendan Fraser in the title role.

      The fourth movie of the marathon is The Invisible Man starring Claude Rains and Gloria Stuart. The story centers around a scientist finding a way of becoming invisible but as he does so, he also begins to lose his mind and become insane. The film ended up becoming the most popular monster film since Frankenstein upon it's release, and spawned a number of sequels and spinoffs that almost had nothing to do with the H.G Welles novel based film but reused the concept of The Invisible Man.

      The fifth movie of the marathon is The Wolf Man starring The Invisible Man actor Claude Rains and centers around an individuals return to their homeland where they are attracted by a Werewolf creature of forklore. He later finds out that he's been infected with a disease that his mind says doesn't exist but ends up transforming himself into the Wolf Man. A gypsy woman tells him that he will transform into a Werewolf every full moon but will also be hunted by his own father whom he confided in about the Werewolf attack and seeks to hunt for the animal as revenge. The Wolf Man
placed the character on the list of AFI's top 100 villains next to The Invisible Man, and spawned four Wolf Man sequels with Lon Chaney Jr. reprising his role in all four of them including Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man.
      The sixth and final movie of the marathon is The Creature From The Black Lagoon starring Richard Carlson. The story centers around a prehistoric beast that lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle with a group of scientists having the intent of capturing and taking the animal back to civilization for studying. A little fun piece of trivia is the makeup of the creature being modeled after the likeness of the Oscar statue, a piece of figurine given out during the ceremonies hosted by the academy of motion picture arts and sciences. Much like the other films in the marathon, Creature From The Black Lagoon was shot in 3-D, and was a huge success leaving a lasting impact on media and pop culture before and after it's release. The combination of these six monsters have all left a huge impact on movie history and inspired many great filmmakers that came along generations later.

So what are these movies all trying to say when you put them together in a marathon. The message is that monsters and creatures can emerge that can either be misunderstood or do great harm to society. These six monsters have forever changed movie history with the groundbreaking special effects, makeup, music, and cinematography that accommodated them. Imagination can be a powerful tool in filmmaking and if done right can become a game changer. Real monsters will leave an everlasting impact on the people they scare in the films and audiences for generations to come.

Our classic monsters for this evening:



When Freddy Meets Jason

Tonight's marathon is about the pairing up of two great titans in the horror genre for the inevitable showdown in Ronny Yu's 2003 blockbuster Freddy Vs Jason. It is because of this showdown that this marathon was conceived to show both men at their most terrifying and ruthless before their epic meeting that forces the audience to choose a side to root for. The question of which of these two legends had a bigger impact on pop culture is debatable but there's no denying that it was the sheer impact that they left on viewers with their respective series that sent the audience to the theaters in droves to watch them meet for the first time on film. Tonight's marathon is a celebration of that union and to also point out that in this fight, there are no good guys to root for but just pure evil. These two men are named Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. We have on our fun and exciting menu for this evening:

Nightmare On Elm Street 1984, Friday the 13th 1980, Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors 1987 Friday The 13th 2009, Wes Cravens New Nightmare 1994, and Freddy Vs Jason 2003
     

It could be argued that tonight's marathon appears to favor Freddy's side more than Jason's but that's mainly due to the fact that there is a specific story arc going on with the three Nightmare On Elm Street films chosen for this marathon. Behind every great villain is a lead character that you ultimately come to care about during the ordeal. In the case of Freddy Krueger, it's Nancy Thompson from the first Nightmare film who also stars in Dream Warriors and New Nightmare. Her character is strong as a female lead and gives Freddy a worthy opponent, someone who won't fall victim to his murderous tactics so quickly, and ultimately chooses to fight back as Freddy claims her friends.

      The first film of the evening is Wes Craven's horror movie classic titled Nightmare on Elm Street starring Robert Englund as Freddy, Heather Langenkamp as Nancy, John Saxon as Nancy's father Lt. Donald Thompson, and Johnny Depp in his first starring role as Glen Lantz. Taking direct inspiration from a kid who bullied him in school, Wes Craven crafts a terrifying story of a group of teenagers being hunted by the vicious serial killer Freddy in their dreams with the outcome being he kills them while they're asleep. Realizing that they are being picked off one by one, the survivors band together to fight back against Freddy in their dreams and come up with a plan to bring him out of his dream and into reality. Nightmare on Elm Street arrived in an era in the 1980's where horror and slasher films were thriving with the already established franchises such as Halloween and Friday The 13th reigning supreme. Nightmare brought a different kind of concept to the table with a villain who is already dead but can't easily be defeated and haunts people at their most vulnerable state which in this case is their sleep. Freddy can take many shapes and forms with his supernatural power and once you think he's been defeated, he rises again even stronger than before. Audiences fell in love with Freddy because not only was he cruel and vicious in his murders but extremely funny and entertaining with his defiance towards peoples requests to back off. The duo team of Wes Craven and Robert Englund for Nightmare On Elm Street paved way for one of the most powerful collaborations in horror.

