24 Hours of Movies: Dimension Horror!

 by Patrick Bromley

Celebrating a studio with exactly one poster design.

Inspired by my recent guest appearance on the Pure Cinema Podcast in which we programmed horror all-nighters again (the first of which was supposed to be a horror movie released by Dimension), I decided to commit fully to the bit and put together a marathon of only Dimension titles. This is the kind of marathon that probably sounds better on paper than in practice, but I would also absolutely watch all of these movies back to back in a heartbeat. Some men simply cannot be reached.

10 am - Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992, dir. Anthony Hickox)

Let's begin with Dimension's first horror movie and one of the franchises that came to define them. I know that Hellraiser III has a number of fans, some of whom honestly enjoy it and some of who have ironic affection for shit like the CD Cenobite. I don't have much use for the franchise beyond the first two (so basically the entire Dimension run), but I do find III watchable thanks to director Anthony Hickox's skill as a director and his penchant for staging gnarly effects. The story is pretty dumb and the tone too campy for what started as something quite serious and adult, but I'd be lying if I said there isn't something fun about watching a Hellraiser go this big.

Noon - Mimic (1997, dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Our second movie is Guillermo del Toro's Hollywood debut, about some mutant bugs who begin passing as human and try to kill Mira Sorvino. Like a lot of del Toro movies, I never love this one as much as I want to but I can at least recognize that it's one of the better and more artistic horror films in the Dimension library. Unforgivable. del Toro had such a miserable experience working for Dimension and was so unhappy with their re-editing of the film that he basically disowned the version of Mimic that was released in theaters in 1997. We're going to cheat and watch his director's cut, which is available on Blu-ray.

2 pm - The Others (2001, dir. Alejandro Amenabar)

Speaking of artistic Dimension movies! Proof that the studio didn't only put out DTV Children of the Corn sequels, Dimension hired Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes) to direct this gothic haunter about an icy mother (Nicole Kidman) who basically locks herself and her kids inside their potentially haunted home to keep them out of the sunlight. I don't always have patience for movies like The Others, which are entirely dependent on atmosphere and slow-burn suspense a la The Innocents, but by programming it early in our marathon I'm hoping we all still have the patience and attention span for what it's offering. Don't get me wrong: the movie is very good at being what it wants to be, that's just not always for me. I do appreciate that Dimension did something different here and were rewarded for taking a risk with big global box office.

4 pm - Mother's Boys (1994, dir. Yves Simoneau)

The first movie in our marathon that I've never seen is, to my understanding, more of a '90s thriller than it is a full-blooded horror movie. Jamie Lee Curtis plays against type as a divorced mother who tries to come back into her kids' lives but turns out to be a threatening presence. I have no idea if this is any good at all or if it even belongs in a horror marathon; I'm just trying to mix things up so we aren't just watching 24 hours of the same movie over and over again.

6 pm - Scream (1996, dir. Wes Craven) 

Our Primetime Pizza slot comes a little early so we can build our marathon around the original Scream, probably the most important horror movie Dimension ever made (and certainly the one that ruined their marketing for the next decade). There's not much I can say about it that hasn't been said already: it's a genuine masterpiece, one of the best horror movies of the 1990s and among the best slashers of all time. It changed the genre for both better and worse, a claim that can be made by only a handful of horror films.

8 pm - Scary Movie (2000, dir. Keenan Ivory Wayans)

Let's pivot away from horror movies for 90 minutes and towards horror parody with another of Dimension's flagship franchises. I hardly ever revisit the Scary Movie movies because they've dated horribly, not just in their comedy and their attitudes but in their desperate attempts to be relevant in their own time periods, which means the material is out of date a year or two past the theatrical release. I admire director Keenan Ivory Wayans' willingness to go for broke in his approach and the cast is certainly super game, but my memory is that it isn't my jam. Maybe revisiting it in the context of all the movies it's parodying will allow it play better. If nothing else, it will provide a little breather.

9:30 pm - Piranha 3D (2010, dir. Alexandre Aja)

Here's a much better horror comedy than Scary Movie, if only because it succeeds at being both (not a knock against Scary Movie, which only wants to function as comedy). French extremist filmmaker Alexandre Aja didn't seem, on paper, to be the right person to helm a silly, horny, Spring Break gorefest, but it turns out he was exactly the right person for the job. Piranha 3D knows exactly what movie it is and leans into being that movie very, very hard. The cast is pretty great and mostly overqualified for this sort of gleeful trash, and while it's difficult to pick just one MVP among the ensemble I think I'd have to go with Jerry O'Connell as a predatory douche who justifiably has his dick bitten off and fed to fish. It's that kind of movie.

