HXFF 2020

The eleventh edition of the Hexploitation Film Festival announced its feature line-up today. We got all sorts of goodies this year, including five Canadian premieres, as well as rockin' after party featuring Blood Opera.

HXFF runs February 20-22 at Hamilton's Staircase Theatre. For all the info, click here.

Go West Part II

Well, I'm off to Saskatoon for SFFF. Stay out of trouble while I'm gone.

Night Light 2019

Check out this sweet poster for the newly formed Night Light Film Festival.

Taking place this October 3rd-5th at the Apollo Cinema in Kitchener, Ontario, Night Light will be showcasing both contemporary and retro genre cinema. For more info, go here.

TAD 2018

The 13th edition of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival kicks off today with a solid nine days slate of features and shorts to satiate even the most hungry genre fan. While I won't be there as much as previous years this time around, I'm sure I'll check in with a round-up after all the dust has settled. Until then, see you... After Dark!

Hexes & Lasers.

Two things I wanted to share with you. First, the full line-up of this year's Hexploitation Film Festival was announced yesterday.

There are several titles I'm intrigued by including Eduardo M. Clorio's I Wish I Wish, Preston DeFrancis's Ruin Me & Toor Mian & Andy Collier's Charismata, as well as the Hamilton Premiere of Chad Archibald's The Heretics.

We're also serving up some terrific shorts, running the gamut between festival favourites like Justin Harding's Latched and Mike Marrero & Jon Rhoads' Buzzcut and world premieres Niall Shukla's A Doll Distorted and Mike Pereira's Zandavi Lives. I'm also fond of Isreali import My First Time from Asaf Livni.

HexFest goes down at The Staircase Theatre from March 23 to 25. For more info, click here.

Secondly, I wanted to make you aware the Laser Blast Film Society (of which I am a card carrying member) has a spiffy new website. Check it out by clicking the image below.

10 Years!

Can you believe it? This humble blog I started as a VHS coverbox archive has been chugging along for a decade now. I've recorded hundreds of covers from the home video era, along with documenting everything that has come along in horror since 2007. It's been pretty wild.

I've made a lot of friends and contacts since then that have allowed me to start making my own films as well as program shorts for three festivals. In celebration of The Horror Section's tenth anniversary I wanted to look back at my most visited posts over the years. Let's dive right in, shall we?

Coincidentally, number ten – with over 1400 looks - was an anniversary post itself. Posted three years ago today, it was another reflective list of seven significant accomplishments I'd made since I'd started THS that included finally archiving my mass collection of horror junk, being accredited for film festivals and keeping a regimented routine of writing at least two-hundred posts a year. 2014 was a really good year for me.

You are going to notice that a lot of my top ten posts are reviews of world premiere screenings, mostly from TIFF's Midnight Madness or Montreal's Fantasia. Number nine was for Mike Flanagan's 2013 film, Oculus.

I really love this film because it focuses on the things that make great horror – simplicity, atmosphere and supporting performances. Flanagan has since gone on to further cement himself as one of the genre's top filmmakers. I mean, Gerald's Game! You need mad skills to put that off.

At almost 1600 views, number eight was my review of V/H/S, the 2012 anthology. Toronto After Dark put on a special screening of that in the summer and man, was The Bloor packed that night. Even though the reception of V/H/S was lukewarm, there was some major anticipation for the film. I know I was pumped. I think I prefer Part 2 overall – mainly because of Timo's Safe Haven – but it was great experience, no less.

Number Seven on the list goes to a review of one of my favourite documentaries of recent years, Jake West's Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape.

As I commented in my post, the sheer amount of content in this set was ridiculous. In addition to the doc, you had separate features including trailers for every single title on the UK's infamous list. That's seventy-two trailers! I believe this set was initially an import, so for a time it may have been somewhat rare on this side of the pond – hence the almost 1700 views.

