Frightfest 2016

This year's Frightfest was moved to Shepherd's Bush as the Vue Leicester Square is being refurbished.   This was one of the reasons we did not buy a Festival Pass or even a Day Pass
but only three single tickets since the journey time there and back was almost doubled.   Our
choices from the programme turned out to be anything but the best.   In reverse order of quality
the final film was 'The Director's Cut' which was described as 'The cleverest, funniest, sharpest
most Meta horror ever'.   Penn Jillette and Missy Pyle starred in this abortion which was neither
clever, funny or sharp.   The amateurish direction by Adam Ritkin was matched by the appalling
acting from which none emerge with any credit.    If the film was meant to be a satire, it failed
as there was no sharpness and no target unless it was the ever-growing number of 'reality shows'
on TV.   A complete waste of our time and energy with the only plus being the light meal we had
at Search's at St Pancras on the way home!   The middle film both in time and quality was 'The
Master Cleanse' to which we were attracted by the cast - Angelica Houston, Oliver Platt and Anna
Friel with Johnny Galecki who is in 'The Big Bang Theory' a TV serial.   The plot is that the latter
two and others are selected to go on a spiritual retreat run by Platt and Houston in order to bring
vitality back into their lives.   Needless to say, things do not work out as they should but the slow
development fails to create any tension and I would think that none of the leads will want to be
reminded of their part in this film - Houston and Platt in particular mailed in their performances.
The first film seen 'They Call Me Jeeg Robot' was far and away the best of the three and may well
have been the best film of the whole weekend.   A small time crook, Claudio Sanataria, is being
chased as the film opens but escapes by hiding in a contaminated River Tiber.   This gives him
superpowers, not at first obvious, as he continues his life of petty crime while becoming involved with the daughter, Ilenia Pastorali, of a fellow crook who is killed in a drug deal gone sour.   The
girl is several slices short of a loaf of bread (possibly ongoing trauma after her mother's death) and
she relates everything to a Japanese TV anime 'Jeeg Robot' which has her mentally transforming
those around her into characters from the series.   The hero's aim is to deal with the psychotic crook
responsible for the drug deal failure with the latter also acquiring superpowers in the same way.   He
intends to cause chaos in Rome by exploding a bomb at a major soccer match but is thwarted by our
hero who ends the film standing guard over the Eternal City.   Oh, if only the other two had been
half as good as this one.