The marquee at 227 Bridge Street in Phoenixville read EF 24HR HORROR THON SAT 12P. Doors opened at ten on Saturday morning, October 17, the first movie started at noon, and the last one was not due to stop until noon on Sunday, or beyond. I’m Harry Hayman, and I went out to the Colonial Theatre to hang with my brother and his crew at the Exhumed Films 24 Hour Horror-thon. I knew where I was going, because my brother had told me all about it. Walking in, I still had one of those moments where you realize how much history is sitting right in front of you. The Colonial is the theater from the original 1958 Steve McQueen classic, The Blob. This is the longer version of my post about that day: what the Horror-thon is, who runs it, what happened in this room in 1958, and what I was really doing there, which was homework for the horror film we are getting ready to make, The Ninth Floor.

Twenty Four Hours, Noon to Noon

The Colonial’s own page calls it the biggest horror movie event on the east coast, and this year was Part XIX. It starts at noon on Saturday and goes straight through until noon on Sunday, or beyond. The lineup stays secret, so the audience only finds out what the features are as they unspool onto the screen. The page promises popular horror titles mixed with really rare gems, plus classic trailers, shorts and other oddities, all projected from 35mm film.

The secrecy comes with a game. The contest sheet in my photos is titled Guess the Movies Contest and carries hints for all 15 films playing this year, along with a promise that none of them has played at a previous Horror-thon. A correct title in the correct time slot earns two points, and the right title matched to the wrong clue earns one. The clues are written to be argued over. Movie number three is a giant monster movie. Number twelve is a gloomy, Gothic vampire making his feature film debut. Number nine is an obscure regional horror comedy so rare, the sheet says, that “we all may be watching it together for the first time.” That last clue explains the whole event. A room full of people agrees to sit in the dark without knowing what is coming. MovieJawn’s recap of the 2019 Horror-thon noted that the short clues are the only help anyone gets, so every year crowds buy tickets with no idea what they will see.

I did not sit through twenty four hours of horror films. I love movies, but let’s not get carried away, and I don’t have that kind of attention span. I spent the day with my brother and his crew and watched a full house look up at the screen.

Exhumed Films and the Case for Film

Wikipedia’s entry on Exhumed Films calls it an organization devoted to showing horror movies for the benefit of their fans. It is based in Philadelphia and was founded in 1997, and its first screening, at the Harwan Theatre in South Jersey, was a double feature of two Lucio Fulci films, Zombie and The Gates of Hell. The group screens film prints instead of digital video, for aesthetic reasons, and it ran its first 24 Hour Horror-thon in 2007 to mark its tenth anniversary.

Bob Trate, the Colonial’s director of programming, gave Boxoffice Pro a plainer description in 2023: a private group of collectors that formed an organization, doing a lot of repertory screenings, almost entirely on 35mm. Exhumed “lost their original theater down in Philly,” he said, so the Colonial invited the group out to Phoenixville. Exhumed’s audience is slowly becoming the Colonial’s audience too, coming to check out the other films, and he called the arrangement a “very mutually beneficial thing.”

The loss was real. MovieJawn’s 2019 recap explains that the theater at International House in Philadelphia, where Exhumed had run the Horror-thon every year since 2007, was about to be vacated. The writer added that finding another venue that can project film and be willing to run shows that last this long was getting increasingly difficult in the age of digital projection. A Hollywood Soapbox preview that the Colonial reposted on its news page called the group “the cinematic purveyors of wonderfully weird programming in the greater Philadelphia area.” In my post I called the whole crowd lunatics and weirdos, and I meant it as the highest praise I have.

The Theater From The Blob

The Blob arrived in 1958. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. directed it, Steve McQueen starred in his first leading role, and it opened on September 10 as part of a double feature. The monster is a carnivorous alien amoeba that crashes to Earth inside a meteorite near Phoenixville and Downingtown. The framed poster in my photos bills the star as Steven McQueen and promises a creature that nothing can stop.

In the movie, a midnight screening of a horror picture called Daughter of Horror is playing at the Colonial when the Blob enters the theater, envelops the projectionist and oozes into the auditorium. The audience runs. A horror crowd at a midnight show is, if you think about it, exactly who Exhumed Films books for.

As the Inquirer put it in 2023, one can debate whether The Blob is a Philadelphia movie, but it is undoubtedly a Chester County movie, filmed in Phoenixville, Downingtown, Chester Springs and other parts of the county. The same piece reported that the Colonial’s marquee looks much the same as it did in the film.