      The second movie of the marathon is the 1980 slasher classic titled Friday The 13th. Arriving a total of two years after the success of John Carpenter's Halloween which successfully introduced audiences to the unstoppable Michael Myers, Paramount Pictures introduced audiences to a similar type of villain but one that's more brutal and sinister named Jason Voorhees. The story for Friday The 13th centers around a group of camp counselors slowly being stalked and murdered by a mysterious person on the premises while trying to successfully reopen a summer camp which got closed down years prior due to the tragic event of a child's drowning. That child goes onto become the man behind the hockey mast named Jason. Although the film was critically panned upon it's release in 1980, the film was a certified box office success making 39.7 million on a budget of just $550,000. The film was greenlighted after the immediate success of Halloween  and was the first Horror film of its kind to get official distribution from a major Hollywood studio such as Paramount Pictures. The films reviews improved over time to the status of becoming a cult classic but it never achieved the critical fame of Halloween or Nightmare On Elm Street. What made those two films special is that it gave you a female heroine and a villain that were equal to each other and Jason's series mainly consisted of him committing horrific acts of murder without any real characters to latch onto. There was no Jamie Lee Curtis or Heather Langenkamp to root in the series except the character of Annie in the first movie played by Laurie Bartram who manages to survive the massacre in the first Friday the 13th.

      The third movie of the marathon is Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors with Heather Langenkamp reprising her iconic role from the first Nightmare along with John Saxon as her alcoholic father. Together they join a group of young kids in a sanitarium along with their physician to fight Freddy Krueger once again when it's revealed that the kids all locked up are the last of the elm street children whose parents helped kill Freddy Krueger during his child killing spree. While learning to take control of their own dreams, they find a way to fight Freddy Krueger and defeat him once and for all with the help of Nancy. Generally considered one of the better sequels in the Nightmare On Elm Street series, instead of playing the events of the first movie as fiction in New Nightmare, Dream Warriors continues the story arc of the first movie and shows us where Nancy and Freddy are at after the ending of the first movie.

      The fourth movie of the marathon is the 2009 reboot of Friday The 13th titled Friday the 13th. Whereas the first movie revealed the mother of Jason to be the mastermind behind the camp murders in an act of crazed vengeance, this film shows Jason Voorhees committing his acts of murder from the beginning. Much like the original Friday the 13th, this one uses the same plot with a group of young adults discovering the boarded up Camp Crystal Lake where they come across Jason Voorhees and his intentions to slaughter everyone who comes along. Rather than using the actual sequel to the original Friday The 13th, the original centered around his mothers murderous schemes and this one reintroduces the audience to the same franchise with Jason being the killer from the beginning. The reimagining of the Friday The 13th storyline succeeds as a worthy follow up to it's predecessors by delivering on the heavy amounts of gore, violence, and cheese that ran rampant throughout the series. With Jason and his mothers story arcs covered there's only the inevitable showdown between Freddy and Jason to cover.

      The fifth movie of the evening is the final chapter to the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise titled Wes Craven's New Nightmare. Bringing back Heather Langenkamp as herself/Nancy in the final chapter of the Nightmare series, Wes Craven returns to the directors chair placing the story in reality with the first Nightmare On Elm Street being acknowledged as a work of fiction. Freddy Krueger is chosen by a demonic force to enter the new world through a portal and Heather being faced with the decision of whether she should play the role of Nancy one last time to stop Freddy from entering reality. New Nightmare is the finale that the Nightmare On Elm Street series deserves and the true ending for Nancy and Freddys story arc. The film received critical acclaim from fans and critics upon it's release who declared it the best sequel to the first film out of the whole series and a perfect cap off to the Freddy Krueger story arc...until Freddy Vs Jason.

      The sixth movie of the marathon is the epic finale and the film that audiences waited in anticipation over prior to it's success. This blockbuster crossover film brought these two iconic characters together and showed them not just going after the teenage crowd but themselves as well in the ultimate battle between evil vs evil. With both sides being inherently bad, the audience is left to wonder out of the two who they should root for. Hypothetically one would end up rotting for Jason due to his tragic past but that's about the only thing that can be said about him that warrants empathy. The film is all about putting these two together and having them fight it out in all their glory which at the time was every horror movie fans dream come true.

So what are these movies trying to say when you put them all together as one? The message behind this marathon is that there are forces of evil out there that can't be explained and could very well be hard to stop. When evil combines with evil, the consequences can be devastating and the impact felt for everyone around them. There are no heroic traits in Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees but if the two are to fight each other, should you take a side for survival? Events such as the drowning of a child at Camp Crystal Lake can never go away and will leave a stain on the camp forever. Villains like Freddy Krueger can never be defeated unless people work together as a team. Sometimes it can be better to not know what to be afraid of and popular cinematic villains such as Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers will never die.

For Wes Craven