Blood Sweat Honey Opens 24-Hour Horror Theater Where Ushers Perform Entire Films Live When Projector Fails
Cinema Machine and Graven Image launch a permanent midnight venue staffed by ushers who must recite every line of every cult film from memory, in costume, at any hour.
Blood Sweat Honey has converted a former tire warehouse into a permanent midnight cinema where the ushers perform the entire film live whenever the projector breaks, which is now scheduled to happen nightly at 3 a.m. The new division, Cinema Machine, calls the venue Graven Image and describes it as «a distribution strategy you can smell».
Founder Chad McKim Miller said the ushers are contractually required to memorize every line of every horror, sci-fi and cult title in the catalog, including the credits. «We stopped repairing the projector in June,» Miller said. «The audience prefers the human version. We had to build a second stage for the intermissions.»
The warehouse now holds 1,400 folding chairs and a fog machine that runs on diesel. Neighbors in the industrial district have filed noise complaints describing «a man screaming the entire script of a 1974 cannibal film at four in the morning, followed by applause.»
Cinema Machine has begun licensing the format to other cities. A training academy in Burbank teaches ushers to perform three films simultaneously by rotating their torsos. Graduates receive a headlamp and a laminated card listing 62 screams they must reproduce without amplification.
Graven Image's first release is a restored print of a film no one has seen, which the ushers will perform anyway. Tickets cost $9 and include a poncho.
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