Films and Events
SPECIAL EVENTS & NOTEWORTHY ATTRACTIONS ALWAYS INCLUDE:
* MOVIE, MOVIES and more MOVIES! We cram in as many classic Drive-In movies, independent films and shorts as we can pack into a weekend. You’ll find movies and shorts on real 16mm film in our 200 seat “Film Room” and all kinds of indy films, shorts, and guest related features in our smaller, 100 seat “Video and DVD projection Room” all weekend long.
* Q&A Sessions, Live Movie Commentaries, Guest Talks and Movie Introductions... Our guests are always willing to interact with attending fans, and we’ve come up with all kinds of fun stuff for them to do over the years. Let’s see what we come up with for the next show shall we?
* Join us for “A GHASTLEE NITE AT THE MOVIES” every Saturday Night beginning at 8:00pm. Hosted by Dayton, Ohio’s very own A. Ghastlee Ghoul and featuring any number of our attending Horror Hosts from the Horror Host Underground, “A Ghastlee Nite at the Movies” isn’t really a film screening at all. It’s more a night of “live entertainment” and laughs. Join us for an evening of silly skits, bad music, interactive games and contests, surprise guests or anything else Ghastlee and the attending Horror Hosts come up with.
* SURPRISES and MORE SURPRISES! With most of the shows we run, things fall together at the last minute and we are able to cram in even more than the posted schedule will let you know about. It may be a surprise guest addition, extra film screening, a special event, movie introduction from a guest... You just never know until you arrive at the show and see if something extra fit into the schedule, but everyone likes surprises, right? Fortunately for you, we like springing a few on you every chance we get!
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AND WHAT ABOUT THE MOVIES YOU ASK?...
You can't have a "Movie Convention" without them, can you? ABSOLUTELY NOT! And we plan on showing plenty of films on both 16mm Film and Video at Cinema Wasteland - Many of which may be hosted by the Stars and Directors appearing as Guests at the show. Our evening film show is Free to all attendees and hotel guests.
Here are the movies we are showing on 16mm film:
ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER THEATER - What is ADD Theater? It’s exactly what it sounds like! If you don’t have the patience to sit and watch an entire movie or get distracted because there is simply too much other stuff to do during any given Wasteland Weekend, you can always drop in on ADD THEATER: A collection of weird short films, classic stooges, cartoons, trailers and odd bits that Eric Ott, resident “Lord of the Film Room”, splices together for your enjoyment. We’ll have him splice together a few reels of short stuff and screen them throughout the weekend in the film room. ADD THEATER is just an extension of our popular Friday Night Short Film Block and is perfect for today’s sugar-fueled youth as well as us slug-like old timers who just enjoy short stuff or getting off our feet for a few minutes every once in a while. Check the program for the times we slip in a reel or two and plan accordingly.
THE DEMONS OF LUDLOW (1983) The town of Ludlow, Maine is celebrating its bicentennial when an old piano is mysteriously returned to the town. The piano was once owned - and is possessed by - Ludlow’s founding father; a man believed to be a warlock that had his hands chopped off by the town’s people. Now, whenever the piano is played, demons are released that seek bloody revenge on the people of Ludlow for their crimes against their ancestors. Limb hacking, blood and guts, scantly clad women, possessed dolls, and freaky flashbacks from the 1700’s highlight the on screen happenings. Rare, low budget Wisconsin lensed horror from cult director Bill “Giant Spider Invasion” Rebaine is must see stuff!
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS (1977) A group of people are suckered by Joan Collins into a phony housing development sales pitch on an island that has been overrun by radiation spawned giant ants. Survivors bicker, argue, and run from the tacky creatures until the cast is whittled down one by one. Silly and even laughable at times, this well worth heckling Drive-In gem from director Bert I. Gordon may not be his best film, but it sure is worth a viewing.
PIRANHA 2: THE SPAWNING (1981) James Cameron dishes up a gory and fun sequel to Joe Dante’s mutant man-eating fish movie that is way more enjoyable than any “killer fish” movies made in Hollywood since. When a group of research scientists cross a piranha with a flying fish, the tourists at a nearby Caribbean resort need to run for cover - fast! Lance Hendriksen has his hands full as the local police chief. And watch for the cool Alien-like scene where a tiny, flying, mini-monster pops out from a victim’s stomach!
