Joseph Gervasi co-founder of Exhumed Films

Recently, there’s been a decline in the number of horror movies on the big screen. But Philadelphians who still love fake blood have Exhumed Films. Exhumed puts together screenings of classic horror and grind house films using 35 and 16mm prints, not DVDs. Some of the films Exhumed has screened include horror classics like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2, and John Carpenter’s  The Thing.

Exhumed Films was founded in 1997 in Blackwood, NJ, by “Four jerks who sort of were friendly with each other (and) wanted to see if we could show two films at a theater,” said Joseph Gervasi, 38, Exhumed Films co-founder with  Dan Fraga, Harry Guerro, and Jesse Nelson.

“We procured these two film prints, these 35mm prints, and we figured, at worst, we’d be watching these two movies by ourselves, and at best, maybe a few people would come out,” recalled Gervasi. To the group’s surprise many people did show up to their event.

“We didn’t really have the mass penetration of the internet,” he said. “We didn’t really have that resource to get the word out.”

Exhumed Films has gone through several theaters for screenings.

“They’ve all [the theaters] just successively closed down around our feet,” said Gervasi. Exhumed Films currently calls the International House, located at 3701 Chestnut St. in Philadelphia, home.  It’s a real step-up.

According to Gervasi some of their previous venues were “dilapidated, and they had bugs and rats running around.”

Though Exhumed has a great ongoing relationship with International House, it is difficult to do monthly events there, because of the theater’s other commitments and bookings. However, Exhumed still manages to hold double features there, “about every other month or so.”

They also conduct a once-a-year, 24-hour horror marathon. Now entering its third year, the marathon allows Exhumed to showcase some of their rarest prints.  “Many of the prints come from the collection of one of the group members, Harry Guerro,” said Gervasi.

Promotional Poster for Horror Marathon made by Justin Miller/Hauntlove

Guerro is part of a network of print collectors and traders, which include people such as Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese. “Whatever he doesn’t personally own, may be owned by Exhumed Films, or he would be able to trade with other people to barrow the prints to run,” continued Gervasi. The network in which Guerro does his trading allows Exhumed access to several rare prints from around the world.

Some of the films shown at the 24-hour event may never end up being screened outside the context of the marathon.  This is because of the films’ levels of obscurity. Were they to be put into one of Exhumed’s regular events, they more than likely would not be able to stand on their own merits.

“If we put them into our 24-hour show, where people don’t even know what they’re [going to be] seeing, because we never ever announce what the films are going to be… then people … wind up seeing something that they wouldn’t normally  gravitate towards.”

The reason for not allowing the audience to know in advance the titles of the films is both practical, and helps add to the fun of the occasion.

“I think if the people knew what they were seeing they would pick and choose and chart when they were going to be there,” explained Gervasi. “It creates a sense of excitement where you have no idea what you’re going to see.”

In addition to several feature length movies, there are also several shorts and trailers between films. The lack of advance knowledge also prevents the audience from missing out on some of these smaller gems.

“Hopefully you [the audience] trust us well enough to allow yourself to be surprised by what we’re going to screen to you,” continued Gervasi.

This year’s 24-hour marathon is on Oct. 24 and 25. Tickets for the event are on sale at www.exhumedfilms.com/24hrfest. Tickets are $25 each.

Though Exhumed Films does charge for their events, the founders do not take any profits. Gervasi and Nelson own a for profit side business, Diabolik DVD, which always has a stand at Exhumed screenings to sell DVDs.

Any money made by Exhumed goes into a kitty used for buying new prints and the other costs of running the films.

“When we all decide we hate each other [the members of Exhumed] and disband we’ll break up that money and we’ll have a hundred bucks each,” said Gervasi jokingly.

Image taken from ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com

He Remembers It, So You Don’t Have to.

