Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I met the charming Adele Hartley, organizer of Edinburgh’s DEAD BY DAWN, an annual horror festival, when I went to FantAsia a few years back. She’s the real deal... a fan with a voracious appetite for the new. I’d love to see her festival on her turf someday, but for now, I’ll have to settle for this review by “Zombie Lust.” Check it out:
Hey Harry,
I saw a number of excellent films at the Dead by Dawn festival here in Edinburgh Scotland back last month (April 25th to the 27th) and I thought you’d like to hear about it. It was fantastic. I finally managed to see the amazing Bubba Ho Tep, May and Undead. If you use this, you can call me Zombie Lust.
Every year around this time Adele Hartley shows the fruits of the year of organization, hard work, and joy that goes into putting together Dead by Dawn, Edinburgh's annual horror festival. This one is extra special as it's the 10 year anniversary for both the festival and Adele as the Festival Director. Held entirely at the Edinburgh Filmhouse this time around, it features a number of guests of honour, a horror short film programme, the unveiling of the new PS2 game EVIL DEAD: A FISTFUL OF BOOMSTICK, and the daunting Saturday night all-nighter. I can't wait. It's my first time.
For the people that came from out of town and have nothing to do on the Friday morning, there is a Friday morning showing of Evil Dead, directed by Sam Raimi and starring the unchainable Bruce Campbell as Ash in the first installment of the wildly successful horror trilogy classic. I miss that one as I am at work.
Friday night and it's the classic that needs no introduction A Nightmare on Elm Street starring Robert Englund as Freddy Kreuger. He is also in attendance in his first Scottish trip ever, jetlagged and tipsy, for a Q&A after the filming and a signing until the close of the bar at 3. A Nightmare on Elm Street is a great film and it was wonderful to revisit the film that reinvigorated the horror genre by opening up the abstract to creative film directors and letting them play imaginatively in a way that wasn't restricted singularly to the machete deaths of teens at summer camps. I get a special chuckle halfway through the film of an exhausted Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) remarking to herself in the mirror after a week without sleep, "My God, I look twenty." It was funny because when I saw the film at 15, there was no humour in the line at all. Johnny Depp is almost unrecognizable as her boyfriend and there are scattered gasps as the people in the audience recognize him in his first scene. The blood flows, teens die, breasts are exposed, and good triumphs over evil in the end. BUT DOES IT? Awesome. Check out the site on http://www.nightmareonelmstreet.com/
The Q & A afterwards features a verbose Robert Englund answering questions about Freddy vs. Jason, his career, why he's still thrilled to do this, and the unnatural way that John Saxon (Nancy's guilt ridden father in Nightmare) doesn't age. He's a good public speaker and his stories are entertaining and enjoyable. At the signing afterwards, even though he's dying from the jetlag he stays for two and half hours instead of the promised hour until every single person has had his or her bit of memorabilia signed. Things that were brought to be signed included a chopping board and a couple of pillowcases. What a trooper this guy is. I mean for real. Respect. Every time his pulls a face or splays his fingers or flicks his tongue for a fan, he seems to be enjoying himself. And no, he did not say whether or not Freddy wins.
It's home to bed after that both looking forward to and dreading the 24 hours of horror films kicking off at noon the next day. Will I be able to do it?
The first film on the Saturday afternoon at 12:30 is Soft For Digging starring Edmond Mercier and directed by TJ Petty. It's an almost dialogue free student graduation film about an old man who lives in an isolated cabin in the woods in a sparse life of routine. One day, while walking his cat, he's witness to a horrible event that sets his life on a track of trying to find out what happened. The police think he's an old hallucinating drunk so he has to walk to line by himself. The film is slowly paced and subtle in its performances but wonderfully realized. There are a few special effects that have unfortunately been done to death in horror films ever since 1990 so they lose their edge here but it's a good story. I look forward to more of this guy's work if this is what he can accomplish for only six grand. Engaging. Check out the site on http://www.softfordigging.com/
Next up after that is the Cutting Edge Short Horror Film competition. There are ten films in all and they’re all about ten minutes each. Here are some encapsulated reviews of each of them in order of how much I liked them.
Daughter – my number one pick of the short films. A woman is plagued by very bloody nightmares and can’t find her daughter when she wakes. In her quest for the whereabouts of her increasingly spooky daughter, the horrible truth of what’s happening is revealed. I loved it.
Repossessed – A realtor shows a house to a mysterious buyer that knows all about the previous occupants and the origins of the rumour that it’s haunted. Great stuff. My number two pick.
