Frightfest 2018

Having failed to make my comments immediately after the Frightfest weekend, I have been less than
speedy in dealing with this.   We saw only fewer films this year apart from the year at Shepherd's Bush.
24 August Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich.   A nazi-style puppet is found in his dead brother's
room by a man who has returned home after a divorce.   He decides to sell it at a small town convention which is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the infamous Andre Toulon murders.   His
boss and the girl next door go with him to the convention where the spirit of Toulon somehow brings
both his and other puppets to life.   The puppets embark on a killing spree which leads to lots of
bloody mayhem until the lead actor works out that he has to deal with Toulon's malevolent spirit.
Enjoyable hokum with no real merit.
24 August The Most Assassinated Woman In The World.   Paula Maxa was the headline star of the
Grand Guignol Theatre in Paris during the 1930s.   She was graphically murdered more than 10,000
times in over 60 different ways.   This fictional tale based on her life there is atmospheric and
evocative.   It combines real life murder and its investigation with the stage happenings in a very
real way.   The acting is sound and the cinematography excellent.
25 August The LaPlace's Demon refers to a mathematical theory that if someone knew the precise
loaction and movement of every atom in the universe they could predict everything down to the
smallest detail.   A group of scientists are invited to a remote island where the host who only appears
on video asks them to prove the theory.   He tells them they have become a part of his experiment
which requires them to work it out before being killed - which they are, one by one.   A very moody
Italian drama which failed to hold my attention.
26 August The Man Who Killed Hitler and then Bigfoot.   Sam Elliot plays an unsung hero who
decades before, assassinated Hitler in an undercover operation that was so secret that no records
of it exist.   Decades later he is approached to find and kill Bigfoot which is the carrier of a deadly
disease that could wipe out mankind.   After a leisurely build-up showing his regular quiet life, he
agrees and does hunt Bigfoot down.   Elliot is, as ever, first-rate and the elegiac tone of the film
makes for anything but a scaring film: it is almost a gentle evocation of life in the Canadian wilds.
We might have seen more films but a determination not to overload the weekend coupled with the
necessary omission of some possibles because of their timing, e.g. `Gaspar Noe's 'Climax' which
closed the weekend, kept our viewing to these four.   The last was by far the best of the four, the
first the worst though an enjoyable worst, the second the most stylish and the third possibly one
that I am under-rating.

Black, Benjamin: The Black-Eyed Blonde

Written by John Banville under the pen-name he uses for thrillers, this is one of several attempts to
update Raymond Chandler by continuing the Philip Marlowe story.   Marlowe has a new client, the
blonde of the title, who wants him to find her former lover, Nico Peterson.   This is just the start as
he tangles with hoodlums and gang bosses as well as bedding his client.   An old friend who was
obliged to relocate in Mexico to escape prosecution is also involved.   After being beaten up more
than once ( this does raise the question of why he is not simply killed though this would end the
book), Marlowe works things out with the denouement seeing his old friend who is the real
villain killed and the blonde taken into custody.   Black captures the world-weariness that came to
pervade the Chandler books and does turn some Chandleresque phrases effectively.  Well written
as would be expected of the author and a fine salute to the originals.