Review: The Story of the Tower (Hirai-Kikaku and Media Kobo, C ARTS, GM Fringe)

July 2022
Digital Event

The Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July, with performances at various venues around Greater Manchester and online. Once again, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

The next show I saw this year was a digital production, and it was part of the C ARTS strand on this year’s Fringe programme. C ARTS is a curated independent arts programme that delivers work for the Edinburgh Fringe, which is then made available online via streaming throughout the year. Although produced for the Edinburgh Fringe, C ARTS productions are now included on the programmes of other fringe festivals, such as Brighton Fringe and – more importantly for today’s post – the Greater Manchester Fringe.

The production I’m going to be reviewing now was originally produced for the 2021 Edinburgh Fringe, but it’s available to stream with a ticket purchase from the Greater Manchester Fringe website throughout the month of July. I’m reviewing The Story of the Tower, a short film installation from Hirai-Kikaku and Media Kobo. The radio version of this review will be broadcast on The Festival Show on Friday 8th July, but here’s the blog version…

The Story of the Tower begins with a shot of a railway station in Tokyo, with ambient sounds playing. A voiceover (Mitsuko Hirai) greets us (admittedly greets us as though we’re in Edinburgh in August 2021!) and encourages us to relax and get ready for the show. A little bit of background information is given, explaining that three stories will be told and that these will be in Japanese, English and broken, mistranslated English. The Japanese story, we’re told, will be ‘One Arm’ by Yasunari Kawabata, and a brief plot synopsis is offered for those who don’t speak Japanese or who haven’t read the English translation of this story.

And then the camera begins to move. The audience is invited to travel with the disembodied voice, from the station to the theatre where the performance will take place, and to enjoy the sounds of a shopping street in Tokyo along the way. It’s a strange experience – the camera is steady, and the pace of movement is measured (as though we’re ambling, not speeding through the city street). It’s almost hypnotic. But there are also some little details in the street – the snippets of sound, the way the bodies of passers-by move in and out of shot at awkward accidental angles, the quiet voyeurism of the disembodied point-of-view, the shop signs that are a jumble of Japanese, English and mistranslated English (one or two being hard to parse for a native English speaker) – that anticipate the style and concerns of the production proper.

And then we enter a ‘theatre’ (which appears more like a basement room in a rather nondescript office) and the physical performance begins.

A lone performer (Yoshiko Imamura, who also choreographed the piece) stands against a plain wall holding an arm towards her face. Another arm appears, covered with a long glove. As the performance unfolds, chromakeying is used to project – or more accurately to layer – a set of images onto the glove, the wall and (eventually) the body of Imamura (filming is by Rob Moreno). The images are of arms and faces, which interact (it looks like they touch, caress and hold) the ‘live’ body of the performer. All the while, Hirai reads from Kawabata’s story, the audio forming another layer to the performance.

This sequence is hypnotic – though in a different way to the pre-show sequence on the street. The effect of the layering of images in the film results in Imamura’s body becoming fragmented, incoherent at times. It is often difficult to understand what ‘shape’ the performer’s body has, as it is distorted by the multiple limbs that are superimposed through the filming. At a number of points, I was surprised to find that the hand I had assumed was Imamura’s was actually part of the projected film.

And a similar effect is created with the audio. Although Hirai begins by telling the story as though she is reading it quietly, the voiceover also becomes layered, with echoes and whispers added to create a subtle sense of polyphony that augments the polymorphous visuals. This is both unsettling and mesmeric, and I would say the effect was heightened by the fact that I don’t understand Japanese (I think I picked out one single word from the voiceover, but that was ‘arigato’ so I’m not sure that’s a huge achievement from me!), and this heightened the uncanniness of the sequence. Hirai’s voiceover was recognizable and familiar as storytelling, but unfamiliar because of the language barrier; in the same way, Imamura’s body was recognizable and familiar as a human body, but also unfamiliar because of the movement of both the performer and the layering of other limbs and body parts.

From here, the piece moves into another story. This time it’s ‘The Black Tower’ by Mimei Ogawa, which is told in English. Again, Imamura offers a wordless physical performance, with images projected on and around her. In this sequence, it’s not so much the physical body that is fragmented and distorted through the layered images, but rather a sense of framing and staging.

The other effect created by placing these sequences together is a distortion – or an undermining – of narrative structure. While both ‘One Arm’ and ‘The Black Tower’ are narratives (though as magic realism and fairy tale respectively, they may not be the most logical of stories), The Story of the Tower turns them into fragments and layers them together in a way that unsettles narrative coherence. The drive for audience members to make connections between the two stories or to link them in terms of theme or plot is consistently thwarted and – in places – the stories dissolve into a sea of words.

And this is where the piece’s underlying influence becomes apparent. As the introductory sequence tells us, The Story of the Tower is inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel. The final sequence, in which a recording of an automated transcription of the breaking news of the destruction of the Twin Towers plays (in occasionally broken or slightly awkward English) over Imamura’s performance and the layered visuals that take us backwards through the Tokyo street scene we experienced at the beginning, brings everything together in a way that – for all its incoherence and uncanniness – does make sense. Again, the piece plays with the effect of defamiliarization: the measured walk through the city street from earlier becomes unfamiliar – almost uncomfortable – as it plays in reverse, in black-and-white, with the physical presence of the performer appearing to step in and out of the film.

The Story of the Tower is a strange and immersive piece. It’s visually hypnotic, but it also has a wonderfully disconcerting soundscape that compliments the physical performances. It encourages the audience to think about communication and its breakdown – as is clear from the reference to the Tower of Babel – but also about the construction of narrative and the coherence of form in physical performance and storytelling.

Overall, I would definitely recommend you check out The Story of the Tower (and I’d also recommend you watch it with headphones, so you can get the most out of the audio elements). It’s strange, compelling and challenging, and it’s unsettling in all the right ways.

The Story of the Tower is available to stream throughout the month of July, as part of the C ARTS strand on this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe programme. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.

Review: Abertoir: The International Horror Festival of Wales 2019 (Saturday and Sunday)

19th-24th November 2019
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales

And so here's the final part of my three-part review of this year's Abertoir horror film festival, with reviews of the films we saw on Saturday and Sunday.

You can read the other two parts of my review here: Part 1 (Tuesday and Wednesday), Part 2 (Thursday and Friday)

Saturday 23rd November

The Four of the Apocalypse (Lucio Fulci, 1975)

The first screening on Saturday was a 1975 film by Lucio Fulci – in anticipation of the new documentary coming up later in the day. The Four of the Apocalypse is Fulci’s slow-paced and lyrical (and admittedly also rather grim) Spaghetti Western. The central character is Stubby Preston, introduced as a vaguely amoral lone-wolf gambler, who arrives in Salt Flats in Utah to win a bit of cash in the casino. Stubby is intercepted by the sheriff on arrival and thrown into jail, which turns out to be a lucky break when the town suffers a violent attack by a band of vigilantes. As he’s locked up, Stubby survives the attack along with three other prisoners: town drunk Clem, pregnant prostitute Bunny and a black man named Bud. The four set out from Salt Flats the next day with optimism. Spoiler alert: their optimism is soon tempered by the harsh world of the western. As they travel, Stubby, Bunny, Clem and Bud run into almost every genre staple you can imagine: pioneers, bandits, zealous evangelists, ghost towns, mining towns, and dangerous gunslingers. It’s this last element that introduces the grimness that punctuates the earlier positivity of the four travellers’ journey. The Four of the Apocalypse is an unusual (revisionist) western in a lot of ways. Perhaps the most striking deviation from the standard template is that this is an ensemble piece. Although Stubby is the protagonist, the secondary characters share focus with him for much of the film. This results in some interesting moral growth for Stubby’s character, who develops (or reveals) his values as the group faces their various challenges. Fulci’s film might not appeal to genre purists, but it offers a really interesting and thought-provoking take on the template. Not always an easy watch, but certainly an impressive one.

Silent Shorts Vol V

The next event was a regular feature of the Abertoir programme. Silent Shorts is a collection of short films selected by Paul Shallcross, who accompanies them with live piano scores specially composed. Shallcross also introduces the films with fascinating bits of information about the films’ creation and production. Given the theme this year, it was only to be expected that the Silent Shorts selection reflected some science fiction tropes, but it was an eclectic mix this year. There was The X-Ray Fiend from 1897 (directed by G.A. Smith), which was notable both for its age and for its brevity. At only 45 seconds, this is the shortest film Shallcross has ever included in his Silent Shorts events. And there was Lucius Henderson’s 1912 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which is the earliest surviving film adaptation of Stevenson’s novel (and also notable for the fact that James Cruze, who plays both Jekyll and Hyde, is sometimes substituted for a supporting actor!). Gaston Velle’s 1906 film Voyage Autour à l’Etoile in a ‘trick film’ that uses the cutting-edge technology of the day to create a fantastical journey. This film is a little deceptive, as it starts out light-hearted and charming before taking more of a ‘horror’ turn. Also in the selection were The ? Motorist, a 1906 film by W.R. Booth that draws its horror from contemporary concerns about the advent of the motor car, and Slippery Jim (Ferdinand Zecca, 1910), a French film supposedly based on the performances of Harry Houdini. By far my favourite film that Shallcross included, though, was Maurice Tourneur’s Figures de Cire from 1914. Unusually, this film is notable not for its survival, but for its deterioration. By serendipity, a patch of nitrate decomposition of the film stock perfectly coincides with the deterioration of the protagonist’s mind!

UK Premiere: Achoura (dir. Talal Selhami, 2018)

Next up was the UK premiere of Talal Selhami’s Achoura, which was followed by a Q&A with the director. The film is a dark fairy tale-esque story about a group of four childhood friends, who’ve grown apart in adulthood but are forced back together when a terrifying creature from their past returns. Sadly, it’s impossible to talk about Achoura without mentioning IT: Chapter One (or even offering some comparison of the two), and this was something that came up in the Q&A. Selhami explained that Achoura wrapped in 2015, but that in the time it took to get it out onto screens, Muschetti’s adaptation of King’s novel had sprung into being. It’s unfortunate timing, and a real shame, as Achoura really should have had the opportunity to stand on its own two feet, outside the later film’s shadow. In many ways, it’s a darker film than Muschetti’s IT, and its creature draws on an insidious, almost existential, type of fear, making Pennywise seem almost garish in contrast. The film’s group of friends are unsettled by having to face their childhood monster again, but Selhami balances this with a gnawing sense of dread that it is adulthood itself that has taken the biggest toll on them. Achoura draws on Moroccan folktales to conjure its monster, and one of the film’s early chills comes with a scene in which the children play out a game-like ritual around a bonfire, leading to a nightmare becoming flesh. My main criticism of the film – and it’s a bit of a horror bugbear of mine – is that Achoura shows its monster a little bit too much. This is particularly disappointing as the film makes brilliant use of atmosphere and apprehension, making the CGI monster a little bit jarring! But otherwise, I very much enjoyed this one.

UK Premiere: Fulci for Fake (dir. Simone Scafidi, 2019)

And then on to another documentary… but sadly this one didn’t impress quite as much as yesterday’s Blood and Flesh. Fulci for Fake is described as a ‘biopic’ on the life of the ‘Godfather of Gore’. However, I’m not sure ‘biopic’ is quite the right word here. The film is mostly talking head commentary, framed by the narrative device of an actor preparing to play Lucio Fulci in an upcoming (fictional) film. As he speaks with Fulci’s colleagues and collaborators, family and friends, he attempts to gain an insight into the man and his work. Scafidi has assembled quite a cast of interviewees, and the film includes both previously unseen footage and surprisingly candid anecdotes from its subjects. For Fulci fans – even those who consider themselves fairly well-versed in the man’s career – there is a lot here that will appeal. For me, though, who is something of a ‘casual Fulci viewer’, it fell a little flat. I think the main problem is that Fulci for Fake assumes (maybe even requires) a fair amount of prior knowledge. Unlike Blood and Flesh, which vividly conjured the world of Al Adamson in a way that would entertain and inform even if you’d never heard of the man or any of his films, Fulci for Fake is very much a film for those in the know. Of course, film fans may argue that one should be more familiar with Lucio Fulci than with Al Adamson, but I found this a bit of a barrier to enjoying the film. Admittedly, I did learn a lot about Fulci and his working practices, but I would’ve appreciated a little more contextualizing of this (and the film is notable for containing very little actual footage from Fulci’s films). All in all, this one unfortunately didn’t really grab me.

Death Line (dir. Gary Sherman, 1972)

Next up was another one of the classic films on this year’s festival programme – and I think this one can rightly be called a ‘cult classic’. This one was a bit of a treat, because not only did it continue the celebration of Donald Pleasance’s work, but the writer-director Gary Sherman was one of the festival guests (we’d already had a great talk on practical special effects from him the previous day). And so this screening was followed by a Q&A with Sherman. Death Line (aka Raw Meat) is a quintessentially British horror film (despite its American writer-director, of course), and it has a pretty strong fan following. The film follows a young couple, Patricia and Alex, who discover an unconscious man on the steps of Russell Square tube station. They report the incident, but when the police attend the scene the body has disappeared. Something sinister is going on under the underground. Of course, Patricia (played by Sharon Gurney) and Alex (played by David Ladd) are soon overshadowed by Pleasance’s brilliant turn as Inspector Calhoun and, later, by Christopher Lee at MI5 supremo Straton-Villiers. Much of the joy of this film comes from the scenes in which Pleasance and Lee interact, particularly where they discuss matters relating to the British class system. Another bit of the fun (if you can call it fun… it’s also been described as ‘harrowing bleakness’) comes from the fact that – despite the film’s reputation for being violent and horrifying – the ‘baddie’ is ultimately a figure of pity, if not of sympathy. The stars of the film are undoubtedly Pleasance, Lee and the London Underground, but it’s that plaintive cry from the bad guy that we all remember (and that we kept quoting after the screening had finished!): ‘Mind the doors!’ Really enjoyed this one!

Blood Machines (plus Turbo Killer) (dir. Seth Ickerman, 2019)

Saturday’s final screening began with Turbo Killer, a trippy assault-on-the-senses short film that was originally made by Seth Ickerman (aka Raphael Hernandez and Savitri Joly-Gonfard) as a music video for Carpenter Brut (aka Franck Hueso)’s track of the same name. As such, it substitutes plot and characterization for style and visual impact, as Ickerman creates something more like a ‘vibe’ than a narrative to illustrate Carpenter Brut’s synthwave music. It’s an onslaught of neon colours, busty women and high-octane cars, with Carpenter Brut’s inverted crucifix logo burning bright throughout. The stylistic influences of sci-fi B-movies (of the highest pitch) are also discernible in the overall character of the piece. Turbo Killer is – as a music video – only a short piece, but this was followed immediately by Blood Machines, a longer-form (50 minutes) film that develops both the tone and the ‘story’ of Turbo Killer further. Here, the creative collaboration is inverted. Ickerman created the film, and then Carpenter Brut wrote the soundtrack. Blood Machines is structured as a kind of three-act space opera, with a bit more sense of an overall plot. That said, it is still a stylistic and impressionistic piece, despite having some minimal dialogue and characterization. There are AI spaceships, epic (and somewhat scantily clad) priestesses, brutish and threatening men. Blood Machines throws a big handful of the clichéd tropes of SFF in your face, but it does this with an energetic abandon and visual intensity that is actually quite mesmerizing. Unlike in Turbo Killer, there is some nod to the idea of female empowerment in Blood Machines, but it still feels like a bit of a masculine piece – the gaze is most definitely male here, though it might be a male who wants to see the females triumphant. Bit of a full-on end to the day!

Sunday 24th November

Planet of the Vampires (dir. Mario Bava, 1965)

As I said in my earlier post, the science fiction theme this year was in honour of the fortieth anniversary of Alien. Sunday was the day for the ‘main event’ – a screening of Alien with a special introduction (more on that below), but we kicked off the day with Planet of the Vampires (aka Terrore nello Spazio), an Italian sci-fi horror made in the mid-60s. And there was a good reason for this. Bava’s film is widely held to have been an influence on Scott’s Alien, both in terms of story and of design. Two ships on an exploration mission receive a distress call from a planet and approach to respond. When one ship, the Argos, enters the planet’s atmosphere, something very bad happens, and the crew turn violently against each other. Only Captain Markary is able to resist the very bad thing and is able to drag his crew out of their murderous rage. The Argos then travels to the planet’s surface, partly to find the source of the distress call, and partly to find the Galliott, the first ship that went down to the planet. The film’s visual style is very much pulp sci-fi cinema, with much of the action happening on what is undeniably a studio set. The colours are garish and the gore is exuberant. But this is all tempered by a somewhat Gothic-inflected element – as signalled by the English title of the film – in which the very bad thing the explorers encounter possesses the bodies of the dead, filling the Argos with the walking corpses of fallen crew members. While the ship’s interior is a rather uninspiring studio, the hostile exterior is an empty and atmospheric soundstage, all mists and skewed visuals (created using miniatures, mirrors and forced perspective). The effect created is… well… alien.

The Science Fact in Science Fiction - a talk by Professor Andrew Evans

Continuing with the science fiction theme, the next event on today’s schedule was a talk by Andrew Evans, a professor of Material Physics at Aberystwyth University. As expected from the title, Evans’s talk covered some of the background to key tropes in science fiction, with some explanation of how/if/why these tropes align with current scientific thinking. As the festival’s specific bent this year was specifically space-travel sci-fi, a lot of Evans’s talk covered the science related to space travel (including a few theories about how interplanetary/interstellar travel might be achieved). There was also a bit on time travel to balance things out. Evans’s is an engaging speaker, who’s able to translate very complex ideas into terms the layman can understand (thank goodness!). But what I really liked about this talk was that there was no snark or sneering about the genre, even though it sometimes tends towards the… slightly unscientific.

The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves (dir. Dima Ballin, 2019)

Next up, it was another documentary, which served to complete a sort of triptych with Blood and Flesh and Fulci for Fake. Here, the subject was Michael Reeves, the director of Revenge of the Blood Beast (aka The She Creature), The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm), who died tragically at just twenty-five years old. Reeves’s work on these films secured him a place in horror history (and, particularly, in the curious history of ‘folk horror’), but his early death meant that we never saw him fulfil his potential (or, indeed, turn away from the genre in favour of other projects). Ballin’s new documentary explores Reeves’s early life and family, his rather arrogant foray into the notoriously ‘closed off’ film industry, and the creation of his three feature films. It’s a well-made film with some enthusiastic and interesting talking heads, and which offers some insight (but also some speculation) as to what the director might have gone on to do after Witchfinder General. The problem with the documentary is the tragic circumstances of its subject matter. Sadly, Michael Reeves’s life and career were very short, and his childhood and upbringing, while not dull as such, held few surprises. Even Reeves’s entry into the film world – something that the documentary makes a lot of – is more a case of self-assured persistence, rather than anything more dramatic. The most interesting bit of the film are undoubtedly the sections relating to Witchfinder General, though there is little here (including the director’s fractious relationship with Vincent Price) that’s not already known in horror circles. Price does not emerge particularly sympathetically from Ballin’s film, but he is, as always, a somewhat larger-than-life figure with a tendency to steal the limelight. This new documentary wasn’t bad, but it fell a little flat for me.

Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club

And next on the programme was something I was definitely looking forward to. We first experienced Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club at Abertoir last year, and we both really enjoyed it. The pair were back this time, albeit with a slightly different offering to last year’s The Demons of Ludlow. This year, they were bringing us Spiders, the 2000 Nu Image creature feature (from the studio that brought you Raging Sharks, Killer Rats and Tobe Hooper’s Crocodile. Spiders is a very late-90s/early-00s B-movie (which I’m pretty sure must have been a direct-to-video). Nicko and Joe had selected this one to fit with the festival’s sci-fi theme, and I must say I commend their choice. Spiders has plenty of the tropes we love: space shuttles, genetic experiments, secret government facilities, conspiracies, a MASSIVE spider on a rampage. It’s a silly film – not the silliest, though, by a long stretch – but it also offered great opportunities for Nicko and Joe’s particular sense of humour. Like last time, I really liked the way they zoomed in on minutiae and drew our attention to it ad absurdum (not that this took long… some of these details really are quite absurd). I think another reason why it’s a good choice of film for an event like this is that Spiders doesn’t take itself completely seriously, and there’s a lot of it (particularly the ending) that’s intended to be OTT, high-spirited fun. Although Nicko and Joe mercilessly mocked and derided it, there were quite a few points where it felt like we were laughing with the film, rather than laughing at it. And this was a nice atmosphere to have for an event like this, as it made it feel much more like we were all in on the joke together. Plus… there were sweets.

Alien (introduced by Ron Shusett... from space) (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979)

And so to the big event… and I have no idea what to say about this one. What can I possibly write about Alien that hasn’t already been said? As I said earlier in the post (and previous ones), this year’s festival had a sci-fi theme in honour of Alien’s fortieth birthday, so it was only fitting that we got a screening of the film itself. The screening was introduced by Ron Shusett, co-author of the original story, and it was… well… given from space. Now, Abertoir weren’t able to actually send Shusett into orbit (though that would definitely have been something of a coup for them), but rather sent a device up and out of the earth’s atmosphere to ‘beam back’ a message to the big screen. It was a fun way to start the screening, though I suspect we were all so busy watching the weird mechanics of the message that we might’ve missed a little bit of what Shusett was saying! Still, it’s not like any of us didn’t know what to expect from the film! I’m not sure how many times I’ve seen Alien, but this was the first time I’d seen it on the big screen. I always enjoy being able to see films I love on the cinema screen, as this is almost always how they were intended to be shown. Big-screen Alien did not disappoint as an experience. I’m not saying that I noticed anything new or looked at the film in a different way, but it was much more immersive and gripping than watching it on the telly at home. I don’t really have a lot more to say – Alien is a classic for a reason, or rather for many reasons, and it was good to just sit back and enjoy it.

Color Out of Space (dir. Richard Stanley, 2019)

So, sadly, we came to the final film of this year’s festival. The last screening was one that I know a lot of other festival-goers were looking forward to, but it wasn’t one I knew much about beforehand. Color Out of Space is a – shock! horror! – Lovecraft adaptation, starring Nicolas Cage and Joely Richardson. I’m not a Lovecraft fan at all, but I know that his work is widely considered difficult, if not impossible, to translate to the screen. I think I’ve only ever seen three adaptation of his stories: Re-Animator, Dagon and the Masters of Horror episode ‘Dreams in the Witch-House’ (all directed by Stuart Gordon, as it happens). But, I like Nicolas Cage films (who doesn’t?), so I was quite happy to give this one a go. The film is an adaptation of Lovecraft’s story ‘The Colour Out of Space’, which is about a surveyor visited a site in Boston that is said to have been the location of a meteorite crash that did bad things to the inhabitants. Stanley’s film adaptation follows this aspect of the plot, but it is told mostly from the perspective of the inhabitants themselves (particularly Nathan Gardner, played by Cage). Unlike in the original story, we see the meteorite land, and then we watch the Gardner family unravel in its wake. (The ‘surveyor’ character is still present, in the form of Elliot Knight’s hydrologist character Ward Phillips.) I wouldn’t say this was my favourite film of the festival, but it was enjoyable to watch. Cage is absolutely in his element as the increasing unhinged Gardner, and the film’s look is stylish and compelling. I liked the slow-burn weirdness of the film’s first half more than the big reveals, but it was a fun way to end the evening and – indeed – the festival.

And so our second year at Abertoir came to an end. Once again, we thoroughly enjoyed our week in Aberystwyth, and we're really hoping work commitments will allow us to return next year for Abertoir 15.

Review: Abertoir: The International Horror Festival of Wales 2019 (Thursday and Friday)

19th-24th November 2019
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales

This is the second part of my review of the films we saw at this year's Abertoir Festival. We saw a LOT of films during the festival, so I'm trying to make my review more manageable by doing it in three parts. You can see my post about the films we saw on Tuesday and Wednesday in my previous post, but here are the films we saw on Thursday and Friday.

Thursday 21st November

The Monster Club (dir. Roy Ward Baker, 1981)

Although the ‘headline’ theme for this year’s festival was sci-fi horror, Abertoir was also marking the centenary of Donald Pleasance’s birth. There was an interesting exhibition about Pleasence’s career in the Arts Centre, and the programme was peppered with films featuring Pleasence. And Thursday’s screening started off with a fun example. The Monster Club is a British anthology horror, sort of in the mould of Amicus and Hammer’s classic anthologies, but made just as the fashion for such narrative-driven horror films was waning. Loosely (very loosely) based on the short stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes, The Monster Club features a fictional version of Chetwynd-Hayes (played by John Carradine), who is accosted by starving but courteous vampire Erasmus (played by Vincent Price). As a thank you for the ‘small donation’ the writer (admittedly unwillingly) gives Erasmus, he is taken to the titular nightclub, where various supernatural creatures gather to party the night away. Erasmus offers an explanation of these creatures, including the hybrid ones, leading into the anthology stories. The episodes are punctuated by scenes in the club itself, with madly incongruous 80s pop numbers interspersing the stories of vampires, ghouls and the ‘Shadmock’ (a hybrid creature possessed of a demonic whistle). Pleasence gives a riotous turn as a vampire-hunter in one of the stories, and the whole piece culminates in a gleefully disturbing speech by Price about how humans are really the greatest monsters. There are some moments of genuine creepiness – Lesley Dunlop’s ‘Humghoul’ explaining how her town gets its clothing and food ‘from boxes’ is my favourite bit in this respect – but mostly it’s just bizarre fun. The film is notable for being a late horror pairing of Carradine and Price – apparently Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing turned down roles – and it made for a great start to the day.

Short Films Competition Part 2

And now: the second panel of short films. The Original (Michelle Garza Cervera, 2018) is a stylishly made near-futuristic piece about a woman struggling to deal with her partner’s debilitating illness and the implications of a medical procedure. A nasty twist makes for a satisfyingly uncomfortable ending. Rain Catcher (Michele Fiascaris, 2018) – another stylishly made short, with a noir inflection – is about a photographer who keeps seeing a mysterious man in his pictures. In Unmade (Steven Sheil, 2019), a woman visits a medium ostensibly to speak with her dead husband one last time; however, she has more planned than a simple conversation. While Unmade feels like it’s treading ground we’ve seen before in short films, it’s well-executed and has a real bite to it. Where Blood Lies (Byron Qiao, 2019) – in which a Romanian hunter seeks to protect his village from Nazi vampire-hunters – is also well-executed, with a distinct 'who is the real monster?' flavour. Two less successful offerings, for me, were Paranoia (Katherine Lindhorst, 2019), a somewhat unpolished animation about surveillance, and Wild Will (Alan King, 2019), a monster film that (strange as it is to say) leaves far too much to the imagination. More effective were Retch (Kier Siewert, 2018) and Swipe (Neils Bourgonje, 2019), films that – while not massively original in their content as such – go a good way to showing off the talents of the filmmakers. The former is a body transformation sequence that showcases visual effects skills, and the latter is a creepypasta-inspired tale of dating app horror with a confident grip on narrative tension. Perhaps my favourite film in this panel was Midnight (Katie Bonham, 2019), a clever and compelling haunted house piece whose content belies the short running time. The winner of this year’s Abertoir prize and the Méliès d’Argent was Rain Catcher.

Donald Pleasence: Portraits Of Affection, Eccentricity and Mischievousness - a presentation by Tristan Thompson

The festival continued its celebration of the career of Donald Pleasence with a talk by Tristan Thompson. Combining biographical detail with an overview of Pleasence’s work, Thompson’s talk was an engaging and entertaining introduction to the man and his varied career. There was a good balance, as well – the details and anecdotes about Pleasence’s family and personal life never overshadowed the focus on his film career, and there was a consistent focus on his horror roles. I was particularly interested to hear about Pleasence’s theatre career, and his recurrent appearances in Pinter’s The Caretaker, which Thompson talked about in the context of the man’s varied film career. All in all, this talk was an apt celebration of Pleasence’s work, offering a solid introduction for people who didn’t know much about him, but also including enough detail to entertain those who did. And now to watch the great man at work…

The Flesh and the Fiends (dir. John Gilling, 1960)

The Flesh and the Fiends is based on the murderous careers of Burke and Hare, and on their financial arrangements with Dr Robert Knox. The first – very odd – thing to note about this film is that film censors (in various countries) refused to allow the names ‘Burke’ and ‘Hare’ to appear on the film’s title card. Apparently, The Flesh and the Fiends, Mania (US title) and Psycho Killers (alternative title) were perfectly acceptable, but to include the words ‘Burke’ or ‘Hare’ would be too much. Thompson mentioned this fact in his talk, and it’s baffled me ever since. Anyway, the film is set in 1820s Edinburgh. Peter Cushing plays Dr Knox, an eminent medical practitioner and lecturer, who needs to get hold of cadavers for his anatomy lectures. And he’s far too lofty and academic to concern himself much with where these cadavers might come from. Donald Pleasence plays William Hare, a man with an eye for an opportunity, and George Rose is his accomplice William Burke. When they realize that there’s money to be made in corpses, they decide to provide the good doctor with a regular supply. There’s a subplot involving one of Knox’s students and a prostitute, as well, which allows Billie Whitelaw to give a lusty turn as Mary. Overall, The Flesh and the Fiends is a bit of period horror fun. Cushing plays Knox almost as a cousin to his more famous role, Victor Frankenstein, and Pleasence is consistently (but rather charismatically) unpleasant as Hare. The latter also has the distinction of, perhaps, the only accurate accent in the film, as he gives Hare a convincing Northern Irish accent that was (probably) historically accurate, which stands out in a sea of English and bad imitation Scots. Not a ‘classic’, but still a very enjoyable screening.

Sator (dir. Jordan Graham, 2019)

I’m a bit unsure about reviewing this next film, as it’s very much a one-man project with a personal element to it. I’ll say up front that it wasn’t to my taste, and will try to be constructive in my comments. Sator is an impressionistic and rather cryptic story of a family torn apart by the titular demonic presence. Adam lives apart from his family, tracking something in the woods around their home. Intercut with the woodland scenes are sequences in the family home – with Adam’s siblings, and with his grandmother, who talks about her long relationship with the presence she calls ‘Sator’. This is clearly a demon, but the grandmother speaks of it as a more benign presence. There is certainly a clear attempt to create atmosphere here, with more than a few nods to The Blair Witch Project. However, there’s no clear narrative and very little characterization. Perhaps part of the problem is that it is a one-man project (as the on-screen credits make patently clear). One thing that really struck me from the Q&As with guests (Norman J. Warren and Gary Sherman) and the discussion of Donald Pleasence’s career was a repeated focus on how collaborative filmmaking is. All of the guests spoke warmly of the contributions made to ‘their’ films by other creative professionals (and, occasionally, not so warmly about the contributions of more administrative professionals!). They also spoke of their influences, mentors and heroes, evincing a love of cinema and of horror, and a recognition of their power. Unfortunately, with Sator, none of this was obvious. Aside from Blair Witch, there was no evidence of any awareness of other filmmakers or any love for the horror genre more widely. It is a one-man project, and sadly this often results in the audience themselves feeling excluded.

