Zombiefest XI
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The 2025 season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater kicked off six weeks ago, but Memorial Day Weekend is viewed by many as the unofficial start of the season because it's the first of the major annual events on the calendar that draws in an audience from across the country.
The 2025 season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater kicked off six weeks ago, but Memorial Day Weekend is viewed by many as the unofficial start of the season because it's the first of the major annual events on the calendar that draws in an audience from across the country.
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| Zombiefest I - Memorial Day Weekend 2015 |
Zombiefest is a partnership between the Mahoning and Exhumed Films which celebrates the undead on the big screen. This is the oldest of the annual events at the drive-in, dating back to Memorial Day Weekend 2015 when they screened nine zombie classics on 35mm. The films shown for the first Zombiefest were Day Of The Dead, Messiah Of Evil, House By The Cemetery, Demons, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, One Dark Night, City Of The Walking Dead, Two Evil Eyes, and Revenge Of The Dead. This was six years before we discovered the Mahoning in 2021 and seven years before our first trip to Zombiefest in 2022.
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| Show banner designed by Andrew Kern |
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| Show poster designed by Jason Cortez |
For the first time in its eleven year history, Zombiefest took place at two venues across four nights with a total of twelve films screened for fans in attendance. This included a single feature on Thursday night and a triple feature on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights at the Mahoning, along with a double feature matinee at The Gap on Saturday afternoon.
There were a lot of cool things that could be won in the raffle for each of the nights of Zombiefest XI, but my favorite of the lot was this print done in the style of a 1985 Topps card that was on the table for Friday night.
Actor Thom Mathews was on the lot to meet fans, sign autographs, and take pictures with fans on Friday night. He's best known to horror fans as Tommy Jarvis in Friday The 13th: Part VI, Freddy in Return Of The Living Dead, and Joey in Return Of The Living Dead: Part Two. I'm trying to be a little more careful with money with the costs of everything going through the roof, so I didn't get anything from his table, but in retrospect, I wish that I had. If I had a copy of Return Of The Living Dead on VHS for him to sign, I probably would have asked him to sign it because it's one of my favorite horror movies of all time.
The first night of Zombiefest XI is an anthology horror classic that was last shown at the Mahoning on Night Two of Zombiefest X - Creepshow.
I've written about this movie last year so I won't labor the point too much, but the short version that the movie is made up of five short stores. I love The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill and Something To Tide You Over, and I like The Crate. The last story of the film, They're Creeping Up On You, is alright... not great, but not terrible. However, the first story in the movie, Father's Day, plays out like a bad soap opera with some comic book effects thrown in and a pretty dull horror twist at the end. Overall, this movie is absolutely worth watching if you're a horror fan, but skip ahead after the opening credits to the start of The Lonesome Death Of Jordy Verrill.
There was a secret feature after the first movie that I really wish I could have stayed for, but I had work on Friday morning and there was no way I was going to be able to stay awake for all three movies on Friday night if I didn't get some sleep.
Return Of The Living Dead / Re-Animator / Waxwork
Friday night of Zombiefest XI kicked off with three horror movies from the 1980's. The first and second are two of my favorite horror flicks from any decade, and the third is one that I was seeing for the first time.
Return Of The Living Dead has a permanent spot in my top five favorite horror movies of all time. It's one of the first horror flicks that I remember seeing when I was a kid. I saw it at the Mahoning once before at a Tunnel Vision Tuesday screening near the end of the 2023 season and it was one of my favorite nights of the season.
This movie exists because of a disagreement between Night Of The Living Dead co-writers George A Romero and John Russo on the direction that should be taken in the sequels. This resulted in two different film series that branch off of the 1968 film. The first sequel series to begin was George A Romero's sequels beginning with 1978's Dawn Of The Dead, followed by Day Of The Dead, Land Of The Dead, Diary Of The Dead, and Survival Of The Dead. John Russo's sequels began in 1985 with Return Of The Living Dead, followed by Part Two in 1988, Part Three in 1993, and two films from 2005 that were made for television: Necropolis and Rave To The Grave. Both of these series have a pretty dramatic drop in quality for the sequels made in the 2000's, but the ones released in the 70's, 80's, and 90's are all almost universally beloved as horror classics by weirdos like me who obsess over such things. However, the Romero and Russo sequels go in very different directions; Romero's are heavy on gritty realism and social commentary, and Russo's have more of a punk rock vibe to them.
