WELCOME TO CINEMUERTE 2005! Western Canada's premiere genre festival is back
with more thrilling premieres than ever before, as well as
an exploitation all-nighter that will shake your perception
of the world. Seriously. You'll be crying for your
mommy by the time the festival is over!
Please Note: Website ticket sales are processed through the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin TX. The screenings are all in Vancouver Canada. An annual Pacific Cinematheque membership ($3) is required to attend any screenings at CineMuerte. This membership fee is NOT included in the price of the CineMuerte tickets - it is payable at the door on the day of screening. See FAQ section on the news page for more details.
WEDNESDAY, OCT. 26th – 7pm:
GALA PRESENTATION:
(Passholders and Invite Only – Public screening on Oct 28th )
CALVAIRE
+ short film: BROADCAST 23
D. Fabrice Du Welz Belgium 2004 94min. 35mm
buy tickets
"DON’T go to the village, they’re not like you and me, they’re not - performers." Good advice there from Paul Bartel (Jackie Berroyer), the sad-eyed former comedian who runs the countryside guest house where cabaret singer Marc Stevens (Laurent Lucas) finds himself when his van breaks down en route to his next gig.
Unfortunately, it’s advice that masks another agenda. The villagers in question may be a deranged bunch of Belgian bestiality freaks who spend their days making pigs squeal and their nights in the pub engaging in bizarre clod-hopping dance rituals, but Bartel has his own twisted reason for keeping his new guest’s presence a secret. Having recently been dumped by his nightclub-singer wife for another man, he’s feeling the sting of loneliness, the humiliation of sexual inadequacy and a general loss of enthusiasm for life. But in the unexpected arrival of Marc he sees a chance for a kind of happiness and so, rather than fixing Marc’s van as promised, he removes the battery, knocks him out, puts him in a dress, shaves off his hair, ties him to a bed and renames him Gloria.
First-time director Fabrice Du Welz’s grimly funny film riffs heavily on the backwoods horror of Deliverance and Southern Comfort (the bearded villagers in particular look like Cajun cast-offs from Walter Hill’s Louisiana outlaw classic), and its bewitching insanity recalls South Korean director Kim Ki Duk’s The Isle. But there’s also a nod to Gaspar Noé in the casting of Philippe Nahon and Jo Prestia (both from Irreversible), and another in the disorientating, migraine inducing camera work used in the final stand-off between Bartel and the villagers - a particularly debased orgy of violence, sodomy and animal humping. Not for the faint of heart.
(The Scotsman)
EXPLOITATION ALL-NIGHTER
Special ticket includes a massive selection of all-you-can-eat cereal!
buy tickets
CLASS OF 1984
Print Source: Mark Lester
(email kier-la@originalalamo.com with inquiries)
The year is 1984. A rabid pack of rampaging punk teens run our schools, our drugs and our prostitutes. Brutality and decadence are everywhere. Enter first-year teacher Andrew Norris (Perry King), who’s forced to violently turn the tables on the bloodthirsty gang before their decadent crimewave swallows the town alive.
Writer/director Mark L. Lester’s reckless masterpiece debuted at Cannes Film Festival to divided reviews. What detractors and many thrill-seeking fans both sadly overlooked was the fact that the movie had been done exactly right. Each actor turns in a memorable, convincing performance amid knifings and punk slam pits. Beloved ham Roddy McDowall pulls off what may have been his best scene of the decade. The film moves constantly forward at full speed, with humor and intelligent dialogue balancing out the horrors perpetrated by the vicious teens. And several jarring scenes were so effective that they’ve since been ripped off for less exciting movies like FIGHT CLUB. Open your eyes…this is the real shit.
The point is: CLASS OF 1984 is a perfect exploitation film. It’s relentlessly seedy, overflowing with assault, suicide, racism, drug use and crime crime crime (all perpetrated by minors!) The gang itself, led by blowdried punk-hunk Timothy Van Patten, wrote the textbook for countless delinquent groups that would terrorize big-screen high schools through the ‘80s and beyond. The tension of victimization and vengeance create some of the most stirring scenes of violent retribution on record. But beyond all this, there’s a bitterly absorbing air of human helplessness and leather-clad heartlessness that makes this movie the flat-out best in its genre. (Zack Carlson, All Freakin’ Night)
CREEP
+ short film SOLE POSSESSIONS
D. Christopher Smith UK/Germany 2005 85min. 35mm
Print Source: Lions Gate Films
Chela Johnson – CJohnson@lgecorp.com
So this is what happens when you fall asleep in a subway station. Kate (Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente) is a London party girl with big plans. Apparently, George Clooney's in town and, after knocking back a few drinks at a little soiree, she decides to seek him out. Unfortunately, by the end of the night, she finds herself with a far less attractive mate. Unable to find a cab in the West End of London, Kate decides to wait for the last subway of the night. Already intoxicated, she has a few more drinks and nods off in the station. When she awakes, the station is empty, the last train is gone, and Kate is locked in. Frustrated by the inconvenience, she soon learns that things are far worse than they seem. As it turns out, the subway is home to a sadistic, demonic creature with an appetite for human flesh. Stuck with only a homeless guy and a dog for protection, Kate must contend with rapists, rats, and even the occasional subway train as they join the beast in a night of torment that she will not soon forget. With a breakneck pace and virtually no lulls, this is the kind of action-oriented horror that is all too rare these days. (Jonathan Doyle, Fantasia Film Festival)
VICE SQUAD
D. Gary Sherman USA 1982 97 min. 35mm
A highly recommended descent into the sulfurous pit of hell known as Hollywood. Direct-to-video action god Wings Hauser burst onto the scene with his intense, over-the-top performance as the psychotic killer pimp Ramrod. Seething and ranting, a homicidal twisted nerve, Hauser is incredible. This is his show all the way, he even sings the theme song, "Neon Slime!" Along the way, Hauser jumps the fence from villain into full-on monster territory, making VICE SQUAD not only one of the most exciting films you'll ever see, but one of the scariest as well. In this truly grim urban fairy tale, a hooker named Princess (Season Hubley) must make it through a long night in a very dark forest (the streets of L.A.) without being gobbled up by the big bad wolf (Hauser), who himself is being chased by the mighty hunter (the LAPD detective who earlier allowed him to escape.) Pure entertainment from the gifted director of RAW MEAT and DEAD AND BURIED. Screenplay by Robert V. O'Neill (director of WONDER WOMEN and the ANGEL films.) Costarring MTV Veejay Nina Blackwood and Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith. (Lars Nilsen, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema)
DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
D. John Newland 1973 US (Made for TV) 74min. 16mm
Print Source: Exhumed Films
By popular demand! The scariest, most lingering made-for-television movie of all time, yours to enjoy on the big screen!
A neurotic housewife named Sally (Kim Darby, the mom from BETTER OFF DEAD) and her business exec husband move into Sally's ancestral home, a spooky two-story Victorian mansion. When Sally hires an obnoxious interior decorator to re-design the interiors, all hell breaks loose – literally! In typical haunted-house fashion, they come across a locked room that they are determined to open. After rebuffing the admonitions of a sage-like handyman who insists they should leave the room locked and untouched, they open her father's old study and immediately set to work on the inexplicably bricked-up fireplace. Once the fireplace (i.e. portal to Hell) is opened, Sally begins to see small creatures everywhere, but no one will believe her. Her husband dismisses her as neurotic and her friend thinks Sally may be losing her mind! But we all know strange things happen at night and Sally’s demonic new friends are keen to initiate her into a world of relentless terror! A big creepy house, scary whispers, dark lighting, a downbeat ending...the classic horror tenets are used to maximum effect in this essential gem of 70s horror cinema.
Jesse Power, Anthony Reyan Wennekers et Matthew Kaczorowski are the infamous Toronto cat killers whose torture of an innocent feline garnered international headlines. Vilified by the media and animal-rights activists, they tell their side of this macabre story for the first time. One Friday night in May 2001, Jesse Power, an artist and former vegetarian, enlisted two friends to help him kill a cat. The intention was to make a video that protested our unthinking consumption of factory-bred and slaughtered animals by killing, cooking and eating a cherished domestic pet, the cat. High on a dissociative hallucinogenic drug known to induce violent behaviour, the ill-prepared trio made a torturous ordeal out of the cat's killing while every moment was being caught on videotape. Alerted by an outraged roommate, the police found the skinned and decapitated cat in the upstairs beer fridge. Jesse Power and Anthony Wennekers pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and mischief charges. The third perpetrator fled and was apprehended two years later in Vancouver. This unsettling documentary tells the story of an "art" project gone terribly awry. Explanations from the trio and excerpts from Power's previous videos are combined with observations from artists, curators, police investigators, lawyers, journalists and activists.
NOTE: There is NO footage from Jesse Power's cat video utilized in this film. However in the first few minutes of the documentary, a feline vivisection from a 1980 Canadian performance piece is briefly shown (approx 40 seconds) as a means of illustrating a historical precedent.
CANADIAN FEATURE COMPETITION:
THE ETERNAL PRESENT
+ short film WE ALL FALL DOWN
D. Otto Buj 2004 Canada 77min.
buy tickets
Print Source: Otto Buj - info@theeternalpresent.com
You know the feeling. Enter any pitch-dark room, whether at home, work or even a crowded movie theater, and the unknown inspires a sensory emergency. Your eyes dart around the room, seeking the black smoke of moving shadows, all the walls and furniture feel like snakeskin, and the anxiety is almost tangible.
That’s what watching THE ETERNAL PRESENT is like — wading through the unknown, denying what’s happening. Written, directed and edited by art school drop-out Otto Buj of Windsor, THE ETERNAL PRESENT is about a young man named Tim who moves to an anonymous city and takes a job processing obituaries at a newspaper, making him the creepy guy in the newsroom who is alternately ignored and avoided. One day, Tim helps an elderly woman with groceries cross a busy street. Later, at work, he receives her obituary and realizes he played an accidental role in her death. But things really start to freak him out when he meets a young woman at a bar, who disappears. Tim begins to wonder if he is an agent of fate, possibly even an accidental assassin. And this is when reality begins to unravel. As the film becomes more surreal, it’s unclear whether the twisted events are actually happening to Tim, whose reality is unlike our own, or if they are feverish episodes of his paranoia.
The structure and meter of this film are intentionally obtrusive; director Buj toys with time, the central characteristic of a narrative, in order to amplify the discomfort. He constructs practically every scene as a jumble of “before,” “during” and “after” sequences, so the viewer is never quite sure if any given event is happening, has already happened or will happen soon. But what makes the movie great is its uncanny sense of horror, the overwhelming dread of uncertainty that cannot be shaken off, even as the credits flash. One menacing gentleman in THE ETERNAL PRESENT sums it up. He’s speaking to Tim but it’s as though he’s addressing all of us: “Displacement always has and always will be yours.” (Rebecca Mazzei, Detroit Metro Times)
THE CANADIAN FEATURE COMPETITION:
SIGMA
+ short film THE HUNGER
D. Jesse Heffring 2005 Canada 85min. Video
buy tickets
Print Source: Quietus Films
Jesse Heffring - quietusfilms@hotmail.com
Youthful doctor Adam Lemay (Colin Walsh) is hanging out in a train station when a mysterious man hands him a small video monitor, puts a gun to his head, and commits suicide. In a complete state of shock, Lemay looks down at the monitor and sees his wife in a vertical, casket-like chamber that is rapidly filling with water. A nearby phone rings and Lemay answers. He is greeted by a demonic voice that explains the situation. As it turns out, Lemay is being watched and, unless he completes a series of elaborate tasks, his wife will die. So begins a breakneck night of running, driving and manic insanity monitored by bikers, the government and an endless supply of surveillance cameras. An exhausted Lemay desperately fights for his wife's life, committing one illegal act after another, including shady surgical procedures, identity theft and armed robbery. But this isn't your everyday abduction-bribery scenario. There's a larger conspiracy at work, one involving nanotechnology and, quite possibly, the end of the human race.
