Jonny Numb

Today I fell into a low-level panic over the whereabouts of the driver’s cap I picked up in Edinburgh in 2024, but my fears were assuaged by the verification from Lizard that it had found its resting place in his car over the weekend.

And what can I say? My consciousness wasn’t in its clearest state when we parted company the morning of Saturday, November 1, 2025.

Why, you ask?

Well…in another instance of “why do I do this to myself” and “you will question your life choices,” I voluntarily went to yet another horrorthon, on Halloween, at the Mahoning Drive-In.

Dubbed the “Dusk Till Dawn Scare-A-Thon,” its conceit mirrored that of Exhumed Films’ 24-Hour Horrorthon: 5 mystery movies projected over the course of one night, with the added appeal of the Mahoning’s low-key drive-in vibe.

And, with no small degree of cockiness, I thought: five movies? Pfffft! That’s nothing – I sat through fifteen a couple weeks ago! This’ll be no sweat!

With darkness encroaching earlier in accordance with impending Daylight Savings Time, the show was set to start at 7:30.

Despite my intentions to arrive earlier, I didn’t pull into the almost-full lot until around 7.

I followed the parking directions of the lot attendant, who was dealing with confused idiots off-roading (I felt like the Ghost of Christmas Past from Scrooged: “Go back ta Jersey, ya moron!”). But once I got situated, I gathered my camping chair and NIN zipper bag containing snacks, water, my Skinny Puppy hoodie (from their 2015 “Down the SocioPath” Tour), and George, the Stourbridge Station Cat beanie, locked my car, and trekked over to where Lizard was parked.

Wanting something semi-substantive to eat, we braved the snack-bar line, which extended into the parking lot and moved very slowly. I glanced at the Screem Magazine table set up inside, with their rack of horror CDs and legit and bootleg Blu-rays and DVDs. I picked up my usual chicken fingers and fries, forgot to get a soda (paid for) out of the cooler, and we ventured back out into the cold wind tunnel of the night, perching like sherpas huddling down for a night on Everest.

We toasted with bottles of Shofferhofer and buckled in for the first film:

Mausoleum (1983) – I’d watched this before and wasn’t much impressed by it (yeah, yeah, the makeup FX are well-done, but so what?), so I took the opportunity to use the indoor men’s room, followed by a perusal of the Screem table. I purchased bootlegs of Blood and Roses (a 24-Hour Horrorthon discovery), Dawn of the Mummy, and the still-not-legitimately-released-on-disc Barbarian.

As an aside, I found it amusing how the older couple running the table were discussing protocol for tearing down and leaving, with the man complaining about how cold it was, but being reluctant to take the woman up on her offers for him to “sit in the car with the heat running.”)

In the spirit of the holiday, some people were wandering the lot, handing out candy and other paraphernalia. A girl complimented my “sick” hoodie and handed me a sticker with a URL I still haven’t checked out (pictured above).

Anyway, I returned to my seat with still too much Mausoleum left to watch. For what it’s worth, I find Marjoe Gortner a beguiling cinematic presence, but much prefer his turns in Food of the Gods and Starcrash.

Adding insult to injury, some folks further down our row had started to MST3K the movie, hurling “jokes” at the screen. While I’d surely watch the Rifftrax crew tear Mausoleum a new one, I’m less interested in a gaggle of drunk or stoned mouth-breathers doing the same.

In situations like these, folks will either tell the offending parties to pipe down…or, in this case, others join in the lame heckling (if you can’t beat ’em – or confront ‘em – join ‘em, I guess.) (But Jonny, why didn’t you confront them?) (Shutup, Brain!)

So it was just as well that, as the Satanic-looking gardener in Mausoleum cackled at the viewer as the credits rolled, Lizard and I made an executive decision to spend the remainder of the marathon in his car, free from the confrontational wind chill.

The next movie showed an exponential uptick in quality: Black Christmas (1974), which I’d watched many times before, but never on 35mm. As always, it held my attention from start to finish. A film far ahead of its time (and still far ahead of a lot of the horror films released these days), with director Bob Clark at his best.

Tiredness began to manifest during the third film, in part because I’d watched it several times (on DVD and Blu-ray) and once before on 35mm – during the 2024 edition of Splatterfest. For all I know, it was the same print used at that event.

In any case: the blandly-titled Nightmare (1981) – released in the UK under the much more enticing Nightmare in a Damaged Brain – isn’t a “bad” movie, despite its low-budget shortcomings and sometimes-risible performances (apparently, I gave it 3.5 stars on Letterboxd!), but such programming choices afford the opportunity to catch some Zs, of which I acquired a few during the sluggish midsection. Still, that third act with the asshole kid, the gun, and the masked killer wailing on a door with a hammer is something to see.

I think it was sometime during this one that I decided to face the wind and cold and check out the Mighty Mahoning Merch Booth. I entered quietly and caught Mahoning Merchandising Manager Sandy – whose back was turned – off-guard, which I felt bad about. I milled about in the dimly-lit enclosure for a bit, looking over the items for sale (including leftover T-shirts from other 2025 events, none in my size). I could’ve bought a (pullover) hoodie or a T-shirt, but none of the designs really screamed to me, and I wound up leaving with a “35mm for Life!” fridge magnet instead.

It bears noting that, as I was leaving the enclosure, a strong gust of wind swung the door open wide, causing a thick wooden sign hanging on it to fall straight from its hook and hit my right foot, dead center. While this hurt for the remainder of the night and for a couple days after, the pain has since subsided – and as I’m walking normally, I assume I didn’t break anything.