The sixth highest hits was for one of my first posts, coming only three days after THS's inception. It was a list of Ten Great Modern Horror Films that included the likes of The Descent, Session 9 and The Devil's Backbone. I had previously written about these movies on different review sites (now long gone) but at the onset, I wanted to pull together a best-of-the-best into one definitive list.

Number Five is a bit inexplicable, but the first of three Fantasia posts was for Patrick Laugier's follow-up to Martyrs, The Tall Man in 2012.

This film gets a lot of disinterest or disdain, mainly for not being Martyrs 2, but I remember Jessica Biel's performance really knocked my socks off. It was a good precursor to the great work she did more recently in The Sinner.

Coming in at over 2000 views at number four, is my post for Fantasia's world premiere in 2014 of Leo Gabriadze's film Cybernatural. This film was really wild, in that it didn't seem to care that it was infringing on so many copyrights it made my head spin. Google, YouTube and Facebook were all utilized in this micro-budget flick about a vengeful spirit killing teenagers off via Skype.

It was later released in an altered form as the re-branded Unfriended, which judging from the people who saw both was highly inferior. I imagine the high amount of my hits were due to the fact I would've been one of only a few hundred people that would've seen this first cut. I'll never forget that bat-shit scene where a girl is murdered within her Facebook feed, her animated sprite banging around inside her own desktop.

At number three, with over 2500 hits, is my most viewed Midnight Madness review for 2010's Insidious.

It's a franchise now, but seven years ago, the horror community was buzzing over this creeper from James Wan & Leigh Whannell. They had taken the festival circuit by storm six years earlier with Saw and everybody was curious to see whether they could repeat. I actually re-watched Insidious from my Ithaca hotel room last month and I was glad to see that it holds up. I believe the ending was changed from the premiere, but a lot of what these guys executed in this film have become Blumhouse touchstones.

Runner up, is my most viewed review was that of Steven R. Monroe's 2010 remake of I Spit On Your Grave.

An unpleasant film to be sure, but as a remake it's mostly successful because it fixed the problem I always had with the original. The focus of the 1978 movie was the rape, and not the revenge whereas Monroe took a more balanced approach. It made sitting through the nasty stuff a bit more palatable when subsequently the bad guys get it back just as good.

I Spit's reputation continues to live on (with two sequels to boot) so I guess it is not surprising almost 3000 people have looked in over the years.

Numero uno on the list with triple the hits of the closest competitor is my piece on James Herbert's Rat Trilogy that kicked off Rat Week.

I guess it makes sense, as I'm always prattling on about James Herbert. He has never been as popular over here as he should have been and I suppose people searching for info would naturally hit on my blog entries. My first Herbert post connected me with esteemed blogger Mermaid Heather and we've continued to keep in touch over the years as we creep by milestone after milestone.

I definitely plan on writing more about rodent-based horror in the future, but one thing at a time. For now, I'll just keep on keepin' on. Stay safe, kiddies.

Bloody Mary 2017

Last weekend The Carlton hosted the 2nd annual Bloody Mary Film Festival, which showcases the work of female genre filmmakers from across Canada. In addition to two horror features, the fest also screened two very strong shorts programmes.

I'm always happy to see Larica Pereira's Tik-Tik and Alicia Moses' Undress Me unspool on the big screen because I think they are some of the strongest genre CanCon out there right now.

Bloody Mary offered up a fine pair of double bills with Gigi Saul Geurreros' Bestia and Madre De Dios, and Erica Genereux Smith's A Brief History of the Apocalypse and A Woman on the Telephone.

In terms of first time watches, I was really taken by the character and relationship studies of Ariane Louis-Seize's Wild Skin and Kassandra Tomczyk's Sea Monster.

Kassandra Tomczyk in Sea Monster.

The highlight of the evening was meeting writer/director Morgana McKenzie who was there with her visually dynamic short/music video, Atlas World. I've been a fan of her work for years, so it was cool to finally put a face to the name.

Bloody Mary's future is very promising, in that even though it is a niche within a niche within a niche, the organizers were still able to find such fantastic content. I look forward to year number three!

Ithaca IS Fantastik.

