The Horror Movie Sleepover

Sounds Good!

Well, the Horror Movie Sleepover went well.

You might remember, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about howI felt Friday The 13th Part II was the great horror sequel – and part of the reason I’d recently watched it again is because I’m going through the franchise with my son, Oscar. He’s obsessed with horror films all of a sudden (no idea where he could have got from, he’s an apple and it’s a short fall from our tree). And I’m trying to save some of the all-time freak-outs and frighteners, but comedy-horrors and the good old-fashioned slashers are going down a treat. We’ve started in on Elm Street, we’ve watched loads of silly comedy goof-off horrors and we’ve been doing it in a graduated way: Poltergeist and Beetlejuice first. And now we’re gearing up for some of the bigger-ticket items.

So, Saturday night his mum was away – she’s not a fan of the horrors – and we had planned a horror movie sleepover. We had snacks and we had the lounge all set up to crash out in slumber-party style. We still hire DVDs – because we’re lucky to live down the road from one of the last stores standing. It wasn’t pointed out to us as a feature by the real estate agent when we bought the house, but let’s just say part of the reason we went to the open home in the first place was because I’d done my due diligence.

Of course we had more movies than we’d manage. That’s also part of the plan – but once we took that pack shot, I felt it was pretty easy to narrow it down to some essentials.

We went with Halloween, Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. After a quick chat we watched them in that exact order. There was a method to the madness – we’d recently seen the first Freddy so we had to click on with that series. We’d double-featured two Friday The 13ths the night before in our pre-match curtain-raiser so we didn’t need to include anymore Fridays on Saturday. And because I’d seen every single one of these movies before I felt like Scream was the big one for Oscar – I also knew that Halloween is overtly referenced in Scream. And that he’d enjoy making that connection.

The movie night was a big hit.

The jump scares near the end of Halloween made the slow build up worthwhile. I love that movie. It’s a perfect horror film. A great little indie movie too – and its influence is enormous. If Psycho is the horror film of the 60s and the next really big leap is Texas Chainsaw Massacre then it’s Halloween that becomes the most significant horror flick of the late 70s and its influence dominates the culture until, well…until Scream.

I hadn’t seen Scream for about 20 years. It’s 25 years old and I remember watching it in the cinema. And loving it. I’m a Wes Craven fan. Elm Street was my go-to franchise across the 90s. And I’d loved Craven’s other deviations away from Freddy so I was rooting for his master comeback. It didn’t disappoint. And I must have watched it on VHS at least once – possibly on DVD too but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it.

I reckon it holds up pretty well – it’s funny though, Scream is that weird thing in the culture where it’s had a profound effect and ushered in a whole new wave of copycats but almost everything it influenced was quite shit. It’s basically the Eddie Vedder of movies.

Elm Street 2 is, well, to put it lightly, fucking bonkers. But I love it. Always have. This was my first time seeing it since watching Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street – a documentary that explores the homoerotic overtones of the film. That doco is a great watch by the way.

Elm Street 2 is lesser Freddy – but I still love it. The pool party scene, the bus, the big fight at the end. The weird mood of it. I’m just forever signed up for that movie.

We were almost going to bung Poltergeist on to finish – the scariest PG-rated film of all time? But it was getting super late for little eyes. And Oscar takes his horror very seriously, he is busy writing recaps of every horror film he watches at his website, Fascinating Inspires and with Friday’s viewing of Jason Vorhees in The Final Chapter and the Vorhees-less A New Beginning it was already five films new to him to recap. (He’s already nailed four of those recaps by the way. I’m hanging out to see how he processes Elm Street 2).

Sunday morning was a little groggy – but the bad dream Oscar had hoped for never came. Seriously, that was his aim, his ambition: “Just one bad dream from all this!”

But no. His will is ironclad, and he gets that The Movies are just (and always) The Movies. Fiction. Silliness. Escapism. He’s into being freaked but he’s hard to genuinely scare.

Unless of course you happen to show him a picture of a Shoebill.

What’s the best run of horror films you’ve watched in a double or triple bill? And what’s your dream night of horror-movie watching? What films can you endlessly re-watch? And do you like watching horror alone, in a gang, and does it change it to re-watch with someone somewhat uninitiated?