This is the second surveillance-intensive digital feature by Canadian filmmaker Jesse Heffring. Unable to finance a conventional feature in the late 90s, Heffring decided to assemble a film using surveillance footage alone. After successfully completing this mission with his award-winning 2000 debut, Coil, Heffring decided to try it again. Shot over the course of six weeks in August and September 2002, Sigma required the use of roughly 60 locations and over 100 actors. The result was 66 hours of DV footage—many scenes were shot from 10 angles or more—that took two full years to edit. In its finished form, Sigma is a chaotic and unusual movie experience. Like Cellular and numerous other phone-oriented suspense films, Sigma gets mileage out of its seemingly invisible villain and its utterly helpless, puppet-like protagonist. The film also grabs your attention with its unorthodox visual style. Heffring uses split screen and multi-screen techniques, as well as multiple aspect ratios and video formats, in order to create an energetic and hyperactive tribute to cyberpunk. (Jonathan Doyle, Fantasia Film Festival)
SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST
+ short film: FEAR & FUN WITH FISH
D. Norifumi Suzuki Japan 1974 91min. 35mm
buy tickets
Print Source: Cult Epics
Nico Bruinsma - cultepics@sbcglobal.net
A mind-blowing critique of Catholicism (Japanese-style) in the guise of an exploitation film. In what plays like a bawdy version of Sam Fuller’s SHOCK CORRIDOR, a young woman enters a convent to investigate the mysterious death of her mother. She soon discovers a smorgasbord of vice as she’s abused by lecherous archbishops, a lesbian mother superior and a line of fellow nuns ready to whip her (in the film’s most deliriously over-the-top scene) with rose-thorns! An unholy mix of lesbian sex, comedy, drugs, flagellation, horror, fetishism, blasphemy and political commentary is brilliantly fused in one outrageously provocative package. Truly excessive and absolutely wild, this demented masterpiece is also one of the most visually beautiful films of all time.
THE BUFFY SING-ALONG
+ short film BOOTH
buy tickets
Hosted by Henri Mazza
Is ONCE MORE WITH FEELING the greatest hour of television of all time? In a word: yes. In two words: hell yeah. And in nine words: how could you even ask such a ridiculous question? Sure, HBO's got all those shows that get the critics talking and help to teach us all new curse words, but the musical episode of BUFFY is the only piece of episodic television we've seen that holds up to repeat viewing after repeat viewing after repeat viewing. The only thing that could possibly make this hour of TV any greater than it already is would be watching it in a movie theater surrounded by 200 singing, shouting, laughing and lighter-waving fans. So that's what we’re going to do, and we’ll do it in style, with lighters and bubbles and plastic fangs and dancing bunnies. And as a warm-up episode we’ll see the silent episode of BUFFY – “HUSH” !
As hundreds of DV filmmakers the world over have already learned, making a short film in one weekend can be terrifying. Lack of sleep is just the beginning of your problems when you are trying to corral actors into repeating their performance with more energy at 5 in the morning and you know you have only got another 6 hours to get a final edit of your masterpiece put together. Well, start brewing your coffee now! There will be celebrity judges, fabulous prizes, and more fake blood than Sam Raimi can make shoot out of the wall in an abandoned cabin somewhere in Tennessee. Assemble your team and visit www.bloodshots.org to check out the rules and reserve your spot now!
THE PRIZES:
JURY PRIZE FOR BEST FILM (awarded Friday Oct 28): $500 cash, a paid lunch with the jury for all official (max.8) team members, free admission to the panels for all official team members, and a chance to win the GRAND PRIZE ($1000 cash), to be announced in November.
AUDIENCE AWARD FOR BEST FILM (based on the average from both screenings): $250 cash and a chance to win the GRAND PRIZE ($1000 cash), announced in November.
There will be additional jury prizes courtesy of our sponsors for BEST DEATH, BEST ACTING, and MOST SUBVERSIVE USE OF GENRE.
THE JURY:
WILEY WIGGINS: best known as the doe-eyed Mitch Kramer from Rick Linklater’s DAZED AND CONFUSED, Wiley also served as an animator on WAKING LIFE and continues to work behind the scenes on independent films. He’s on the jury because he said Andrej Zulawski’s POSSESSION was one of his favorite horror films.
TAYLOR NEGRON: You may not remember his name, but you certainly know his face, and his biting sense of humor. Immortalized as the slacker-prototype “Mr. Pizza Guy” in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, the mailman in BETTER OFF DEAD, and the evil Milo in THE LAST BOYSCOUT, Taylor Negron has been a fixture in the LA comedy scene since the late 70s and is still involved with something like 20 movies a year, including this year’s scatological THE ARISTOCRATS. He was on the Dating Game 15 times and he will punch anyone who says anything mean about Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen.
Media Blasters presents
SHADOW: DEAD RIOT
D. Tony Wan USA 2005 90min. 35mm
buy tickets
Print Source: Media Blasters
Carl Morano – carlm@media-blasters.com
This heartwarming tale opens with mass murderer "Shadow" (Candyman’s Tony Todd) filing his teeth down to broken fangs and performing occult blood rituals in his cell as he patiently waits to be executed. When the hour comes, he is strapped to a table for lethal injection, shot up with toxic chemicals and dies. Sort of. It seems the state did him a favour. At the very least, it looks like they put their faith in the wrong god. Massive carnage ensues as Shadow’s blood snakes through the prison, possessing prisoners and leading to a savage, supernatural revolt. Hordes of rioting inmates are shot to pieces by guards and buried in a mass grave out by the prison yard. A good day for justice.
CUT TO: today. The prison has been turned into the Ellis Glen Experimental Correctional Facility for Women, an institution that believes in "spiritual rehabilitation through physical improvement," which means that many of the inmates work out around the clock and are absolutely gigantic! Enter sexy Solitaire ("because I don’t play well with others"), a street-fighting jail newbie with psychic abilities and a penchant for slamming the hell out of any girl who gets in her face. Her presence will blow the doors off clandestine medical experimentation and will ultimately lead to nothing less than Shadow’s undead return to earth!
A seedy, blood-spattered trash film and damn proud of it, SHADOW: DEAD RIOT is the second 35mm feature production from Media Blasters. True to their obsessions, they hired noted HK cinematographer Derek Wan (FIST OF LEGEND) to shoot and direct (this is his first U.S. film) and brought on stunt guru Tony Leung Siu-Hung (DRUNKEN MASTER II) to choreograph the film’s kung-fu sequences. Living Color guitarist Vernon Reid composed the score. Fangoria managing editor Michael Gingold’s nasty script blends various retro exploitation genres (women-in-prison, slasher, blaxploitation, Ilsa and her ilk, American kung-fu, zombie, even the It’s Alive films…) and comes out the gate shrieking with gory, tongue-in-cheek thunder. Enthusiastically gratuitous shower scene? Check. Brutal prison riot? Check. Brutal prison riot with zombies? Check. Bare-behind-bars lesbian seduction? Check. Inappropriate use of a fetus? Check. Pervy male doctor sleazing up to inmates he probably should never be allowed near? Check. Nipple piercing via tooth? You bet, check. You get the drift. Suffice to say, Shadow: Dead Riot won’t be winning any humanitarian awards and it ain’t Tarkovsky, but it knows what it is and has lots of tasteless fun running with it. (Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival)
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DORKS
+ short film: TEENAGE BIKINI VAMPIRE
D. Matthias Dinter Germany 2004 89min. 35mm
buy tickets
Print Source: Atlas International
Dieter Menz - mail@atlasfilm.com
"The Weird Science of zombie movies… A riot from start to finish" (Eric Campos, Film Threat)
It’s not easy being a misfit at Fredrich Nietzsche High School. You’d think life would only be harsher if one were dead and somehow still in school. As three "nerds" discover, in many ways, it’s a hell of a better time! Our story begins "three months ago" out in Haiti, when a family is attacked by a vicious zombie that they efficiently burn to a crisp in abject frustration. Through the wonders of a global economy, the ghoul’s ashes end up on an eBay-like auction site and find their way into the hands of German teenagers, who use them for a hopeless love spell. After the ritual, a group of the teens drive off into the night, smoke a ton of hash and end up in a car crash. They wake up, not in a hospital but… well, okay, they’re in a hospital—a hospital morgue! Two have fractured skulls and one has a windshield wiper wedged through his heart, but they’ve never felt better. Not knowing what else to do, they continue to go to school. Now with superhuman strength and a total insensitivity to pain, they can stand up to the school’s worst bullies. They can even play football. Perhaps most exciting, with no livers to worry about, they can get trashed around the clock! Their social status becomes as cool as their slowly decomposing bodies. Of course, suppressed urges are growing increasingly difficult to control and appendages are starting to fall off, but… who needs stitches when you’ve got a staple gun?
If John Hughes made raunchier, PORKY’s-style teen comedies in his ’80s heyday and had a distinctly Germanic sense of comedy… Writer/director Matthias Dinter, a self-admitted member of the un-cool in his own school years, has brought the world an unusual high school comedy that proudly stands its ground with equal helpings of crassness and sweetness. It’s a surprisingly endearing affair, with a starry-eyed love story at its centre, in the midst of some of the funniest doper gags in ages and nasty bodily humour that would make the American Pie people drop. Complete with a German pop-punk soundtrack, this film is a ton of fun, and not remotely the Shaun of the Dead cash-in you might suspect upon initially hearing its title. It’s also weirdly naïve, which adds considerably to the film’s goofball charm. An audience favourite wherever its been shown, Night of the Living Dorks is a whacked-out, feel-good flick that totally works. (Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival)
THE BIRTHDAY
D. Eugene Mira Spain 2004 100min. 35mm
buy tickets
Print Source: Eugene Mira: miracall@gmail.com
EURO-ICON JACK TAYLOR LIVE IN PERSON!
Socially awkward Norman Forrester (Corey Feldman, doing an odd, feature-length Jerry Lewis impersonation) is nervously walking on eggshells. It’s the night of his manipulative girlfriend’s birthday and to mark the event, her millionaire father (’70s Eurohorror icon Jack Taylor, in his best role since THE NINTH GATE) has arranged an elaborate party in the lobby of his baroque Baltimore hotel. Forrester is terrified, but he is about to learn that this night offers much more to fear than the judgmental opinions of his potential in-laws. Something sinister is visibly amiss amongst the hotel’s staff. They seem to be in tense preparation for something much more significant than a bourgeois birthday. It’s almost as if they’re planning their own party for a very different and much darker birth occasion altogether. Situations get increasingly abnormal and people start to die until it becomes horrifically clear that Forrester better have his apocalypse shoes on, because this party might well be the last word in… human history!
