The Zone Horror Frightfest 2006 - Day Two

It might be a bit early yet to be celebrating a "boom" in Irish horror, but given last year's screening of Dead Meat (2004) (now available as a Frightfest Presents DVD) and the zombie comedy Boy Eats Girl (2005), the arrival of Isolation (2006), the first of Saturday's six features, gives hope that there might at least bee a blip in horror film-making from the Emerald Isle. Unlike the two afore-mentioned films, Billy O'Brien's Isolation plays everything completely straight - no cheap gags, just a solid, unpretentious horror film that riffs on themes from Alien (1979) and Shivers (1975) but comes up with something completely fresh and original.

The plot sounds utterly ludicrous when reduced to its component parts - genetic experiments on a remote Irish farm leads to the birth of a calf which is itself pregnant with six mutant creatures, one of which lives long enough to wreak havoc and kill just about everything and everyone it comes into contact with. But daft as it sounds, it works. O'Brien's direction is moody and confident, the score is excellent and the ensemble cast is outstanding. Bob Keen's special effects are kept out of view for most of the time which adds greatly to the suspense though O'Brien, in his Q&A that followed the screening, wished that he'd been able to show more of it. Playing on still very real fears about mad cow disease, Isolation proves to be a disturbing and unsettling experience that marks out O'Brien as a talent to watch for in future.

Nicholas Rucka's Out of the Darkness (2006) was Frightfest 2006's second short film and it was a lot better than yesterday's disappointing Gasoline Blood. Shot in black and white, it's a neat reality-bending ghost story which keeps the audience as off-guard and bewildered as its protagonist. Look out for a couple of unforgettably scary images near the end.

Second feature of the day was one I wasn't completely sold on prior to its screening. Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water (2005) is a documentary about, of all things, the wholly made up Klingon language, developed by Mark Okrand for Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (1984) and now studied and further refined by devotees all around the world, put particularly at the Klingon Language Institute under the directorship of Dr Laurence M. Schoen.

Earthlings initially looked to the least attractive of the weekend's offerings and I know that a number of the regulars at the Frightfest Forum were planning to skip the film in favour of lunch - indeed Alan Jones commented in his introduction that he was surprised that as many of us had stayed for it as we did, and the crowd in the Odeon was certainly notably thinner than it had been since the weekend kicked off. Those who chose to skip Earthlings missed a real treat - alternately hysterically funny, deeply sad (in every sense of the word), unnerving and flat-out terrifying, it'll be one that will rattle the cages of Star Trek fans everywhere as it homes in on some of the franchise's more obsessive devotees and pokes not-too-gentle fun at them. There are some extraordinary characters here - the Denver linguist Dr d'Armond Speers who spoke exclusively in Klingon to his son from birth to the age of 3; knobbly forehead wearing musician Rick Yampbell (aka Captain Krankor), composer of the Klingon anthem; people who are dedicating theit livs to translating Shakespeare into Klingon. Even Michael Dorn (the Klingon Worf in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 - 1994) and Deep Space Nine (1993 - 1999)) is on hand looking faintly bewildered by it all, but the real star of the show is lovelorn postal worker Michael who you didn't know whether to take great pity on or simply slap around the head with a Shatneresque cry of "get a life!!

There will be those who will hate Earthlings for its mocking stance, but when your subject is something as ridiculous as the made up language of a fictitious alien race (worryingly one contributor refers to Klingon as "hypothetical aliens" while another believe them to be "mythical") from a television show, what other stance is there to take?

There's no escaping the fact that UK cable TV station Zone Horror (formerly The Horror Channel) are the headline sponsors of this year's event - giant projected Zone Horror logos crawl around the auditorium walls between films and occasionally a trailer for their forthcoming releases pops up before a screening. At this point, I should perhaps mention something that I forgot to talk about yesterday - the quite brilliant Zone Horror trailer featuring the animated protagonists of the Charley Says,... Public Information Films (this bit will mean nothing to anyone outside the UK I'm afraid) which features Charley the cat coming to a very nasty end at the hands of the Grim Reaper!

This year, Zone Horror, along with Frightfest and Ghost House Mobile sponsored the Cut! short film competition which gave viewers the chance to submit a two minute film to be judged by Frightfest's own Alan Jones, Troma boss Lloyd Kaufman and Sam Raimi associate Rob Tappert. Part of the prize was to have the short-listed films shown at Frightfest and ten of them were up next. As you'd expect from what are, essentially, amateur films made with sever restrictions placed upon them, the quality varies from the achingly pretentious through the "what-the-fuck-was-that-all-about" experience to the genuinely rather good. Pick of the litter were A Very Grimm Fairy Tale (in which a cruel father terrorises his young son with the nastiest bedtime story ever), The Fall Down (which managed to cram into 2 minutes what appeared to be the contents of an entire 90 minute movie) and the eventual winner, Kasting (a nasty take on the audition process).

The next feature was The Marsh (2006), introduced by its youthful director Jordan Barker but not by his leading lady Gabrielle Anwar who was supposed to be here but was prevented from attended by work commitments. The Marsh proved to be the first disappointment of the weekend. It's not particularly bad - it's very well made - but it's not terribly good either. Alan Jones introduced it as "traditional horror" and therein lies its problems - there's nothing in The Marsh we haven't seen before in many, many better movies.

The story, though seemingly complex at first, just turns out to be another ghostly revenge story with the now regulation little ghost girl joining a glowing eyed teen in terrorising children's writer Claire Holloway (Anwar) in a spooky old house next to a marsh. The climax ties itself in knots as it tries to make a straightforward story that bit more interesting (it fails) and the performances are merely so-so, even from the usually great Forest Whitaker. Effects overkill eventually robs the film of the eerie atmosphere that Barker seemed to be striving for though there are a few decent shocks, albeit very mechanical ones signalled by deafeningly loud music stings in case the visuals don't have the desired effect.

Barker - also an actor - shows some talent as a director but really needs a better script in future, one that doesn't rely on cranking out the clichés and has better drawn characters reciting interesting and believable dialogue. Between film conversation suggested that disbelief suspension had failed to be achieved as most of us were just wondering why Claire didn't move out of her short-term rented house the very second the spooky stuff started. In the end, The Marsh is very glossy but completely disposable - I doubt any of us will remember much about it once the weekend has ended.

After a short break, organisers Ian Rattray, Alan Jones and Paul McEvoy took to the stage for the annual Frightfest quiz and managed to turn the potentially dull reading out of a series of questions into a light hearted interlude with much banter with the audience (kudos to the guy who brought along his previous Frightfest brochures and a copy of Alan Jones' Rough Guide to Horror Movies from where many of the questions seem to have been drawn!).

With that out of the way, it was straight into See No Evil, a wonderfully messy splatter opus from former porn director Gregory Dark (director of the classic Traci Lords vehicle New Wave Hookers (1985)). The "return to basics" theme that has been running throughout Frightfest's selection this year continued with a film that harked back to the slasher movie heyday of the 80s but also dipped into the Texas Chain Saw Massacre bag of tricks for some of its atmosphere.

Like Isolation, a brief attempt at a synopsis might put you off but bear with me: a group of young offenders (four boys, four girls of course), none of them particularly likeable, are taken to help clean up a ramshackle hotel by former cop Williams (Steve Vidler) who had his arm ripped off by hulking maniac Jacob Goodnight before gunning the killer down. It's not really giving anything away to learn that Goodnight survived and is now lurking in the burnt out penthouse suites looking for some hatchet action.

Despite the fact that script makes very little sense, that there's really no-one here you feel like rooting for and that the plot has been before the camera so many times that it feels like a very old friend who has outstayed their welcome, See No Evil amazingly works very well. The violence is frequent and gory as hell, World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Kane (the film is a WWE co-production) is fantastic as Goodnight and the last minute plot twist works quite well. Dark refuses to take the easy option, using some very clever misdirection techniques to wrong foot audiences and the fate of Williams is refreshingly unexpected, leaving viewers completely unsure as to what's going to happen next. Another winner and one that played extremely well with the ever-vocal Frightfest faithful.

One of the great highlights of previous Frightfests were the Trailer Trash compilations, something that was very much missed at last year's event. Thankfully, they were back for what would turn out to be a triple bill this year and the first batch kicked off with a crowd-pleasing ad for Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: I guerrieri del Bronx / Bronx Warriors (1982), during which Fred Williamson got a hearty cheer and round of applause. There was also a trailer for a martial arts films (possibly Er long zheng zhu / Karate vs Tiger (1974) but it was difficult to tell what the title was amid the many strange captions reading "excellent", "bloodthirsty" and an absolutely riotous one for Sergio Martino's L'isola degli uomini pesce / Island of Mutations (1979) under another of its alternatiev titles, Island of the Fishmen.

