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The Horror! The Horror! - 8th June

June Bumper Edition

As usual, starting with many apologies for the column disappearing off the face of the Earth. What with Istanbul Film Festival and other duties interrupting, there was a tremendous, horrible and unfortunately unavoidable gap which has now been fixed for once and all. So without dwelling too much on this subject let’s move onto this week’s news.

Let’s start with the Istanbul International Film Festival – held each year in March/April in sunny Istanbul, this Festival brings together the best of many worlds: From Hollywood major releases to small European titles, more than 267 films made it to the city this year to wow and dazzle the audiences.

One of the key reasons why I enjoy attending the festival is the inclusion of a lot of European fare that never seems to make it across the ocean to our shores: title in example – last year’s brilliant remake of ‘La Deuxieme Souffle’ starring none other than Danielle Auteuil and Eric Cantona. A terrific updating of film noir with some lovely Hong Kong bloodshed gunplay thrown in, this was one of the most impressive titles on show in the Festival. I still patiently await a U.K. release.

But in a column called ‘The Horror, The Horror’ it’s perfectly silly to talk about mainstream titles – so let me cast a glance over ‘Midnight Madness’ – yes even in Turkey there’s an equivalent audience who is just as hungry and ready for the cinematic excess as the Frightfest audience.

This year, the strand consisted of four titles: From U.K. ‘The Cottage’, from South Korea ‘The Chaser’ , from Canada ‘Pontpool’ and from Belgium ‘The Loft’.

Although I’d already seen ‘The Cottage’ and ‘The Chaser’ I still attended the screenings to experience them with a Turkish audience and I can honestly say that neither could have been better received. The audiences were as savy as back home and they gave all the right reactions in all the right places. On top of that each of the screening started at Midnight and even with a 02.00 ending time for ‘The Chaser’ the cinema was still more than half full.

Now ‘The Loft’ was an interesting thriller from Belgium: directed by Erik Van Der Looy (who was behind the noiresque ‘The Alzheimer Case’) – it was a Hollywood thriller under Belgian clothes. The plot involved five men who shared a loft to which they all brough their mistresses. One day a member of the group finds a women murdered in the loft – since there are only five keys , the murderer by logic must be one of them. So the men lock themselves in the loft and try to solve the mystery. A terrific time-waster, ‘The Loft’ might outstay its’ welcome by about 20 minutes but is still well worth investing in.

The other new title (at least for me) was ‘Pontypool’ which to put it simply is a genuinely unnerving and intelligent masterpiece. Set almost entirely inside a make-shift radio station, the film survives on terrific characters (not least by Stephen McHattie who rules the screen each second he’s on it) and a genuine interest in dissecting the horror film and then re-writing all the rules. It’s a film that’ll divide audiences over here (as it has already been doing in America) where one camp will completely fall for it whilst the other camp will hate the second half for what it is. As far as I’m concerned I cannot wait to see it a second (or even a third time) just to re-experience the last twenty minutes. I’m even reading the book (which sits next to me as I write) which came as a gift.

Right – that’s ‘Midnight Madness’ from Turkey, an experience I recommend to any Fester that travels to Turkey during the dates of the festival.

Now some news from the movie front:

‘Giallo’ is playing Edinburgh. I want to go – I need to go and yet I can’t. If anyone out there manages to see it, we need to hear reviews quickly – is Argento back, or is it another flop?
 

Also ‘Black Dynamite’ will be showing at Edinburgh , too – another great looking titles that’s got us all hot and bothered under the collar.

When will they stop? What started as a remake of ‘Terror Train’ and ended up some sort of hybrid between a slasher movie and a ‘Hostel’ copy has opened in Japan to not much acclaim. No surprises there but if you decide you’d like to see the trailer, here it is:

There’s also a remake of ‘Last House On Sorority Row’ coming soon – and judging by this trailer on Apple website, it ain’t going to be pretty:

How about a trailer for ‘Pontypool’? I know, I know but just indulge me:

Have you guys yet seen the poster for the new ‘Final Destination’ movie? It’s in 3D and it’s now been called ‘The Final Destination’

And I think that’s it for this time – I know most of the column went to Turkey but I thought some of you might want to hear about horror audiences in a different country.

Plus I promise this time to come back next week with more news.

Sincerely yours.

Evrim Ersoy.