THE «HORROR MARATHON» STARTED OUT IN 1973, THE OLDEST ONE ALL OVER SPAIN. IT WAS AN EMBRYO STAGE OF THE HORROR MOVIE FESTIVAL WE KNOW TODAY.
Back in 1973, the local film club were chewing over the way of getting some extra income that helped them to improve their rock-bottom financial estate. They surprised everybody with a fully breaking idea that, even today, more than forty years later, is still alive and kicking with a big success. The first «Horror Movie Marathon» across the country was being born. In the first two years, it consisted of 16 hours of genre cinema; after the third edition it became the now classical «Molins de Rei 12 Hours of Horror Movies». Since then, the «12 Hores» have turned into the Festival that we know today.
1973, the birth of a notion. The new age of horror.
In 1973 there was a re-birth of the genre of horror in the cinematographic industry, materialized in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. The great commercial success of the film brought about an intense follow-up of devilish sequels and sub-products. It was the start of a new dimension of cinema full of sensationalism within the horror genre which showed up in an unstoppable increase of the sadistic boast and a decay of the old ellipsis that the old censorship codes had imposed, which were ruled out in order to protect the competition of cinema against television. Dare I say that Polanski was the last one who, in 1968, within that generic new language, used the classic idea of suggesting rather than showing the devilish baby-child at the end of Rose Mary’s Baby. The brilliant Polanski knew that the imagination of the audience can be more disturbing than raw reality. At this point, as an exercise of cinematographic expertise, we can compare Polanski’s non-present devilish baby-child with the purulent and extensively shown protagonist girl exhibited by Friedkin in The Exorcist to measure the new horror cinema that started to crowd the screens at the beginning of a golden era, the 70’s.
Joan Domènech, 28-06-2007, Molins de Rei.
President of Cine Club Hal 2002
Source: AVED Produccions web page.