By Thomas Mates

If you still pine for the days when Saved by the Bell was still on the air and it was worth it to wake up early for Saturday morning cartoons then you have probably heard of the Nostalgia Critic, on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com. Every Wednesday, the Nostalgia Critic updates his site with reviews of movies and television shows most twenty-somethings grew up with. The Nostalgia Critic in real life is Chicago native Douglas Walker, 27.

Walker was a film major at NIU, Northern Illinois University. “I was actually going to go into film for a living, but the more I grew up the more I realized that I’d probably have to deal with Hollywood and I’m not really a huge fan of Hollywood,” said Walker.

After college Walker made a living doing illustration and design. He then started his career on the internet through YouTube. “I started posting these five second movies; they were like famous movies reduced down to five seconds… those seemed to catch on really big time on the YouTube community.”

From there Walker went on to create a character called the Nostalgia Critic, an angry reviewer of all things nostalgic who, “remembers it so you don’t have to.” After the Critic took off Walker was approached by Mike Michaud, who Walker knew through a friend in college. “Really the reason the site exists is because of him [Michaud].”

“He said you know if you give me time I can actually turn this into a business, like a legit business that you can actually make money off of,” recalled Walker. Though skeptical at first, Walker gave Michaud the go ahead. Michaud put together a team and built the site. He then brought Walker on and “[I’ve] been doing it ever since. I’m getting paid for it and doing pretty much what I love.”

Walker handles all of his own editing and most of the writing for his segments, though his brother Rob does help with writing for the Nostalgia Critic. In addition to the Nostalgia Critic, Walker has other characters he portrays like That Guy with The Glasses, and Chester A. Bum. Both of these characters’ sketches are mostly adlibbed by Walker.

Despite the amount of content that Walker deals with, his computer set up is relatively low tech. “I’m not a very big technical person, especially when it comes to cameras and computers, ironically.”

He uses a commercial PC with Adobe Premier to edit and Pinnacle Studio to import clips from other films, and occasionally using After Effects for very specific effects. “It does get clunky, you know, considering the amount of editing I do but for the most part it works.”

Since Walker’s reviews tend to use a lot of copyrighted material, i.e. clips from movies, the site has to keep a lawyer on standby just in case. The only real legal problems Walkers run into so far were on YouTube. “I’ve been kicked off of YouTube several times. I think the final number was about three or four.”

Walker believes his work to be covered under Fair Use and Parody/ Satire laws, but some Hollywood studios seem to disagree, though Walker’s legal problems have been limited to YouTube so far. “We do keep a lawyer on standby just in case… if anything were to come of it we’d probably, definitely make our point.”

Though Walker would be considered the star of thatguywiththeglasses.com, there are many other contributors to the site’s content such as, Lindsay Ellis; the Nostalgia Chick, Kaylyn Dicksion; Marz Girl, and Daniel Rizzo; That Aussie Guy just to name a few. “It’s not always so focused on me… I like getting more people in there.”

The sites expenses are taken care of through user donations and advertisement revenue through a partnership with Blip.tv. Blip.tv is a video hosting and distribution site for video bloggers. They encourage their users to create episodic material, like the Nostalgia Critic, as opposed to viral videos, single videos that gain widespread internet popularity.

Users of Blip can opt for advertisers to be run concurrent with the users’ videos and the revenue is split down the middle. “We’re one of their [Blip’s] number one customers. We work very well with Blip,” commented Walker on his site’s relationship with blip.tv.

For all the other people out there that would like to become an internet phenomena, Walker’s first word of advice is, “don’t.” “I’m really kind of a rare case, and a lot of it had to do with luck and having a lot of really good people behind me.” Walker then went on to advise that people should, “hone in on things that people are always going to be googling and looking up… it’s like the four p’s, patience, persistence, perseverance, and pretty much a big shit-load of luck.”

Thomas Mates can be reached at mates.thomas@gmail.com, at myspace.com/freelance_journalist215, twitter.com/tmates, and on FaceBook.