Memorial Horror Film Festival Celebrates Indie Filmmaker

When local independent filmmaker John Thonen died unexpectedly late last month, he left his widow facing a pile of bills for her cancer treatments. His friends in the local moviemaking community will honor him and raise money for his wife and three children by staging the John Thonen Memorial Film Festival in April at the Glenwood Arts Theatre.

Thonen was a free-lance entertainment writer and film historian who had published more than 200 film reviews and related interviews, as well as the book B-Movie Horrors, about low-budget moviemaker Don Dohler. He was the founding editor of Imagi Movies magazine and was the video department chief for Cinefantastique magazine. He also worked for the Fandom and Cinescape Web sites.

Because Thonen was a huge lover of trashy science fiction and horror, his friends have chosen titles that reflect that obsession. All will be shown at 10 a.m. Saturdays; technically the screenings are free, but organizers suggest a donation of $5 a person.

The lineup includes:

• “Invaders From Mars” (Saturday): Considered by many to be the definitive Cold War sci-fi film, this 1953 effort was directed by William Cameron Menzies (“Things to Come”). In this surrealistic, paranoid nightmare, a boy witnesses the landing of a flying saucer and watches in horror as alien invaders take over his small town's human residents.

• “The Crawling Eye” (April 10): A weird creature from beyond terrorizes scientists and townspeople in the Swiss Alps. Only a professor and a young woman with psychic abilities can stop its murderous rampage.

• “Bride of the Monster” (April 17): Ed Wood Jr. directs Bela Lugosi as the crazed Dr. Vornoff, who with his man-beast, Lobo (pro wrestler Tor Johnson), conducts radiation experiments on humans in an attempt to create a legion of atomic supermen.

• “Plan 9 From Outer Space” (April 24): Ed Wood Jr.'s magnum opus may be the most popular atomic-age cult film of the 20th century. This no-budget horror/sci-fi extravaganza features not-so-special-effects (a pie-tin flying saucer), aliens in skating skirts, zombies, howlingly awful dialogue and Bela Lugosi in his famed “postmortem” performance. It's a monument to everyone who ever tried to create something great and failed miserably.

For more information on the festival, contact Joe Spease at (913) 492-2862.

Source: Kansas City Star