For as much as I enjoy and respect the Romero sequels, if the Mahoning asked me to choose if they should dedicate a weekend to his sequels or the Russo sequels, I would choose the latter. The first three Return Of The Living Dead movies are among the most fun horror movies I've ever watched, and they fit right at home at a drive-in theater on a weekend dedicated to zombie flicks, and the cream of the crop is the one that kicked off Night Two of Zombiefest XI.
Re-Animator is a horror classic that I haven't seen too many times in my life. I saw it for the first time when I worked at Blowout Video when I was a teenager and brought it home as one of my free rentals. It was produced by Brian Yuzna who we got to meet three years ago on the last night of Zombiefest VIII. He was one of my favorite guests that I've ever gotten to meet at the Mahoning.
This is the story of a medical student named Herbert West who developed a reagent that can be used to bring the dead back to life, but it has side-effects similar to those who comes back to life in Pet Sematary. It also leads to a conflict with Herbert's professor, but I'll spoil the story if I say too much about that. Let's just say that there's a very memorable and disturbing scene at the end that gives a whole new meaning to the expression "giving head". The uncut version of the film can be streamed on Amazon Prime, and if you're a fan of horror movies who hasn't seen it yet, I strongly recommend it.
The last movie from Friday night was the 1988 horror comedy film Waxwork. I had never seen or heard of this one before, but it was definitely interesting. The story is that a wax museum has suddenly opened in what appears to be a residential neighborhood. This museum is a bit like the castle in Super Mario 64, but instead of paintings on the wall that warp the player into one of the levels, the wax displays unexpectedly warp the guests of the museum into another world where the characters have come to life. When a person dies in one of these worlds, they return to the museum as one of the wax figurines.
This movie became another victim of my Friday night curse at the Mahoning. I have to wake up early for work on Friday morning, so if they're playing a triple feature, the chances of me remaining awake and alert for the final film are pretty slim. I was slipping in and out of sleep for all but the first ten or fifteen minutes of Waxwork. I'm not sure how much of it I ended up sleeping through, but the parts of the story that I missed while dozing off combined with the general lack of brain function after being awake for nearly 20 hours kept me from enjoying this film as much as I'm sure I would have under other circumstances. From what I could tell, it's a pretty corny horror comedy and it was interesting enough to make me want to circle back and give it a second watch, but that's about all I can say about it at the moment.
The third day of Zombiefest XI was dedicated to Italian zombie films. It kicked off at The Gap Theatre in Wind Gap on Saturday afternoon with my favorite Italian horror movie of all time, followed by an Italian horror from the 60's that I've never seen before.
The first movie on Saturday was the 1985 Lamberto Bava classic, Demons. I saw this for the first time six years ago during the original 24 hour marathon of The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs and instantly fell in love with it. It's one of those horror movies that starts off wild and just keeps topping itself every ten minutes. Just when you think that this movie cannot possibly get any crazier, there's a moment that no one seeing this movie for the first time would ever expect. I'm deliberately saying as little about this movie as possible because if you haven't seen it before, the absolute best way to see it is to go in completely cold. Don't look up the trailer. Don't read any of the reviews. Don't even read the description on the DVD box or the streaming service. Speaking of which, this movie is available to stream on a wide variety of services, including Tubi. Click the link, press play, and sit back and enjoy the wildest ride you'll ever take in a zombie film.
Next up was the 1965 Italian classic Terror Creatures From The Grave. I had never seen or heard of this movie before, and I'm very glad that I went into the theater knowing nothing at all about this movie other than the title.
There are few experiences as satisfying to me as seeing a classic film on the big screen with absolutely no prior knowledge about what I'm about to see. There's no opinions from friends, family, or critics to pollute the waters. There's no expectations based on knowing who directed it and who appears in the film. There's just you and the story being told on the screen. It is without question my favorite way to see a movie. If you haven't seen it before and you want to go into the experience the same way that I did, stop reading this and click here to stream it for free on Tubi.
This movie is the story of an attorney who was summoned to appear at an estate that was built on grounds where people who deliberately spread the black plague were put to death. When he arrives, he learned that the person who summoned him had died a year before the letter that he received was sent. The story plays out like a gothic horror blended with a detective story, and although it has several moments of unintentional comedy, it was an excellent film that held my attention from start to finish.
The Italian zombie films continued at the Mahoning when the sun went down with three movies that I got to see for the first time.
The third movie of the day, and the first at the Mahoning, was the 1980 film Nightmare City, which was released in the United States in 1983 under the title City Of The Walking Dead.