Then there is the building. The Colonial’s history page says Harry Brownback built the Colonial Opera House in 1902, with a first stage show on October 15 and a first film presentation that November. The timeline adds appearances by D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Harry Houdini between 1915 and 1917, and The Jazz Singer arriving in 1928. One Harry built the place and another came through to perform, which makes me the third Harry through those doors.

Some accounts date the opening a year later. Boxoffice Pro says the Colonial was built in 1902 and first opened its doors as a vaudeville house in 1903, and Wikipedia’s entry on the theater says 1903 too. The theater’s own page looks ahead to a 125th anniversary in 2028, which also points to 1903. In my post I used 1902 and 124 years, the date the theater gives for the building. Count from 1903 and it is 123. Either way, people have been sitting in the dark in this room for more than a century.

Blobfest and the Run Out

Phoenixville turned that scene into a festival. The history page lists the first Blobfest in 2000 and calls the 25th, in 2024, the largest and most successful to date. The centerpiece is the run out: the audience watches The Blob and then recreates the movie by running out of the theater in mock terror. PhillyVoice reported that the first run out, in 2000, was spontaneous. Trate told the paper that somebody suggested showing The Blob, the Colonial showed it by itself, people ran out afterward, nothing was planned, and the staff decided it was a good idea. The festival now opens with a fire extinguisher parade, a nod to the film, in which carbon dioxide extinguishers finally stop the monster. The Colonial’s Blobfest page already says the next one is July 9 to 11, 2027.

The walls inside hold the proof of how far this has gone. One wall carries a framed copy of The New York Times story on the 25th Blobfest, dated July 16, 2024, and it is in my photos. The Times placed Phoenixville about 27 miles northwest of Philadelphia, noted that the run out is recreated twice over the festival weekend, and quoted the Colonial’s executive director, Jennifer Carlson, on the local pride in the film, because so many people in Phoenixville have family members who were extras. Then it wrote the line I keep repeating: Philadelphia has Rocky. Phoenixville has The Blob. I love Rocky, and I will not argue with the comparison.

What I Was Studying in the Dark

My real reason for the trip was simple. We are getting ready to make our own horror film, The Ninth Floor, and I figured that spending some time with people who are absolutely obsessed with the genre might not be a bad idea. So while my brother and his friends watched movies, I did a little homework. I wanted to see how the audience responded: when people laughed, when they got uncomfortable, when a little silence did more than any special effect could.

My photos include one from inside the room. The house is dark, the heads of the audience fill the bottom of the frame, and above them a tinted frame of a film glows on the screen, two figures facing each other in a cone of light. You can practically feel the tension in a room like that. One person jumps, somebody else laughs, and suddenly the whole room is part of the experience. Watching a horror movie with a full house is something you cannot replicate on your couch.

For somebody thinking about making a horror film, that is pretty valuable stuff. I will leave The Ninth Floor there for now, because I have a horror movie to help make.

Why a Room Like This Needs Us

The Colonial is not a museum piece. Its timeline says the Phoenixville Area Economic Development Corporation bought the theater in 1996, the Association for The Colonial Theatre was formed, and the theater reopened in 1999 as a nonprofit with Run Lola Run as its first film program. A 2017 expansion into the building next door added two theaters. The pandemic closed it in 2020, and it reopened gradually in 2021. Boxoffice Pro reports that it draws some 70,000 patrons a year, and Trate told the magazine how hard the work has become: it gets harder to find film prints, and harder to know who actually has the rights.

That is what a civic institution looks like to me. It runs on volunteers, members, a programming staff and a town that decided a monster movie was worth a festival. Drew Boardman, the Colonial’s events and engagement manager, told the Inquirer that some people credit the Colonial and Blobfest for ushering in the renaissance Phoenixville is experiencing.

If you missed the Horror-thon, the Colonial has more coming. On Sunday, October 25, it shows Nosferatu with live organ accompaniment, and the poster for it is in my photos. The theater’s Nosferatu page names the organist as Dennis James, a Philadelphia native and former staff organist at the Wanamaker Grand Court Organ. Exhumed Films returns on November 22 with the Terror Tele-Thon, four films from original 16mm television broadcast prints, and Blobfest comes back in July.

We need more of this. More historic theaters doing interesting things, more people supporting independent cinema, and more reasons to actually get out of the house and experience something together. Long live the weirdos. Long live the movies.

Exhumed Films' 24-Hour Horror-Thon at the Colonial Theatre