In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.
I'm now officially locked and loaded for my yearly jaunt to Montreal for the Fantasia Film Festival. There is always no shortage of great films to see - the initial lineup of titles was announced a few days ago - but this year, there is something extra special on display.
Artwork by Gary Pullin.
According to the press release, Rue Morgue head honcho Dave Alexander has corralled several Canadian filmmakers to contribute to a gallery of faux movie posters. Just a few of those on board are Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun), Bruce McDonald (Pontypool), George Mihalka (My Bloody Valentine), Lee Demarbre (Smash Cut) and Astron-6 (Father's Day). I can't wait to see what imaginary nightmares these guys have cooked up.
Tickets for the 4th annual Shinsedai Cinema Festival go on sale today. Showcasing the best in fringe and independent Japanese cinema, the festival runs July 12th to the 15th. Check out the sizzle reel below.
I'll surely be checking out a few of these. For ticket info, click here.
A newlywed couple staying at a resort hotel meet a
mysterious woman named Countess Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) and strike up an
increasingly bizarre relationship with her.
This film is best described as a beautiful looking film with
beautiful women. The cinematography is
top notch, and the central location, Belgium's Grand Hôtel des Thermes, seems like it was made to be immortalized on film.
I also love the way colour is used in this film. Except for
the first scene in the train car, which is bathed in blue, the entire film is
accented with red, much like Mario Bava's slasher Blood and Black Lace.
I found Daughters of Darkness to be fairly unique in its
handling of vampire mythos, as well.
The filmmakers ditch the fangs and crosses
employed by most of their contemporaries and go for a more suggestive feel. The film is still soaked in erotica, but is
miles from the vampire films being produced by the likes of Hammer in the sixties
and seventies.
Delphine Seyrig (right) with John Karlen & Danielle Oiumet
Though I found some of the character's behaviour puzzling during much
of the film – I had to through my hands up at the scene where Stefan
(John Karlen) viciously beats his wife Valerie (Danielle
Oiumet) – the ambiguous nature of the hold the Countess had on the people around her made it easier to swallow. This was mainly due to Seyrig’s spectacular
performance here. It is said that she
modelled her performance on silent movie star Marlene Dietrich, which makes
sense, as it her presence onscreen that is just as commanding as anything that
comes out of her mouth. Ouimet and
Andrea Rau are also extremely striking in this film.
Danielle Ouimet as Valerie
I can quite easily say that there is no shortage of
things to look at in this film and that it is, I assume, why Daughters of Darkness made it onto the Time Out list. It is a visual feast, but in my opinion, its narrative stumbles often, especially in its rushed third
act.
Off to see the ol' patriarch shortly, so I'll get right to it this morning.
A Return To Midian.
There was fantastic news out of Los Angeles recently, as the New Beverley played hosted to the restored director's cut of Nightbreed that the fans have been craving for years. With director Clive Barker in attendance, along with the film's lead Craig Sheffer and some of the production team, this was one hot ticket indeed. Barker plans to not only tour this "Cabal cut" around the US (and fingers crossed, Canada) but also eventually release the film on Blu-ray. Here's where we come in though. In order for rights holder Morgan Creek to put money into a release, they must be first convinced by the movie's fan base that it is a worthwhile venture. You can Occupy Midian, by going here. Below, courtesy of Fangoria, is some footage of the event . Barker still doesn't look one-hundred percent, but it is very good to see him out and about after his recent health woes.
Summer After Dark.
A while back, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival announced it would be playing four films as part of a summer film series, ahead of its usual string of nine nights in October. Well, earlier this week, the four films were announced.
On Wednesday June 27th, The Bloor will be host to the cuban zombie tale Juan of the Dead and Canadian haunted house flick The Pact. Then a few weeks later, on July 11, Joseph Kahn's Detention followed by the super-anticipated anthology film V/H/S.
I have seen Detention and Juan of the Dead already, so this event to me is all about V/H/S. Speaking of which, the film just released a sweet poster a few days ago.
For more information on getting tickets, check out the festival website, by going here.
A 2D Nightmare.
Lastly, a friend recently turned me on this indie video game called The Lone Survivor. It is a cool retro-2D survival horror game which reminds me a lot of Silent Hill. Here's a peek.
You can currently play the demo on Congregate, or buy the entire game for $10 at their website. I've played it and simply put, it is awesome.
I took in The Night Shift, a mammoth Worldwide Short Film Festival programme of genre short films that
screened at The Bloor last Saturday. It
was three ninety-minute sections, mercifully broken up by small
intermissions. Oh, did I mention that
this began just before midnight?
Yes. Night Shift indeed. Here’s a rundown of the films I enjoyed the
most.
The short I was most looking forward to was former
Rue Morgue magazine editor Jovanka Vuckovic’s debut film The Captured Bird and it did not disappoint. With stunning visuals and a fantastically
grotesque creature designed by Paul Jones, Vuckovic shows great potential as a filmmaker.
Skyler Wexler in The Captured Bird
One of the longer offerings was the Swedish zombie tale The Unliving, which I really dug. It immediately immersed me in its universe by showing blue collar workers of an undead apocalypse functioning day to day. There was so much material squeezed into its twenty-eight minute running time, that I really kind of wished it was a feature.
It's a living.
I was very happy to see a former ABC’s of Death contest
entry show up onscreen. Adjust
Tracking aka T is for Tracking was one of the best offerings of the hundred-and-seventy-one and am glad to see it living on. Brimming with VHS era nostalgia, it should be no
surprise to THS readers that I am a big fan of it.
Speaking of contest entries, there were also two solid
Canadian films representing Bloodshots, the 48-hour-film challenge out of
BC. The first was Requiem For a C.H.U.D, which had remarkable creature effects and several great gore beats –
for a normal production, let alone a timed one! – and the second was Children Of The Dark which was kind of like The Road with zombies.
Requiem for a C.H.U.D.
Nicolas Bacon’s film Odette was also very entertaining. I found the dialogue to be crisp and the
ending is that which I’m sure everyone watching is hoping for.
But, nothing, NOTHING was better than Bobby Yeah. I’d been hearing about this short for
sometime now, but I wasn’t prepared for just how bizarre, how batshit loco it was. The amount
of imagination on display from UK animator Robert Morgan was astounding, as was the amount of expression he got from his puppeted subjects.
Every subsequent creature that popped up had me reeling with just how
one would even conceive such things.
Morgan clearly functions on another level than the rest of us.
In fact, there were many strong animated shorts in the
programme, including the darkly beautiful Black Doll, Ülo Pikkov’s Body Memory and Moxie from the creator of a past favourite of mine, Black Dog’s Progress.
All of these shorts made the event a successful endeavour, but overall, four-and-a-half hours in the dead of night was a bit much I’d say. It was an admirable experiment, but I wager a really solid two-hour programme would be a better way to go. Well, that and not asking everyone to “get up and dance” at 3 a.m.
Last weekend was the inaugural Niagara
Falls Comic Con, and more specifically MacabreCon!
It was a really good time with a
fantastic turnout. The convention centre floor was a fairly large
space with equal areas given to comic book artists, celebrities and
vendor booths.
Take a load off!
Predababe!
There was also a gaming booth, which was demoing, among other things, the new zombie game Lollipop Chainsaw.
There was also an added element to this
event, that I made sure to take advantage of.
Take that, Fan Expo!
I walked around the show floor, bought the newest Walking Dead trade from Mostly Comics and a DVD previously unknown to me from Suspect.
However, my main reason for attending
was the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Reunion, which included a screening and a Q&A
with three members of the original cast, Gunnar Hansen (Leatherface)
Marilyn Burns (Sally) and Teri McMinn (Pam). The post-screening
discussion was really fun and all three seemed in very good spirits.
Teri McMinn, Gunnar Hansen & Marilyn Burns.
It started out with them answering
questions about if they think there are any modern ‘Texas
Chainsaws’ to which the answer was a resounding no. Gunnar then
used the differences between the 1974 and 2003 versions of the film
to prove his point.
“Everytime they (the remake) have a
chance to make it really disturbing, they chicken out and splatter
blood on you. The great example being when the girl finds her
boyfriend hanging on the meat hook with his leg cut off, with his
toes touching the keyboard. They could have made that scene
excruciating because they are deathly afraid that Leatherface is
going to show up. What if that scene had been five, six, seven
minutes long? And she's struggling to get him off the hook. His toes
are touching the piano, so they're making noise, I mean the audience
would have been horrified because any second he's going to come back.
It would have been like the dinner scene (in the original). But
instead, she gives up immediately and guts him. Literally, it's a
bloodbath. Just a big bucket of blood splashes all over her. And I
thought, do they really think this is psychological horror? They
chickened out.”
It is pretty clear to anyone who has
seen the film that it was a gruelling experience to shoot,
so they all recounted which scenes were the most difficult. For
Hansen & Burns, it was the dinner scene, which was filmed over a
marathon shooting day of twenty-six hours in hundred plus degree
heat. For McMinn, it was her death scene which had to be shot over
and over because of director Tobe Hooper’s fondness for multiple
takes. It was McMinn who I found to be the most charming, especially
while relating her apprehension about a certain iconic camera setup.
“At that time wearing red short
shorts and your cheeks showing was a very risqué thing to do. I was
very worried because I came out to the set that morning and I see
Daniel (the cinematographer) hunched over the camera under the swing.
I knew what was supposed to happen and that I was going to have to
sit on that swing. I'd never taken Tobe on about anything so far,
but I went over and said 'come on, what's the camera doing there?'
So Toby and I argued for about ten minutes and after I stood my
ground, he just said, 'Oh Teri, dammit, I'll just shoot around it.'
So I thought, great, my cheeks won't be in the shot. Then of course,
when I went to the screening for the first time to see it, I was so
embarrassed to have, in Cinemascope and Technicolor, my cheeks going,
ba-badum-bada-badum across the screen.”
The trio also confirmed that Paul
Partain (Franklin) was just as miserable offscreen as he was on.
Burns made a point to mention that they had made amends at a recent convention though. It turns out that he'd been method
acting and deliberately staying in character the entire
length of the shoot.
Someone asked about the upcoming Texas Chainsaw 3D project, which Hansen and Burns are both in. They were forbidden
to say much, but did reveal that the movie picks up right after where
the original left off. Hansen added that he saw some footage while
doing some recent ADR and was quite impressed.
I had a great time at this show and I'm sure the event
was enough of a success to warrant future iterations. Congrats to those
involved for pulling it off. For me, it was back on the road and
straight up the QEW to the WWSFF event Night Shift.
Here below is the latest episode of the Laser Blast podcast. This time around, we watched the 1967 Audrey Hepburn film Wait Until Dark and nineties thriller Mute Witness. The usual tangential shenanigans ensue.
