Burn Witch-Baby Burn
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The weekend at the drive-in was an absolute banger; six classic spooky films over two nights, with one very cool special guest in attendance.
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The weekend at the drive-in was an absolute banger; six classic spooky films over two nights, with one very cool special guest in attendance.
 |
| Show banner designed by Andrew Kern |
Friday night was a triple feature of classic horror films involving babies, and tonight is a screening of three movies that involve witches. I get what they're going for with the title of this event and I can't really think of anything better, but man... that name really does not roll off the tongue.
Author Grady Hendrix was in attendance for both nights to meet fans, sign autographs, and to introduce each of the triple features with a presentation. I've met Grady twice before on the lot; once before a screening of Enter The Dragon in 2022, and again in 2023 at the Haunted House Party weekend. He's a hell of a nice guy. He joined our book club last June for our discussion on the 1959 Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting Of Hill House, and I was very glad to see that he sat with us again for the book club again this year.
The subject of tonight's book club meeting was Grady's 2021 novel The Final Girl Support Group. I was only able to get through about a third of it before the book club met, but it has an interesting premise and it was a cool experience to talk with the author about it.
I got a copy of The Final Girl Support Group last year, so this time I picked up copies of Paperbacks From Hell and My Best Friend's Exorcism.
 |
| Show poster designed by Tom Bifulco |
 |
| Show t-shirt designed by Andrew Kern |
Grady was also featured on both the show poster and t-shirts that were designed by Tom Bifulco and Andrew Kern respectively. Both designs have taken inspiration from Andrew's banner art which depicts Grady being burned at the stake.
.jpg)
Night One - Friday, September 6
Grady's presentation on Friday night was about demonic babies and their appearance in horror novels over the years. I missed the first couple of minutes, but managed to capture most of it in the video above.
The first movie on Friday night was the only one that I really didn't care for across both nights of the event; the 1981 relationship drama/horror film Possession. I saw parts of this movie last May when it aired on The Last Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs, but I was very tired that night and ended up sleeping though most of it. I meant to re-watch it at some point, but it slipped my mind.
One interesting thing that happened during this movie is that we got to see another Starlink satellite train. It's the faint white diagonal line that's below the star at the top right corner in this photo. It's pretty hard to see here, but it was much brighter in person. We saw a couple of these at the drive-in last year, but this is the first time I noticed one in 2024.
Grady's presentation on Friday night was about demonic babies and their appearance in horror novels over the years. I missed the first couple of minutes, but managed to capture most of it in the video above.
The first movie on Friday night was the only one that I really didn't care for across both nights of the event; the 1981 relationship drama/horror film Possession. I saw parts of this movie last May when it aired on The Last Drive In with Joe Bob Briggs, but I was very tired that night and ended up sleeping though most of it. I meant to re-watch it at some point, but it slipped my mind.
I'm going to preface my next statement by saying that I know absolutely nothing about the personal or professional lives of writer/director Andrzej Żuławski or co-writer Frederic Tuten, so this is not at all a statement about them personally. Having said that, this movie feels like it was created by someone who is playing out a cuckold kink on the big screen. Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani play a married couple who spend nearly every moment of their screen time together screaming at the top of their lungs at one another. The performances themselves are very good, but as a screenplay, this schtick got old really fast. Sam Neill's character is shown to be physically dominated by his wife's lover even after he kills the man, and it is the very definition of cringe. Meanwhile, it is revealed that his wife had a miscarriage in a subway before she becomes controlled by a tentacled creature in an abandoned apartment building which she both kills for and has sex with. The film ends with this tentacle creature morphing into a carbon copy of Sam Neill before the police come in and shoot them both. Oh yeah, I almost forgot... in the final scene, the couple's very young son drowns himself in a bathtub because there's a knock at the door that scares him. The end.
This movie might have worked for some folks, but for me, it just kind of felt like a bad softcore porn that was trying to be artsy fartsy. The annoying screaming matches alone make it a chore to sit through, but there's nothing else going on here that I found worth the time or effort to sit through it a second time.
One interesting thing that happened during this movie is that we got to see another Starlink satellite train. It's the faint white diagonal line that's below the star at the top right corner in this photo. It's pretty hard to see here, but it was much brighter in person. We saw a couple of these at the drive-in last year, but this is the first time I noticed one in 2024.
Friday night's second film was The Brood. This is a 1979 horror film from one of my favorite writer/directors of all time, David Cronenberg. I have never seen it before last night, but it lived up to my expectations for what a Cronenberg film is all about.
The Brood tells the story of a woman named Nola who is under psychiatric care to help her process the abuse from her mother that she suffered when she was a child, which led to her abusing her own daughter. While at the psychiatric hospital, it is discovered that Nola's body is producing skin lesions which grow and develop into violent creatures that appear as children and who attack and kill others.
This is a weird movie to say the least, and it's not one that I'd necessarilly recommend to everyone, but if you're into twisted and bizarre horror films, this is a must-see.
The final movie of Friday night was from another one of my favorite writer/directors, Larry Cohen. It was the 1974 horror film It's Alive, which tells the story of a women giving birth to a monstrous killer baby who was mutated in the womb as a side effect of the contraceptives that his mother was taking in the years prior to his birth.
The first movie on Night Two of Burn Witch Baby Burn was the 1977 giallo classic, Suspiria. I saw this for the first time two years ago on the second night of the Mahoning's Mondo Argento weekend. If I'm being completely honest, it didn't really impress me all that much on my first viewing. I thought it was a good movie, but it been hyped up to me so hard that it fell short of my expectations.
