INT: Horror-Thon!

Last Updated on July 26, 2021

Earlier this month, I sat down with Joseph Gervasi, co-owner of
Diabolik DVD and cofounder of
Exhumed Films, an exhibitor that focuses almost exclusively on horror and cult cinema. Since 1997, Exhumed Films has held over 100 screenings, including two 24-hour Horror-Thons. On Saturday October 24th-25th, the International House in Philadelphia will host the third Horror-Thon, an event I highly recommend you attend. For full details, click

HERE.
To contact Joseph Gervasi directly, you can e-mail him at
[email protected].

JOSEPH GERVASI INTERVIEW

As far as the Horron-Thon,
you’ve sold out tickets with almost three weeks to spare. How does that
compare to last year?

It sold out a lot
quicker, but we offered the tickets later in the previous years. We had to
go through Ticket Tron or Ticketmaster through International House
before…Since we were running it this time with PayPal, we got to open it
sooner. But I think that the word has gotten around now about the [Horron-Thon]
and it’s better to get the tickets in advance.

How many tickets do
you have at the box office [for those that didn‘t purchase in advance]?

We probably have about
50 or 60…Certainly there are going to be a core group of people who are
gonna stay for the full 24 hours. But certain people are gonna come and go
and we’ll find that some seats are open. We try to get everybody in,
especially if someone comes up and says, “Look, I drove up from [Washington]
D.C.,” and you know that they came from hours, you don’t want to turn anyone
away. But the physical fact is, there’s a finite number of seats, so as much
as we want to let everyone in, we don’t want someone who bought tickets
months ago not to find a place to sit…There’s a really good chance that you
should be able to go and get tickets as long as you’re there at least an
hour early.

You mentioned people
coming from D.C. and other areas. What’s the farthest distance anyone’s
traveled that you know of?

One guy came in from
Colorado. He made the movie and he wanted to see it. When we did the
CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST show, there was such an excitement for people to see that
because you could only see it as a bootleg, that I know people were coming
from the Midwest area. We started polling people at random and it turned out
that we found someone who came from like way far out. It was a kid and his
dad…I don’t know what they actually thought they were going to see {laughs}.

HALLOWEEN was your
first film of your first Horror-Thon. THE FOG kicked off the second. Why
John Carpenter? Is that planned?

We try to work some
parallels in with the screenings, so that people can work with the clues
[provided in the free booklet every year] better. I can say that there isn’t
going to be a John Carpenter movie opening this time. But we try to open
with an A-list film that everybody knows, a kind of general interest film
that’s seasonally appropriate and a fan favorite. Usually the second film is
a giant monster movie. It may well be that this year is the same way. The
idea is that it’s not something particularly nasty, so if anybody happened
to bring their kids, it wouldn’t be some total gross-out [movie].

How does this
Horror-Thon differ from the past two?

This year we’ve got the
art show, which I think was a big plus. One of the guys who does a lot of
artwork for us [Justin Miller] came up with this idea–because he’s a
graphic designer, he knew a lot of people who were doing…hip or edgy [art],
who would have an interest in cult films. We thought it would be neat to do
this kind of thing independently from the screenings, so people can come in
and go to the art show, they don’t need tickets and they can buy these
prints.

We wanted to have [the
Horror-Thon] be a bit more obscure this year, because people are trapped
there anyway, they’re not gonna know what we screen. The people who stick
around are probably gonna be hardcore fans, so we don’t want to show the
movies that they’ve watched on DVD a thousand times before. We want to work
in some really weird stuff, because we have a library of literally hundreds
of films between the group or one particular member who’s a collector [Harry
Guerro]. A lot of the titles are so obscure, they haven’t been released on
VHS or DVD. If we did a double feature with those movies, we’d get very few
people coming out because they haven’t heard of them…But they’re worth
seeing.

You only show 35mm
and 16mm. You don’t project DVDs–

In the past, if a reel
of a film is lost, we have to put the DVD on the reel. But generally, no
video.

Is there a reason
behind that? DVD would be much cheaper I’d imagine.

And it would be really
lame, because I could watch a DVD at my house and I’ve got a comfy couch and
I’ve got some cats and a really nice sound setup and a cool TV…what the hell
would I want to see a DVD projected for? It’s easy. Who the hell can’t put a
goddamn DVD in a player and hit the play button? I mean, people are
considered film programmers because they hit a play button. There’s no
element of trying to track [the film print] down. The look, the texture, of
film is really important. What makes it unique is that it’s very fragile.
Every time you’re playing it, it’s getting a little worse. Oftentimes, the
films that we’re showing is different than what’s on video–there’s a little
bit missing here, there’s a little bit added there–so we felt like film
from the beginning and we want to stick with film until the end.

There’s something
about film and horror. A lot of old-school horror movies are being put out
on Blu-ray now: FRIDAY THE 13^TH, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, even
FACES OF DEATH. Is that any way to see a horror movie?

I would say Yes, that’s
fine, because the alternative is either a bootleg or a VHS, where it looks
horrible: the aspect ratio is bad, the number of lines is pathetic. It looks
dupey or washed-out, often the prints weren’t complete. I think it’s great
these movies look better, but the experience of seeing it projected is
certainly lost because something about that grain, which they often remove,
is so much of the beautiful texture of film.

If you watch a Criterion
[Collection] disc, they’ll keep the texture that should be there, so it has
a filmic look on video. Why you want to watch FACES OF DEATH on Blu-ray may
be beyond my personal interest, and I have no comprehension of that, but I
think it’s valid.

