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6th February 2008

A great surprise this week came not in the form of my regular exploitation fix -- Lucio Fulci’s sporadically (and when it is, very) excessive “Contraband” and the delightfully endearing literalness of “Black Belly Of The Tarantula’ (“The killer? Just a psychopath”…thanks, Poirot) -- but another, unplanned viewing: writer/producer/director Hakan Besim’s eerie low budget short “The Providence Tape” which got passed onto me during an evening out with one half of “The Zombie Diaries” hit-squad, Mike Bartlett.

A great Lovecraftian concept -- an unnervingly prescient piece of technology seems able to wreak quiet tumult on the lives of a suburban couple -- this modest production shares the best attributes of any short I’ve seen in quite a while. Terrific sound design (one area that low budget filmmakers tend to fall foul of. They might try and ape the prettiest shots in the world, but if the sound isn't layered and mixed properly the whole film is going to feel flat, lifeless and utterly devoid of impact) is creatively and coherently blended in with the unfolding story. With subtle, sensitive direction and an unease rising naturally out of the story rather than any gurning, cheap looking special effects, Besim has marshalled together an reassuringly old fashioned little chiller.

I hope Hakam won’t mind me mentioning it briefly here, but it reminded me that some of the best cinema we’ve seen at Frightfest has been in the form of the short film. True, we might be more forgiving of the rough edges and budgetary limitations of these small, often shoestring gems, but that doesn’t mean they skimp on story or, more importantly, emotional impact.

Mike Mort’s hilarious “Deadly Tantrum”, Jim Solan’s mind-boggling “Piss Boy”, Dominic Hailstone’s dazzling “The Eel”, Aloysha Saari’s wickedly witty “Kasting”, Brendan Muldowney’s chilling “The Ten Steps” and Dennison Ramalho’s astonishing “Love From Other Only” have been particular, and peculiar, standouts over the years. Something Frightfest always hopes to foster between its international feature discoveries is nascent talent from the ranks of its impassioned fan base. We’re always hoping that others might follow in the footsteps of fans-turned-famous people Ed King (producer) and James ‘Jimmy-Joe-Jim-Bob’ Moran (writer, of whom I have no idea whether he likes being called that, but I just did, for one time only…)

Last year, the mysterious and no doubt rather dashing ‘Benozoid’ and ‘Davo’ from the boards were entrants to Robert Rodriguez’s SXSW Grindhouse Trailer competition last year -- directing and conceiving a trailer for the incomparably titled “Slash Hive” (aka “Six Deaths In A Wasps Eye”). They, and the makers of the now legendary “Hobo With A Shotgun” (not to mention “Cong Of The Dead” and “Woman With The Eyes Of Glass”) embody the very spirit of this come-as-you-like bravado and verve, launching their fevered minds onto the screen with giddy abandon regardless of budgetary constraints. Go and Youtube these ripe specimens for yourselves, for either the first or even umpteenth time: they never lose their luster. Trailers like these are something that could find their spiritual home at Frightfest -- residence, as it is, to the annual triumph of Rattray’s own patented “Trailer Trash”. Something for future years, perhaps?

(Incidentally, you’ll also be able to experience the delights of “Slash Hive” for yourselves if you’re lucky enough to be attending Glasgow bash on the 23rd -- look out for its luminescent, Bava-saturated beauty lurking in the wings before one of the pictures.)

I mention Hakan’s “Providence Tape” atop all this random musing because he’s also the proprietor of www.budgetfilmmaker.com and www.halloweenchallenge.com, two enterprising initiatives for the guerilla filmmaker, the latter of which will be of particular interest to readers of this site.

I don’t know how many of us are entering films for the fest this year -- I, like many of you, probably talked with renewed enthusiasm for “getting all creative”, particularly after last year’s ever-stimulating spread of succinct celluloid. But self-generated extensions of the creative community like Hakan’s inspired Halloween Challenge facilitate such undertakings with the reassuring knowledge that throngs of like-minded individuals want to do that same thing you probably do: make a movie.

Perhaps you’ll be able to give Alan, Paul, Ian and Greg a piece of your bloody, ingenious mind in the coming years. Ultimately, I’m sure it’s what we’d all love to do.

