Matt Palmer on All Night Horror Madness 2022

Since 2010, All Night Horror Madness has been delighting Scottish gorehounds with memorable marathon screenings of weird and wonderful horror films. The night harkens back to the 70s and 80s heyday of grindhouse theatres, those fleapits with sticky carpets and questionable clientele who would run debauched repertory screenings throughout the wee hours to night owl cinephiles. Matt Palmer, the man behind All Night Horror Madness, was coming of age at the fag end of this era.

“When I was 16, I read this book called The Deep Red Horror Handbook and got totally obsessed with horror movies,” recalls Palmer. “At that time, all-night horror nights were quite prevalent. There was Black Sunday in Manchester, and Shock Around the Clock at the Scala in London. Near where my friend lived in Manchester, the UCI, the old multiplex cinema, they did some all-night horrors. So that was the first one I went to. We were under 18 but we managed to get in and it was Nightbreed, Hardware, Maniac Cop II, Reanimator II – like a really great lineup.”

When Palmer found himself working in film exhibition at the Cameo in Edinburgh in the early 00s, the repertory cinema scene was in the doldrums. “I really missed those nights,” says Palmer. “And I thought, ‘surely, if we put one on at the Cameo, people would come.’” His boss wasn’t so sure there’d be an appetite in Edinburgh for all-night gory carnage, though. “The guy who managed the cinema at the time, Ian Hoey, I repeatedly badgered him about this. And he said, ‘that won't work’.” Those were words that would come back to haunt Hoey, however, as he’s now Palmer’s All Night Madness co-host. “When we did the first event it sold out. So Ian was on stage with me and had to fess up in front of 242 people and say he was wrong.”

When it comes to curating ANHM, Palmer has a few ground rules. The films are strictly from a specific era of horror film (roughly 1967-1992). The second is that at least some of the films will be screened on 35mm. “It's funny with the 35mm thing, because when I first started the event, it was a choice between 35mm prints or very often DVD, because Blu-ray hadn't really taken off and DCP didn't exist," recalls Palmer. "So initially I pushed for 35mm because the picture quality was so superior. But now it's become woven into the fabric of the event and I think the 35mm element really helps to give that authentic feel, that sort of sense that you're watching movies from a certain period. But the crazy thing, now that DCP has come in and you're looking at crystal clear images all the time, the 35mm has started to look more and more interesting and more and more like a time capsule – the crackle and the grain, it's just a more unique experience.”

The third rule is to do with the order of the lineup: Palmer punctuates the night with a properly gonzo movie. “The third movie needs to be crazy,” laughs Palmer, “because everything needs to have a peak, and also the third movie is when you're starting to move later into the night for the first time. You're moving towards 3-3.30am, and at that time in the morning people need something to really wake them up. So all the particularly crazy movies, and probably the movies that All Night Horror has become most associated with, are the third-on-the-bill movies.”

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

This upcoming All Night Horror Madness will be an all-star special, featuring some of the films that have gone down a storm at previous editions. Palmer walks us through the lineup.

Film 1: Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989)

"Society was the first movie at the second All Night Horror Madness. The thing with Society... I don't want to give too much away, but there's something that happens in it that's completely insane. I really like playing Society first because, when the credits roll, you really feel like you've been through something. There's a section of it that’s just absolutely off the wall. So I feel like when you play Society first, people come out of it feeling like, ‘Wow, that was a lot!’ I like people coming out of the first movie and feeling like they've had an entire night out, and then realising that they're only a fifth of the way through it. But I think Society has also stood up really well in terms of its politics. It's ultimately a satire about aspiration and a takedown of the rich, which, you know, is a timeless theme.”

Film 2: Night of the Creeps (Fred Dekker, 1986)

“I think Night of the Creeps is, in a lot of ways, one of the ultimate 80s party movies. Also, it's a movie that plays exponentially better with a crowd. It played in the seventh or eighth All Night Horror lineup. It was in the first slot last time, and it's just got that great Tom Atkins performance in the middle playing a completely crazy cop. It's one of those dream movies that you know you can put on and everyone's gonna love it. I think after Society, Night of the Creeps is going to be the tonic people need to get back on an even keel again.”

Film 3: Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983)

“When I screened Sleepaway Camp I was still doing the Glasgow events. And when the final moments unfolded, one of the audience members just stood up and went 'NO! NO! NO!' and literally just walked away from the screen and out of the cinema while the rest of the audience went nuts. And I was just like, 'I'm not gonna beat that!'

"Because it's the best-of lineup, a lot of the audience this time are going to know the wild direction that Sleepaway Camp goes in. It's a legendary ending. It might be one of the most infamous climaxes of all horror movies. But the great thing about Sleepaway Camp is, even when you know what's coming, it really bears up to repeated watches. The ending is crazy, but the whole movie is mad as a bag of spiders. There are a lot of fantastic moments, and it also has one foot in the bad movie category, if that's your thing. So as crazy third-in-the-lineup movies go, Sleepaway Camp is up there with the craziest.”

Film 4: The Hidden (Jack Sholder, 1987)

“The Hidden's reputation has really been building up recently. It did get a small theatrical release in '87, but it was mainly known as a straight-to-video movie. It’s a sci-fi actioner with a bit of horror, which is the type of movie that I like to throw in to mix up the lineup. It involves aliens – I think it's reasonable to say that without giving too much away – and it moves like a ten-tonne truck; it's just got so much momentum. And it's just crazy and funny and out there.

"I think one of the chief reasons it’s stood up so well over time is that it's got a funny and really excellent Kyle MacLachlan performance grounding it. It's a proper genre-hopping hybrid, but it's a film I've always loved and when we screened it at All Night Horror last time, it took the roof off.”

Film 5: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

"It's a lot easier to gauge the response of a movie like Sleepaway Camp or Night of the Creeps, where you get a very active audience response. I think the audience response to Texas Chain Saw as it goes on is just a grinding down and complete flooring of everyone. It’s the oldest movie in the lineup, but the crazy thing about Texas Chain Saw Massacre is that if you made that movie as it is today and released it, it wouldn't seem remotely dated.

“I was totally obsessed with it. I’d maybe seen it 20 or 30 times when I was younger, and I’d kind of worn it out. I hadn't seen it for about eight years when I put it on at All Night Horror Madness the first time. I was like, ‘Oh, you know, it'd be fun to watch again,’ but by the end of it, I was just like, 'Holy fuck!' It just totally, totally slayed me. I mean, the power of it. If it’s not the best horror movie ever made, it's very, very close. So basically this is a party lineup with a really horrible sting in the tail. So people can leave after four movies and go ‘Yeah, that was a laugh.’ Or they can leave after five, and then spend a couple of days getting over it.”

---

All Night Horror Madness, Cameo, Edinburgh, 8 Oct