Friday night I went to see Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D and, immediately after, Frankenstein. Two classics were exactly the right way to start the weekend. It is worth noting that there is a reason Creature is so often held up as the example of its kind of movie – the ’50s monster flick – and it is that Creature is actually a very good movie. Pants Wilder went straight to the first time we see the creature swooning over Kay and pointed out that the scene is really creepy because that’s not CGI. The athleticism displayed by Ricou Browning is just stunning. No special effect can accomplish something that cool. That said, guess what? Nobody watches 3-D movies anymore so nobody knows which way to wear the glasses. A tip for future 3-D film experiences at the Carolina: give a tutorial before the movie starts. Someone as well-known and well-regarded as Phil Lee should not have to spend two hours wondering when the hell the 3-D will start because he’s got his glasses on backwards.

Frankenstein is also a genuinely great film – a narrative that wastes not a single second, lavish sets, a genuine sense of glimpsing another time – and watching it I was struck how not just some scenes were iconic but every scene was something I’d seen copied in later work. Gods, what a great movie.

That said – and I say this as one of the Retrofantasma people – can the Retrofantasma people who come to the headline movie on the Friday of NEVERMORE just shut the fuck up already? For fuck’s sake, people, I did not buy a 10-pass so I could listen to you run your fucking mouths. Do not fucking MST3K the movie outside your own home.

Saturday I went to see The Disappeared which was really, really good. In fact, it was so effective that I had to get up and go out into the hall and just take a break from it in the middle. The movie features supernatural elements but they’re not the real story. In fact, I’d argue that the supposed main narrative – the main mystery driving the plot – is handled fairly ham-fistedly. I didn’t care, though, because that wasn’t what interested me. The movie is a ghost story, yes, but it’s not about that. It’s about what it’s like to be powerless in the face of grief and what we do to cope with that. It’s about what it’s like to be disadvantaged and surrounded by personal relationships taut with the tension between poisonous suspicion and a desperate need to trust someone. Very touching. So touching, in fact, that I barely even noticed the twist ending happening because the emotions of the story were much more interesting than the events.

Finally, I caught the comedy shorts. The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon was every bit as good the second time around. Things that were new to me included the gleefully sadistic and extremely funny Treevenge and the genuinely surprisingly well-done and extremely fun and funny The Auburn Hills Breakdown, about which I can only say – without spoiling it – that the concept was sufficiently simple that it could either be done really badly or really well and the makers definitely land on the really well end of things. If you have the chance to catch any of these in person, do so.

It’s worth noting that a few seats away from us during the shorts collection was a woman who was having a really, really good time. I don’t know if she was just wicked high or what but she giggled endlessly, such that more than once the crowd was laughing at her as much as at the movies. I’m not complaining, though; she made the whole thing more fun. That’s the difference between someone who’s really into the movie and someone who’s trying to make the experience be about themselves: she was sharing and improving the experience with/for everyone around her. The blabbermouths on Friday were just pissing me off.