Frightfest 2009: Day 2

'The Horseman': A father tracks down the makers and distributors of a pornographic video featuring his daughter who has died from a drug overdose. This provides a series of violent confrontations with much letting of blood and a lead character who seems to take an almost unbelievable amount of punishment as he works his way through those he holds responsible.
A new feature this year was the running of a second screen with a number of films each being shown twice. 'I Sell The Dead'
was bodysnatcher story with Ron Pearlman in a major role and Dominic Monaghan as one of the two main bodysnatchers.
The only problem I had was sitting in the front row of a small cinema and thus being unable to focus properly - which in turn
induced sleepiness - so I did not see too much of the film. What i did see moved along at a brisk pace and was more than a little amusing.
This meant missing the documentary 'Beware the Moon' about the making of 'An American Werewolf in London' but this was
followed by a restored high definition print of the film, both being introduced by John Landis who is definitely one of the more articulate film directors of recent years. Seeing the latter again after quite a number of years was an enjoyable experience and the enhanced print added a lot.
Federico Zampaglione is a highly thought-of Italian rock musician and 'Shadow' is his debut film. An American soldier returning from Iraq is on a mountain biking tour following a classic trail in the Italian foothills of the Alps. An incident at a
local inn leads to him and a girl he befriends being chased by two hunters until all four are captured in an isolated laboratory
by a cadaverous scientist (Nuot Arquint plays this all but soundlessly). A number of gruesome 'experiments' leads to a
shocking finale.
'The Horde' starts with a funeral which seems to be of a gang member whose relationship with a woman who turns up at the
ceremony was somehow disturbing. It then turns out that this is actually a select undercover police group and that she is
blamed for his death. They unofficially set out to get revenge on the drug lord who killed their colleague but their raid goes
wrong and they are about to be killed when something external creates hordes of raging zombies so they reluctantly team up
in order to survive - the late start of the film meant we left before the end though only four of them were then left including the woman and the drug lord. I gather they escape only for her to kill him as she had meant to do from the start.
'Macabre' was the really late film from Singapore with lots of blood and anything but a coherent plot.