The Satanic Rites of Robin Ince

The next event was a theatre show – a stand-up comedy show from Robin Ince.
The Satanic Rites of Robin Ince is a frenetic reflection on the comedian’s lifelong relationship with horror and other related creepy things. The stage is littered with bits and bobs from Ince’s collection, including novels, film journals and posters, and the backdrop is a PowerPoint presentation featuring yet more ephemera (and a lot of video clips). Ince rattles through his collection, seemingly (of course, deceptively) at random, pulling out little gems and waxing lyrical about their content. There are po-faced reviews of gory horror films, the obligatory shock at revisiting public information films from the 70s, and some well-selected clips from cult movies and TV shows. The highlight of the show, for me, was Ince’s readings from Guy N. Smith’s Crabs novels, and I would happily have listened to loads more of this. The books themselves are funny enough, but Ince’s performance and commentary really brought out the absurdity of it all. Less successful, perhaps, was the hectic listing of traumatic things from 70s childhoods – not that this wasn’t rather funny, but it has been done before a lot. I’m not sure there’s any new way to say that The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water was messed up, or that Children of the Stones was kinda weird. Nevertheless, the strength of Ince’s show is the presentation style. It feels so personal and off-the-cuff that it’s very easy to imagine that he’s literally just grabbed an armful of stuff from his attic and rocked up on stage. His Abertoir performance was enhanced by his direct address to the audience as fellow fans of horror, as though we were already in on some of the jokes. I really enjoyed the show – and I did laugh a lot.

Vivarium (dir. Lorcan Finnegan, 2019)

The next screening was Vivarium – which is not (as I was slightly worried it might be) about snakes. Instead, it’s a bit more of an existential horror. Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots play Tom and Gemma, a couple looking to buy their first home together. They visit an estate agent who shows them a housing development called Yonder and, despite not being particularly enthused, they agree to a viewing. Yonder is at once an exaggerated suburban parody and a Kafkaesque nightmare. However, if you’re expecting a Stepford-like descent into the claustrophobia of consumerism and conformity, you’re mistaken. Again, Vivarium is a bit more of an existential horror. Left alone in Yonder – and with no way of leaving – Gemma and Tom aren’t thrust into a world of enforced marital harmony and competitive domesticity, but rather into a world of parenthood. Shortly after they have realized the extent to which they are trapped in the blandness of the Yonder show home, Gemma and Tom receive a package – a new-born baby that they are instructed to raise. Again, the audience is somewhat wrong-footed by this plot development, and any assumption about the direction the plot is heading (or the direction the relationships between the characters are heading) is likely to be proved wrong. For the most part, the film relies on its low-key set and near-absurdist storyline (for instance, Eisenberg’s Tom spends much of the latter half of the film digging a hole in the garden) to provide the unsettling and off-beat horror. However (and without spoilers), the film’s ending was the real high point for me. Ultimately, Vivarium is building towards a conclusion that is way darker than anticipated – and which just gets darker the more you think about it afterwards. Definitely enjoyed this one – and I’m glad it wasn’t about snakes.

Once again, stymied by lack of energy (I'm still blaming the cold). This time, we had to miss the late-night screening of First Love (dir Takashi Miike, 2019).

Friday 22nd November

Blood and Flesh: The Reel Life and Ghastly Death of Al Adamson (dir. David Gregory, 2019)

We weren’t sure what to expect from the first film today. I don’t like to read the programme in too much detail before screenings, as I like to go in with as few expectations as possible. All I knew about this one was that it’s a documentary – and, I assumed from the title, a documentary about Al Adamson. And I have to admit that, before seeing the film, I didn’t know anything about Al Adamson. I’m very happy to say that this has now been rectified. Adamson was an American filmmaker who specialized in B-movies and exploitation films, with titles such as Psycho-A-Go-Go and Satan’s Sadists on his CV. The son of silent film star Denver Dixon, Adamson was a prolific director between 1965 and the early 80s, as well as being something of a larger-than-life character. In a horrible twist to the story, Adamson was murdered in 1995 by a man he’d hired to do some work on a house he owned. Gregory’s excellent documentary is an insightful and highly entertaining look at a life that was, in some ways, stranger than fiction. The film strikes the perfect balance of talking head reminiscences from Adamson’s friends and colleagues (with admirable authenticity and honesty), archive footage of Adamson, and clips from a good number of his films. Some of the stories – like how Psycho-A-Go-Go got its name, and how Russ Tamblyn came to be closely associated with Adamson’s work – were just genuinely fun to watch. However, the film handles the darker side of the tale (Adamson’s murder, but also the aftermath of the death of his wife, Regina Carrol) with sensitivity and the appropriate level of gravity. This is a documentary which is both testimony and tribute to a life lived through cinema. A definite highlight of the festival programme.

Gary Sherman Masterclass - Creating the Illusion: Poltergeist III and the Secrets of Practical Special Effects

The next event was another theatre event (to accommodate some film students who were attending). It was another one that I wasn’t sure about. I mean… with the best will in the world, Poltergeist III isn’t exactly the most iconic horror film of all time. How interesting could a talk on the special effects be? It turns out… very! Gary Sherman began his talk by explaining that, when he was first invited to direct the third film in the franchise, he wasn’t keen. It was quite a different kettle of fish to his usual projects, so he only agreed on certain conditions. For the purposes of today’s talk, the most important condition was that all the special effects on the film were practical effects, and that there would be no computer manipulation. Now he had our attention. Sherman’s talk was a fascinating and engaging explanation of how various on-screen effects were created for the film. A lot of these involved the use of mirrors of varying types, which finally explains why, in this film’s narrative, the ghosts have to use mirrors to make contact with Carol Anne! I really enjoyed seeing how decisions about how to do effects led to certain choices with storytelling. It was also good to hear about the film’s prolific use of reflective glass panels placed at strategic angles on the set, as I’m pretty sure this is a version of the Pepper’s ghost stage trick (and I enjoy the continuity). Sherman was a great speaker – entertaining and information – and his answers to the audience’s questions were illuminating as well. Of course, Sherman’s warm and personable style – in addition to the interesting revelations in the talk – has created a strange effect of its own. I think Poltergeist III is now my favourite instalment of the franchise!

Off-Site Screening: Prince of Darkness (dir. John Carpenter, 1987)

Each year, Abertoir stages an off-site screening as part of the programme. Last year, we watched Friday 13th Part 3 in a barn in the middle of nowhere. This year, the scheduled film was Prince of Darkness, and we had a sneaking suspicion we knew where we might be watching it. And we were right! The buses dropped us off by a (not quite) abandoned church in the mid-Wales darkness. It was the perfect location for the screening. Carpenter’s film isn’t, perhaps, the most critically acclaimed of his work, but this screening was a lot of fun. The film tells the story of a group of students, who are assembled by a quantum physicist, Professor Howard Birack, to investigate a mysterious green cylinder in the basement of an old church. Birack has been called in by a priest, in order to offer a scientific perspective on something that may or may not be a manifestation of Satan. From this (admittedly far-fetched) premise, the film builds into a claustrophobic horror in which, one-by-one, the various students are either killed or possessed by the eponymous bad guy. Some of the science is rather cheesy, and the underlying supernatural element is a bit OTT, but there’s still a lot to like about Prince of Darkness. Not least… another appearance from Donald Pleasence (who plays the priest)! And a cameo from Alice Cooper as ‘Street Schizo’! Although it’s a bit of an uneven film, there are some great sequences in Prince of Darkness as well, and I particularly like the recurring dream that the students all experience. It’s an unsettling effect that is one of the more stylish elements of an otherwise quite riotous affair. Overall, I really enjoyed this screening. Like last year’s off-site screening, the location and atmosphere really made the experience.

