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Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
There were nine features announced for VHS Fest 8, with a couple of surprises for folks who were able to stay up late.
The first movie on Friday night was the 1988 horror comedy Nightmare Sisters, starring special guest Brinke Stevens alongside Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer. I had never watched this before, but the way that Tom described it to me in the days leading up to VHS Fest had me hyped to see it.
Friday night's second movie ended up being my favorite film of the weekend. It was the 1986 sci-fi/horror/comedy TerrorVision. The VHS box looked so familiar to me that I could have sworn that I saw it before, but I realized just a few minutes in that I had never seen it before. I'm glad that was the case, because there's no better place in the world to experience a movie for the first time than the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.
The final announced movie of the first night of VHS Fest was the 1989 superhero action/horror film Robot Ninja. I met the writer/director J.R. Bookwalter and an actor named James L. Edwards who played a villain named Sculley in the film earlier in the day. They were both very nice and gave me a Robot Ninja comic book for free when I bought a VHS copy of the movie from their table.
Saturday night's first movie was the 1990 Fred Olen Ray movie, Haunting Fear. The weekend's special guest Brinke Stevens stars as a housewife named Victoria Monroe who has frequent nightmares about being buried alive that she cannot shake the memory of throughout her day. She is married to a man who has racked up a massive amount of gambling debts. His secretary, who he is having an affair with, convinces him to kill her so that he can inherit and sell the house to pay off his debts. Naturally, the method that they use ties into her deepest darkest fears, but things do not go according to plan.
While TerrorVision was my favorite movie of the weekend, Conrad Brooks vs Werewolf was by far the most memorable moment, in the same way that the possum in the tree at the end of At Dawn They Sleep was the most memorable moment of last year's VHS Fest.
The third movie of the night was a 1987 horror/slasher called Blood Harvest, and the main thing I will remember from this movie is the utter jackass sitting behind us who spent the entire movie doing an obnoxious impersonation of Tiny Tim every twenty seconds. If you are that person and you happen to find this post, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you. You're not funny. You're not clever. You're a douchebag and nobody likes you.
The final movie of Saturday night was advertised on the poster as Attack Of The Beast Creatures, but the tape that was shown on the big screen referred to it by its alternate title: Hell Island. This is an independent horror movie from 1985 that is set in 1920 and tells the story of nine men and women who survive the sinking of a cruise ship only to wash ashore on a desert island that is populated by tiny monsters who are out to kill them.
Like the first two nights of VHS Fest 8, Sunday kicked off with a horror movie featuring special guest Brinke Stevens. The Slumber Party Massacre is probably the most well-known and loved horror movie in her filmography. It was released in 1982 and introduced the world to the concept of the driller killer that was used in its sequels and many other unrelated horror flicks in the years that followed.
Slumber Party Massacre II was the second movie the final night of VHS Fest 8, and it was the last movie of the announced lineup. Seeing this at the Mahoning was kind of a reverse experience of TerrorVision for me. I was pretty sure that I haven't seen it before, but after a few minutes, I realized that a lot of what I was seeing was very familiar to me.
That's a wrap on what is probably my favorite weekend at the Mahoning of the 2024 season so far, and one of my favorite three day weekends since we first discovered this place. I'm already looking forward to VHS Fest 9 next July.
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
When I started this blog, my intention was to limit each post to a single picture with a short blurb, and to only post more than that on rare occasions. That structure flew out the window after a while, but I still wanted to keep each subject or event self-contained to a single post. VHS Fest 8 is one of the exceptions. I'd probably write about each night as a separate post if I had to start over, but I'm not going to go back and blow it all up now. If you want to read about the vendors and the tapes and other merchandise that was available, check out Part One. For the hours before the sun went down, the special guests, and the event itself, click here for Part Two. This is Part Three, and it's all about the movies that were shown on the big screen during VHS Fest 8.
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There were nine features announced for VHS Fest 8, with a couple of surprises for folks who were able to stay up late.
The first movie on Friday night was the 1988 horror comedy Nightmare Sisters, starring special guest Brinke Stevens alongside Linnea Quigley and Michelle Bauer. I had never watched this before, but the way that Tom described it to me in the days leading up to VHS Fest had me hyped to see it.
This movie came into existence because director David DeCoteau had leftover film after production wrapped on Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and he wanted to put it to good use. Kenneth J. Hall threw together a loose script in about seven days, and the cast and crew from Slimeball got together at DeCoteau's home to use that leftover film and a budget of about $40k to make Nightmare Sisters. The film is only 83 minutes long, and it only reached that length due to an extended bubble bath scene and Linnea Quigley singing Santa Monica Blvd. Boys, which was one of her songs that she recorded with The Skirts.
Nightmare Sisters is the kind of movie that could only have been made in the 80's. It's a movie that doesn't take itself the least bit seriously, and that's what makes it a hell of a fun watch. They filmed this movie with the expectation of putting it on VHS to make a few bucks from video rentals. Unfortunately, the company that distributed the film went out of business when these tapes were still in production. While it didn't stop the movie from hitting the rental market, it did severely limit the number of tapes that made it out to the stores, which made it a rare collectible in the horror community in the years that followed. It has since been given a DVD release and is easier to find, and it has obtained a well deserved status as a cult classic.
Friday night's second movie ended up being my favorite film of the weekend. It was the 1986 sci-fi/horror/comedy TerrorVision. The VHS box looked so familiar to me that I could have sworn that I saw it before, but I realized just a few minutes in that I had never seen it before. I'm glad that was the case, because there's no better place in the world to experience a movie for the first time than the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.
Stanley and Raquel Putterman are married swingers who live with their tween son Sherman, their teenage daughter Suzy, and the children's psychotic ex-military grandfather. The five of them, and the house that they live in, remind me of the late 80's video game Maniac Mansion. It would take a full essay to describe how weird this family is, but I think it can be summed up with the fact that they raise lizards to eat their tails because their tails will regrow and allow them to eat them again and again. The house is also visited by a couple named Spiro and Cherry, who are swinging with Stanley and Raquel in the house's "Pleasure Dome", a local horror host named Medusa, and Suzy's boyfriend, a metalhead named O.D. who is played by the absolutely brilliant Jon Gries (King Vidiot in Joysticks, and Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite).
In addition to snacking on lizard tails, the family has installed a large satellite dish which accidentally pulls in and reassembles a mutant blob who had been turned into energy by an alien garbage disposal on the planet Pluton and beamed into outer space. The movie is all about this mutant blob, and its desire to eat and imitate everyone that it comes into contact with in the house, and it's a wild ride.
The final announced movie of the first night of VHS Fest was the 1989 superhero action/horror film Robot Ninja. I met the writer/director J.R. Bookwalter and an actor named James L. Edwards who played a villain named Sculley in the film earlier in the day. They were both very nice and gave me a Robot Ninja comic book for free when I bought a VHS copy of the movie from their table.
Robot Ninja was filed on 16mm for just $15,000, and it's pretty damn impressive what they were able to produce with such a low budget. It's the story of an artist who goes out on the streets as a vigilante to fight crime in a superhero costume that's based on the main character of his comic book. This movie felt to me like the prototype of the 2010 movie Kick-Ass, and it's definitely worth watching.
There was also a secret feature on Friday night, and I think you can probably guess what it was, but I'll write about that movie some other time.
Saturday night's first movie was the 1990 Fred Olen Ray movie, Haunting Fear. The weekend's special guest Brinke Stevens stars as a housewife named Victoria Monroe who has frequent nightmares about being buried alive that she cannot shake the memory of throughout her day. She is married to a man who has racked up a massive amount of gambling debts. His secretary, who he is having an affair with, convinces him to kill her so that he can inherit and sell the house to pay off his debts. Naturally, the method that they use ties into her deepest darkest fears, but things do not go according to plan.
This is a solid suspense horror flick that reminds me of the kind of thing I used to see on USA Up All Night when I was a teenager, and exactly the kind of fun, low brow horror that made going to the video store back in the day so much fun.
While TerrorVision was my favorite movie of the weekend, Conrad Brooks vs Werewolf was by far the most memorable moment, in the same way that the possum in the tree at the end of At Dawn They Sleep was the most memorable moment of last year's VHS Fest.
First and foremost, anyone who tells you that Conrad Brooks vs Werewolf is a good movie is lying to themselves. It's not a good movie. It's an absolutely terrible movie. In fact, it's charitable to call it a movie at all. However, it is also an extremely fun movie, and the joy that you can get from a film like this is enhanced tenfold when you see it with a group of like-minded weirdos on the big screen at VHS Fest. Incidentally, I've heard it said before that a movie can't possibly be terrible if it's fun, and I call hogwash on that concept and I'll tell you why. You would be hard pressed to find any moviegoer who would disagree that Schindler's List is an incredible movie. It's an absolute masterpiece that everyone should see one in their lives. However, you would have an even harder time finding someone that would describe it as a "fun movie". A movie can be an amazing piece of art without being a fun experience, and the reverse of that is also true. Plan 9 From Outer Space is a terrible movie. The Room is a terrible movie. They're both extremely fun movies to watch, and I strongly recommend them to anyone who has even a shred of a sense of humor, but the amount of fun you have watching them doesn't make the quality of the movie itself any better than the amount of talent that it took to make Schindler's List could make it a fun experience. The quality of the film can affect the amount of fun you have watching it, but they are two very different things.