11 pm - Feast (2006, dir. John Gulager)

Let's keep the splatstick vibes going with Feast, the first feature from filmmaker John Gulager and the product of Season Three of Project Greenlight, the reality TV show that sought to get a genre film made this time around in the hopes of expanding box office appeal. Instead, Feast barely got a release but must have found an audience on video and DVD, seeing as Dimension greenlit two DTV sequels that are largely obnoxious, mean-spirited, and unfunny. The first Feast is still a pretty good siege movie with monsters, one that seeks to subvert cliches and expectations whenever possible. It's got the right kind of energy for the midpoint of our marathon in that it moves along at a nice clip and demands very little of us as an audience.

12:30 am - Halloween II (2009, dir. Rob Zombie)

Shit's getting real. Dimension gave Rob Zombie an incredibly awful time on his 2007 remake of John Carpenter's Halloween, but that movie was a big hit and they naturally wanted a sequel. Zombie took the job on the condition that he be given the chance to make his movie. The result is one of his best films and one of my favorites of the entire Halloween franchise, a brutal and unflinching look at the trauma and PTSD of surviving a slasher movie years before A24 turned every horror movie into a trauma metaphor. The movie is proof that every once in a while Dimension allowed some art to escape their shitty methods.

2:30 am - Venom (2005, dir. Jim Gillespie)

I'm programming this one (and watched it) solely because it came recommended by friend of the site Elric Kane on the Pure Cinema Podcast, where he programmed it into the Dimension slot. I Know What You Did Last Summer's Jim Gillespie directs the start of a would-be slasher and voodoo crossover franchise that finds a tow truck driver killed off and brought back (by snakes) with the spirits of countless evil killers inside him. The movie is well-directed, offers an interesting take on a slasher origin story, and is willing to take chances in terms of which characters live and which ones are brutally killed off. It's way better than I remember it being from when I first saw it 20 years ago and should work well in our overnight slot, as it's never dull and rarely lets up once it gets going.

4 am - Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (1995, dir. James D.R. Hickox)

This was going to be my opener for PCP but plans changed. Of the only two Children of the Corn sequels I've seen, it's definitely the best. (The only other one I've seen is 2001's Revelation, directed by the legend Guy Magar.) While the first two-thirds of this installment, which transplants the action from the rural cornfields of Nebraska to Chicago, are pretty standard CotC stuff, where some spooky kids are put into foster care and then start murdering and conjuring up He Who Walks Behind the Rows. It's the last third that things go nuts and the effects (by Kevin Yagher, who would later have his name removed as director of Hellrasier: Bloodline, another Dimension effort) really take center stage that make this one worth a watch. Look quick for Charlize Theron as an extra in a few shots. Programming a Dimension marathon without a Children of the Corn sequel would be like programming a Dimension marathon without a Hellraiser sequel. It simply shouldn't be done. 

5:45 am - Darkness (2002, dir. Jaume Balagueró)

The second of only two movies programmed into this marathon that I've never seen is another Spanish haunted house effort, this time starring Anna Paquin as a young woman who moves to the Spanish countryside and begins to experience supernatural occurrences. Shot in 2001, released in Europe in 2002, but held by Dimension until they recut it to a PG-13 and put it in theaters in 2004, Darkness is yet another horror movie fucked over by a studio that fucked over many a filmmaker. It's a miracle anyone wanted to work with them. I'm not expecting much from this one, so if I'm a little drowsy at this point I'm not going to worry about it.

7:30 am - Dracula 2000 (2000, dir. Patrick Lussier)

Our penultimate movie is one I haven't seen since its theatrical release in 2000 and don't remember liking very much but which has to be one of the most Dimension movies that ever Dimensioned. Gerard Butler plays a modern incarnation of the World's Most Famous Vampire amidst a supporting cast that includes Christopher Plummer, Omar Epps, Vitamin C (always gotta have a pop star in those Dimension movies), Jeri Ryan, Jonny Lee Miller, Jennifer Esposito, and Sean Patrick Thomas. It's young! It's hip! It's boring? I can't remember.

9:30 am - From Dusk Till Dawn (1996, dir. Robert Rodriguez)

Aside from being a very literal commentary on the state of our marathon -- we've been up all night watching movies and now the sun is up -- it's important to close things out on a banger and this is exactly what the doctor ordered. I once attended a 24-hour marathon that ended with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's crime/horror hybrid and it was the perfect way to wrap up because it has so much energy and so many gags that one can't help but feel reinvigorated watching it play out. George Clooney becomes a movie star in the span of a single performance and Salma Hayek may or may not do a snake dance, I can't remember. Every once in a while Dimension could hit a home run. This was one of those times.