And with that out of the way we were onto film number four for today, Adrift, known just about everywhere else as Open Water 2. Made with German money, it has very little to do with the original indie hit beyond a similar premise and, having now seen it, I've decided it really isn't a genre film and doesn't deserve a place in EOFFTV. Which is just as well as I now don't have to watch it ever again...

The basic premise of Adrift is very sound - a group of people on a yacht miles from anywhere foolishly all go swimming at the same time without lowering the ladder that will allow them to get back on board again. Unable to climb the sheer sides of the yacht and with no hope of rescue, the stranded holidaymakers descend into panic and paranoia while Amy tries to overcome her fear of water and find a way to reach her infant daughter who is still on board...

After the initial set-up is accomplished, things start to fall apart very quickly. The characters are some of the most stupid and irritating ever seen in a film - when the first victim succumbs to drowning you have to stifle a cheer as they are deeply annoying and whiney. Their attempts to re-board the yacht are inventive but ruined by their rank stupidity - having made a "rope" from their own swimming costumes, one of the men is sent to climb it rather than one of the much lighter women (one is near-anorexic and probably weighed significantly less than the "rope" itself) with predictable results. And when the survivors do finally make it out of the water, it's by using a method that most of us had thought of very early on.

Add to this annoyingly intrusive music and a strange and inconclusive ending (just what was going on there? Had anyone really survived? If not... well, see it for yourself if you must) and Adrift is a deeply frustrating experience. There are some lovely shots here - particularly one very eerie one of a drowned body floating serenely down into the depths - and the handheld camerawork does impart some of the sense of urgency that the piece required, but with characters that you didn't so much not care about as came to actively dislike, Adrift is an emotionally unengaging film that doesn't do justice t the genuinely terrifying Open Water. Director Hans Horn was supposed to be here to introduce the film but didn't show up.

With the day drawing to a close, we were due for another short film, Toll, but it didn't turn up either so we got another collection of vintage trailers, much to everyone's delight. This time we got a couple from The Exorcist (1973), one from Alien (1979) and one for Demon!, which turned out to be Larry Cohen's retitled God Told Me To (1976).

The final film of the day was the anthology Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror (2006) and the title tells you all you need to know. Those with a love for and interest in "urban music" (a particularly stupid label as most popular music is made in an urban environment) will probably love. Personally, as a middle-aged not-so-ex-hippy I barely understood a word of it. Snoop Dogg is the Devil (I think) who talks nonsense as her introduces three variable tales of terror. The first is a slight story about a female "tag artist" who is given the power to erase violent gang-bangers by crossing out their "tags" with a demonic spray can. It ended with the tale of a ruthless rapper whose determination to get to the top backfires in spectacular fashion.

The best story is the middle one, which takes some of its basic ideas from the Blind Alleys episode of Amicus' much-loved anthology classic Tales From the Crypt (1972). Anson Mount is hilariously appalling as racist white trash scumbag Texas Jr who, which is dim-witted but scheming eye-candy girlfriend Tiffany (Brande Roderick) moves into a homes for Vietnam Veterans that he inherited from his father and promptly sets about trying to get rid of the four black former soldiers who still live there. Much squirm-inducing fun is to be had from Texas' terrible racist outbursts and the final revenge evoked by the soldiers brings a grisly sense of satisfaction.

But overall, Hood of Horror was pretty poor stuff - some neat gore scenes help a bit but nothing could overcome the fact that it gives the impression that no-one involved in was really interested in what they were doing. It's listless, poorly written and often just plain dull, with some not terribly good animated inserts separating the stories. Although he mostly talks rubbish, Snoop is actually very good as the host, having more charisma in his extended little finger than the rest of the cast put together. But did we really need him rapping some forgettable piece of tat at the end over a compilation of clips from the film we'd just sat through?

But then I don't suppose a middle aged white man is who director Stacy Title was aiming at here. It may well play better with a younger audience more in tune with rap culture than I, but it just left me completely cold and uninterested for most of the time, something that the 70s Blaxploitation horrors rarely did.

And so to bed after another long day in preparation for what looks like it could be one of the most intense and gruesome single day line-ups that Frightfest has ever presented - British violence and psychological horror, French stalkers and demons, German cannibals and an American indie adaptation of a Jack Ketchum all await us tomorrow...
KEVIN LYONS