The Candy Snatchers!

One of the reasons that I had for creating a blog was to document the cool shiza that I do.  One of the problems is that as a married man with a youngin, I don't really do all that much cool shiza these days that doesn't involve the youngin.  (I'm not complaining, mind you.  Just saying that while I find it *adorable* that Sam demands to "push the button" to pop the "Aunt Amy toast" from the toaster, I'm not sure that all of the readership would...)  So, this week when I went out to the movies, I hit gold.

Now, I know what you are saying.  "What's the big deal about going to movies?  I mean this summer it's especially painful, but as long as you're a little masochistic, you're good to go."  Well, dear readers, lemme tell you a little story about a grindhouse movie that I watched this week.

My good friend Bobby is pretty connected with a bunch of cool happenings in Raleigh.  He and I were chatting on Wednesday and he told me he was heading out to see a movie.  (I know!  A school night!)  I said - what movie are you watching?  He told me "The Candy Snatchers".  So, he pointed me here.  (Warning:  It's a grind house style trailer and so pretty NSFW.)  Though the movie didn't really appeal to me (they showed this just a few months ago and that's more my style), I figured, what the heck?  I hadn't seen Bobby for a few months, so this would be a good excuse.

Lemme say this...  the experience of this movie was very much unlike anything that I had done in quite some time.  First off, tickets were only $5.  For a cheap bastard like me, that was totally worth it.  Secondly, and this one is a little harder to describe, unless you were there, but the atmosphere was really appropriate.  There was this neat vibe in the air.  Remember that this movie is a 70s exploitation movie.  The theater that we were watching it was definitely of that era.  It wasn't symmetrical since there were support columns holding the ceiling up.  O, and how about shag carpeting on the walls?  Awesome! 

Another groovy thing was the people there.  It was definitely a younger leaning audience, as the only people there over thirty seemed to be me, Bobby, and the two guys running the show.  Not a bad thing, just not what I'm used to.  Plus, people there all shared a bond of love for movies.  I never get that feeling if I go down to the local Carmike.  Seems people there just wanna sit down, shut up, and enjoy AC in a dark room for 90 minutes.  Here, people really seemed to dig the culture of making films.  You've gotta appreciate that.  And lest, I forget, I met a very nice lad whose claim to fame was that he built his house based on the house from Halloween.  Think I'm kidding?  Think again.

And then we come to the movie itself.  From the trailer, it looked just like another POS movie banged out  in a week.  But it was actually surprisingly deep.  Granted, not exactly Oscar-worthy, but deeper than you would expect.  The characters actually had back stories.  Oh, and how about this?  The film was shown on the old school projectors where the reels had to manually be fed and adjusted occasionally?

I'll definitely say that this was one of the more graphic movies that I have ever seen.  (But it's a grind house movie - what do you want?)  It is only the third movie that I have ever seen with an on-screen(ish) rape scene, oddly also featured in the trailer above.  (The other two being Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave.)  However, I will say this... it wasn't concentrated on and was handled as well as that subject really can be.  It's also worth mentioning that the rest of the movie hangs together so well that it doesn't really stand out as being out of place.  I just figured that I would mention it, should you be interested in seeing it yourself.

One last part of awesomeness was that the theater showed old school movie trailers both before and after the movie.  Definitely helped to set the tone.

This probably won't be a monthly occurrence, but I did have a hell of a good time, and I wanted to share.  Thanks for the invite, Bobby!