Having said all of that, Conrad Brooks vs Werewolf is essentially a guy with a home video camera filming actor Conrad Brooks and his two brothers being chased by, and chasing after, a man in a werewolf Halloween mask for 43 minutes. The plot is absurd. The script (assuming there was a script) is at the level of a C- creative writing exercise from an elementary school student, and the acting performances are even worse than that. There is no way to understate it. In comparison, this makes The Room look like a contender for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor.
Despite all of this, it was ridiculously fun to watch. I don't think I've ever heard this much joy and laughter on the lot during any screening in the four years that I've been coming to the Mahoning. At the intermission between the end of this film and the start of Saturday night's third movie, the Found Footage Festival guys mentioned that there were still VHS copies of Conrad Brooks vs Werewolf available at the Saturn's Core merch table. Tom immediately got up and walked over to buy a copy, and he was quickly followed by Mike and I, and the three of us were definitely not the only ones who wanted to bring home our own tape of this beautiful dumpster fire.
I would recommend that you watch the movie and judge for yourself, but it doesn't appear to be available to stream on any platform. The only thing that I was able to find is this trailer from the YouTube channel of its director, David "The Rock" Nelson, but it's more than enough to give you an idea of what this film is about. It's a little cringy to hear the director refer to himself as "the Ed Wood of the 90's", but it's pretty clear that this is the goal that motivated him as a filmmaker. If you do have an opportunity to watch it, I suggest you get together as many friends and as much alcohol as you can, and then as you press play on whatever device you're using, turn to the group and say "this one is for the Marines!".
The third movie of the night was a 1987 horror/slasher called Blood Harvest, and the main thing I will remember from this movie is the utter jackass sitting behind us who spent the entire movie doing an obnoxious impersonation of Tiny Tim every twenty seconds. If you are that person and you happen to find this post, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you. You're not funny. You're not clever. You're a douchebag and nobody likes you.
Now that that's out of the way, Blood Harvest is a pretty damn good slasher flick. It has two claims to fame for which it is remembered today. The first is that it features Tiny Tim, who carries the film playing a mentally disturbed man who copes with the loss of his parents by becoming a clown. The second is that it features Peter Krause (Nate from Six Feet Under and Detective Miller in The Lost Room) in his first role in a feature film. It's definitely low-budget, but if you're having a marathon of obscure slasher flicks from the 80's, this is one that you'll want to include in the lineup.
The final movie of Saturday night was advertised on the poster as Attack Of The Beast Creatures, but the tape that was shown on the big screen referred to it by its alternate title: Hell Island. This is an independent horror movie from 1985 that is set in 1920 and tells the story of nine men and women who survive the sinking of a cruise ship only to wash ashore on a desert island that is populated by tiny monsters who are out to kill them.
It's difficult to give an opinion on this movie other than to say that I enjoyed the parts of it that I remember. It was the fourth movie of a quadruple feature on a night after I spent a good portion of the day wandering from tent to tent in 90+ degree heat. I'm pretty sure I didn't fall asleep at any point, but I was definitely zoning out after about an hour. It's available to stream on YouTube so I'm going to have to give it a second watch sometime this week.
Like the first two nights of VHS Fest 8, Sunday kicked off with a horror movie featuring special guest Brinke Stevens. The Slumber Party Massacre is probably the most well-known and loved horror movie in her filmography. It was released in 1982 and introduced the world to the concept of the driller killer that was used in its sequels and many other unrelated horror flicks in the years that followed.
I can't remember the first time that I saw this movie, but I've seen it several times over the past ten years or so since I really started diving into movies as more than a casual interest, and I've enjoyed it each time.
Slumber Party Massacre II was the second movie the final night of VHS Fest 8, and it was the last movie of the announced lineup. Seeing this at the Mahoning was kind of a reverse experience of TerrorVision for me. I was pretty sure that I haven't seen it before, but after a few minutes, I realized that a lot of what I was seeing was very familiar to me.
As it turns out, I saw it for the first time four years ago when Joe Bob Briggs hosted it on an episode of The Last Drive-In, but I must have either fallen asleep that night or was distracted by something and wasn't fully paying attention. I remembered that the sequel was a continuation of The Slumber Party Massacre that followed Valerie's little sister Courtney years later when she was a teenager. I remember that she was in a rock band in this movie. However, I did not at all remember the rockabilly driller killer or the twist at the end of this film. I'm glad to have had this second chance to see it on the big screen while I was wide awake and able to give it my full attention. I won't go as far as to say that I like it more than the first film in the series, but it's fair to say that I like it just as much. It's definitely a lot more strange, but it all makes sense by the time the credits roll.
There was one more movie that played as a secret feature at the end of Night Three, and while we have been asked not to name it in public, there are ample clues for you to guess what it was. It's pretty obvious, really, and it was the perfect conclusion to VHS Fest 8.
That's a wrap on what is probably my favorite weekend at the Mahoning of the 2024 season so far, and one of my favorite three day weekends since we first discovered this place. I'm already looking forward to VHS Fest 9 next July.
