Frightfest 2012 Day 5: 27.8.2012

The Soska sisters earlier film, 'Dead Hooker in a Trunk', was such that we had not intended to see their new one, 'American Mary'but decided to do so as we had seen one of the other two and the third did not appeal. A medical student is broke and not too happy with her studies. Played deadpan almost by Katharine Isabelle, she becomes involved in the world of illegal body modification which pays well. After a party at which her medical tutor rapes her (as seemingly do others there, she takes revenge on him by removing limbs while keeping him alive while making money illegally. All, of course, eventually goes wrong. Could have been better but not bad. After directed by Ryan Smith is creepy. A man and a woman survive a bus crash to find themselves trapped in their home town and completely alone while a dark fog moves closer and closer. In their efforts to escape they fall in love and finally succeed though it may not have been the terrifying reality it seemed to be at the end. Well done tosh. Chained directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch has Vincent D'Onofrio as a mad taxi driver who kidnaps a mother and her son then kills the mother and enslaves the boy who is made to clean up after further killings. He is taught from books about anatomy and other things and, in his late teens, offered freedom if he, too, becomes a killer. He is unable to complete this but does killy his captor and returns to the family home after finding lettersand cancelled cheques from his father who has remarried. The end is a bloody one. Probably well done but distasteful. The Possession directed by Ole Bornedal tells of the possession of a young girl by a dybbuk which is in an antique box purchased at a yard sale. Eventually a young rabbi does perform the relevant ceremony and the film ends with the cliche of a cliffhanger. Solid and unmemorable. Tower Block directed by James Nunn and Ronnie Thompson was the closing film having its world premiere here. Now on general release it tells of the remaining occupants of a tower block due for demolition who find the lifts booby-trapped and exits and entrances blocked while they are sitting ducks for some shooting at them from a nearby block. Their numbers are gradually whittled down to the redoubtable heroine and two others who are able to overpower the shooter who has entered the building to complete the slaughter. Quite good.

Frightfest 2012 Day 4: 26.8.2012

We Are The Night directed by Dennis Gansel is a stylish vampire film set in Berlin. There are three of them, Louise who is searching for her last love, Charlotte who misses the daughter she last saw in 1923 while the third just wants to have sex and fun. Lena, a pickpocket on the run is seen by Louise who is convinced she is the one she is seeking. Although joining the undead, Lena falls in love with a policeman who is chasing them and from this point on, the vampires are in trouble. True love does finally prevail, however. A delightful romp of a film. The Inside directed by Eoin Macken had its world premiere and possibly its only ever showing. A group of girls go to celebrate the birthday of one of them in a disused warehouse (WHY?) where they are terrorised and abused by a group of vagrants before falling prey to something apparently supernatural. This is all seen on a camcorder picked up by a young man who goes to investigate only to be killed by the one survivor before sheescapes into the Dublin streets to be hit and killed by a car. This film made 'Nightbreed' (see Day 2) look a masterpiece. Alas we were stuck in the middle of the back row with one of the cast next to me so politeness meant we suffered! Sleep Tight directed by Jaume Balaguero unfortunately lived up to its title as I slept through a fair amount though through no fault of the film. What I did see was well done in this tale of a janitor who obsesses on a new occupant to the extent of raping her in her sleep though he is eventually found out and dimissed. Berberian Sound Studio directed by Peter Strickland has Toby Jones working as a sound engineer on an Italian horror film though his background is nature documentaries. No gory or scary scenes are viewed and the whole film develops from his reaction to what he sees as he produces the sound effects. Something of a disappointment

Frightfest 2012 Day 3: 25.8.2012

Eurocrime! directed by Mile Malloy is an interesting documentary exposition of the crime movies that provided a violent follow-up to the Spaghetti Western genre in Italy. With a number of interviews from the leading actors such as Franca Nero and Henry Silva with extracts from many of the films and intelligent use of posters, this was a fascinating slice of relatively unknown film history. Annoyingly put together at times, this did not detract from the light shed on the processes used which were much different from those used elsewhere. Kill Zombie directed by Martin Smits and Erwin van den Eshof was a delight. Four friends and a female cop emerge from the police station to discover the city has been ravaged by a zombie outbreak caused by a Russian space station crashing into the top of atall building where one of the works. Receiving a cry for help from the sexy secretary he was expecting to bed, they set off the rescue her, their journey across the city being fill with fights with the undead. Reaching the building they climb up to rescue the girl to find she had called everyone she knew and is now rewarding the first to reach her as only she knows how. Further mayhem follows with the female cop forming an attachment for the now disillusioned friend. Great fun, well done. Paura directed by the Manetti Brothers is a 3D shocker. A garage mechanic overheards a very wealthy customer telling the garage owner that he will be away for the weekend so he decides to break in with his mates to have a party there. They do and make merry with the place while waiting for the evening but... the house owner's car breaks down and he returns! The three hide and one discovers a naked girl chained up in the cellar while doing so but gets away with one of his friends but they decide they must go back for the other one. Eventually, the elderly owner kills two of them while the third releases the girl but is himself captured. She then kills her captor and finally her would be rescuer before running off naked down the road as the friends of the dead men arrive to party. Gory and reasonably done. Another Manetti brothers film followed, The Arrival of Wang. A girl interpreting Chinese films is hired for a one day assignment and is taken blindfolded to a hidden location where she starts to interpret the interrogation of Mr Wang though she cannot see him. She finds the methods used objectionable and refuses to continue without seeing Mr Wang who turns out to be an alien who eventually manipulates her into setting him free for her to discover that she has unwittingly aided the invasion of earth. Quite jolly in a weird sort of way. The final film we saw was also Italian, Tulpa directd by Federico Zampaglione. A driven female professional relaxes at Club Tulpa where the philosophy of freedom through promiscuity is practised. Those with whom she couples start getting murdered and, fearful that she would jeopardise her day job, she tries to find the killer herself. The film suffered from what was either inane dubbing or a poor script which tickled the audience's fancy; this spoilt an interesting film with an unexpected but credible denouement. I would like to see this undubbed.

