By Marta Tahja-Syrett
All Freakin’ Night is an annual event where five horror movies play throughout the night. Put on by the Capitol Theater, this year marked the event’s 30th anniversary. I met with Ian Bracken, who has been hosting All Freakin’ Night for the past three years alongside his wife, Tori Bracken, and we discussed the evolution of the event, the horror community, and the behind the scenes work that goes into hosting All Freakin’ Night.
When asked about All Freakin’ Night, Ian explained that the event usually happens around the time of the Olympia Film Society film festival, but it came a few weeks early this October. He told me that the event began in the eighties and that he’s been attending for the past 18 years. Through that time, it’s gone through many stages and hosts.
“When I first went the hosts were covered in blood and they got so many sponsors that they were throwing brand new DVDs out into the audience — the action figures, still in their packages, and everyone got posters. It was just all awesome and once you paid the tickets you got so much out of it for free. There were skits. I remember one of the games was ‘fall straight on your face without putting your hands down,’ for prizes. I remember a girl ate some glass on stage. I think it was fake but nobody’s sure. I remember someone threw a cow eye up in the balcony and my friend just ate it for no reason. I think she threw up, but she was just like ‘Oh, a cow eye — GULP.’ It used to be crazy and then it kind of died down for a little bit because those hosts left. It was too much to take on for them and a couple of them moved out of town.”
Ian explained that he and Tori now enjoy incorporating live-action theatrical gore, performances, and theatrical stage props into the event. The two also find ways to incorporate blood and gore, without getting too messy.
I asked Ian to tell me about some of the films that were featured this year. All Freakin’ Night featured Critter, a film about furry aliens with sharp teeth who end up getting chased by bounty hunters, and The Fly, produced in the fifties, but which Ian says translates well into the modern day. He notes, “All Freakin’ Night is really about the old school. It’s cool to play new movies, but people that go there are usually kind of rooted in eighties horror or even older.”
When asked how films were selected for the lineup, Ian explained that the programmer contacts him around half a year before the event, asking for a large list of potential films. The programmer must ask in advance so that the rights and prints for the films can be obtained on time. Ian then motioned behind me to a very large bookshelf filled with movies. He told me that he has three times this many horror films, mostly in VHS form, and that he has been collecting them for twenty years. He said,
“They know that I know what’s good but also, what’s the most important, it’s not based on my own taste. It’s based on what is going to get a good audience reaction. Then we contact different companies that have the rights to these films and we pay whatever they ask.”
Ian went on to talk about how All Freakin’ Night used to be a part of the film festival, and that it brought a completely new aspect to the event, “They wanted to bring a horror angle to at least one part of it and it brought in a lot of the more punk rock kids, the college kids, the film geeks that are more into cult film and genre film rather than more prestigious art films that they tend to play over there. Most of the film festival is more indie, art house kind of stuff so it’s cool in this town that you can get that but you can also get extreme nasty horror films.”
When I asked what initially got him interested in horror films, Ian said, “I kind of want to say it was the fact that my parents wouldn’t let me watch them when I was growing up and it was the video store days, back when you rented movies.” He said that he’s been hooked on horror ever since. Even though the genre isn’t for everyone, Ian said that he himself has found a tight-knit community within the horror scene. “It’s like a niche thing, but within the horror community it’s some of the most open-minded and supportive [people]. We met a lot of people at the horror conventions and they’re like our horror family now, we meet up now. I’ll go to Seattle to meet somebody that I met through horror.”
Ian was struck by the overwhelming welcomeness that the horror community fosters. “It’s crazy. You’d think that they’d be the insane people but they’re the most gentle, open-minded people ever and so accepting to all different types of people and really inclusive. I was part of the punk scene for a really long time and that’s the opposite. Very, very strict and very non-inclusive in a lot of music scenes. I love the horror community.”
