Happy Halloween!!!

Stay safe kiddies!

THS Halloween Clip Show!

Hey all. I love those videos where peeps stitch together old Halloween clips so I decided to make my own, mostly from stuff in my VHS archives. Enjoy!

Short of the Week #77: The Resurrections of Clarence Neveldine.

This week's short is another recently posted short film from my buddy Mike Pereira. The Resurrections of Clarence Neveldine stars the lovely and talented Raven Cousens and is my fave of Mikey's works because it involves a horror trope near and dear to my heart - the Final Girl. Enjoy.

Short After Dark 2019

Despite missing both shorts programmes at Toronto After Dark this year due to my Ottawa trip, I was able to still catch them via screeners. Here are my faves from this year's selections made by programmer-at-large Shannon Hanmer.

On the international side of things, it was a particularly strong year with work that ranged from stunning animation (Carlos Baena's La Noria) to the blackest of comedies (Mia'kate Russsel's Maggie May), but for me there were two outliers;

Jason Gudasz's Place was a delightful exercise in absurdity. A brisk ten minutes, I immediately earmarked it to perhaps pair up with something we're playing at SFFF next month.

I also really dug Marc Martínez Jordán's Your Last Day On Earth, which possessed all the colourful quirkiness we've come to expect from the Spaniards along with a dash of Ray Bradbury.

TAD's commitment to Canadian content continued this year and I was pretty impressed by the visual polish on several of these, namely Kat Webber's Barbara-Anne and Neil Cavalier's Eilid & Damh.

It was also a good year for economy, as there were a pair of shorts that nailed it in under five minutes, these being Denman Hatch's Make Me A Sandwich and David Hamelin & Neil MacDonald's The Changeling.

On the other hand, equally as noteworthy was Geoffrey Uloth's Moment. Clocking in at twenty-two minutes, it remarkably kept me engaged, walking a tightrope between the startling and saccharine.

If I were to pick a top short, it would likely be Guillermo de la Rosa's A Noise That Carries. This one has atmosphere in spades and relied heavily on sound design and a supremely unsettling performance by Lee Lawson.

So that's another TAD in the bag. This was the sadly the first year in fourteen that I wasn't able to attend a single screening - a huge bummer - but I guess it shows how busy I've been. That's the Halloween season for you!

Up All Night Fest 2!

As I mentioned before I took a jaunt to Ottawa last weekend to catch a movie marathon. Up All Night Fest is the brainchild of Hamilton Trash Cinema founder Ben Ruffett and with the kindly gifted use of the historic Mayfair Theatre, he screened eight crusty VHS of ill repute.

Though my memories may be part fact, part fever dream - I got three hours sleep over a fourty-eight hour period - here is what I can recall of what went down.

The night began with this shot-on-video gorefest. I reviewed this, rather unfavourably, back in 2012, but it's quite staggering how much more entertaining a bad movie can be with an audience. I mean, that moment when the killer interrupted his necrophilic activities to belt out a Lucas-sized NOOOOO had the audience in stitches. It really is the little things. And surprisingly 555 wasn't the night's cheapest representation of a police station office. That would come later...

Having been initiated just a few months ago, I was looking forward to watching - nay, experiencing Things again. What can I really say about it? It must be seen to be believed. And it has BLOOOOOD... ... ... AND GUTS!

Now I moved into uncharted territory with this SOV flick from 1986. As you would expect, it shared a similar storyline with 555, but wasn't nearly as sleazy or gratuitous. It also featured Larry Thomas aka The Soup Nazi as a creepy photographer. I do have to mention the soundtrack and the hilariously long driving scenes that fondly reminded me of Global's Night Ride. Several other attendees didn't find it as soothing as I believe we lost an entire row during one of those sequences. Too bad because I thought this movie ended pretty strong, by B-movie standards anyway.

I should mention that there were ten to fifteen minute intermissions between flicks, so we could walk around and/or pee. They also opened up concessions during these times too, as the lone theater employee was also the projectionist.d

It was now past three a.m. and I wager I may have been going in and out because I don't remember a lot of this one. It was less than an hour, but pretty amusing in a cheesy kind of way. It was made by the same Texas collective responsible for the ultra-low budget slasher Carnage Hall that Ben screened in Hamilton a few years ago. Imagine Creepshow if was just the “Father's Day” segment and Nathan's corpse continued killing people while spewing puns. I found the gore to be surprisingly well done, as well.

Now we came to the real endurance test of the evening/morning. This movie was atrocious, yet one I would happily recommend to fellow bad movie enthusiasts. It's perhaps the most perfectly imperfect movie ever made, next to Things of course. Zombies was largely a one-man-show, as creator Jess Turner let us know in a dozen individualized credits at the end of the movie. But he also gave us the gift of putting himself in his own movie, first as a zombie and then as a police captain with the most hilariously fake beard you have ever seen, presumably so we wouldn't confuse him with his zombie self.

Captain Stefans can see into your soul.

It takes real talent to make an eighty-five minute movie feel like three hours. My buddy Justin described Zombies best when he said, “This movie is told in triplicate. First we see the zombie attack, then we see a new report about the attack and then we see Captain Stefans talk at length to his two underlings about the attack.” Then rinse and repeat. Add some whistling (which I swear was lifted from Just Before Dawn) and wind noises and Bob's your uncle. As you can see, it's the REALLY BAD movies you remember the most. My brain was so fried I couldn't even fall asleep to this one.

I think this was a legitimately good movie. I say I think because I was really battling sleep during this one. I'm pretty sure I nodded off during a sizable chunk of the middle. Though it doesn't sound very exciting, the first half of this movie is John Hawkes standing in line to get into a haunted house, but it's well shot and the production design is pretty great. It's definitely one I intend to revisit at some point.

This was a twenty-minute short that was as advertised. It has lots of ladies being eaten whole by a large tree. I bet this movie was a hit with the vore crowd.

This Don Dohler effort was the final film of the night and a fitting capper. It had a few bloody good twists, including when the movie one-eighties from Last House to Evil Dead. I was glad to see this one also had that dime-store fog aesthetic that I've come to expect from Dohler. Blood Massacre also featured George Stover doing his best Michael Moriarty impression.

So that was it. We started with a hundred or so peeps and were left with about twenty brave souls by the time the sun came up. Considering it was only ten bucks, I imagine most just showed up for the first two and took it from there. I think we incurred the most casualties during the Mind Ripper to Zombies Invade stretch. Oh, I forgot to mention that Ben and fellow VHS seller Brett Jansen were on hand selling tapes. I picked up these beauties.

It was a success and one I'd be glad to repeat. VHS 4EVA!

Short of the Week #76: Zandavi Lives

This week short is the latest from my pal Mike Pereira, Zandavi Lives. Enjoy!

This was the third short to feature his recurring monster hunter Nash Caruthers, played by Timothy Paul McCarthy. For more, click here.

Nineties Delirium!

Hey all. Just a quick post to let you know that Delirium #21 comes out today.

This issue is a love letter to 90's horror and was guest-edited by filmmaker Ama Lea. Lea is no stranger to the magazine, having served as art director and contributor on many of Delirium's past issues. But if that isn't enough for you, look out for my piece about the early days of Full Moon Video. Find out how you can get the new issue, by going here.

Ed - Funny story. So it looks like my article got bumped for ad space. I know, right? Look for it in issue #22 I guess?