Monster Movies Celebrate 100th Anniversary With Marathon Webcast
Steve Barton
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Happy Birthday, monster movies! An unprecedented birthday party is planned over at the newly launched 100YearsofMonsterMovies.com website for the monster movie genre, which turns 100 years old this month. Beginning Friday, March 26, at 5PM EDT, the “100 Years of Monster Movies” campaign kicks off with a nonstop webcast of monster movies from classics like Night of the Living Dead and The Wasp Woman to modern gorefests like Creature from the Hillbilly Lagoon and Bacterium.
The event, which will be simulcast on ChillerTV.com, ends Sunday night at 9PM with a screening of the monster movie that started it all, Thomas Edison’s 1910 short Frankenstein.
“We want to celebrate the 100th birthday of the monster movie with an old fashioned scare-a-thon,” said Executive Producer Joe Sena of pop-culture marketing company SphereWerx Micromedia. “Among his other inventions, Edison invented the monster movie in 1910, and we felt this was a fitting way to mark the occasion.”
Between the films will be live intros by “horror hosts,” cult personalities with names like Penny Dreadful, Count Von Scary, and Doktor Ghoulfinger, who recreate the classic “monster movie night” television show at their local syndicated stations. That same weekend they are all gathered for the first time at the Horrorhound Weekend convention in Indianapolis, and each will take a turn opening a classic film during the webcast.
Joining them at the convention that weekend are classic TV horror hosts like Washington DC’s Count Gore De Vol, Joe Bob Briggs of TNT’s ”Monstervision”, and perhaps the most famous horror host of all, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Lastly, the webcast will feature a live introduction of Night of the Living Dead by its legendary director, George A. Romero.
“This has never been done before,” said Sena, who knows a lot about creating horror websites as he’s been doing so longer than just about anyone what with past classics like 13thStreet.com and his tenure at Fangoria Online. “We’ll be switching back and forth from the hosts in Indianapolis and the film streams at our studio in New York. We’re striving to create that classic ‘live television’ experience. I just hope nothing blows up.”
Sena’s company, which is producing the webcast in conjunction with the Dark Carnival Film Festival, developed the 100 Years of Monster Movies promotion through his brands FearWerx (the largest online horror store), EMCE Toys (a scifi/horror action figure line), and KlickWerx, a digital development studio. Though this is the company’s first live webcast, Sena is no stranger to the concept, having produced many as Creative Director of Universal Studios New Media Group in the 1990s, most of which featured the studio’s legendary lineup of monsters. “This time will be different,” he says, “because now people actually have the bandwidth to see what we’re producing. In the 1990s it was like producing color TV shows for the radio.”
The webcast can be viewed starting March 26th at 5PM EDT at 100YearsofMonsterMovies.com. For news and updates as they happen follow along on Twitter at @100YMM.
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