Kenneth Branagh, January 1996 (Sundance Film Festival)

By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff
SALT LAKE CITY – For 10 days every January, Utah is off-Hollywood, catering to Dream Factory players, actors, agents and a clot of energetic, enthusiastic young filmmakers hoping the Sundance Film Festival will launch their embryonic showbiz careers.

They were swarming like hungry locusts Thursday night at Sundance's opening night premiere of "A Midwinter's Tale," the latest from writer-director Kenneth Branagh ("Henry V," "Much Ado About Nothing"). The festival commandeered the whole Crossroads Cinemas and much of the adjoining Marriott Hotel's ballr00ms to celebrate the festival's 11th year under the direction of Robert Redford's Prov0 Canyon-based Sundance Institute.

"Gore Galore" ("Outtakes" movie column), Oct. 30, 1987

Photo illustration taken at the Cinedome Theater in Riverdale.

Time was when a horror movie opened, people lined up at the box office -- then went back again the next week for more. They just couldn't get enough.

It all began in the 1930s, really, with "Frankenstein" and "Dracula." And it's continued right up to today. The latest love affair with shockers was kicked off by "The Exorcist" in 1973, but began to die out in 1985 with "Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning."

After all, a discerning public will take only so much.

The numbers of horror films being produced may have declined, but the fact remains that people love them. Or, rather, people love to be frightened by them. Horror movies present an undeniable attraction: If it's a good one, you'll be terrified -- the ultimate movie-going experience.


It's one thing to be moved by a love story, challenged to think by a whodunnit, or stirred to cheers by a sports movie. But to be scared out of your seat -- well, that's where it's at, man. It doesn't get any better than that.