Frightfest 2012 Day 2: 24.8.2012

Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut opened the day with a work in progress directed by Russell Cherrington. Claiming to present Clive Barker's true vision rather than the limited cinematic release, this effort combines two European work prints with the DVD and the theatrical release. Unfortunately, what was shown was a mix of almost unwatchable footage which would have disgraced a fourth generation video copy mixed with some much clearer footage, the whole providing a near unintelligible mess. What struck me was that Barker's imagination was as much submerged by the flat acting as by the unwatchable interpolations. I thought there were computer programmes to clean up tape footage. The Dario Argento interview which followed was hampered by Argento's limited English and would have been better served by using a translator - surely not too difficult a procedure to arrange. He did come across as a man of some wit. Hidden in the Woods directed by Patricio Valladares tells of two sisters raised in an isolated cottage in the woods who are abused by their drug dealing father. When he is reported, he chainsaws to death the two police sent to arrest him but is caught and jailed before he can tell his drug lord boss where he has hidden a recent shipment. The drug lord sends his men to find this but the two girls and their mentally handicapped brother kill them and then the drug lord before the final scene of the three of them gambolling in the sea. Unredeeming splatter. V/H/S followed which is a six director found footage compilation. This demonstrates beyond doubt that found footage has had its day (possibly except in thrillers using CCTV footage sparingly to advance the plot) and is, by and large, an excuse for a lack of both talent and imagination. The outcome was that we then left without seeing the UK premiere of [Rec}3 Genesis which was probably a better film.

Frightfest 2012 Day 1: 23.8.2012

The Seasoning House directed by Paul Hyatt was the opening film. Set mainly in a house used as a brothel to which girls captured by soldiers in an unnamed Balkan conflict (presumably Serbia/Bosnia) are brutalised and used sexually, often after their parents have been killed in front of them. The young female lead is a deaf-mute who has been orphaned and is made to care for the prostituted girls, cleaning them and keeping them drugged. Unknown to her captors, she moves around the spaces between wals and floors to comfort some of the girls when she can. While the man in charge is as brutal as anyone, he seems to have a soft spot for her but when the man who killed her family arrive, she uses her knowledge of the secret passages to exact revenge before escaping - but she ends up at the home of the doctor who has been used to treat the girls in the brothel. A reasonable first effort. Cockneys vs Zombies directed by Matthias Hoene was the second film and a complete change from the first. Two brothers decide to rob a bank to save the care home where their grandfather lives at the same time that an underground vault is opened on a nearby building site releasing the undead entombed there for centuries. The delight of the film is seeing elderly actors like Honor Blackman, Dudley Sutton and richard Briers deal with the zombies when the care home is attacked. Alan Ford plays the grandfather somewhat reprising his role in recent British gangster films not that I recognised or had heard of him. While there is ample gore, the tone is light with the highlight surely being Richard Briers using a zimmer frame trying successfully to outpace slowly an attacking zombie. All ends happily with them riding upstream to safetly.

Lukyanenko, Sergei: The Night Watch

A few years ago, the film of this book was shown at Frightfest and it proved to be a well-made and entertaining addition to the world of fantasy films. I have had the book for some time but only now have I read it. My memory of the film has dimmed but the book is far superior. It tells the story of Anton, a young Other and Night Watch agent, in three connected but separate episodes. Set in Moscow, there is no great effort made to create a cityscape though the city's geography is presumably correctly depicted. The three episodes provide examples of the way the Day Watch and Night Watch clash and the difference between them. The unreal aspects of what is effectively a parallel world entwined with the 'normal' one are shown with skill and are not overblown, there being a high degree of naturalness about most of them. The book reads like an adult Harry Potter story a lot of the time, this being an indication of the high standard of the writing and plotting. There are three sequels which I shall read over the coming months rather than immediately as it will be better to savour them slowly rather than rushing through them.

Pryce, Malcolm: The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

In the splendid alternative Wales which has been at war with Patagonia, where Louie Knight leads a Marlowe-like existence as Aberystwyth's only private eye, strange events have occured. As if the author's earlier imaginings were not enough, we now have extra-terrestrial beings and others looking for a dead man. Well up to the witty and believable standard of the previous books, this one is solidly based even though the overall premise may not be. The exposition of the plot resonates with reminders of the novels of Chandler and MacDonald without being overly strained and there is a definite hint of world-weariness appearing as the book progresses. It will be better to read the earlier books first though this one does stand on its own. Well up to the very high standard Malcolm Pryce has set himself