Weekend Of Terror IX
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The annual Weekend Of Terror is an interesting event at the Mahoning. It's a horror event as the name suggests, but the specific theme changes every year. In 2021, it was psycho killers. In 2022, it was road and vehicle themed horror flicks. Last year, the theme was demonic possession. The theme this year was two of the most iconic trilogies in horror history which have a particular power tool in common.
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The annual Weekend Of Terror is an interesting event at the Mahoning. It's a horror event as the name suggests, but the specific theme changes every year. In 2021, it was psycho killers. In 2022, it was road and vehicle themed horror flicks. Last year, the theme was demonic possession. The theme this year was two of the most iconic trilogies in horror history which have a particular power tool in common.
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| Show banner designed by Andrew Kern |
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| Show poster designed by Jason Cortez |
In the weeks leading up to this event, I didn't hear anyone other than the staff refer to this as Weekend Of Terror IX. We all just used the Dueling Chainsaws subtitle, and it's easy to see why. It a cool name that just begs horror fans to imagine a crossover battle between Ash and Leatherface.
The Exhumed Films table had a lot of merch for sale, including t-shirts, posters, and DVDs, but the thing that caught my eye were these foam chainsaws. They reminded me of the old foam figures that they used to sell at WWF shows for wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, and Jim Duggan when I was a kid. But surely I'm too old to want silly things like this as a middle aged man, right?
If anyone out there is still holding onto hope that I'm going to grow up someday, I have some disappointing news.
Night One - Friday, September 20
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The first movie on Friday night was a horror classic that is the foundation upon which the slasher genre was built, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's turning fifty years old in just a couple of weeks, but it's still as shocking and effective today as it was when it premiered to audiences in 1974. I have never seen it on the big screen before, let alone on 35mm at a drive-in, so this was a true privilege.
The second movie was Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. We got to see this last June at a Tunnel Vision Tuesday screening that coincided with toxic air from Canadian wildfires that made breathing outside about as healthy as chain smoking. If the original film was the foundation of modern horror, the sequel is the very definition of so-bad-it's-good. It really is a hell of a lot of fun. If you like seeing Dennis Hopper going apeshit with a chainsaw, this is the movie for you.
The third movie of the night was the 1990 film Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I dozed off about 30 minutes into the film and didn't wake up again until about five minutes before it was over. The third movie on a Friday night triple feature is always a challenge since I have to wake up for work at 5 am. On the positive side, the unplanned nap did help me to stay awake to see all of the secret feature, which is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. I'm not going to name it here, but I will say that while it is not a part of the Texas Chainsaw or Evil Dead film franchises, it definitely fit the chainsaw theme.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre / The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Part 2 / Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
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The first movie on Friday night was a horror classic that is the foundation upon which the slasher genre was built, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's turning fifty years old in just a couple of weeks, but it's still as shocking and effective today as it was when it premiered to audiences in 1974. I have never seen it on the big screen before, let alone on 35mm at a drive-in, so this was a true privilege.
Exhumed Films has a very impressive collection of movies, but some of their 35mm prints are in rough shape. This one looked pretty good. It wasn't pristine colors or anything, but it wasn't beet red like some of them have been in the past. However, the film must have been in pretty rough shape because it stopped five times during the screening. I don't know enough about projecting films to know what went wrong, but I don't ever remember a film stopping that many times. It really didn't hurt the experience though. Fans in attendance hooted and hollered every time that it stopped, and the screen only went black for a couple of minutes each time. They were able to get through the movie on 35mm without having to resort to going digital, so it all worked out, and it was the only film that had any issues all weekend.
The second movie was Tobe Hooper's 1986 sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. We got to see this last June at a Tunnel Vision Tuesday screening that coincided with toxic air from Canadian wildfires that made breathing outside about as healthy as chain smoking. If the original film was the foundation of modern horror, the sequel is the very definition of so-bad-it's-good. It really is a hell of a lot of fun. If you like seeing Dennis Hopper going apeshit with a chainsaw, this is the movie for you.