Check back for a complete list....
Here are the movies we are showing on DVD or Video Projection:
DEADLANDS 2: TRAPPED (2008) A couple of years back, we ran director Gary Ugarek’s zombie flick, DEADLANDS, to an enthusiastic crowd. It took him a couple years to get the sequel just to his liking, but Ugarek has come back with another tale of the living vs the undead that’s guaranteed to please even the most jaded zombie fans out there. Your typical Government douchebag, Dr. Robert Mitchell, (played by CW guest Jim Krut), cuts off all communication to and from Hagerstown, Maryland to test a highly secret nerve gas on the residents. The gas turns out to be a contagion that turns people into highly energetic flesh-hungry zombies and six uninfected townspeople wind up taking shelter inside the local movie theater trying to figure out exactly what’s going on around them. Well acted with good effects and ample gore, DEADLANDS 2: TRAPPED, is guaranteed to please. And talk about filling your movie with zombies. Looks like half of Hagerstown turned out to get slopped down with blood and makeup to appear as a zombie.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: REANIMATED (2009) What happens when you take the audio tracks from a cult classic horror film like George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and let a team of international artists re-envision it from beginning to end using everything from puppet theater to hand drawn animation, CGI, flash animation and oil paintings? You wind up NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: REANIMATED, a truly avant-garde approach to animating a horror classic if ever there was one.
WELCOME TO DEER CREEK (2009) One year after the womanizing mayor of Deer Creek gets away with the hit and run death of a small boy, the woman who was with him in the car when the accident happened, goes missing just before the town’s 75th Annual Corn Festival begins. Then, to further add insult to injury, people attending the Corn Festival begin to get sick and slowly begin to turn into blood-spewing flesh-hungry monsters. It seems the father of the kid the mayor killed a year earlier wanted his revenge and dumped contaminated waste on the corn they served up at the Festival. Things just got a little out of hand is all...
ZOMBI 2 (1979) aka ZOMBIE. After a derelict boat drifts into New York harbor and a walking corpse attacks the Coast Guard while investigating the apparently empty yacht, reporter Peter West (Ian McCulloch) teams up with the daughter of a missing scientist to investigate the Caribbean island her father may be located on. The same island the mysterious boat came from. They team up with another couple (including Al Cliver) and wind up on an island teaming with not only zombies, but a slightly frazzled doctor (Richard Johnson) trying to make sense of, and stay away from, the hoards of flesh-hungry living dead populating the island. It’s one of director Lucio Fulci’s best horror flicks if you ask this fan, and not to be missed if you’ve never seen it before.
ZOMBI 3 (1988) Lucio Fulci began directing this sorta-sequel to his classic ZOMBI 2 when he became sick and had to bow out. The show must go on as they say, so Claudio Fragasso (AFTER DEATH) and Bruno Mattei (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) co-directed the remainder of the film, creating a manic zombie outing all its own. When a scientific experiment to raise the dead goes wrong thanks to terrorist meddling, a cloud of toxic gas is released into the air and, you guessed it, causes the dead to rise hungry for human flesh. A group of young people led by Kenny, Patricia (Beatrice Ring) and Kenny’s buddy Roger (Ottaviano Dell’Acqua) hold up in an old hotel before trying to find refuge at an abandoned military base. Heavy on the gore and hard to pass up even if for the bizarre, flying, flesh-eating head scene alone. ZOMBI 3 is a perfect example of Italian zombie cinema gone amuck.
Check back for a complete list....
AND DON’T FORGET ABOUT ALL THE OTHER “WASTELAND” VIDEO AND FILM BITS WE SCREEN ALL WEEKEND LONG. PLENTY OF HORROR MOVIE TRAILERS, ASSORTED SHORT FILMS, AND EVEN SOME CLASSIC THREE STOOGES ARE GENERALLY ALWAYS RUN SOMEWHERE DURING WEEKEND!
Please consult the Cinema Wasteland Program Guide upon checking in for a complete film show listing and their approximate starting times. The film line-up is subject to last minute changes.