Mystery Screening: Synchronic (dir. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, 2019)

From an off-site screening to a mystery one… when the buses brought us back to the Arts Centre, we went into the cinema for a surprise. The next film was listed simply as ‘Mystery Screening’! There’d been quite a bit of speculation as to what this would be, but it turned out (as some people guessed) to be a screening of Synchronic, the new film by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. Synchronic returned us to the world of sci-fi horror (though, I guess you could say that Prince of Darkness did this too). Two New Orleans paramedics are called in to what appears to be a standard drug overdose death, but they discover some strange circumstances when they attend. As further cases follow, they realize that they may be dealing with the effects of a new designer drug called ‘Synchronic’. The two paramedics, who are also old friends, have their own personal issues to deal with. For Dennis (played by Jamie Dornan), it’s family issues that play on his mind. For Steve (played by Anthony Mackie), it’s a cancer diagnosis. For me, the film is at its strongest when it’s exploring the relationship between the two men, with the (potentially) creepy narcotic storyline forming a backdrop to this. Nevertheless, the drug – and specifically Steve’s investigation into its effects – comes to the fore when Dennis’s teenage daughter decides to partake. I wasn’t completely convinced by all the developments from that point, but I enjoyed the film’s neo-noir aesthetic and low-key dystopian vibe. Ultimately, the story unravels a bit, as though it doesn’t really know how to end, but it’s still a stylishly presented piece, with engaging performances from Mackie and Dornan. There’s a bit of buzz about this one, so it was great that the festival was able to secure it.

UK Premiere: Diner (dir. Mika Ninagawa, 2019)

And now to something quite quite different (I do love the mad variety you get on a good festival programme)… The next screening was the UK premiere of Mika Ninagawa’s new film, Diner. Based on a novel by Yumeaki Hirayama, via a manga adaptation by Takanori Kawai, Diner is a film that revels in sumptuous, rich and occasionally kind of surreal visuals. The story is a little slight, with a lot of elements left underdeveloped, but that’s because this is a film that favours style over narrative. And that’s not always a bad thing. Tina Tamashiro plays Kanako, a hapless girl who dreams of ‘something’, but ends up captured and forced to work in the enigmatic ‘diner’ of the title. This place is actually a clandestine restaurant run by assassin-turned-chef Bombero (Tatsuya Fujiwara), and its clientele are exclusively larger-than-life killers for hire. The visuals, which constantly threaten to become overwhelming, take their cue, in turn, from manga and graphic novels, knowing nods to other action films, and visual art installations. Such plot as there is involves two strands: the resolution of Kanako’s predicament, and the fallout from the death of the leader of a yakuza gang. However, Ninagawa’s film constantly draws us away from these almost incidental plot concerns with violent set-pieces, charming comedy (including a bit of wordplay around Kanako’s name that even non-Japanese speakers will get), and some broad-brush character arcs. I’ve seen a couple of other reviews that highlight Tamashiro’s performance as Kanako – and this is a fair assessment, as she gives a surprisingly relatable turn here. However, for me, it was Fujiwara’s seductive, charismatic and unexpectedly human Bombero who stole the show. Diner isn’t the sort of film I’d normally go for (in terms of style and genre), but I was actually quite charmed by it.

Once again, we missed the final screening of the night. This time, it was more through choice than tiredness. I think we may have been the only people at the festival who don't like Event Horizon (dir. Paul W.S. Anderson, 1997)!

One more part of this three-part review to come. My next post will be about the films we saw on Saturday and Sunday.

Review: Abertoir: The International Horror Festival of Wales 2019 (Tuesday and Wednesday)

19th-24th November 2019
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales

This November, we once again travelled down to Aberystwyth for the Abertoir horror film festival. It was our second time at the festival - we went for the first time in 2018, and absolutely loved it. Fortunately, work commitments allowed for us to go again this year, which we were very happy about! Abertoir really is a great festival, with a very well-planned programme and lovely (very hard-working) staff and volunteers. This year, the theme was (loosely) sci-fi horror, in honour of the 40th anniversary of Alien (more on that later). However, as 2019 is also the centenary of Donald Pleasence's birth, there was a bit of a secondary theme running through this year's programme (again, more on that later).

As Abertoir is a six-day festival, and we saw a LOT of films, I'm going to once again do my review in three parts. First up... here are the films we saw on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday 19th November

It Came From Outer Space 3D (dir. Jack Arnold, 1953)

This year’s festival had a couple of different themes, which ran in parallel. The theme that was used in all the advertising was sci-fi/horror, in honour of the fortieth anniversary of the release of Alien. As such, it was fitting that the week kicked off with a classic bit of 50s sci-fi. It Came From Outer Space begins with amateur astronomer John Putnam (played by Richard Carlson) witnessing a meteorite crash. However, Putnam believes that the object is, in fact, an alien spaceship. His assertions are met with derision by the rest of the townspeople – and, indeed, by the academics he’s worked with at the observatory. As you can probably imagine, Putnam is eventually vindicated, but with an interesting (and somewhat unusual) spin on the standard ‘alien invasion’ narrative – which was introduced by Ray Bradbury in his original story treatment. The film was an early 3D movie, but in the introduction to it as Abertoir, we were told that it is now rarely shown in 3D. It was apparently quite difficult to get hold of a digital version of the film that could be screened with adequate 3D. In the end, the festival organizers had to do some digital mastering of their own – one of several ‘above and beyond’ tasks they took on this year with the films in order to enhance the audience’s viewing experience. The result was incredibly well-done, one of the best 3D visual experiences I’ve seen. I was really impressed by it! 3D rendering aside, It Came From Outer Space was a great start to the festival. While in many ways it’s classic Cold War B-movie fare, the film offers a quirky message about close encounters and an idiosyncratic take on the ‘bodysnatchers’ trope. I definitely enjoyed this one – a good start to this year’s festival.