Tonight's second movie was my favorite one of the event. It was advertised by the Mahoning as Burn Witch Burn, which was an alternate title that was used when it was released in the United States. The real title of this film when it was released in the UK in 1962 is Night Of The Eagle, and since we got to see a British 35mm print of its film under its original title, that is how I'll refer to it. It's a much better title anyway. The name "Burn Witch Burn" implies that it's a period piece that has something to do with the witch trials, or that a witch is burned at the stake, or something along those lines, but the plot of this movie has nothing to do with any of these things.
The final movie of Friday night was from another one of my favorite writer/directors, Larry Cohen. It was the 1974 horror film It's Alive, which tells the story of a women giving birth to a monstrous killer baby who was mutated in the womb as a side effect of the contraceptives that his mother was taking in the years prior to his birth.
This is a horror classic that resulted in a mini-franchise with two sequels and a remake. It's a little shady for the way that it presents contraceptive pills as dangerous, particularly since it premiered in 1974 when the availability of birth control pills was still relatively new, but it's scary as hell and worth watching for any fan of horror films.
Night Two - Saturday, September 7
Tonight's presentation from Grady began with him leading the audience in singing happy birthday to Dario Argento. The legendary director turned 84 years old today, and it was a surreal experience to sit at a drive-in theater with my friends participating in a happy birthday singalong to him that was led by a New York Times best-selling author and member of our book club before a 35mm screening of Mr. Argento's 1971 classic, Suspiria.
Tonight's presentation from Grady began with him leading the audience in singing happy birthday to Dario Argento. The legendary director turned 84 years old today, and it was a surreal experience to sit at a drive-in theater with my friends participating in a happy birthday singalong to him that was led by a New York Times best-selling author and member of our book club before a 35mm screening of Mr. Argento's 1971 classic, Suspiria.
The rest of Grady's presentation was about witches and the forms that they take in horror fiction. His slideshows remind me a lot of Joe Bob Briggs and his How Redneck's Saved Hollywood show. Both are very funny and leave you with a list of things that you're going to want to check out.
The first movie on Night Two of Burn Witch Baby Burn was the 1977 giallo classic, Suspiria. I saw this for the first time two years ago on the second night of the Mahoning's Mondo Argento weekend. If I'm being completely honest, it didn't really impress me all that much on my first viewing. I thought it was a good movie, but it been hyped up to me so hard that it fell short of my expectations.
It's been two years since I've last seen it, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it a lot more on this second viewing; particularly its dark atmosphere and incredible cinematography. I'm not sure if I've grown to appreciate these things more over the past two years or if I was more able to relax and appreciate them without getting frustrated at following the plot (that happens to me with some movies the first time I see them), but in retrospect, I think that my first review of this film was more negative than this movie deserves. If you're familiar with giallo, everything I'm saying right now is probably coming off sounding so ridiculous that you're rolling your eyes at my neanderthal film brain. If you're not familiar with giallo, my recommendation to you is to stay as far away from the reviews as possible and go into this film with an open mind. Turn off all the lights, turn off your expectations, and just let yourself get lost in the film.
Tonight's second movie was my favorite one of the event. It was advertised by the Mahoning as Burn Witch Burn, which was an alternate title that was used when it was released in the United States. The real title of this film when it was released in the UK in 1962 is Night Of The Eagle, and since we got to see a British 35mm print of its film under its original title, that is how I'll refer to it. It's a much better title anyway. The name "Burn Witch Burn" implies that it's a period piece that has something to do with the witch trials, or that a witch is burned at the stake, or something along those lines, but the plot of this movie has nothing to do with any of these things.
Night Of The Eagle was based on a psychological horror novel from 1943 called Conjure Wife. I've never read it so I can't say how closely it sticks to the source material, but I will say that this movie reminded me quite a bit of a 1961 Twilight Zone episode called The Jungle. Both stories are about a husband who is aggressively skeptical of superstition, but who are married to women who have magical talismans hidden in their house for their protection. In both stories, the husband discovers and burns these items in front of his wife, only to then learn the hard way that these totems really were protecting them from harm. Night Of The Eagle expands on its story from here in a way that The Jungle does not, but the similarities and the six months between the airing of the American television show and the premier of the British film make me think that this isn't a coincidence.
I'm beginning to wonder how many horror and sci-fi movies from the 1960's were inspired by episodes of The Twilight Zone that aired on television not long before a similar movie found its way to theaters. I first noticed this when we saw Carnival Of Souls at Zombiefest last year, which is a movie that is praised to the moon and back by the horror community, but one that I found to be so similar to the Twilight Zone episode The Hitchhiker (and its 1941 source material) that it borders on plagiarism. I think that Night Of The Eagle is a much better film than Carnival Of Souls in every way, and while I believe it may have been inspired by The Jungle, it does a much better job of re-using a plot device to tell it's own story. If an episode of The Twilight Zone inspires you to make a film, be more like Sidney Hayers and less like Herk Harvey.
The last movie of the night is the 1975 Spanish horror film Demon Witch Child, which just started, so I'll have to circle back and update this post later.
[UPDATE 9/12/2024] So, this was a movie about an old witch who kidnaps a baby so that it can be sacrificed to Satan. When she's arrested and threatened to be injected with sodium pentothal to force her to disclose the whereabouts of said child, she commits suicide by leaping from the window. However soon afterward, her younger coven cohort helps the dead witch to posses the body of the police commissioner's young daughter. I've heard it referred to as a ripoff of The Exorcist, but that's a pretty weak argument. Both involve a young girl being possessed by something, but the similarities end there. It's a creepy horror flick that's definitely worth watching. It's not a part of any streaming subscription that I'm aware of, but you can rent or purchase it on Amazon for just a few bucks.
And that's a wrap on Burn Witch-Baby Burn; two nights of spooky books, demonic children, and various forms of cinematic witchcraft.