This film begins with a television reporter named Dean Miller going to the airport to interview Professor Hagenback (which I initially misheard as Professor Häagen-Dazs) about a radioactive waste spill at a nuclear power plant. An unmarked plane unexpectedly arrives and lands at the airport while he's waiting for the professor. This instantly becomes a security concern prompting the authorities to circle the plane after it has landed and demand those on board to come out. The reporter and his cameraman quickly follow in the hopes to catch this breaking development. The first person out of the plane is Professor Hagenback, but he and the other occupants of the aircraft have turned into psychotic irradiated mutants who are impervious to bullets (except for a shot in the head) and who attack, kill, and drink the blood of whoever they set their sights on. Unlike most zombie films, these are not dumb creatures who stumble around mindlessly. They can run, jump, climb, open doors, use weapons, plan their attacks, and basically do anything that they could have done before they were transformed into these creatures. However, like most other zombie films, the victims of these creatures soon come back to life and join the horde as they take over the city.
This movie was a hell of a lot of fun, culminating in a scene in which our hero climbs up the steep incline of a roller coaster at a closed amusement part while tossing grenades down at the zombies below. However, the ending of the film had myself and everyone within earshot groaning as loud as the zombie mutants in the film. You can rent it on YouTube for 99 cents, and if you want to have a zombie film marathon with things that you may not have seen before, this would be a good addition to the night.
Burial Ground was the next movie to hit the screen. I had never seen or heard of it before, but this was the movie out of the Zombiefest XI lineup that my friends on the lot who had seen it had me hyped up for. I was told that there's a scene towards the end of the film that I'll never forget and... man... they weren't lying. This may have been the most creepy depiction between a mother and son on film that I've ever seen. I don't want to say too much more, but if you enjoy highly disturbing horror films, you can see this one for free on Tubi.
This was my least favorite movie of the weekend. There are exceptions to this, but I'm not generally a fan of military and war movies. I found myself annoyed that it felt like it was going on forever even though it was only 90 minutes long. It's possible that I was just getting tired and would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't the last movie of the night.
The final night of Zombiefest XI began with two more of my favorite zombie films from the 80's, followed by the third chapter of the Re-Animator series which I've never seen before last night.
The final night of Zombiefest XI kicked off with writer/director Fred Dekker's love letter to the horror genre, the 1986 cult classic Night Of The Creeps. It starts off looking like it's going to be a science fiction movie before spending the next ten minutes convincing the audience that it's going to be a slasher, after which it finally becomes an insect horror and zombie film mashup.
This is one of the greatest horror movies from the 80's. I saw it for the first time when I was an adult, which is a shame because I would have gone bananas for this when I was a kid. It's not included in any streaming subscription services that I'm aware of, but it's more than worth the $3.99 rental fee to watch it on Amazon Prime. It will thrill you.
The second movie of Sunday night was Return Of The Living Dead: Part Two. I've gotten to see the Part One twice at the Mahoning (once in 2023 and again on Friday night), and I saw Part Three at Zombiefest VIII in 2022, so I've now gotten to see the first three Return Of The Living Dead films on 35mm on the big screen.
This is my least favorite of the first three Return Of The Living Dead films, but I don't at all mean that I don't enjoy it. Part Two is a lot of fun and a worthy chapter in the series, and I'm glad that I got to see it at the Mahoning. Maybe next year they'll show all three of them as a triple feature.
The final film of Zombiefest XI, and the most recently released movie of the weekend, was the Brian Yuzna film Beyond Re-Animator. Seeing this on the big screen projected from 35mm was a rare treat. The movie premiered on The Sci-Fi Channel in 2003 and received a very limited theatrical release.
I had never seen this final chapter in the Re-Animator series before, and I was cautioned by some of my friends on the lot who had seen it to not get my hopes up. I'll agree that it's not as good as the first Re-Animator movie. Few "part three" movies are as good as the original, but I don't think it was bad at all.
According to Untold Horror, Brian Yuzna has originally planned to continue the Re-Animator series with a follow-up movie in which President George W Bush (played by William H Macy) dies in office and is brought back to life by Herbert West. That sounds like it would have been one hell of a movie!
The next few weekend at the Mahoning are stacked. This coming Friday and Saturday is dedicated to the films of Keanu Reeves with a single feature of the 1981 film Thief on Sunday. The following weekend is the second annual Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan event on Friday and Saturday, with a Sunday night screening of The Phantom Of The Opera with an organist set up under the screen to perform the score along with the screening of the movie.