“And Soon The Darkness”: now here’s one I’ve never seen but the name of whose director gives pause for acute anticipation right off the bat. Director Robert Fuest made his name with television’s “The Avengers” but solidified his reputation in the eyes of cult aficionados (and aficionados of stuff that’s simply rather excellent, if they know what’s exquisite for them) with a charming twisted little duo of pictures about one Phibes, Dr Phibes.

“The Abominable Dr Phibes” and its sequel, “Dr Phibes Rises Again” are simply stunning pieces of purposefully absurd phantasmagoria, and the perfect accompaniment either “Medea” or “Theater Of Blood”, such is their air of both mock-tragic portent and maleficent glee. As much responsible for the eventual explosion in innovative methods of bloodshed employed by such exploitation cinema as Mario Bava’s “Twitch Of The Death Nerve” or “Black Christmas“, these mainstays of any inventory of the genre’s great and good are triumphs of excessive imagination, melded with a precise -- if surreal -- feel for ghoulish mood.

Which makes psychological mystery “And Soon The Darkness” an all the more enticing proposition. Co-written by “Dr Who”’s Terry Nation and Fuest’s “Avenger”’s mentor Brian Clemens, it stars Michelle Dotrice -- one year shy of the bucolic hysteria of Piers Hagard’s impactful “Blood On Satan’s Claw” -- as one of a pair of young English cyclists taking a sojourn to the French countryside. Presaging George Sluizer’s “Spoorlos” (“The Vanishing”) by nearly two decades, it essays the almost real time, rapid unravelling of one of the pair’s psyche as the other suddenly and inexplicably vanishes. The terrifying speculation of being enmeshed in this series uncanny and unnerving events far from the familiar comforts of home promises a series of taut, expressionistic chills.

If the subsequent track record of writer Clemens and director Fuest are anything to go by -- there’s also the promise not a small amount of extremely odd behaviour and errant eventuality.

“Hatchet”: in 2006, Adam Green experienced what would be a daunting prospect for even the most hardened genre veteran: following Del Toto’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” into the fold of Frightfest opening night screenings. All the more impressive then that the gregarious first-timer rose to the moment with both an animated, gracious introduction and a show stopping picture. ‘Hatchet’ is a throwback, in the keenest sense, to the breed of horror picture that fans clamour for all too vociferously and are then usually denied by shoddy studio marketing ethics and preposterous, demographically skewed compromise.

Enlightening us on the Louisiana legend of Victor Crowley, it sees the deformed, tragic maniac prowling the bayous slicing and dicing -- in an increasingly imaginative and audacious variety of methods -- a parade of just-dimensional yet still hilariously animated characters who are always one inventive wise-crack away from the next jaw-mangling set piece. A triumph of Green’s intense, savvy low budget ingenuity, the picture makes fine job of inspiring John Carl Beuchler’s MMI f/x team back to the glory of their 1980’s heyday and proves a new and unexpected benchmark in post-modern, zero-pretence horror.

Yes, I’ve used that sound bite before and it still applies on a second, even third viewing. The backlash for “Hatchet” was, perhaps, inevitable, as it always is when something so “simple” is so celebrated (I say “simple”, not to denigrate this enthrallingly entertaining picture: it’s just that we are -- and I’m sure Green, too, is -- under no illusion that this is “Memento” or “Pi”). Expectation is a devilish burden and anticipation its winsome trollop: this picture’s been doing the fan circuit for over a year and its only natural for some aficionados to have felt let down by what is essentially a very straightforward -- albeit unashamedly gruesome -- slasher film. It’s as well to remember that “Black Christmas”, or even “Halloween” isn’t universally loved either.

But in the picture’s defence (not that its needs any but I’m too opinionated to let it slide for less than another paragraph) Green’s great weapon is in understanding the context in which he has made his picture. By this, I don’t mean it’s full of Kevin-Williamson-arch, self-deprecating quips and dull referentiality (though it’s certainly far funnier than any of those dated, self-aware horror pictures from the mid-90s -- Green’s background in comedy shines through). These kids don’t *know* they’re in a horror movie, but the *movie itself* knows (and Green and Beuchler are all too aware) that it’s emblematic, celebratory even, of a genre that, of late, panders to just these kinds of kids who probably don’t know a classic, excessively bloody slasher film from “Boogeyman”. Maybe these cine-illiterate kids deserve everything they get? Maybe.

But while weighing up that not-particularly-substantial question, we certainly have a roaring time as all about us limbs fly, torso’s split and people scream, deliciously.