A very unusual, real-time black comedy that only reveals its true horror-film colours after lulling the audience into a false state of comfort, THE BIRTHDAY is a coolly distinctive feature debut for director Eugenio Mira. An odd bird indeed, Mira’s film opens with the tone of an ’80s comedy, introduces its horror aspects with a deliberately campy approach at the half-way mark then tears through the roof with a last act of nightmarish, Lovecraftian ferocity. The narrative stands alone and Mira’s calculated, stylish direction infuses the film with a playful atmosphere that pivots gracefully between fun, freaky and frightening. Feldman’s performance, easily the strangest in his career, reaches surprising levels of intensity through its cartoonish surface and SECOND NAME’s Erica Prior shines in a refreshingly lower-key role as Forrester’s domineering girlfriend. Evocatively photographed in cinemascope with award-winning art direction inspired equally by the universes of BARTON FINK and BLUE VELVET, super-theatrical lighting and an ingenious sound design geared for maximum discomfort when necessary, this is a film absolutely designed to be experienced on a big screen in a darkened hall. This birthday is one Pagan party you won’t want to miss. (Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival)
SPECIAL GUEST: Jack Taylor
(Click on the box below to start the trailer; works best with Quicktime 7)
SPECIAL GUEST: Jack Taylor is one of the most prolific of European genre stars. The suave American actor found a home in Spanish films in the 60s and 70s, where he played leading man to a plethora of Jess Franco’s succulent starlets, including Janine Reynaud and Soledad Miranda. His credits include SUCCUBUS (1968), EUGENIE DE SADE (1970), TENDER AND PERVERSE EMANUELLE (1973), ENIGMA ROSSO (1978) and the inimitable PIECES (1982). Jack Taylor will be receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the festival.
MALEFIQUE
+ short film: GOTHAM CAFE
D. Eric Valette France 2002 90mi. 35mm Subtitled
buy tickets
Print Source: Pathe Films
Catherine Montouchet - Catherine.Montouchet@pathe.com
In Eric Valette’s taut tale of cramped terror, blood-soaked suspense, claustrophobic anguish and full-blown fright, four prisoners find a diary of black magic spells offering them freedom. Carrere (Gerald Laroche) has been accused of company fraud and is waiting for his two-timing wife to post nonexistent bail. His cellmates are pre-op muscle transsexual Marcus (Clovis Cornillac), retarded insect-eating Daisy (Dimitri Rataud) and intellectual wife-murderer Lasalle (Phillippe Laudenbrach). When a stone slab loosens next to Carrere's bunk, they unearth a book of weird symbols written by a 1920's convict who used the esoteric incantations to walk through the cell walls. But their great escape leads to further confinement in a hellish limbo where their vanity is tested by an evil presence granting each a solitary wish. With outrageous special effects - wait until you see the porno collage of winking vaginas - MALEFIQUE is a grimy, sticky wonder where time-suspended luridness, nightmare mythmaking and a surreal hallucinatory quality combine to provide vivid gross-out tableaux and genuinely gruesome pleasures. (Alan Jones, Frightfest)
TROUBLE
+ short film: BLIND FEAR
D. Harry Cleven Belgium/France 2005 96min. 35mm
buy tickets
Print Source: TFM Distribution
Catherine Piot - capiot@tf1.fr
Separation can be a terrifying thing. What would you do if you were informed out of the blue that you had a long-lost identical twin? This is the creepy situation that successful photographer Matyas (THE PIANO TEACHER’s Benoît Magimel), freshly settled into a new family life, finds himself in. The mere revelation brings back uncomfortable childhood memories and cracks begin to form in his seemingly perfect home life. Upon meeting Thomas, his twin, Matyas becomes disoriented and slightly delusional. Thomas seems like a calmer, more perfected and much more controlled version of himself. As fate would have it, he too is a photographer, in a sense—he works in a hospital taking echograms. Thomas instantly wins over Matyas’ pregnant wife Claire (CRIMINAL LOVERS’ Natasha Régnier), and their son Pierre. When Matyas confesses a queasy unease with being present for Claire’s childbirth, Thomas even volunteers to secretly accompany her as him in his place. Matters gradually evolve into an understated dream tone. Identities begin to blur. A chilling series of events are set into motion. Matyas will have to go back… way back… in order to understand what is happening to him and his family. Meanwhile, Claire is, inexplicably, petrified of him…