The third movie of the night was the 1990 film Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I dozed off about 30 minutes into the film and didn't wake up again until about five minutes before it was over. The third movie on a Friday night triple feature is always a challenge since I have to wake up for work at 5 am. On the positive side, the unplanned nap did help me to stay awake to see all of the secret feature, which is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. I'm not going to name it here, but I will say that while it is not a part of the Texas Chainsaw or Evil Dead film franchises, it definitely fit the chainsaw theme.
Night Two - Saturday, September 21
There were a lot of folks in cosplay on Friday night, but Saturday was on another level. This photo was taken by Johnny Wheats after a call went out for everyone to "get their Ash out to the stage" for a group picture.
Saturday night's first movie was the directorial debut of Sam Raimi, The Evil Dead. It premiered when I was fifteen months old and blew the minds of horror movie fans all over the world. I saw it for the first time when I was 14 years old and I enjoyed it. I don't mean to come across like I'm damning it with faint praise, but my brain wants the Evil Dead trilogy to make sense as a single continuous story, and no matter how you try to twist it around in your head, it just doesn't. I'll explain more when I talk about the sequel, but for now, suffice to say that the original Evil Dead is one of the greatest horror films of all time, and seeing it on 35mm at a drive in, with the sounds of the woods around us in the background, is something I'll never forget.
There were a lot of folks in cosplay on Friday night, but Saturday was on another level. This photo was taken by Johnny Wheats after a call went out for everyone to "get their Ash out to the stage" for a group picture.
Saturday night's first movie was the directorial debut of Sam Raimi, The Evil Dead. It premiered when I was fifteen months old and blew the minds of horror movie fans all over the world. I saw it for the first time when I was 14 years old and I enjoyed it. I don't mean to come across like I'm damning it with faint praise, but my brain wants the Evil Dead trilogy to make sense as a single continuous story, and no matter how you try to twist it around in your head, it just doesn't. I'll explain more when I talk about the sequel, but for now, suffice to say that the original Evil Dead is one of the greatest horror films of all time, and seeing it on 35mm at a drive in, with the sounds of the woods around us in the background, is something I'll never forget.
Next up was one of my favorite horror comedies of all time, the 1987 film Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn. As much as I love this movie today, this thing short circuited my teenage brain when I saw it for the first time.
If you've never watched the first three Evil Dead movies, an explanation is probably needed. The original Evil Dead movie is a straight up horror film about a group of five college students: Ash, his girlfriend Linda, his sister Cheryl, his friend Scott, and Scott's girlfriend Shelly. They drive to a cabin in the Tennessee woods and discover the Necronomicon as well as a recording of a researcher reading from its pages. The recording is played, and all hell breaks loose. Despite it's title, Evil Dead 2 really isn't a sequel. It's a remake of the original film that drops Cheryl, Scott, and Shelly from the story entirely. Ash and his girlfriend Linda go to the cabin by themselves where they discover the Necronomicon and the audio recording left behind by the researcher. It takes a more comedic tone than the original, and I think it's the better of the two films.
Evil Dead 2 ends with a cliffhanger. Ash is shown being hurdled back in time to the middle ages where he dispatches the deadites and is worshiped by the onlooking knights. The next movie picks up the story with this plot device, but it's handled in a slightly different manner.
The last movie of Dueling Chainsaws was the third installment in the Evil Dead trilogy, the 1992 film Army Of Darkness. Like Texas Chainsaw 2, I saw this movie at the Mahoning for the first time last season, but this wasn't on a Tunnel Vision Tuesday; it was screened on the first night of Zombiefest IX.
After a brief recap of the events of Evil Dead 2, Army Of Darkness picks up with Ash in medieval times (not the theme restaurant), but he isn't hailed by the people as the chosen one quite so fast. This is not only my favorite movie of the trilogy, but it's one of my favorite horror comedies of all time, and I'll go to see it whenever it's playing.
There's only five more weekends left in the season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater. It's been an incredible season so far, and there's still some great films left on the calendar, including a season finale that hasn't been announced yet. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm looking forward to finding out.