As an aside: you may be wondering how 5 movies clocking in at around 90 minutes apiece (give or take) would constitute a start time of 7:30 and an end time of dawn, especially since the common hardcore gorehound could surely shoehorn more than that into an at-home marathon? Well, part of the charm of the Mahoning is the curated buffer material between films (vintage ads; a variety of animated 10-minute intermission countdowns; thematically appropriate trailers); additionally, the time before the intermission countdown factors in long lines at the snack bar, trying to accommodate every patron by ensuring the majority are back in their seats for the next movie. This down time adds up, extending the experience for the gathered group.

In any case, movie #4 answered my silent prayer of a feature I’d never seen before: The Children (1980), a creepy killer-kid movie with a unique conceit – after a school bus travels through a bizarre cloud (implied to be some sort of energy-plant pollution), the handful of kids along for the ride reappear as char-handed demons who give burning-hot hugs to any and all grownups in their path (shades of Tobe Hooper’s underrated 1990 effort, Spontaneous Combustion). If I caught a few boring human Zs during Nightmare, I got some extended, fat-cat-after-dinner Zs following the first 30 minutes of The Children, nodding off completely for the last 30 and waking just in time for the end credits. Not that I found the film dull – in fact, I was intrigued enough by what I did see to order the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray – but its placement in the schedule all but guaranteed an endurance test for patrons struggling to maintain consciousness.

For the sake of driving home with a minimal semblance of safety, sometimes you just gotta succumb to sleep.

It bears noting that, as part of the between-movie show, some past guests at the Mahoning popped up to share video testimonials of their most treasured Halloween memories. This was a nice idea, somewhat awkwardly executed by folks like the heir to the Ricos Nachos dynasty, Michelle Bauer and Linnea Quigley (Linnea, it’s Mahoning, not Manhoning), and Friday the 13^th Final Girls Adrienne King and Amy Steel. That said, I enjoyed the recollections from comedian Dana Gould and Night of the Comet’s Catherine Mary Stewart. Overall, these were nice little surprises throughout the night.

Which brings us to movie #5, which the social-media posts stated would be screened digitally due to no film print being available. As the number of movies in this particular limbo is more innumerable than most collector geeks would readily admit, I made no attempt to guess at what it possibly could be. Instead, I just sat there as it started, and upon seeing “A Film by Sandor Stern” (screenwriter of The Amityville Horror), I knew.

“It’s Pin (1988)!” I exclaimed. Then, trying to downplay my reaction in an effort to seem “cool”: “I like this one.”

This Canadian creeper has links to my childhood, catching snippets of inappropriate movies on basic cable back when it was still called The Sci-Fi Channel – stuff like Blue Monkey and The Rejuvenator. I never saw any of these movies – Pin included – from start to finish, just bits and pieces when I was able. I remembered not understanding how Pin (a medical dummy) was able to talk to siblings Leon (David Hewlett as an adult) and Ursula (Cynthia Preston as an adult) while their icy clinician father (Terry O’Quinn) stood in the background; nor did I understand what that nurse was doing with Pin while young Leon is peeking through the exam-room door; therefore, the extremely uncomfortable scene where Ursula finds herself pregnant and getting an (off-screen) abortion at the hands of her already-unfeeling father made even less sense.

Also: how mind-blowing is it that Jonathan Banks – best known as the gruff and grizzled Mike Ehrmantraut from Breaking Bad – voiced the titular character?

In the decades since seeing the Sci-Fi Channel snippets, I’d acquired a bootleg DVD of Pin via the good folks at VHSPS and had the opportunity to give it a proper watch. And I was utterly floored by the intricacy and effectiveness of the psychological horror on display – Stern logs subtle, skin-crawling work here, employing classical methods of suspense and horror over the slasher gore of the time. The result is one of the best character studies in the genre, and as brilliantly awkward a coming-of-age tale as you’re ever likely to see.

Obviously, I found this to be a fantastic note to end the marathon on – with the final minutes creeping into sunrise and nearly bleaching out the image – and made my decision to stick it out more than worthwhile.

At this point, the survivors were invited to line up for their souvenir ticket for the event, followed by a huddle beneath the Mighty Mahoning Screen – which really did dwarf all our faces into featureless dots – for a group shot.

Based on the Mahoning’s post-mortem update via Facebook:

Out of the 700+ attendees, half lasted the entire night.

Not bad – me and Lizard were certainly surprised by the minimal attrition between movies, especially as the night wore on, but hey, maybe nerds like us were just jazzed to get a cool holographic ticket on nice card stock!

After the photo, I took my camping chair and NIN bag of survival items back to my car, where me and Lizard did our usual Parting Hug before heading our separate ways.

Postscript: It was weird heading back from the Mahoning in daylight, but I adjusted. I’d strategized my gas tank getting low during the drive in so I could justify a stop at the Wawa in Hamburg (next to the Cabella’s Survivalist Compound). I got a custom coffee whose add-ins I can’t remember (a mocha something-something-something), along with a sausage-egg-cheese breakfast sandwich made with French Toast. I had no concerns over my alertness as I headed home, arriving just in time to pass my S.O. on the way back from her Saturday-morning constitutional. And, excepting a 45-minute nap that afternoon, I managed not to wreck my sleep schedule because of my physical and psychological negligence, so…yay!