by MATTHEW HAYS

Who said Easter weekend had to be entirely holy?

The fine people behind the inaugural Week-end of 1000 Thrills have decided to take this holiday-event opportunity to let the blood flow freely. Here, in a finely balanced menu of both new horror films and old favourites, organizers have assembled a slate chock-full of thrills, chills and nasty spills. And the fun part is, horror fans will be able to deprive themselves of sleep while taking it all in. The Week-end of 1000 Thrills is literally that: the mini film fest will unreel at the Imperial for 48 hours solid, beginning at 10 p.m. on Friday. (Thank Lucifer for those ultra comfy chairs.) Here are a few of the highlights.

The premiere of Dave Payne’s Reeker kicks off the event. On their way to a rave in the desert, some sex-struck students pop into an eerie hotel after losing their way. Funnily enough, the place they stay at turns out to be a meeting point between the living and the dead. When will students learn about nasty rural settings?

There are premieres here that could prove controversial: Hard Candy is the taut David Slade entry in which a 32-year-old man lures a 14-year-old girl into his home after they meet on the Internet. Aussie Brett Leonard’s Feed has another cyber stalker who manages to commit a series of dastardly crimes—force feeding women to death!

Week-end of 1000 Thrills will also screen a selection of locally spawned horror material, an anthology brought together by the most excellent Spasm Festival. These truly inspired, low-budget wonders include Patrick Boivin’s Néolibéralisme, François Gauthier’s gruesome Head, and the over-the-top Le Bagman profession: meurtrier, among others. If you missed these at previous Spasm events, here’s a great opportunity to catch up.

Classics and Canadians

This weekend also offers a chance to revisit old favourites—and these are films worth losing sleep over. John Carpenter’s pivotal slasher, Halloween (1978), a feature that ignited 1,000 rip-offs, will screen. I caught this film again recently and was reminded of how superb it is, from Jamie Lee Curtis’s performance to the Hitchcock references to the director’s hypnotic musical score. The ultimate high school/teen-pride movie, Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976), will also play, with a stellar cast that includes Sissy Spacek, John Travolta and P.J. Soles (who also appears in Halloween). And the entry that many dismissed as a Halloween knock-off, Friday the 13th (1980), has earned its apologists over the years. Many suggest it’s actually a serious and unique ode to fright in its own right. There’s also a Hitchcock favourite thrown in for good measure: The Birds (1963) is famous for its strange politics (the film has a subtext about societal and familial changes and the threat they pose to old-world values) and the complaints of cast members after production. Rod Taylor suggested that, “Some of those birds really had it in for me,” while Tippi Hedren has always maintained that Hitch himself had bad intentions, especially when he had live birds thrown at the blonde starlet for two days straight. Other entries by noteworthy auteurs include Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (1992) and Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932).

And there is vintage home-grown fodder too. David Cronenberg’s Rabid (1977), shot and set in Montreal, features porn star Marilyn Chambers as a libidinous zombie, eager to suck dry unwitting victims to sate her need for fresh blood. There are many moments of hilarity in this film, and Montrealers will rejoice at the sight of zombies running rampant in the city. This is one of those horror movies that gets better with time. And My Bloody Valentine (1981) will screen as part of its 25th anniversary celebration, directed by Montreal-based filmmaker George Mihalka. While the organizers of The Week-end of 1000 Thrills deserve a standing ovation for putting all of this together, in the Can-con dept there is one glaring omission: where is Bob Clark’s ultra-scary 1974 Canadian classic (and Halloween precursor) Black Christmas? Next time.

The Week-end of 1000 Thrills screens from this Friday, April 14–April 16, non-stop, at the Cinéma Imperial. Info: www.weekend1000thrills.com

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