I am back and recovered from my little jaunt last week to New York for the sixth edition of the Ithaca Fantastik Film Festival. I really cannot praise this fest enough. It is a well run, well curated festival that cares about film. Hugues Barbier and his team programmed some real gems this year, ranging from current fest faves like The Endless, Tragedy Girls and My Friend Dahmer to more dynamic and challenging titles like November and The Crescent.

This is just one day's programming alone!

There is a real love of the medium at this festival. These guys don't seem concerned whether their selections are playing to one or one hundred people, they just are happy to showcase the strongest voices in genre cinema. Again, as with my experience last year, IFFF's presentation was on point with another beautifully illustrated programme book.

This year's retrospective was Italiana Psichedeliko, a look at Roma's wacky and wild genre films from the sixties & seventies that included Mario Bava's Danger: Diabolik, Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga and the new 4K resto of Dario Argento's 1977 masterpiece Suspiria.

Towards the end of the fest, IFFF also put on screenings of the new restorations of Gary Sherman's Deathline and Bob Clark's Deathdream, with Sherman and Blue Underground's Bill Lustig in attendance.

Perhaps the most unique event was the screening of Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet with live music from local musician Anna Coogan. That was a real treat, as I'd never seen the film before, let alone accompanied by a haunting score.

IFFF doesn't just give festival goers great programming though, they also go out of their way to put on other fine events off-site. After Suspiria, there was a bar meet-up that included a live set by a band called MSZM and on Friday night, there was a horror trivia game that my compatriot & I absolutely crushed. We Canucks took home this sweet poster as a prize, along with bragging rights.

It was a truly amazing five days. I met a lot of new people who I'm sure I'll see again at subsequent festivals for many years to come. In amongst all the IFFF stuff, my travelling companions & I also got to walk some gorge, pay our respects to Rod Serling--

--and I even managed to snag this little treasure from a used bookstore. 

I really love this town. Ithaca is beautiful in the fall and I love its cheesy Dad-joke plays on words everywhere like the local barber shop “Ithacuts” and tourist paraphernalia marked--

Tomorrow, I'll sound off on my favourite film of the fest, followed on Thursday by a rundown of IFFF's varied short film programming. Till then, stay safe kiddies.

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Hey all! Apart from TIFF's Midnight line-up being announced it's been a pretty quiet week here, so it will be a quick one today. Have a good one!

Hexed.

This week, a film festival I program for in Hamilton, Ontario announced its new name. After much deliberation over the last few months, Fright Night Theatre has now become the Hexploitation Film Festival.

The name didn't wow me right away, but I've warmed to it. I like that it's a combination of Horror and Exploitation - our two biggest programming cornerstones - and the abbreviated moniker of HexFest rolls off the tongue easily.

The festival runs Mar 23-25th, 2018 and we have begun taking submissions for both shorts and features, so if you're a filmmaker or know one, send them here. Hope to see you next year.

122 Nightmares.

I came across this pretty awesome video from last year compiled by Diego Carrerra where he beautifully traces the history of horror from 1895 to 2016. Enjoy!

Fright Night Theatre 2017

I've been a little lazy this week I admit, but I will be back with reviews soon, as this weekend is the 2017 edition of Fright Night Theatre!

In edition to bringing Agnieszka Smoczynska's debut The Lure to the Hammer, there are also weird and wacky treats like Pool Party Massacre and Cat Sick Blues. Come on by to the Staircase Theatre if you happen to be in the area.

For more info on the fest, click here.

BITS 2016

The fifth edition of the Blood In The Snow Canadian Film Festival kicks off tonight. Be sure to check back over the weekend for some reviews of what went down. Or better yet, if you live in the GTA, why not come out to a screening or two. Find out about tickets here.

I'm pretty stoked this year, as we're rolling out the Bloody Bits DVD (featuring my 2013 short Lively) at the opening party tonight.

Have a safe one kiddies.

Back From The Empire State!

Hey all! My little trip to New York for the Ithaca Fantastik Film Festival was a total blast. Ithaca is a beautiful little town, teeming with culture and little curiosities. Hugues Barbier and the rest of the team at the fest made my compatriots and I feel so welcome. 

This may be a smaller fest than some, but boy do they have their presentation down pat with a gorgeous programme, and even some exclusive posters for their retro screenings. The amount of work that went into just their pre-show entertainment puts some other fests to shame.

The Cinemapolis in downtown Ithaca was a great little space. Run as a non-profit, it's a wonderfully cozy cinema that reminded me a little of Toronto's Carlton Cinema.

IFFF's programming was also on point. With festival faves like The Handmaiden and Train To Busan (opener and closer respectively), more challenging offerings in Alipato and I, Olga Hepnarova and a robust retrospective programme, there really was no genre stone left unturned. Even documentaries (24 x 36, S is for Stanley and Creature Designers - which I'll get to in another post) and animation (Nova Seed, Seoul Station) had their place here.

The film I'll start with today though, is Anna Biller's The Love Witch.

A witch named Elaine (Samantha Robinson) leaves a trail of dead bodies in her wake as she searches for true love. 

I had a lot of fun with this film. Right out of the gate, it was impossible to ignore how gorgeous this movie was. Shot on film, the colours really pop off the screen, much like the old sixties and seventies giallos for which The Love Witch has been compared. However, the beauty of the film was not all in the scenery as the lead actress Robinson was positively luminescent. I have no trouble comparing her to some of the greats like Edwige Fenech and Barbara Bouchet in the way they lit up the screen. Robinson was able to play both femme fatale and naive vixen with equal conviction.

Samantha Robinson is The Love Witch.

The film is by design a comedy that includes both intentional and (perhaps) unintentional laughs in that Biller seems selective in the things she chooses to play straight. I liked how the subject matter toyed with the expectations and preconceived notions of love. It's really quite absurd when you shine a light on the L word as a concept, don't you think?

Gian Keys & Robinson in The Love Witch.

I think the only real negative was that it's a lot longer than it needed to be. It sounds crazy to say, but at two hours, a full quarter of its running time could have been trimmed. At ninety minutes, The Love Witch would have been a much more tight and tidy affair. With so much to look at though, I can't really complain much.

I took in much more while in Ithaca, so come back tomorrow for more highlights.

One More Road Trip!

Today, I'm heading south of the border with a couple of pals to check out the fifth edition of the...

...which kicks off this evening with a screening of Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden. I'll be back after the weekend with some updates, so until then... keep the lights on for me!

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Hey all. I hope you have recovered from your Halloween hangovers! This week's Messenger post all about showcasing women in horror. Why? Because of two things that happened this weekend, the first being the inaugural edition of the Bloody Mary Film Festival in Toronto.

The brainchild of Laura Di Girolamo & Krista Dzialoszynski, the fest seeks to highlight Canadian women filmmakers. Over the two-day fest, they screened April Mullen's 88 and Tricia Lee's Silent Retreat, as well as a slew of great short films, including Gigi Saul Guerrero's festival juggernaut El Gigante, Ellie the newest from teenage wunderkind Morgana McKenzie and local slasher Do You See What I See? co-directed by a colleague of mine, Serena Whitney. Here's a taste of what went down.

Secondly, I wanted to shine a light on this awesome series of drawings featuring women in horror movies that I found on Facebook last night.

Now, there are some obvious omissions from this series of thirty, but I like to think the artist was holding some back for a series two. Speaking of which, if anyone knows who the artist is, please let me know. I can't for the life of me make out the signature, but it appears to be “Ale” something. Gemez? Emmez? Despite my best efforts, my Google searches came up empty. I'd sure love to know who came up with these because they are super great!

Lastly, to all my followers down south, I wanted to let you know you also have a third option this Tuesday.

I trust you'll all do the right thing. I'm coming down to join you guys the day after the election for Ithaca Fantastik and would appreciate it if your entire country wasn't on fire. Kthxbye.