You brought up
Criterion. EQUINOX (1970), which you screened at the first Horror-Thon, is
on the label. Just an example of what Criterion is known for: Fellini,
they’ve got an Akira Kurosawa box set coming out in December…Do you think
EQUINOX belongs in the Criterion Collection?

Yeah! Absolutely! I
think it was a really seminal film. A lot of people saw it when they were
young and it inspired them [to make films]. Certainly you can see echoes
through the EVIL DEAD films. As a kid I used to see that on TV all the time
and it was really important to me. So does it have the weight of [Ingmar]
Bergman? Intellectually, no. But creatively, all of the elements are there
and to give it such a lavish treatment is something it deserves. I’m glad to
see when they put these oddball titles in there.

What is the selection
process for picking the films in the Horror-Thon? You usually have 13 or 14
films–

Generally, you want to
start off with a big bang, then go into the obligatory giant monster movie.
From there, you’re just interweaving trailers and short subjects…and then
you want to make sure you end with something big, because if people are
running out of steam and it’s 10 o’clock in the morning, you want something
that’s gonna wake them up…I think that this year, none of the movies are
slow in any way, so they should keep a constant momentum. The idea is to
keep everyone awake and have nothing that’s throwaway, and there’s no reason
we’d have to do that. It’s not like we’re lacking in films and we have to
throw in some dud because we ran out of movies.

How long does making
the list, from start to finish, take? Is it a year-round thing where you’re
always discussing, “What are we gonna show at the Horror-Thon this year?”

We kind of keep it in
the back of our heads when we’re figuring out the individual screenings
through the year. We think, “Is this something we want to use for the
Horror-Thon or do we want an actual screening under its own title?” If we
got a really cool print, we wouldn’t want to bury it in the 24 hours if we
thought that it could stand on its own. It’s usually the beginning of summer
we’ll get together and have a huge list.

You’ve played
HALLOWEEN and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but you’ve also played TEENAGE
MOTHER and EQUINOX. Which gets a bigger rise out of the audience?

It’s kind of a split and
it’s hard to determine exactly how. So many people come and many of them
don’t come to the regular screenings. They’re gonna come [to the
Horror-Thon] because it’s a big event.

How many people know
the list? Is it just the four guys and the projectionist?

He doesn’t see the list
until…he’s in the booth with the prints. But he doesn’t really care…Really
it’s just the core group.

I still have the
booklet from the first year. You don’t tell people the list of films, but
you give hints…{I pull out the folded and mangled booklet}–

You’ll have a much
better book this year, too, by the way. We’re getting a beautifully printed
book, so it won’t be like that piece of crap there.

For example:
“Gruesome favorite that doesn’t easily fall into any particular genre”
(HELLRAISER, 1987)…

Dan [Fraga, cofounder]
writes those things and I don’t know how anyone could ever figure out what
anything is based on those. I think they should be more clue-oriented, so
that [people] could actually try to figure it out.

You mentioned that
some people will bring their kids–

Always a bad idea.

I was going to ask,
what are some films you will never, ever show? You just don’t feel morally
right.

THE SMURFS AND THE
MAGICAL FLUTE (1976)…Uh, morally, I don’t know that there’s anything
necessarily. Certain members of the group have certain sensitivities to
issues…We did a series of benefit shows…The way that it was supposed to work
was that each member of the group was gonna pick a movie that we normally
wouldn’t screen to an audience and that whatever profits the show made would
benefit some particular cause. Mine [at a Larry Fessenden double feature]
was to benefit [the Schuylkill Wildlife Rehabilition Center] because I don’t
like to see animals killed or tortured for real in films, which
unfortunately turns up from time to time, like in CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.

There’s nothing we
really haven’t shown because of content in the past. There’ve been things
that people have reacted to very negatively…We showed HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF
THE PARK (1980), the Ruggero Deodato film and there was a woman that came
out of the screening. The film is known as being a really nasty piece of
work and it has pretty graphic rape scenes. Anyone who’s read even the
shortest synopsis of the film would know that’s what the film deals with. It
kind of works like THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972). This woman was
offended by what she saw and wanted her money back…it became quite a thing.

Are there any major
problems you run into holding these screenings?

There are always issues
involved…[For example] if somebody sends us something from Europe and it was
supposed to cost $200 and it [actually] costs us $900. Then we’re like,
“Well there goes the money from that show because that asshole sent it that
way.” Or if someone agrees to send us a print and they just don’t do it.
We’ve gotten prints before that had missing reels. SLEEPAWAY CAMP (1983) was
missing the last two reels.

What hasn’t Exhumed
Films screened that you’re dying to, but haven’t been able to get a print
of?

Well, the one thing that
everybody always asks for is DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978). The problem is, the
producer Richard [P.] Rubenstein has a stranglehold over the movie and even
if you manage to get a print from somewhere–which is not impossible–he
would sue you. He doesn’t sell the rights to screenings. It’s one of the few
A[-list] films we’ve never screened before.

What’s planned for
after the Horror-Thon?

The next double feature
is SHOGUN ASSASSIN (1980) and a Shaw Brother’s kung fu classic.

Horror has this
built-in audience. It’s critic-proof. Why do you think that is?

People appreciate the
thrills that you’re gonna get with the horror film. There’s a love of the
bad. I think if you really love horror films, you accept that many of them
are artistically deficient in many ways. But it’s that kind of funkiness
that people like sometimes. The thought is that the critic, in theory, is
going to be high-minded and to view these [movies] as trash. But the people
who are lurking at the bottom of the trashcan are going to view it as their
art. So if [the critics] hate it, then we love it.

GET ALL THE HORRORTHON INFO YA NEED HERE!