In Hollywood, there is a film series called Cinespia, where they show classic movies on the wall of a mausoleum outdoors at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. They were talking about it on NPR Sunday night, and it reminded me of how I’ve always wanted to go, but every time I check on it, there’s nothing going on for a few weeks, and then I forget about it for a while, found I’ve missed it, check the schedule again, find there’s nothing going on for a few week, and the cycle continues. This has actually gone on like this for a couple of years, until finally I forgot about it completely. It seemed like they were actively trying to get me to forget about it anyway until the piece on NPR. So on NPR, they played an audio clip from the great silly classic horror movie The Beast with Five Fingers, and I thought about how much I’d love to see that movie there! I’ve always wanted to go, and I hope I can end up doing it soon, but coincidentally, they are not showing that movie anytime soon.
In any case, when I heard about this film series again on NPR, it reminded me of something else I have heard about this place. A couple of years ago, when I was getting a haircut from a punk rock girl, she happened to mention Cinespia. I told her I had always wanted to go, but that it never seems to be showing anything when I look into it, but that it seems like a great idea for a place to show horror movies. She said it is, especially on Halloween (!), but that they’re not allowed to show zombie movies there. What?! No zombie movies? But, but…
It’s the perfect place to show a zombie movie on Halloween! If you’re going to show a horror movie on Halloween, and show it in a cemetery for added spooky effect, then you should totally show a zombie movie (or at least a vampire movie)! You could have all these coffins sitting out next to freshly-dug grave holes, and lots of shallow graves around the seating area, just for extra-creepy ambiance. But then, just when everyone thinks they’re just props and starts getting into the scary part of the movie, actors in corpse make-up come rising from their tombs and caskets and start chasing people around! Back in 1931, the movie Frankenstein had women in the audience paid to sit there and watch until a certain point in the movie, and then scream and go running up the aisle toward the exit. Well, here at the cemetery on zombie movie night, you could have the people nearest to the caskets set up with previously-applied make-up, and then when the zombies burst forth from their coffins, they could take fake bites out of these people and rip off phony prosthetic appendages and have stage blood come squirting out all over everyone and stuff like at a GWAR concert. Then people might be really freaked out and actually start fighting for their lives! It would be awesome!
Here’s their website, if you’re in the area and interested:
