Up All Night with Vampires

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As the clock’s hands turned toward midnight at the Coolidge Corner Theater, hordes of horror fans turned out for the 21st Halloween Horror Movie Marathon. This year’s schedule of films took up ‘vampires’ as its unifying theme. Bloodsuckers from every era graced the screen in the gilded main hall of the art deco movie palace from after dusk till well after dawn.

More than a few attendees arrived in special dress to participate in the early morning costume contest. There were icons of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy epics, past and present. The “best costume” winners were determined by the audience through several rounds of applause-based voting. Standouts included a two-person concept costume that paired Freddy Krueger with one of his victims in the notorious “Welcome to prime time, bitch!” scene.

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The leadoff of the night was London After Midnight (1927), a long lost silent film directed by Tod Browning and starring the inimitable imitator Lon Chaney. The lost film remained lost. Instead, the audience watched the 2002 TCM-reconstruction of the film, which used rare stills to piece together a kind of slideshow narrative. The live keyboard accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis helped breathe life into the proceedings.

From Tod Browning classic to Tod Browning classic, Dracula (1931) followed immediately after. The film featured Bela Lugosi as the title character. Many consider the Hungarian-American actor as the greatest contributor in the history of portraying the Count, and no vampire-themed marathon would be complete without him.

Other notable film selections included Hammer classic The Brides of Dracula (1960), post modern spatter fest From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), blaxploitation horror Scream Blacula Scream (1973), and more.

Other choices like The Descent (2005) pushed against the boundaries of our expectations regarding the vampire horror sub-genre. In the story a group of thrill-seeking outdoorswomen get lost spelunking beneath the Appalachian Mountains and encounter a strange, albino, humanoid race of cave-dwelling predators. In other words, no vampires.

The inclusion of the film in the marathon alerted the viewer to different narrative clues about the nature of the caving nightmare that may have been otherwise ignored. The bat swarm that erupts out of the cave’s mouth. The comparison of the humanoid race’s hunting and navigating method with that of bats. The visual fetishization of blood. The latent psycho-erotic/thanatotic drama of a group of attractive women being hunted by monstrous avatars of masculinity. You may not be entirely convinced by the interpretation, but there’s an argument to be made.

Contestants in the costume contest.

Burritos and pizza were available for purchase throughout the night. Coffee and donuts were provided gratis in the morning, if you survived that long. The fans with the most stamina were trained veterans, having arrived with a living room’s worth of accommodations from snack packs, pillows, blankets, No Doz, and more.

When the final credits rolled a good-sized crowd straggled out into the light of day, bleary-eyed, brain-dead, and needful of a nice hot bath. The celluloid vampires, on the other hand, remained; left to find their safety in the coffins and crypts of film canisters until the next crop of blood victims comes calling.

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