Entombed – a car thief steals a car only to find that he’s locked in and invisible to passers by. He can’t escape and the car won’t start. Then the tow truck driver shows up. Creepy. My number three pick.
Paradisiaque – One of the funniest shorts I’ve ever seen. An alien lands on Earth and is blown away by its beauty. He makes new friends with the help of his sonic replicator.
Strangers in the Night – An opus devoted to taking the piss out of zombie films. With an opening line like “I sure get tired doing the night shift at this top secret experimental gene splicing government installation.”, you have to love it. An audience favourite.
Dialing the Devil – Not exactly a horror but a well filmed story of a guy who sells his soul for a Cadillac. The sequence of the hell’s phone line was especially amusing.
RIP – A woman’s husband returns from the grave to address a very important issue. A one joke story but it’s a pretty good joke.
Rage – A woman, her ex boyfriend and a loud mouth new boyfriend go to the dump and end up finding a videotape with some novel solutions the their dilemma. Reminiscent of the Ring. I didn’t care for it because I’ve seen that kind of thing before but my pals liked it a lot.
Red Lines – Pretty weak story about a girl in detention and a sinister teacher. Starring Doug Bradley (Pinhead) as the teacher.
American Bickman Burger – A young man becomes the owner of the biggest burger chain in America by making burgers out of human meat. Seemed to have some sort of anti consumerism moral. Well shot but it left me cold and feeling preached to.
For more information on short horror films check out www.deadbydawn.co.uk and www.urbanchillers.com
After a short break is a great Chilean vampire film called Sangre Eterna. It’s about Goths in Chile who play a role playing vampire game called Sangre Eterna (Eternal Blood). The opening set piece is one of the coolest clips I have ever seen in a vampire film. I highly recommend it to people. The casting of the four leads is superb. It does drag just a tad near the end but I loved it. Check it out. Original and a must for any vampire film fan. Check out the site at http://www.sangreterna.cl/
Directly following is Near Dark which needs no introduction or review. Simply a kick ass film. It was wonderful to see it on the big screen. For the uninitiated, it stars Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen as members of a coven of Texas vampires living hand to mouth in a rootless nomadic existence. One of the first films to portray vampirism as a non romantic state of being, there isn’t a ruffled collar or crushed velvet jacket to be seen. It’s a touching, gritty, and wonderful piece of work. It’s a classic that must be seen if you haven’t had the chance to view it yet.
The next film is one of my picks of the fest. It’s called May and it’s one of the most original, macabre, and moving films I’ve seen in my life. Angela Bettis turns in one of this year’s most tragic performances as May, an only child raised by an overbearing mother. Her best friend is a doll that she confides in at the end of every day. She works in a pet hospital with Scary Movie’s Anna Faris and starts to fall for the mechanic that works next door played by Jeremy Sisto. Things look bright for the couple but it’s a rocky road that ultimately leads to harsh realities for May. In the end, she comes to the conclusion that she may have gone about making friends the hard way. I’ve never seen a horror film with this level of emotional resonance. I’m owning it as soon as it comes out. To all of you, I say track it down and see it, whether it’s at a festival (optimal) or on tape or DVD. Check out the site at http://www.maythemovie.com/
Paired with May was the short film, Evelyn:The Cutest Evil Dead Girl. In the tradition of Dr. Seuss, it tells the story in rhyme of a dead girl named Evelyn who gets tired of playing with dead crows and attempts to kill herself back to life so that she can join the live friends that she so eagerly craves. Beautifully executed (no pun intended) with a wonderful Tim Burton-esque art direction. I loved it. I can’t seem to find an official website for it but here’s some info. Hey, it’s Canadian!
http://www.thewatch.ca/september02/evil.php
After a short half hour break, the all nighter begins at midnight with the much anticipated third installment of the Re-Animator series. Beyond Re-Animator takes place 13 years into Dr. Herbert West’s (Jeffrey Coombs) sentence at Arkham State Penitentiary. A young doctor joins the staff who had a sister that was killed by one of West’s creations 13 years ago. He’s kept a vial of the magic fluid and together they try to perfect it. Like the plot matters.
Bring on the zombie prison riot! With a few twists and innovations on the last two, Beyond Re-Animator does not disappoint in either the gore or the effects departments. And I don’t know about you, but I could watch Jeffrey Coombs read the phone book and be enthralled. Like Robert Englund and Doug Bradley (Pinhead from the Hellraiser films), Jeffrey Coombs seems to be made for this part. Highly enjoyable. Check out some trailers here. http://www.filmaxinternational.com/default.cfm?num_seccio=7&num_noticia=105
Opening for the next film is a short entitled Cry. It plays as the last ten minutes of a horrifying nerve shredder of a film. A bloody and terrified woman is trapped in a ruined room with the doors and windows nailed shut. Frantically, she keeps the nails pounded deep into the wood whenever the assailants outside threaten to loosen the boards. I really want to see the first hour and a half leading up to this. I hope the director gets the funding to make the rest of the story.
Garden of Love opens with the VERY graphic massacre of a hippie commune family. There is only one survivor. The little girl who survives is in a coma for two years before waking up with no memory of her earlier life. She’s adopted by her aunt and uncle. Ten years later, visions start to haunt her and the real truth of her earlier life rises to the surface through a series of extremely gory bloodbaths. This film featured some of the hammiest acting I have EVER seen on the behalf of the police chief. It has to be seen to be believed. He received a standing ovation in the theater after his fifteen minute exposition to the main character about what was happening in her life. Spellbinding in its glorious badness. It is a must see for fans of such things. I can’t make sense of the sites because they’re mostly all in German, it being a German film and all. It was directed by Olaf Ittenbach.
After that came my least favourite film in the festival, Hatred of a Minute. I don’t want to totally lambaste the film as it’s obviously a very personal or possibly even autobiographical piece. To give you an idea, the main character is a child of an abusive marriage who still struggles to keep his mind at peace after watching his father beat his mother on a number of occasions. Now he’s older and a scriptwriter who’s having trouble making ends meet. He has a nice wife who’s struggling to understand him but remaining supportive. He gets a job transcribing morgue dictation by his brother, the police officer. Are you starting to see what I mean? After a while, his mother dies and he snaps. He kills his father in a rage after the funeral and starts to kill women after breaking up with his wife. He figures that the only way he can truly save the women of the world from abusive men is to send them to heaven. Thrown into this are his good conscience and his bad conscience, played respectively by a vampire looking guy and a little guy who reminded me so much of a gay male prostitute that I had a lot of trouble working out exactly what his role was until the end of the film. I don’t recommend it but my hat’s off to the director or writer or whoever for making it. That’s what it’s all about. It did have a couple of throats being slashed so I guess it qualified as a horror film. And it was produced by Bruce Campbell. Check out the site at http://www.hatred-of-a-minute.com/
The Evil Dead took us up to breakfast.
After breakfast, it was zombie madness with the two films Plaga Zombie:Zona Mutante and Mucha Sangre (A lot of blood).
Plaga Zombie is a film from Argentina which is a sequel to the cult classic original. A wrestler, a drifter and a geek are in the middle of a city infested with zombies and the FBI have the only map out of the town. Bring on the exploding heads! The film was made for a very low amount of money and every single dollar is up there on the screen. It was an unreasonably fun film to watch. Of course by this time in the morning I’m drifting in and out of consciousness. Not that it mattered. I’d wake up for a few seconds to see Adele’s homemade subtitles proclaiming something that seemed like a non sequitur to me and then some zombie would shoot blood out of their eyes and get ripped in half. It’s the best way to spend the wee hours of a Sunday morning if you ask me. Check it out. http://www.farsaproducciones.com.ar/Pz/index.htm
Much Sangre is one of those rare films that manages to combine science fiction, zombies, homophobia, and misogyny into one glorious bloodbath of fun. The plot centers around alien parasites that give their hosts eternal life. The aliens are actually giant green penii that attach themselves to the relevant parts of the male anatomy. These aliens also crave the putrefying flesh of female humans. So a large number of young women are being rounded up, gassed, and left to rot for the feasts that thealiens have on a regular basis. Oh yeah, and the way that the alien seed is spread is by anal sex with other men. And the only way you can kill them is by shooting off their cocks. Best movie ever? Almost. The extended slow motion scene to classical music where one of the leads is cutting a chained up zombie to pieces which just grow back is almost poetic. Check out the site at http://www.muchasangre.com
The rest of the films don’t start until 5 in the afternoon. It’s noon at this point. Do I nip home for a rest? No. I go to the cinema up the street and watch the ten finalist entries in the Jim Poole short film competition. Call me crazy. My eyes are bleeding now and I’m getting hallucinations in my peripheral vision. My sentences are starting sense to not make.
Back to the festival.
I missed the Q&A with Keith Bell and Neil Marshall, director and producer of Dog Soldiers. I sat in the bar downstairs and had some dinner with my mates. I feel bad but I think I’m the only person on the planet who didn’t really enjoy Dog Soldiers. I’m willing to admit that it may have been a case of me getting my hopes up (one decent werewolf movie this decade. PLEASE! Oh wait. Ginger Snaps kicked ass. And it was Canadian. Well, you know what I mean.) but I really thought it was amateur hour up there on the screen. And I couldn’t have cared less when the soldier “who like the footie” died. And the lame lines that the woman had that I won’t ruin for you but she has a couple of clangers near the end that’ll have all the testosterone junkies in the house hooting and hollering. I’m starting to go on a rant here and I’m finding it hard to stop because I feel like everyone in the world has gone crazy except for me. The werewolves were ridiculous. The pacing, plot and acting were way below par. But it was the writing and cinematography that really torpedoed it for me. I was expecting something hip, cool and exciting and what I got was a rather washed out misogynistic Scottish comedy, badly done, and filmed in the woods by gnomes.
But like I said, I’m the only person in the world that thinks this. Everyone else gives it eleven out of ten. Maybe it was something in the air. God knows I love a goodcheesy horror film. I don’t know what it was that just turned me off of this film.
Enough!
Thr3e is the next film or group of films. From South Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand, three vignettes open up windows on the afterlife and are by turns scary, touching, beautiful, hypnotic and suspenseful.
In ‘Going Home’, Eric Tsang and his small son move into a giant apartment complex that’s scheduled to be torn down the following month. The son plays with the little girl next door and one day he doesn’t come home. The father investigates the couple next door to see if they’ve seen his son. What he gets involved in is touching and terrifying. This film scared me and really moved me. This was my favourite of the three films and one my favourites of the whole festival.
In ‘Memories’, the suspense and the jumps had me peeking through my fingers like a little boy. The disappearance of a man’s wife leaves him overwrought and seeking therapy. She herself is seeking a way to get home despite her memory loss. The horrible truth emerges slowly. In the style of the Ring, this film is low on effects but high on nail biting tension. I liked it a lot.
In ‘The Wheel’, a master puppeteer is haunted by a curse placed on his puppeteers. I have to be honest here, I fell asleep for half of it. I remember lush jungles and cool looking puppets but I can’t turn in an honest review. My friends seemed to like it though.
The horror and explorations of the supernatural filmed by other cultures never fails to fascinate.
The two shorts that opened up the next film were called Gone Bad I&II. These are lovingly computer generated five minute zombie films with a breathtaking amount of talent involved. They’re available to watch here http://www.gone-bad.com/ and I highly recommend them.
Undead is the next film. This one is a must see for anyone. It is original. Cinematic, engrossing, and beautiful, Undead manages to mix Australia, zombies and aliens into a tightly driven plot with some great (and I mean great) effects. This film is a first time outing for the brothers who created it with no name actors and a modest budget. They took their time to make a ‘perfect’ film and didn’t rest until they were sure it was what they wanted. The results are astounding. I got chills during parts of it. The imagery is amazing. I felt like I was a kid again watching something new and unseen like Blade Runner or Jacob’s Ladder. I really hope that this gets a theatrical release. I’ve never seen anything like it. It deserves a lot of success. Look out for it and go see it. You won’t be sorry. Check out the site at http://www.undeadmovie.com/default.htm and check out the trailers. It’s such a good film.
Finally, the piece de resistance that is Bubba Ho Tep. For those unfamiliar with the buzz that this film has generated on Aint It Cool and other film sites, Bruce Campbell stars as an aging Elvis Presley in an old folks home. His best friend (Ossie Davis) is a black man that thinks he’s JFK. Together, they thwart a mummy’s curse that’s killing the citizens of the home. The action is minimal and almost secondary to the ruminations on age and a life gone by. Lovingly crafted and acted by the main actors, this film got a standing ovation. I’ve been waiting for a year to see it and I was not disappointed. I highly recommend this film to anyone. Bruce Campbell’s Elvis is a sight to behold and Ossie Davis’ JFK is just regal and believable to enough to make you wonder. Director Don Coscarelli reigns in the shlock just enough to give the film dignity while still letting it be wonderfully silly. I loved it. I will own it. Check out the site at http://www.bubbahotep.com/main.html
That’s it. I hope you’ve taken the time to read this whole thing. Look out for the films I’ve recommended. Hunt them down. It’s only with the demand of the public that these films will see the light of day in cinema or DVD releases. Bring on the horror!
Braaaaaains,
Zombie lust
Excellent work, man. But you gotta work on your stamina. Ask any veteran of any BNAT... those all-nighters can’t wipe you out if you have something good to watch. No excuse.
"Moriarty" out.
