The opening salvo of Horrorfest’s Saturday film list was a palate cleanser. I could also have said that of last night’s Unearthed, except that there was nothing to be cleansed from and that said movie really wasn’t as good. And, okay, I’ll be opening up a little bit of confusion by claiming that Lake Dead was a good movie, so I want to be clear and say that it wasn’t good. It was slightly better than the Skinemax fare it occasionally looked like, and it had a truly excellent climactic line of dialogue. But good? No.

It was, however, extremely awesome. Three sisters stand to inherit land and a motel from a grandfather they had been told was long since dead, after he’s murdered during a moral dispute. They gather up their skintight clothes, their slutty friends and frat-boy dates, and head off to check out the inheritance and decide whether to sell it. If it wasn’t for the inbred locals, this would probably have been porn instead of horror. The acting quality and the looks of the cast both bear this out. All of which is basically my point about the awesome: hilarity ensued at every point. The lines were funny on purpose almost as often as they were due to the acting failures, the slasher-style chase scenes had to have been intentional parody, and the foreboding “But is it really over?” finale was probably populated with the actors who hadn’t quite been skilled enough at their auditions to get into the real movie.

I think I’ve long since been established as a person who can appreciate a bad movie, if it’s done the right way. If you’re like that sometimes, this should be on your short list of rental gold. (Or, I guess it’ll still be in a theater near you sometime next week, maybe.)

Like I said before, each night of the festival had its departure from the straight up scary monsters, psycho killers, drugs, sex and gore genre conventions in order to do something different with mood or pacing or psychology. The third night’s The Hamiltons surpassed the previous entries by combining that departure with the genre conventions and proving, as happens every so often, that a horror movie can be genuinely good in its own right, not just when measured against others of its type.

The titular family is composed of four siblings making their way in the world after their parents died recently and unexplainedly. David runs the household, though it’s clear he is not very well respected by twins Wendell and Darlene, who mostly seem to live their lives for the pleasure of the moment. And youngest brother Francis is still in school, trying to find his place in the world and trying to understand the place his siblings occupy as well. Because despite how slice of life this all sounds, the early revelation that Wendell kidnaps girls and stores them in the basement turns things on its head. The additional knowledge that everyone in the family is aware of this little secret (and that only Francis disapproves) and that the house has a mysterious fifth resident named Lenny, hidden away behind a different locked door deeper in the basement serves to change it into… well, I suppose you could still call it slice of life, but with an added, slyly macabre definition of the phrase.

Clearly, all these questions about whether nature or nurture rules sway over people and whether family is more important than external morality serve to get in the way of the story, from a drive-in perspective. But at the same time, allowing a movie that has multiple moments of genuine horror to tackle real issues in a thoughtful manner, well, that’s rare enough that I’m willing to let it slide, since the questions didn’t overshadow the story. One breast. Five bodies. Face-chewing. Lead pipe to the noggin. Red Cross fu. Drive-in academy award nominations to Kitty, for triple-daring the twins to make out during a homemade game of Truth or Dare, then saying, “I win. You guys won’t do my dare!”, and then letting her smile slip by confused degrees when she realizes that she didn’t win anything at all, as well as to Kitty’s cousin for his bit part as self-proclaimed security guard of the year. Four stars. I’m going to have to get this one on DVD, too.

Day two is now past. The experience was a fair bit like day one, except with mandatory evacuation of the theater between movies so they could clean up. Despite losing the chance to maintain seats without a line rush every time, the cleaning thing made it superior. There’s nothing like stepping on someone’s old nacho tray, losing your balance, and wavering at the edge of eight rows of stadium seating to get your life flashing before your eyes. Well, I mean, other than an actual dangerous situation of some kind, clearly.

Speaking of dangerous situations bringing up painful memories, the first movie of the night was Penny Dreadful, the story of young Penny’s psychological struggle to get over her fear of cars. Which sounds stupid, until you take into account that her parents died in front of her in a horrific car accident, and that since the trip was for her, she blames herself. Luckily, she’s got a bottle full of pills, a relaxation cassette, and an overbearing psychologist to get her through her attempt to face her fears head on. If only there weren’t a psychotic hitchhiker with an inexplicable urge to toy with her by keeping her trapped inside the object of her terror, instead of killing her like everyone else who crosses his path, it probably would have been a successful trip.

Four bodies. One breast. Toe rolls. Not much else in the way of totals, because this is an edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller and hedge trimmers as murder weapons would be out of place. Drive-in academy award nominations to Penny’s mom for using her last strength to tell Penny she’d be okay and then proceeding to fountain her life out of the hole in her neck once the dialogue was over, to the park ranger for insisting, “There’s no killer. There’s nobody here but us!”, and to the relaxation tape guy for creating a relaxation method that consists entirely of closing your eyes and chanting the names of zoo animals. Despite that last bit, this has easily been the scariest movie of the festival so far; four stars. Lesson learned: never pick up hitchhikers (other than the perky, college aged, slightly crazy female variety; not that they’re any more safer, but at least it won’t have been a creepy person in a huge coat who offers you a skewer of unidentifiable uncooked meat out of his backpack; plus, she’ll probably take her shirt off), not even if it’s really cold outside and you feel guilty for having just hit them with your car.