Rosemary Chesney, Campus Carrier arts and living editor
the Evans building. The final movie of the night, introduced by Clinton Peters, was the 1982 film The Thing. Courtesy of Berry Dismembered
On Oct. 22, Professor Clinton Peters and a band of students put on a horror movie festival, titled Berry Dismembered. This movie marathon showcased 30 different movies in five different rooms in the Evans building from noon to midnight. After eight months of planning, the event was a smashing success.
Clinton said the idea to host a horror movie marathon first sprang into his mind last January. He met with a few students to ask for assistance in this production including his research assistant Meredith Olsson, Matt Parks, Mya Sedwick, Kayla Slack, Lindsay Duffy and Emily Perry. At their first meeting, they came up with the lineup of horror movie selections.
“I want to give a huge thank you to the students who helped,” Peters said. “It was super fun, and they put a lot of hard work into it. It was honestly one of my highlights of my time here at Berry.”
Later in the semester, the group met up to design the poster and logo for Berry Dismembered. Then in the summer, according to Peters, the whole group met up to divide responsibilities for each one of them including social media, logos, posters, decorations and t-shirts. They also invited other students to volunteer in helping out including junior Annabelle Norton.
“I love horror movies so much, and I’m a big fan of Professor Peters,” Norton said. “The idea of spending a whole day watching movies with friends just sounded so fun.”
Seventeen students overall helped with the production of the event. The group met the day before and spent over three hours decorating the Evans building. They finished decorations the next morning.
“The decorations were awesome,” Peters said. “They really got everyone into the spooky spirit.”
Throughout the day, a total of 387 students attended Berry Dismembered. Volunteer students helped by running the popcorn machines and introducing movies. The introductions including giving backgrounds of the movie’s history and producers. One student to introduce a movie was senior Meredith Olsson.
“The horror festival was super fun and we’re going to make it even better next year,” Olsson said. “The atmosphere was really cheerful and there were couches so people could just sit down and relax. It really felt like a big party.”
The movie categories included good, bad, ugly and the history of horror. The final movie, introduced by Peters, was the 1982 film The Thing. Throughout the event, Peters gave away old movie dvds and sold Berry Dismembered t-shirts.
“One of my favorite parts was seeing the costumes,” Olsson said. “People came dressed up in costumes of favorite characters and it really added to the fun atmosphere.”
The event was not without a few challenges, however. One of the popcorn machines broke down. Also, Olsson said it was a challenge finding how to stream all of the different movies. Some were not on streaming services and hard copies had to be found for them. Also, Peters said that if he were to host it again, he would have a culminating movie at the end rather than five separate movies going on at once.
“My favorite part was a moment when I was sitting in one of the comfy chairs during a lull just knowing that the whole thing was going on around me,” Peters said. “It was kind of like the eye in the tornado.”
Peters said that the idea to host a horror movie marathon originated from when he used to attend 10 hour long movie marathons back in college. He said he hopes to make this an annal event. At the end of this semester, he is hosting Black Christmas, and next semester there will be another round of ‘Bad Movie’ events.