TROUBLE’s opening titles play over quietly spectacular shots of glowing backlit water imagery that gradually reveal themselves to be of a fetus floating weightlessly inside a womb. Initially soothing in their ghostly tranquility, the images, once we grow accustomed to them, become strangely eerie in their effect. It is an ideal introduction to the inverting universe the film inhabits. Besides, disquieting natal motifs will be a recurring experience here. Bubbling with existential horror, Trouble’s black wit and even blacker perversions make for a… troubling… time in the dark. (Mitch Davis, Fantasia Film Festival)
THE THING
+ short film: WEINER 2
D. John Carpenter USA 1982 109min 35mm scope
buy tickets
Based on John Campbell’s short story Who Goes There?, Carpenter’s remake of Howard Hawks’ Arctic adventure (here relocated to the Antarctic) remains the ultimate winter horror flick, retaining the paranoid qualities of the original text. Carpenter staple Kurt Russell stars as MacReady, a gruff helicopter pilot stationed at a remote Antarctic workcamp with a small group of equally pessimistic and desperately bored scientific researchers. When the group takes in a snow dog escaped from a nearby Norwegian camp, things start to get weird – the dog mutates into an unrecognizable heap of teeth and tendrils and MacReady has to fight it off with a flamethrower. An investigation of the Norwegians' camp reveals that it has been completely gutted by fire, with no survivors. Video tapes show that the Norwegians were trying to dig something huge out of the snow. Eventually the men begin to realize that they have an alien in their midst, an alien that is capable of taking on the form of any living thing it chooses, even the men themselves. Rob Bottin’s groundbreaking FX colored the mountains of madness in a sea of blood and bile and posited him as the gorehound’s favorite 80s guru, while Carpenter turned in what is arguably his best film, with a sparse but effective Ennio Morricone score and a stifling claustrophobic angst.
PANEL: CANADIAN HORROR: THE TAX SHELTER YEARS
buy tickets
With Bob Clark (BLACK CHRISTMAS) and Caelum Vatnsdal, author of THEY CAME FROM WITHIN: A HISTORY OF CANADIAN HORROR CINEMA
(books available for purchase and signing at the festival)
More feature films were made in Canada from 1975 to 1984 than at any other time in Canada’s cinematic history - when Canadian feature-film policy (with its 100% tax writeoffs) was made up by greedy producers, clueless politicians, bottom-line consultants and inventive lawyers and accountants. But out of this supposedly “artistically bankrupt” period of Canadian cinema came some of the most lingering horror films of the last few decades – including those of American-born Bob Clark, who used the tax shelter program to its full advantage and made more money for the Canadian film industry than any other director up to that point (In addition to his horror efforts he also made PORKY’S and A CHRISTMAS STORY). With a lively discussion and film clips, your hosts Bob Clark and Caelum Vatnsdal will shed some light on the maligned period we now know and love as the Golden Age of Canadian Exploitation.
+ short film: BROADCAST 23
Print Source: Mark Lester
+ short film SOLE POSSESSIONS
D. Gary Sherman USA 1982 97 min. 35mm
D. John Newland 1973 US (Made for TV) 74min. 16mm
D. Zev Asher 2004 Canada 88min. BETA SP
+ short film WE ALL FALL DOWN
+ short film THE HUNGER
+ short film: FEAR & FUN WITH FISH
+ short film BOOTH
OCT. 21-23, 2005 – FILMS SCREEN AT CINEMUERTE OCT 28 & 31
D. Tony Wan USA 2005 90min. 35mm
+ short film: TEENAGE BIKINI VAMPIRE
D. Eugene Mira Spain 2004 100min. 35mm
+ short film: GOTHAM CAFE
+ short film: BLIND FEAR
+ short film: WEINER 2
