After three years, Black Lodge is set to return

Matt Martin recently experienced a disaster that was, in his words, “almost Looney Tuneslike” in its slapstick violence, yet also horrormovie harrowing.

The combination was perhaps appropriate, since dozens of classic Warner Bros. cartoons along with innumerable scary movies are among the 32,000 — yes, 32,000 — films in Martin’s collection of videotapes, DVDs, Blu-rays and LaserDiscs.

Anyway, Martin, a creature of nocturnal habits, as befits a man who spends much of his time in dark screening rooms, was awakened from his bed at about 3 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 14, when he heard what he thought was a “heavy knock” at the door.

He got up, walked into the front room of his apparently less-than-wellmaintained apartment at Central and Hollywood, and “the entire ceiling collapses on me, from corner to corner.”

He was knocked unconscious for a moment, he said during an interview this week. “Under my clothes are some scratches and puncture wounds from nails,” he added.

Nevertheless, he didn’t go to the emergency room for a checkup until after midnight, because the collapse occurred just a few hours before this month’s “Time Warp Drive-In” Halloween show at the Summer Quartet DriveIn, which included a screening of 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

“For me, I’d rather fall over dead than miss ‘Texas Chain Saw’ on the big screen,” he said, with the dedication of a person literally shedding blood for his passion.

Now, Martin, with the collaboration of longtime friend and business partner