6th July 2009

It’s film festival time here in Sydney. Those of us who live on the other side of the world may be incredibly jealous of the recently announced An American Werewolf in London screening but it’s been a busy few months in Sydney with festivals galore to keep us occupied so we can’t complain too much.

The annual A Night of Horror festival featured a bloody slew of titles that will be familiar to many Frightfest goers. Kicking off with Sean Ellis’s The Broken, the festival included many Australian premieres and a splattering of world premiere screenings. The Green Carpet premiere of I know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer, featured the aforementioned carpet along with Pimms and cucumber sandwiches a plenty. Doug Turner and Stacey Edmonds were present for a Q&A after the screening hosted by yours truly.

Steven Sheil’s incredibly disturbing Mum & Dad put everyone off meat and cleaning jobs for life while the World Premiere of Michael Master’s and David Francis mockumentary Reel Zombies brought the house down. The film follows a group of inept filmmakers as they prepare to shoot their latest horror film, the difference here is the zombies actually exist. Saving money of gore, make up and extras the crew just do everything for real, the problem is the undead actors get hungry and the only food available is the film crew. It’s actually a really interesting take on the genre and the film proved to be one of the best received films of the festival. Yes, the gag does begin to wear thin before the films grisly climax but the combination of horror and comedy works well.

Another world premiere John Effers Finale. The 16mm low budget thriller was much touted for its colourful visual stylings that often recalled the Italian Giallo thrillers of the Seventies. Indeed, for the budget Effers was working with, this was an astounding debut and he is definitely a name to look out for. David Gregory’s Plague Town was another low budget treat that defied expectations. The film follows a dysfunctional American family who head to Ireland to bond and discover their roots. After missing their bus the nightmarish town that they find themselves stranded in is certainly lacking the Guiness fuelled welcome they were hoping for as groups of giggling deformed children begin to kill off the family members. The festival then headed to Scotland for Kerry Anne Mullaney’s The Dead Outside and Argentina for Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s harrowing I’ll Never Die alone. The festival closed its eight day residency at Newtown’s Dendy Cinema with Toby Wilkins Splinter which was certainly lapped up by the appreciative crowd.

To tide us over until the Sydney Film Festival, the city’s Chauvel Cinema treated us to a Summer Bloodbath, a season of horror films and spaghetti westerns. Kevin Connor’s Motell Hell and Sam Raini’s Army of Darkness rubbed shoulders with the likes of Sergio Leone’s Fistfull of Dollars. They have just started a new season entitled Uninvited Guests, a special program of cult horror films and double features such as Gremlins and Piranha, Child’s Play and the hammer horror masterpiece Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed or John Waters Trash masterpiece Pink Flamingos with the classic Kubrick shocker The Shining.

We then had the Sydney Film Festival to enjoy. While not loaded to the brim with horror titles, there was plenty to enjoy. Nicholas Winding Refn’s fabulous Bronson was the prison drama that Kubrick never made and justifiably won the festival’s big prize. Henry Selick’s Coraline was given some red carpet glamour by Teri Hatcher and John Woo was present for the screening of Red Cliff. I also got to interview the great man which was a wonderful thrill.

Horror wise the Canadian Pontypool tried hard to impress luring the audience with a tense and oppressive atmosphere that John Carpenter would have been proud of. Restricting the actors, and the audience, in the radio recording studio was a brilliant and claustrophobic move. We learn what is happening as our heroes do, through snippets of radio talk and phone calls and the first 40 minutes is a brilliantly sustained exercise in restraint.

Any Frightfester who has seen the Aussie gore fest Dying Breed will have a vague awareness of the infamous Australian cannibal Alexander Pearce but where that film took a modern view of things integrating inbreeding mutants, flesh eating and Tasmanian Devils; Jonathan Auf Der Heide’s Van Diemen’s Land tells the actual story of the Irish convict who was driven to cannibalism during an attempt to escape incarceration in the harsh environs of Tasmania. Beautifully shoot, this is a remarkably assured debut from the young director and his group of actors who look like they went through hell to get some of the dramatic shots.

Dead Snow was a gloriously gory comedy that had the audience jumping and laughing in equal measure. It reminded me of seeing Peter Jackson’s Braindead at the London Film Festival many moons ago. Nazi zombies in the snow, what better way to end the festival? Next time we’ll take an in-depth look at the Aussie classic that was rediscovered in a skip in Pittsburgh Wake in Fright including an interview with the director Ted Kotcheff, the man who gave us First Blood and Weekend at Bernies.

Until next time,
Be lucky
Dave.

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