Does Saturday night fever have you itching for guts, glory and bad special effects? Well, Freak Flicks has your antidote. For their first event, the horror movie festival will be showing the B-movie films Phantasm and Halloween III: Season of the Witch.
“We’re big on ’80s horror, lots of gore and guts and cheese. But basically we’re gonna screen whatever the hell we want to,” says Melissa Como, a co-founder of Freak Flicks, which will have its opening night this Saturday. Como and co-founder Ryan Hogan intend to make this a monthly event. The idea is to give people the opportunity to see films on a big screen that they wouldn’t ordinarily have the opportunity to.
“We both had this idea before we even knew each other, but we were both too lazy to actually move forward with it. Once we met and it eventually came up, we decided to do it as a team. It’s a lot easier to get stuff done when you’ve got someone behind you,” Como explains.
“There seems to be a lack of repertoire theatres in Montreal, and the ones that do exist, in my opinion, don’t screen the types of movies I’d wanna see,” says Hogan.
Phantasm (1979) is a film about a teenager named Mike who has just lost his parents. At a cemetery, Mike sees a suspicious man known as Tall Man who is doing something sinister with dead bodies.
The second movie which will be featured is Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982). This film is about a psychotic serial killer toymaker who is out to kill on Halloween. His murder weapons of choice are Halloween masks which he has rigged to commit crimes when a certain jingle is played.
“I grew up with movies like this and I think it’s unfortunate that I’ve never had the chance to see any in a theatre when all over North America, stuff like this is screened on a regular basis, in cities even smaller than Montreal,” Hogan says.
Five dollars will grant you access to this scary, fun night.
“We aren’t making money off this or anything; in fact we’ll probably lose some. We’re doing it for fun,” adds Como.
Freak Flicks presents Phantasm and Halloween III: Season of the Witch on March 9 at the Visual Arts cinema – VA-114, 1395 René Lévesque W. from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.. Tickets are $5.
