Gorezone Weekend of Horrors, Prince Charles Cinema London, 31 Oct/1 Nov 2009
Report by Ben Bussey
Tucked away in a shady corner a stone’s throw from the bright lights and gloss of Leicester Square, sits the Prince Charles Cinema, proudly proclaimed the only independent cinema in central London. And this past Halloween it played host to the second annual Gorezone Weekend of Horrors, the British horror movie magazine’s international film festival. Hosted by UK fanboy favourite Emily Booth and US B-movie star Suzi Lorraine (both of whom also write for the magazine), with a bulging schedule of 15 movies over two days – all UK premieres, and even a world premiere or two – hopes were high for an event to remember. So, on behalf of Brutal As Hell, I came, I saw, I consumed a fuckload of caffeine. Here’s how it all played out.
DAY 1
Temptation – I dare say this tale of a young woman-about-town stumbling into vampirism was as good a film as any to kick-start the festival. After all, particularly when it’s grim and rainy outside, there’s nothing like a bit of girl-on-girl bloodsucking to get you up in the morning. That it’s a UK production set and shot in London only made it that bit more personable. Playing like a gender-reversed Lost Boys, but with the gay overtones made explicit, this is a simple, by the numbers vamp romp, but it’s perfectly enjoyable if that’s your cup of tea. It most definitely doesn’t hurt that the young female cast are extremely easy on the eye, with oodles of leg and corseted cleavage on show. Director Catherine Taylor joined the bulk of the cast for a Q&A post-screening, wherein she acknowledged the influence of The Lost Boys, and we learned that head vamp actress Rachel Waters, unlike her character, is in fact neither French nor ginger. DVD release is lined up for next March.
Samurai Princess (AKA Devil Princess) – I could just put the words ‘from the makers of Tokyo Gore Police’ and that would probably say it all. Yep, it’s another one of those utterly batshit Japanese martial arts splatterfests, with a cast of cosplayers wandering around the wilderness hacking each other to fuck with various lethal android appendages. It’s a fairly simple revenge story in which a brutalised schoolgirl (yes, of course, another Japanese schoolgirl) allows herself to be rebuilt as a killing machine to avenge her raped and murdered classmates, but the weirdness is upped further with a twist of the spiritual, her body playing host to the souls of the dead girls. It’s safe to say that anyone who liked Tokyo Gore Police and/or The Machine Girl will find plenty to enjoy, with highlights including a pair of shears in the place of a foot, detachable tits utilised as a projectile weapon, and shred metal guitar creating sonic booms.
Won Ton Baby – The first of three movies at the festival to star co-host Suzi Lorraine – this one she also produced and co-wrote the story for. Introduced as a tribute to the likes of Basket Case, this is indeed a distinctly Henenlotter-ish splatstick tale of a deformed, conjoined twin coming forth into the world to wreak all manner of freaky goings-on. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as there’s also a surprisingly heavy emphasis on the relationships of a dysfunctional mixed-race family, and questions of ethnicity and identity handled in an unexpectedly serious fashion. Indeed, the family politics takes up so much of the running time that Won Ton Baby himself and his dastardly goings on seem little more than a subplot. This doesn’t necessarily do the film any favours, particularly given that it’s already hampered by poor production values, which Lorraine herself admitted were a problem in the Q&A afterwards. She also expressed a desire to remake the movie with a bigger budget, and revealed that she was able to get a cameo appearance from Gunnar Hansen as a result of interviewing him for Gorezone. Oh yes, she also said Bubba Ho-Tep had been a big influence; I haven’t even mentioned the whole Elvis thing going on in this movie…
Speaking of interviews, it was after this movie that I was able to grab a quick word with Emily Booth and Gorezone editor Bryn Hammond:
True to Ms Booth’s word, the next movie was -
Maneater - Dispel all thoughts of Nelly Furtardo and/or Hall & Oates, for this movie is about a small town plagued by brutal murders which Sherriff Dean Cain realises are the work of a wendigo. As you might expect this is basically a Sci-Fi channel movie of the week, but with an added helping of boobage and F-bombs. The creature FX are good enough, but the overall execution is utterly prosaic, nothing we haven’t seen a million times. Dean Cain being moody and swearing isn’t enough to save it, nor are the plentiful sex scenes, with no less than two moments attempting to recreate Julianna Guill’s defining moment from Friday the 13th ’09. Two of the movie’s producers (didn’t catch their names, d’oh) had flown in from LA for a Q&A, wherein we learned that they had managed to get Dean Cain when he had a month off, and that SAG rules about low-budget movies enabled them to secure his services for the equivalent of only £60 a day. As a result Cain was given a ‘trophy credit’ as executive producer and will get a cut of the gross profits, though the producer himself gave a wry chuckle at that thought, wisely not anticipating big business. It should be released to DVD and VOD from Lionsgate in the new year.
Plague Town – In a line-up full of gore gags and ‘what-the-fuck’ moments, this was one of the few films in the festival to boast some real chills. In a bid to get over tensions between his two teenage daughters and their soon-to-be stepmother, a father takes the whole family rambling in Ireland, the elder daughter having somehow picked up a Cockney geezer boyfriend along the way. Naturally they’re soon lost without transportation, and as night falls and the group gets broken up, they find themselves prey to the local monsters – hordes of demonic kids. Put simply, it’s The Hills Have Eyes meets The Children, but with stronger supernatural overtones, aided considerably by creepy camerawork (though better lighting would have helped), and good central performances from Josslyn DeCrosta and Erica Rhodes as the sisters. (DeCrosta in particular says ‘cunt’ very well.) Sorry to say that due to the onset of hunger I missed the Q&A to this one, but it’s certainly a movie worth checking out.
Someone’s Knocking At The Door – I must agree with Bryn Hammond that this was the real hit of the festival, but perhaps not for the reasons he gave. As you may have gathered from the earlier video, the Gorezone editor was so shocked by this film he went so far as to put an additional warning next to its listing in the festival programme – ‘EXTREMELY GRAPHIC, MAY CAUSE SICKNESS!’ – but not long after the screening there were some quite vocal disagreements with this sentiment. Frankly, this is neither hither nor thither, as Someone’s Knocking At The Door scores points not just for perversity but for sheer unexpectedness.
Very much in the vein of US indies from the likes of Gregg Araki and Harmony Korine, it’s a genre-blurring collage of drug trip, college comedy-drama, and supernatural horror movie, as a bunch of medical students experiment with a mysterious hallucinogenic that somehow resurrects a long-dead serial killing couple who raped their victims to death, utilising the male killer’s abnormally, indeed terrifyingly-large penis. If possible, it’s even stranger than it sounds. It doesn’t all completely work, with the more conventional slasher elements sitting uncomfortably amongst the experimental freak-outs, but it’s highly laudable as an effort to take audiences out of their comfort zone. Sadly director Chad Ferrin was not present for the Q&A, but producer Sean Cain described him as being obsessed with penises and rabbits (his previous film being entitled Easter Bunny Kill Kill!) Actor Ricardo Gray, who had a particularly challenging and provocative role as a stutterer known as Spaz, said he used John Waters movies as inspiration for getting to grips with the bad taste movie tone. Also, remarkably, the whole thing was shot in only eleven days.
The Telling – In one fell swoop we go from the high-point of the festival to its lowest. It’s a nice enough idea for an anthology movie – in order to gain entry to a sorority, three pledges must each tell a scary story – but it falls short on pretty much every level. Dull stories, dull acting, no scares, and – biggest shocker of all given the casting of the Girls of the Playboy Mansion – very little sex appeal. As Emily Booth herself remarked after the screening, what’s the point if they don’t get their tits out? It may have better production values than many of the other films at the festival, but unlike most of the others, this one doesn’t even feel like they’re trying. Sad to say, Hef’s harem didn’t show up for a Q&A.
Next came the announcement of the Goremate of the Year – essentially a reader’s poll of the sexiest woman in horror in 2009, based on a shortlist given by the magazine; not unreasonably, both Ms. Booth and Ms. Lorraine voiced light-hearted annoyance at their own omission from the shortlist! Clearly this was intended as a bit of a laugh, but it resulted in the most uncomfortable ten-to-fifteen minutes of the whole weekend, as the co-hosts silently stood on stage waiting through interminably long promo clips of the ladies in question, set to music. Here’s hoping next year they’ll keep these clips down to no more than twenty or thirty seconds per nominee, rather than the two or three minutes they were each allocated. Even the Eliza Dushku sideboob clip couldn’t break the tension. But when all was said and done, and the nominees had all been represented – Bijou Phillips for The Wizard of Gore, Lindsay Lohan for I Know Who Killed Me, Olga Kuryenko for Max Payne (how that’s a horror film I don’t know), Amanda Seyfried for Solstice, Bobbie Sue Luther for Laid To Rest, and the aforementioned Ms. Dushku for The Alphabet Killer, the ultimate winner was Bobbie Sue Luther, who was nice enough to provide an amiable video acceptance speech. All fun and games, I’m sure, but if there’s one element of the festival that needs serious rethinking before next year, it’s this one.
The Children of the Corn 2009 – While this may have been expected to be one of the big audience-grabbers of the weekend, the auditorium had largely emptied out by the time this one commenced, and I’m afraid I didn’t stick with it beyond the first twenty minutes or so, from which it was evident that this remake was not deviating from the original in any significant way. With TV movie aesthetics and TV movie acting, there was nothing compelling me to watch this regurgitation of a movie which I was never that keen on in the first place. Perhaps journalistic ethics should have compelled me to see it through to the end, but what can I say. It might have been the seven previous films talking, but all I got from this was a big yawn.
A few drinks, a couple of tube journeys and considerably less than a full night’s sleep later…
DAY 2
Holocaust, Holocaust – This was the second Suzi Lorraine movie of the festival (the lady herself sadly absent most of the day due to illness), though her role is largely limited to filling a bikini in the early scenes; not a complaint, you understand. Set up as a fairly standard survivalist horror, as some decadent holiday-makers find themselves marooned on an island inhabited by a cannibal tribe, things take an unexpected romantic turn as a native takes central female Amanda Cole as his mate. A curiosity indeed, aided by some reasonable performances and cinematography, but none of it is enough to significantly hold the attention.
The Graves – On paper this sounds like it could be a winner – two ‘busty nerdy girls’ (to paraphrase Emily Booth once again) find themselves up to their sweaty cleavages in murder and supernatural shenanigans while visiting a remote desert town populated by the likes of Tony Todd, Bill Moseley, and Amanda (Tina from Nightmare On Elm Street) Wyss. But while Jillian Murray and Clare Grant may be very attractive as the titular sisters (Graves is their surname – groan), neither their performances nor the script ever succeed in making us care about them. As such, this attempt at merging Ginger Snaps with The Hills Have Eyes largely falls flat, even with amusingly OTT turns from Todd and Moseley.
At this point came a sneak preview of a new British movie entitled Hard Shoulder, from first time writer/director Nicholas David Lean. With the snippet we were shown featuring bound and gagged victims tormented by scuzzballs, there’s a definite feeling of white trash/hillbilly horror transposed to an urban UK setting. However, Lean promised ‘psychological horror’ over bloodshed, emphasising the emotional angle of the story: a materialistic man faced with losing his family. Actor James Fisher also pointed to influences beyond the genre realm, intriguingly citing Johnny Depp in Secret Window, Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood, and Elijah Wood in Sin City as reference points for his character. Whatever Hard Shoulder turns out to be, it certainly seems mean and moody, and the team seem enthused, so it may be worth keeping an eye out for it. They’re currently in post-production, aiming to premiere at Cannes, and intent on a theatrical release.
After a good sized lunch break – well needed, particularly as the movies had been pretty much non-stop on day one – we got a teaser trailer for Monitor, the new movie from the makers of Animal Soup (which incidentally also had a trailer shown immediately thereafter). If you’ve seen Animal Soup or read Marc’s review, you’ll know it’s an extreme exercise in bad taste, its ample blood and gore complimented with lashings of piss, shit, and vomit. From the tiny glimpse we got of Monitor, it looks to be an entirely different ball game: a bank of black and white CCTV screens, all of which if I’m not mistaken are looking at the same woman from different angles and at different times – definite echoes of My Little Eye. I spoke to director David VG Davies of Film MA who said that Monitor had grown out of an idea for an Animal Soup sequel but should indeed be a very different, more mainstream film, set in a rehab clinic and told via CCTV footage. The teaser is in fact all they’ve shot to date, and I’m intrigued to see where it goes from there.
After that, it’s on with the movies:
Dog- I’m almost loathe to say anything bad about this one because I can see the filmmakers had good intentions, but it just doesn’t work. The action cuts between the day to day life of a pretty Emo girl, and two inbred white trash brothers whose junkyard is home to their mutated hairball of a younger sibling – the Dog of the title. Much like Someone’s Knocking At The Door, efforts are made to mix up genres and do something unexpected, but in this case it falls way short of the mark. There are lots of idiosyncratic bit parts thrown in and a deluge of unusual editing effects, but it all feels like a desperate attempt to overcompensate for the sorely lacking script and abundance of continuity problems. Director Timothy Gates was there, and revealed that the bulk of the hiring for the film was done via IMDB and Myspace – including, remarkably, the scoring of Harry Manfredini, whom the director had added as a Myspace friend only to be asked (words to the effect of) “why don’t I do the music for your movie?” To his credit, Gates seemed genuinely humbled to have such an established composer on board, declaring Friday the 13th the second best horror movie theme of all time after Psycho.
Bikini Girls On Ice – Director Geoff Klein introduced this by dryly declaring that his movie was ‘not going to answer any existential questions.’ Boasting the third and final Suzi Lorraine acting role of the festival (she later called it her ‘Drew Barrymore in Scream’ scene, so you won’t be too surprised how she ends up), it centres on a female college soccer team who throw a bikini car wash fundraiser in the grounds of an apparently abandoned gas station which, unbeknownst to them, is home to a madman named Moe. But despite the title, the premise, and a few snippets of boy/girl and girl/girl action, this movie is surprisingly low on sleaze, Klein and co-writer/producer Jeff Ross are more interested in crafting characters than exposing bodies. This would be fine, if only the characters they’d crafted were a tad more endearing. Given that a good percentage of the preceding movies that weekend had on some level referenced The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, nothing could keep Bikini Girls On Ice from feeling more than a bit on the stale side in concept and execution. Still, Klein came off as smart and amiable in the Q&A, wherein he told us that the title was originally made up as a joke, confirmed that he consciously underemphasised the sexploitation elements in favour of character, but also confessed that the casting process was fun. We also learned that there are hopes for a sequel that will flesh out the character of Moe (though thankfully Klein promised ‘no mommy issues’), and perhaps most intriguingly that they had managed to get the bikinis for free, but the ice set them back $1000!
Next up was another sneak preview, this time for upcoming British crime thriller Killer Bitch. For some rather petty reasons that I don’t care to regurgitate here this film has whipped up minor controversy in the British tabloids, in spite of the fact that it still hasn’t completed production. Not too surprisingly, the promo we were shown consisted of pretty much nothing but violence, sex, and swearing. Given that it was shot on cheap looking DV, there’s a distinctly Crank-ish vibe about it, but with a British gangster film angle. None of it struck me as especially new or shocking, and the cast and crew Q&A did little to win me over, with the director making bold declarations about the authenticity of everything – real violence, real sex, and the casting of real-life criminals – and one of the actors cracking jokes about his six years in jail for football hooliganism. Perhaps it’s just me, but I haven’t found anything remotely likeable about that minority of British society and as such I have no particular interest in Killer Bitch. But credit where it’s due, it certainly looks to be an intense, visceral viewing experience, and to be fair to the director he did stress that the film was simply intended to be a ‘lad’s film’ and ‘a bit of fun,’ so let’s not get our knickers in a twist. Currently on a production hiatus due in part to the press attention, there are hopes for a theatrical release next year. Next up:
Silent Night, Zombie Night - another surprising entry in that the preconceptions conjured by the title have very little relation to the end product. The movie may be set at Christmas time, feature a zombie dressed as Santa, and have a few moments of dead-bashing humorously set to festive music, but its real focus is a love triangle: the failing marriage of obnoxious cop Frank, and his partner Nash’s unspoken desire for Frank’s wife. As was pointed out in the Q&A, it is refreshing to see a modern horror that isn’t about teenagers, with midlife anxiety instead being the driving force. It was written and directed by Sean Cain, producer of Someone’s Knocking At My Door. In what would be the last Q&A of the weekend, he made no attempt to hide the influence of Reservoir Dogs (early on the car scene with Tim Roth and Harvey Keitel is recreated almost verbatim), but used the not unreasonable defence that Tarantino probably ripped it off too. Ricardo Gray, who played a zombie, amused the audience to no end with his horror story of the make-up getting in his pubes.
The Crypt – as with day one, the penultimate movie turned out to be one of the biggest let-downs. A group of professional thieves break into a sealed crypt where bodies were buried with all their jewellery, but find the inhabitants aren’t quite dead (not a bad premise, but – this might just be me – it’s strangely reminiscent of a short story called Grave Robber from a 2007 anthology called The Sound of Horror – the story in question written by a certain Benjamin Bussey…? ) I had a chat with Geoff Klein about this movie later, and we agreed that basically it’s a low rent clone of The Descent, but falls into all the traps The Descent was smart enough to avoid. It casts sexy young fantasy females (plus one buff pretty boy) instead of women who you might actually believe for a second could be career criminals, and rather than focussing on the characters and the action, the camera is constantly leering. Subsequently, while the movie and its cast may have genuine dramatic aspirations, it all just comes off as tawdry and sleazy. All the most effective sequences recreate moments from The Descent as good as directly, and the ideas dry up rapidly, particularly given that the whole thing drags on at least twenty minutes longer than it should.
Offspring - the last movie of the festival was the only one I really had any preconceptions or expectations about. It’s the fourth film to be made from the novels of Jack Ketchum – a writer who I truly believe is one of the greatest working in the world today, regardless of genre – and the first to carry a screenplay by the man himself. However, it’s an adaptation of what I consider his weakest novel, and directed by Andrew van den Houten, who to my mind (and I’m well aware that many, including Marc, will disagree with me on this) failed to adequately capture the power of the source material with his movie of Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. Sad to say, Offspring winds up a somewhat hollow experience. Once you get beyond the initial shock value of graphic violence involving young children – admittedly, a lot of people won’t be able to get past that! – there really isn’t a great deal going on under the surface. Particularly coming at the tail-end of two days of excessive violence, it’s easy to just get numb to the relentless brutality pretty quick, and the bland TV movie visual aesthetics doing nothing to help draw you in. Something of a dull note to go out on, but by that point there was no one left in the auditorium but the faithful hardcore; hell, neither of the hosts even showed up to introduce it.
Overall feelings about the Gorezone Weekend of Horrors: even though I can’t say I was particularly blown away by any of the movies, there was still a definite pleasure to be taken in seeing them all in this manner, back to back on the big screen. After all, the majority – if not every single one – of these films are destined to go direct to home rental rather than theatrical release, so there’s a degree of satisfaction to be taken in seeing them get the cinematic treatment at least once, and given that the Prince Charles Cinema has a history as a bona fide grindhouse, I can’t think of a more appropriate venue. If they can iron out a few of the creases and be just a smidgen more discerning in their movie selections next time around, I can certainly see this being a winning format well worth revisiting.
