On the evening of Saturday, October 24, Birmingham families will haul blankets and folding chairs up Red Mountain, settle onto the lawn beneath the largest cast-iron statue in the world, and watch a cartoon vampire try to keep his daughter from falling in love with a human. It is the final installment of this year's Movies on the Mountain series at Vulcan Park & Museum, and the billing is Hotel Transylvania, the 2012 animated comedy from Sony Pictures Animation.
The gates open at 6:30 p.m. and the film rolls at 7, wrapping around 8:30. Admission is ten dollars for adults, children ages five through twelve, and seniors alike; children under five get in free, and members pay eight. Parking at the park is free but limited, and the museum encourages guests to carpool or rideshare rather than count on a space. Popcorn and cookies are free while supplies last, with cotton candy, candy, and snacks for sale, plus a cash bar pouring beer and wine for the grown-ups. The park's mascot, a costumed character known simply as "V," works the crowd for photos and hugs. Dogs are welcome on a leash, with waste stations set up around the grounds and owners responsible for cleanup.
The series is run by the museum's Junior Board, and it spreads three films across the calendar year — Madagascar in April, Space Jam in June, and Hotel Transylvania in October — rather than packing them into a single summer run. That spacing is part of the appeal: the October date lands in the sweet spot of a Birmingham fall, when the ridge top finally cools off after a long, humid summer and the sun sets early enough that the screen is legible well before 8 p.m.
What the audience is really buying, of course, is the venue. Vulcan Park sits on a four-acre parcel atop Red Mountain, and the statue that anchors it has one of the more improbable biographies of any civic monument in the country. Birmingham's Commercial Club commissioned it in 1903 as the city's entry to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. The sculptor was Giuseppe Moretti, an Italian-born artist who began with a six-foot model to work out the proportions, then built a full clay master in an unfinished church in Passaic, New Jersey. The clay was divided into sections and shipped by rail to Birmingham, where it was cast in local iron — a pointed choice for a city whose entire identity was built on iron and steel. The finished figure stands fifty-six feet tall and depicts Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and the forge, kitted out with blacksmith's tools.
Vulcan came home from St. Louis to a city that wasn't quite sure what to do with him. He spent decades in pieces and in exile before being reassembled and permanently installed on the mountain in 1939, the year the statue's Wikipedia entry lists alongside 1904 as its construction dates. In 1976 he was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Some Birmingham residents still call him "The Magic Man." The park around him now includes a museum devoted to the statue's history and to the region's industrial past, and the observation deck draws visitors year-round for one of the best views in the state — the downtown skyline dropping away to the north, the ridge line running east and west.
That view is the reason an outdoor movie works here at all. A screen on a lawn is a screen on a lawn almost anywhere; a screen on a lawn with the Birmingham skyline laid out below it and a fifty-six-foot iron god standing at your back is something else. The series leans into the setting rather than fighting it, keeping the production simple — a screen, a sound system, a few vendors — and letting the altitude do the heavy lifting.
Hotel Transylvania is a fitting closer for a family night. Directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, the animator behind television's Samurai Jack and Dexter's Laboratory, the film stars Adam Sandler as Count Dracula, who has built a remote hotel where monsters can vacation without fear of humans, and whose overprotective parenting is upended when a backpacker stumbles through the door. It was a substantial hit on release and spawned a franchise, but its pleasures are modest and reliable: sight gags, a loud ensemble of monster voices, and a running joke about how embarrassing fathers can be. On a blanket in the dark, with a nine-year-old laughing next to you, that is plenty.
For anyone planning to go, the practical notes are worth repeating. Bring layers — the top of Red Mountain runs cooler and breezier than the neighborhoods below, and the temperature drops fast once the sun is down. Bring cash for the bar and the snack vendors. Arrive early if you want a good patch of grass and a parking space. And if you have a dog that handles crowds, the park genuinely wants it there.
The October screening is the last of the three for the year, which means the next chance to see a movie on this particular lawn won't come until spring. Tickets are ten dollars, the popcorn is free, and the view has been under construction, on and off, for more than a century.