Saturday, October 15, 2011

ghosts and zombies

as zombie versions of Footloose and John Carpenter's The Thing battle for #1 box office in America this weekend, Los Angeles Times's Patrick Goldstein asks: "Is Hollywood's Mania For Remakes Spinning Out of Control?"

mind you The Thing was itself a sort-of-remake of a Howard Hawkes movie already, right? And Halloween has a pomo streak running through it, references to classic horror movies

just five minutes up the road from us is a ghost cinema--a derelict movie theater, the Rialto, one of those old fashioned picture palaces with the ticket booth as this separate little glass box upfront under the awning -- supposedly it actually is haunted -- and one of the pair of posters from its last week open to the public is Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's Halloween



in its later years the Rialto seems to have played on its old-timey appearance and gone-to-seed shabbiness by showing a lot of midnight movie and grindhouse type fare, Rocky Horror Picture Show, etc



a daytime shot from when it was still open but looking delapidated