It is the season of undead film franchises. You can catch plenty of reboots and movie series in which they had to swap out the lead actor after a decade of sequels. While some series recycle the first film’s formula, others break the mold.
A pioneering example mentioned by listener Austin Simons is “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), which carries on the timeline from the original 1931 “Frankenstein” while switching the focus from the doctor to the monster. Nick Knittel called in from Durham to highlight how “Doctor Sleep” (2019) uses a jump in chronology in addition to a perspective shift to bring a new life to the iconic setting of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980). Other studios rely on an expansive cinematic universe to generate fodder for follow-up plotlines. Listeners also shared their thoughts about series like “Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings,” which inspired fans to write sequels and spin-offs themselves.
Host Frank Stasio discusses listeners’ picks with film experts Marsha Gordon and Laura Boyes. Gordon co-directed the short film "All the Possibilities...", is a film professor at North Carolina State University and a public scholar at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Boyes is the film curator for the North Carolina Museum of Art and the curator of the Moviediva series at The Carolina Theatre of Durham.
Halloween screenings across North Carolina:
- The Drive Movie (Winston-Salem, outdoors) - "It", "The Goonies", "The Blair Witch Project" and "Nightmare on Elm Street"
- Marketplace Drive-in (Winston-Salem, outdoors) - "Ghostbusters" and "Hotel Transylvania"
- Carolina Theatre (Durham, outdoors) - "Ghostbusters" and "Gremlins"
- Raleigh Road Outdoor Theatre (Henderson, outdoors) - "Doctor Sleep"
- Lexington Cinema and Drive-in (Lexington, outdoors) - "Don't Look Back"
- Thalian Hall (Wilmington, indoors and socially distanced) - "Night of The Living Dead" and "Rocky Horror Picture Show"
- Smoky Mountain Cinema (Waynesville, indoors and socially distanced) - "The Empty Man"
