Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City

[Frank Cox]

I've always enjoyed the Resident Evil movies. The first movie (2002) is by far the best - the Red Queen is one of the creepiest villains that I've ever seen in a movie.

The sets, the lighting and the sound mix create a great atmosphere. That's the strength of the Resident Evil movies, and there's just something about their look that really appeals to me in terms of... art? That sounds like a really pretentious way to describe a horror movie. They aren't really story-driven but rather just set up to look cool and keep lots of action and shotguns on the screen for an hour and a half. It succeeds at that very well indeed.

The week before Christmas has always had the lowest turn-out for the year, so I've learned to not put anything really big in for that week since it ends up being wasted. I usually just play something that I want to see myself that week and hope others might want to see it too.

This year we'll have zombies for Christmas.

[Dave Macaulay]

Probably 2002, I had an emergency call to a drive-in playing the original Resident Evil. Something had happened with the light, the screen image was so dim (the movie is pretty damn dark to start with) that only a few dim moving blobs were visible... no way of telling what the image actually was. But at least a dozen cars were there "watching it". I shut the lamp off to avoid losing the "Technilight" glass mirror if the lamp blew and let it play out, nobody there noticed the difference on screen but the sound kept playing. After it ended I found the lamp (slightly over service life) envelope black, installed a new one and checked the cooling and rectifier DC power but found no problems.