FrightFest 2005 - Day Two

The second day of FrightFest 2005 began with an announcement from the stage from Alan Jones that one of the planned films for Sunday, Anthony C. Ferrante's Boo!, hadn't turned up so would be replaced by the latest thriller from Wes Craven, Red Eye - and there was the faint chance that Craven himself would turn up. He also told us that at 5:00 on the Sunday they were going to try something that they'd never done before - a live satellite link-up to Hollywood to talk to Japanese horror legend Hideo Nakata, director of Ringu [1998] and Honogurai mizu no soko kara / Dark Water [2002]. Nakata would be answering questions from the set of either The Entity remake or the reworking of The Eye - Alan wasn't entirely sure which film he was currently working on!

The first film of the day introduced me to an entirely new feeling - a Dario Argento film I simply didn't care anything about. I've either loved his films with a passion, loathed them on sight [Trauma [1993] and Il fantasma dell'opera / The Phantom of the Opera [1998]] or initially hated them and grown later to like them immensely [La sindrome di Stendhal / The Stendhal Syndrome [1996]]. His latest offering, Ti piace Hitchcock? / Do You Like Hitchcock? is the first in a series of made-for-television thrillers that Argento will be producing and the only one he will be directing himself.

It's an odd one - at times it looks like an Argento film but it never actually feels like one. Having been made for TV, the violence is toned down almost to the point of not being there at all [those who complained that Il cartaio / The Card Player [2004] was atypical and anaemic are going to hate this] and the mystery elements have been placed centre stage. The problem is that the mystery - inspired in equal parts by the Hitchcock masterpieces Strangers on a Train [1951], Rear Window [1954] and Dial M For Murder [1954] - simply isn't that interesting and fails to hold the attention as it should.

It's a good looking film thanks to the photography of Frederic Fasano and Pino Donaggio's score is excellent, at times cheekily quoting from the score he did for Hitchcock impersonator Brain De Palma's Body Double [1984]. But the story simply fails to engage and the characters are so limp and lifeless that it's impossible to engage with them on any level. The result is a so-so film which doesn't inspire one to seek it out for a second viewing. Maybe it'll gain in stature in years to come though this time I really do have my doubts. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies - we saw the subtitled print as Alan assured us that we'd be in fits of hysterics at the apparently dreadful dubbed version!

A lot more entertaining was Ban the Sadist Videos!, a brand new documentary from Anchor Bay and Blue Underground chronicling the dark years of the mid-80s in the UK when the 'video nasties' were being held up as the source of all evils in British society. As you'd expect from a documentary directed by David Gregory and produced by Carl Daft [who was on hand to introduce the film from the stage] it's a corker - those of us who were there at the time will recoil in horror as we remember the unsettling experience of suddenly facing the real prospect of becoming criminals simply for trading in films and for those young enough to have missed it, it's a valuable piece of social history.

The documentary will be released soon as part of Anchor Bay's Box of the Banned set due in September [a collection of several previously banned titles, including Day of the Woman / I Spit on Your Grave [1978], Zombi 2 [1979], The Driller Killer [1979] , The Evil Dead [1981], Last House on the Left [1972] and Nightmares / Nightmares in a Damaged Brain [1981]. It ends with a look forward to part 2 though Daft wouldn't be drawn on when that would appear, referring us instead to Anchor Bay UK main man Mo Claridge who was in the audience for the screening.

FrightFest 2005 marked the official launch of the new FrightFest Presents... DVD label, a collection of titles from around the world that are unavailable on disc anywhere else. The titles already announced are Eros Puglielli's giallo Occhi di cristallo / Eyes of Crystal [2004], Andreas Marschall's Tears of Kali [2004], Eric Valette's Malefique [2002] [shown at the 2003 FrightFest] and the first ever Irish zombie movie, Conor McMahon's Dead Meat. To whet the appetite for the new range, McMahon's film was up next. It was introduced by Ian Rattray and the producer Edward King who had been planning to make his own film for years, promising that it would be shown at a FrightFest at some point, and by the youthful director himself who wondered if we'd be able to understand the thick Irish accents.

He had nothing to worry about and has done an outstanding job with this, his debut feature. I had suspected that we'd get another amateurish shot-on-video Romero wannabe but, although it does occasionally betray its ultra low-budget roots and first-time-director status - too many close-ups and an abundance of those odd Dutch angles that low-budget film-makers seem to revel in] it turned out be nothing of the sort.

Set in the stunning Leitrim countryside, it tells the tale of a mutant strain of Mad Cow Disease which not only turns the entire local bovine population into killers but starts bringing the recently deceased back to life. European tourist Helena [Marian Araujo] finds herself on the run from a growing army of the undead with locals Desmond [David Muyllaert] and The Coach [David Malard], all heading for possible rescue at a remote location.

It's a fun [though it get's darker as it goes along] tribute to Romero with an excellent cast of unknowns [Araujo in particular is a real find], plenty of crowd-pleasing gore, lashings of genuinely funny Irish humour and a unique death scene involving an eyeball and a Hoover... It also features some genuinely tense and unsettling moments - the nightmarish nocturnal encounter with a pack of zombie children and the attack on their car by an enraged cow being among the highlights.

Dead Meat covers no new ground but then writer / director McMahon probably wasn't out to do that - he wanted to pay homage to the classic zombie films of the 60s, 70s and 80s and he's done exactly that in his assured debut. It's an excellent start for the FrightFest Presents... range and just good enough to place McMahon on our 'ones-to-watch' list.

Next up should have been the first of the weekend's shorts, The Eel, but technical difficulties prevented it being shown until Sunday. Instead we got an exclusive FrightFest presentation of a specially made trailer for a film whose name I'm afraid I've already forgotten [anyone out there remember it?] but which looks like a low-budget offering from the UK's tired S&M underground scene.

It was followed by Rinjin 13-go / The Neighbor No Thirteen, a slice of Japanese madness from director Yasuo Inoue and introduced by Paul McEvoy who proclaimed it to be "fucking insane!" And he wasn't wrong - based on the popular manga by Santa Inoue, it tells the slow-moving but creepy tale of a young boy who was so scarred mentally and physically by the torment meted out by his classmates that his personality fractures and his violent, obsessed alter ego acts out a life-long vendetta against the ring leader.

Like a lot of less mainstream Japanese horror films, it seems to have divided the audience into those who couldn't warm to its chilly ambience and ever-mutating storyline and those of us who loved its invention and creepy atmosphere. It unravels somewhat right at the very end [it really isn't clear what was supposed to be going on] but it was never less than riveting, with excellent lead performances from Shido Nakamura Shun Oguri as the disparate halves of the same personality and a great cameo from J-horror legend Miike Takashi as a complaining - and doomed - neighbour.

Inoue has complained that the violence in his film is preventing many festivals from showing it and, although it's never as explicit or as over-the-top as some of the other film's we've already seen this weekend, the violence is disquieting, mainly because of the cold, matter of fact way that Inoue films it. The scene of the murderous #13 emerging from the shy and friendly Juzo to try to drown a young boy in a bathroom washbowl is genuinely shocking and likely to cause problems in many Western markets.

Once upon a time, it was possible to lament the fact that the British film industry never took to werewolves in quite the same way that they did to vampires but Neil Marshall's wonderful Dog Soldiers [2002] showed that when we put our minds to it, we can deliver the lycanthropic goods. So it was particularly pleasing to find that this year's FrightFest was offering another home grown werewolf flick in the shape of the world premiere of Craig Strachan's Wild Country.

Strachan has described his film as "Ken Loach goes horror" while his producer Ros Borland hails it as "Gregory's Girl with werewolves", neither description really filling me with any real desire to see it at all. They really should re-think their marketing strategy as what Wild Country actually is is a fun, fast-paced and often creepy tale of teenagers lost in the beautiful Scottish wilds being tracked down by a mysterious wolf-like creature. After being forced to give up her new-born baby, teenager Kelly Ann [Samantha Shields, excellent in her feature debut] joins several of her friends on a cross-country hike. After they find an apparently abandoned baby in the unstable ruins of an old castle, they find themselves being picked off one-by-one by the wolf-monster as they blindly try to find help in the pitch dark.

The best film of the day so far, Wild Country is an excellent addition to the British horror canon, with knockout performances [how refreshing is it to see teenage characters that you actually care about], a good, barely-glimpsed monster courtesy of Brit effects veteran Bob Keen and a nice streak of gallows humour. The ending is slightly odd [it isn't really clear that the monsters are actually werewolves until the last minute] but this is otherwise an excellent film from Strachan, whose previous work includes the rather less impressive Bring Me the Head of Mavis Davis [1997] and Hidden [2000]. I'd urge you all to give this one a try.

Strachan and Borland were on hand afterwards with leading ladies Shields and Nicola Muldoon for a brief Q&A where he addressed a problem that seems to have troubled a couple of films this weekend - it had struck me that Land of the Dead and parts of Evil Aliens had seemed rather dark and it had occurred to me that there may be problems with the Odeon West End's presentations. Strachan seemed somewhat bemused by the fact that some scenes in Wild Country were completely impenetrable, particularly the lengthy sequence in the monsters' subterranean lair. He assured us that when he'd watched the print earlier all seemed OK. One can only hope that if there are projection issues that the Odeon gets them sorted out for the rest of the weekend.

During the short break before the next film, I opted to stay in my seat and was approached by a young man handing out rubber bat rings and stickers to promote the next film on the menu, the unknown quantity The Roost. It later turned out that this was young director Ti West himself, making the most of his first trip abroad to personally plug his film!

West took to the stage to briefly introduce the film which, as is so often the case with the less well known FrightFest films, turned out to be the day's real winner. Shot on the lowest of budgets with help from American indie horror specialist Larry Fessenden [Habit [1997], Wendigo [2001]], it's a quite brilliant piece of low budget film making that mixes eco-horror and zombie splatter with some considerable style.

Four rather miserable 20-somethings find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere where they have one of those car accidents that only ever happen in horror films and seek shelter in an isolated farm they find nearby. But there's a swarm of hungry, flesh-eating bats hiding in the barn and their bite causes what's left of their victims to rise from the dead and kill anyone they can get their hands on.

It's always gratifying to be in at the start of something and the chance to be there at the birth of what must surely become a cult following for both The Roost and West was fantastic. West's direction is amazingly confident for a debut feature and he makes startling use of the locations [previously used by Hitchcock for Marnie [1964]] and the surrounding countryside.

The shaky, hand-held camerawork gives the film a you-are-there, quasi-documentary feel which only adds to the unbearable tension. The four main members of the cast, all unknowns with few previous credits [only Wil Horneff seems to have done much so far, turning up in Ghost in the Machine [1993], the remake of The Shining [1997] and an episode of C.S.I.: NY among others] make the most of characters who are, frankly, rather unlikeable yet we still end up caring what happens to them. Tom Noonan is on hand as a horror host in black and white sequences that bothe bookend the film and even intrude on the action near the climax to rewind the "tape" and offer acidic comments on the action!

With its unsettling music score and even more unnerving sound design, excellent direction and twisting plotline, The Roost turned out to be the real find of the weekend so far. West returned to the stage for another all-too-brief Q&A and seemed a genuinely likeable guy with a clear love for the genre that I'm sure endeared him to many of the appreciative FrightFest crowd. Any chance that this could be added to the FrightFest Presents... DVD range? Hopefully and the sooner the better - this is one chiller that's positively crying out for a wider audience and we'll be watching West's career with interest.

The final film of the day was the long delayed remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis gore-fest Two Thousand Maniacs! [1964], 2001 Maniacs, directed by another newcomer, Tim Sullivan, but produced by genre veterans Eli Roth [Cabin Fever [2002]] and Scott Speigel [Intruder [1989], From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money [1999]]. Paul McEvoy promised us plenty of "tits, ass and gore" and that's exactly what we got - in spades! Anyone familiar with Lewis' original [the best of his films, which I know isn't saying much] will know exactly what to expect and won't be disappointed.

Several horny, good looking students are lured into the very remote village of Pleasant Valley where they wind up being guests of honour at the "Guts and Glory Jubille" celebrations. And thanks to the townsfolk's singular culinary choice also end up on the menu...

Robert Englund [whose first on-screen appearance was greeting with applause] is outrageous as the one-eyed mayor of Pleasant Valley, happily hamming it up to great effect as he presides over a carnival of slaughter. Lin Shaye is outstanding as the owner of the local hotel, a murderous Southern belle who cheerfully organises the town's young women in their orgy of sex and mayhem. The rest of the cast are largely undistinguished, cookie-cutter 20 somethings, all cut from the same interchangeable cloth.

But really no-one cared much about the cast - we just wanted lashings of gore and we certainly got plenty of that. We also got the share the frustrations of a hillbilly in love with his unwilling sheep, some wonderfully PC-baiting dialogue and the most annoying singers ever captured on film - their tormenting of one of the leads as they follow him around singing about his trials and tribulations is hysterical and reminiscent of Sir Robin's band of painfully truthful minstrels in Monty Python and the Holy Grail [1975].

2001 Maniacs is nothing new and won't be picking up that many awards any time soon but it was the perfect Saturday night closing film - gory, silly, sexy and deliberately tacky, it's a lot better than Lewis' over-rated original and brought day two of FrightFest 2005 to a rousing climax.
KEVIN LYONS