Posted October 2, 2021 by mondovulgare General

The 4th Annual Scare Crow Film Festival!

For those of you who aren’t aware, October 9th is a very special day. A sacred day, even. For you see, it is the birthday of my best friend (tied with my wife, I should add before I get into trouble), the Goddess of the Dark Herself, my black cat Crow.

For the most part, Crow is indifferent to most of what I watch and will just curl up in one of her many (many, many) napping places whenever I put something on. There are some notable exceptions, however. The biggest one is Xena: Warrior Princess, which I swear she will pay attention to whenever I put it on. I’m serious. Wherever she is, whatever she’s doing, if I put on Xena, she’ll trot along over and stare at the screen for at least a few minutes. I can’t quite explain it, but I’ve tested this multiple times, and it works without fail.

But that’s a TV show, of course, and anyone who knows me at all knows that I almost exclusively watch movies (so in case you’re one of the people who has been trying to get me to watch a certain TV show forever, the answer is no, I still haven’t started it). To these she remains almost completely indifferent, and the movies that do seem to capture her attention don’t appear to have any discernible similarities that I’d be able to test out. Case in point: two recent movies that lured her over to the TV were the brilliantly bonkers 1987 Hong Kong action-horror-romance-comedy (among several other genres) A Chinese Ghost Story and Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 classic Contempt. If you want to try piecing together some common element those two films share that may have captivated a cat, be my guest.

Despite this, every year on her birthday, I host a film festival in her honor. Now of course, by “host,” I just mean I do it myself at home and simply tell everyone I know (all four of them) what I’m doing. Since this occasion lands right in the middle of Halloween festivities (actually, it lands towards the end of my Halloween festivities since I personally begin on my own birthday, which is August 21st), I obviously stick to horror movies when deciding the lineup, but in honor of Crow I make sure they’re all feline-centric horror movies. I call this festival–what else?–the Scare Crow Film Festival. Past featured films have included the likes of Cat People (both the original and the remake), Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye, The Tomb of Ligeia, and Kuroneko. Usually they don’t grab Crow’s attention, but that’s okay. She still enjoys the extra treats we give her as part of the celebration.

Now in its fourth year, the lineup for the upcoming Scare Crow Film Festival is as follows:

The Uncanny (1977, Denis Héroux)
The Black Cat (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer)
The Black Cat (1981, Lucio Fulci)
The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971, Dario Argento)

Obviously this is not a full-fledged livestream event, and I say “obviously” because, well, it’s me we’re talking about here, and I’m neither that organized nor that social. I’ll be marathoning all four starting at around 3pm EST next Saturday, October 9th, so if you decide to watch any or all of these movies–or any other cat-related horror movie, for that matter, since again, this isn’t an actual organized event–feel free to let me know and I will be sure to spread the love to Crow.

I don’t know if any of the movies in my lineup this year will interest her very much (I’ll put an episode or two of Xena beforehand just in case), but if I had to guess which one she’s most likely to watch for at least a few minutes, I’d say probably the Fulci version of The Black Cat since she’s shown somewhat of a curiosity about Fulci in the past, as evidenced here: