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AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy! THE TROLL HUNTER, KIDNAPPED, HORNY HOUSE OF HORROR And More!
International Eye Candy October 6, 2010 Yes, another Fantastic Fest has come and gone, taking with it the warm summer weather and so the only thing to do is to huddle at home out of the cold and try to console myself with the latest cult goodies from around the globe. Yes, this is Todd from Twitch coming at you with another batch of International Eye Candy. In this edition: Norwegian trolls! Live action anime! Kung fu fighting action! A real life bank heist! And Japanese sex-splatter! Here we go!
Every year at Fantastic Fest a number of slots are held back for Secret Screenings, presentations of surprise films with the audience – at least in theory – not knowing what they’re about to see until after they’re seated in the room. This year the final Secret Screening slot went to THE TROLL HUNTER, the debut feature from Norway’s Andre Ovredal. A moc-doc exposing a massive government coverup of the real life existence of equally massive trolls the film arrived as a not quite finished work in progress and left as one of the true buzz titles of the year. It’s clever, funny stuff with great effects work and with the screening out of the way an English subtitled version of the official trailer – featuring loads of troll action – turned up on my mailbox. It’s just as fun as the film.
Last year Japanese cult film fans were treated to THE ANCIENT DOGOO GIRL, a monster hunting television series that featured a buxom, clay bikini wearing monster fighter doing battle with all manner of bizarre creatures. MACHINE GIRL director Noboru Iguchi set the tone with his cheeky story lines while splatter compatriots Yoshihiro Nishimura (TOKYO GORE POLICE) and Takeshi Shimizu (JU-ON) turned up to help with directing duties. And they all had so much fun they’re doing it again.
Luckily for fans they’re following the first rule of sequels - namely, give them the same but more. This means there are now five additional monster hunting girls in clay bikinis, one of whom is HIGH KICK GIRL star Rina Takeda. Monsters will be vanished in jiggly fashion.
Here’s a little something that may be familiar to faithful readers of the column but given that Miguel Angel Vivas’ home invasion thriller KIDNAPPED was my personal pick as the discovery of Fantastic Fest 2010, I’m giving it to you again.
A gripping piece of work shot in an unsettlingly intimate style – the entire film is composed of only twelve shots – Vivas’ goal is to drop you into the midst of a home invasion and not let you out until the entire event has played out. It’s shocking, disturbing and masterfully done. The trailer – English subtitled - is only enough to give you a taste of what he’s doing here but that should be enough to get you hooked.
Also shot in remarkably intimate style, though for remarkably different reasons, is Shane Meadows’ THIS IS ENGLAND ’86. A four episode television follow up to Meadows’ hugely acclaimed film of (almost) the same name, this reunites star Thomas Turgoose with the director to pick up the stories of the film characters several years later. Now, I’m an unabashed Meadows fanatic and in my mind THIS IS ENGLAND is clearly his master work so you can guess how excited I am to see this. It aired last month in the UK but I’m stuck waiting for the DVD release.
Singing! Dancing! Violence! Hooray for Bollywood and Ram Gopal Varma’s RAKTA CHARITRA! For most of his career Varma has been a sort of anti-Bollywood director, a man who built his reputation producing and directing a string of hard edged crime pictures that had more in common with the films of Michael Mann than anything we normally associate with India. And that’s still pretty much the case with the upcoming two part epic RAKTA CHARITRA, a sprawling story based on real life factional violence in the nation. But this time around Varma has included some song and dance numbers – he normally doesn’t – which have been cut together into a pleasing dance of death.
Another audience favourite at Fantastic Fest was Eugenio Mira’s AGNOSIA, an unusual romantic thriller from the producers of PAN’S LABYRINTH. It’s a gorgeous, period set piece built around a beautiful young woman with a rare sensory disorder and is the sort of film that is a marketer’s nightmare because it simply refuses to fit neatly into any particular category. But who needs categories when you’ve got a gorgeous new trailer, which this one does.
Back to Norway now, for the latest instalment of the series that launched the current wave of Scandinavian genre film. Roar Uthaug’s slasher COLD PREY was a huge hit throughout the region, spawning a quick sequel and now a prequel that explains the origins of its hulking killer. A series of teasers have promised that the film would maintain the high level of quality set by the previous pictures and now here comes the first trailer to really show off the balance of slick production values and down in the dirt grittiness of the horror elements. Very nice.
When word came out that director Benny Chan had been handed the reins of a big budget remake of SHAOLIN the response was mixed at best. You see, while Chan has a handful of solidly entertaining films to his credit he also has a number of notable misfires and ‘workmanlike’ is generally the best compliment you can pay his directing style.
Well, here’s a happy surprise. The full trailer – English subtitled – for the film has arrived and is has a scope and style to match its epic cast of superstars. The attention to detail is gorgeous, the martial arts work impressive, it’s got one of the best fall scenes I’ve seen in recent times and it manages the difficult task of honouring the past without being trapped in it. Yes, this looks rather good.
Finland’s RARE EXPORTS may be getting all the Christmas-horror love this year but it aint the only film to lay on the festive blood. Nope, just take a look to the Netherlands and the latest effort from THE LIFT and AMSTERDAMNED director Dick Maas for proof of that.
Maas’ latest is titled simply SINT – or SAINT – and is built on the concept that every thirty two years when the full moon rises on December 5th – a holiday in the Netherlands – the angry spirit of Saint Nicholas rises from the grave to kill as many naughty boys and girls as possible. While on horseback. And wearing his pointy bishop hat. Yay! It’s a great concept and the new English subtitled trailer promises that the film will deliver upon it.
Not all teen vampires glitter. Some of them dance and drive fast and have sex. I point you to the new trailer for Dennis Gansel’s WE ARE THE NIGHT for proof.
Okay all you dirty boys awaiting your dose of sexy splatter, here it is. The film is HORNY HOUSE OF HORROR, the cast led by a trio of Japanese AV girls. Story? Hookers in a brothel do bad things to men’s penises. Splatter effects by Japan’s gore maestro Yoshihiro Nishimura. This is way NSFW so be aware ...
Still in Japan but wildly different is the freshly released full trailer for the upcoming live action adaptation of popular manga and anime GANTZ. If you stop and think about it the story here doesn’t really make any more sense – what with a mysterious black alien ball reviving a couple of dead guys and putting them to work as assassins – but they clearly had more money to spend blowing things up. So up things blow. Early footage on this still looked pretty rough but I’m liking this trailer a lot.
New from the director of the original INSOMNIA – later remade by Christopher Nolan – is the true crime picture NOKAS. A meticulous reconstruction of one of the most notorious bank robberies in Norway’s history NOKAS casts the robbery itself as the star, playing events out as unvarnished and true to life as possible. And that’s just fine with me because this looks like one of the most compelling pictures of the year. We’ve run an earlier trailer for the film in the column a while back but a fistful of extended clips from the picture have just arrived for a better look.
For our penultimate entry in this edition of the IEC, we head to France for a first look at the latest effort from Michel Ocelot – one of the world’s great master animators. Ocelot’s latest, DRAGONS AND PRINCESSES, is a project designed simultaneously for television and the big screen, a collection of fairy tales – each involving a dragon and a princess, surprisingly enough – animated in a unique, silhouette style. Ocelot has dabbled with this look before but outside of his own previous work I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
And, finally, we end things with something a little bit unusual. Were you aware that there is more than one PARANORMAL ACTIVITY sequel coming out this year? Yes, there is the Tod Williams directed PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2 hitting US screens in short order but, in Japan, there is also PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 2: TOKYO NIGHT. This is not a remake. This is not a Japanese version of the US sequel. No, this is a wholly original – and totally authorized – ‘parallel’ sequel, a new branch of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY world with the curse being brought to Tokyo by a Japanese teen who had been visiting San Diego. Word of the film leaked out last week and now the first trailer is freshly on the scene.
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