The Nightingale (dir. Jennifer Kent, 2018)

The first new feature film of the festival was The Nightingale, written and directed by Jennifer Kent (of The Babadook fame). I wasn’t overly enamoured with The Babadook, but The Nightingale is a bit of a different beast. Set in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in 1825, the film follows the story of Clare, an Irish convict who begins as a servant on a British army camp. It’s a grim story, which apparently provoked walkouts at other festivals due to its brutal depictions of sexual violence. (Anyone who knows their classical mythology may guess that a character nicknamed ‘The Nightingale’ will be a victim of rape, but may not anticipate the ferocity of the repeated attacks.) When the British soldiers escalate their violence towards Clare and her family, she sets out on a journey of revenge. Kent’s film navigates the violence of colonialism and the genocide upon which Australia (as colonial state) was founded. It is – a word that comes up in several reviews – unflinching in its presentation of brutality and terror. However, it’s also a film about the relationship between Clare and Billy, the Aboriginal man she hires to be her guide in tracking the men who have destroyed her. Kent navigates difficult territory, drawing some equivalence between the victimhood of the transported convict and that of the Aboriginal survivor (a somewhat problematic narrative), but the film handles this with sensitivity and some nuance. Ultimately, the story is focused on Clare, and so Billy (and other Aboriginal characters) are seen through her gaze, and it is the change in her understanding that we are invested in. The Nightingale is a far cry from Walkabout, and it rightly steers clear of happy endings and clear resolutions. This isn’t a film to ‘enjoy’ as such, but it is a very powerful piece.

Come to Daddy (dir. Ant Timpson, 2019)

For me, the real pleasure of film festivals lies in the variety on offer. And the next film we saw was completely different to The Nightingale. Come to Daddy begins with Norval Greenwood (played by Elijah Wood) arriving at the remote home of his estranged father Gordon, preparing to reconnect after decades of separation. The reunion doesn’t go well, as Gordon turns out to be a heavy-drinking bully, who takes pleasure in tormenting his son. Norval is a quintessential (perhaps even clichéd) millennial, complete with ill-defined artistic career, self-help books and fragile mental health. Gordon exploits all of these aspects of his son’s character, repeatedly taunting him with increasing cruelty. But then (and I’m going to be very careful about spoilers here), something happens to shift the father-son conflict into different territory, introducing another dimension to the inter-generational friction. And the friction is definitely ‘inter-generational’, as Come to Daddy often draws us out of the individual father-son dynamic to gesture towards wider questions about masculinity and identity. Although the film garners a few laughs from some of Norval’s millennial affectations (not least, his pompous attempt to describe his unsuccessful ‘career’), sympathies are divided, and by the end of the film (no spoilers) the angsty self-absorption of the millennial seems far preferable to the repellent selfishness of the older generation. For all this, though, Come to Daddy is a bit of a confused film, both tonally and in terms of genre. The scenes with Norval and Gordon are excellent, and suggestive of a relationship-focused horror film that’s both quirky and deeply unsettling. However, when that thing happens (that I’m not giving spoilers for), the film shifts into different territory that, for me, is less successful. Much like Norval himself, I’m not sure Come to Daddy is completely secure in its identity.

Much like last year, we found we were struggling with our stamina again this time, so we decided to skip the final screening of the night (and given that I was suffering with a really bad cold, we knew it was likely we'd miss more of the late night shows, sadly). This meant that we missed the UK Premiere of Lake Michigan Monster (dir. Ryland Tews, 2018).

Wednesday 20th November

UK Premiere: 8 (dir. Harold Hölscher, 2019)

The second day of the festival began, for us, with another new feature film – 8. This South African film follows William and his wife Sarah, who move back to the remote farm where William grew up, after declaring bankruptcy. William and Sarah have adopted their niece, Mary, after the death of the girl’s parents. One of the first family scenes we see, prior to their arrival at the farm, is a brief stop at a roadside memorial to Mary’s parents – death and grief will loom large throughout the film. William is keen to make a go of the farm, though Sarah isn’t convinced that it’s the right place for them. Although 8 doesn’t tackle it overtly, the tension of South Africa’s past (and present) hum under the surface of this one – William is an outsider, though he believes he isn’t, which is played out with some thought-provoking sensitivity in scenes where the white farmer attempts to interact with black villagers. William’s travails on the farm aren’t actually the film’s main focus, though. 8 is really the story of Lazarus, an old man who (for reasons that unfold in the narrative) is fated to collect souls for all eternity. Lazarus arrives at the farm and offers to help William, who accepts the offer despite his wife’s suspicions. But it’s the relationship between Lazarus and Mary that really steals the attention, as the troubled young girl finds a strange comfort in a friendship with the cursed old man. The creepy supernatural horror escalates, with some well-crafted special effects (particularly the ever-present moths), but 8’s real strength lies in the human relationships at its heart. Some good performances (especially from Keita Luna and Tshamano Sebe as Mary and Lazarus) and powerful sense of landscape and place make 8 a compelling and watchable film.

Short Films Competition Part 1

Abertoir is part of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation and participates in the Méliès Awards cycle for short films. The audience votes on a selection of films, and then the festival awards a Méliès d’Argent to the highest ranked film, which then competes for the Méliès d’Or later in the cycle. Like last year, this year’s shorts were screened in two groups. In the first panel we saw L'Auxiliaire (Frederic Plasman, 2018), a darkly dystopian setting infused with the threat of body horror that gives way to social commentary (and, in the end, a bit of a punchline), and El Cuento (Lucas Paulino and Ángel Torres, 2019), a creepy domestic horror about a witch-like neighbour and an unsettling bedtime story. Both these shorts are very well-made, though both explore familiar territory. Dog Skin (Tiago Teixeira, 2019) presents a folkloric tale of metamorphosis and obsession, and Flowers (Ismene Daskarolis, 2019) – one of the shortest films this year – offers a tech-flavoured take on control and identity. In Ida (Cassiano Prado, 2018), a mother grapples with her daughter's bad-tempered rejection – but there's a sting in the tail. And Limbo (Dani Viqueira Carballal, 2018) offers a more impressionistic take on family disintegration and (self-)destruction. My highlights of this panel were The Cunning Man (Zoe Dobson, 2019), a darkly charming (and ultimately rather heart-warming) story inspired by real-life 'cunning man' John Harries. I was particularly impressed by how much narrative this film managed to present in the short format. The Game (Rogger Vergara Adrianzén, 2019) is a stylishly brutal twist on a children's game, wrapped up in a Saw-esque aesthetic. And Hopes (Raúl Monge, 2019) is a slow-burn (as much as a short film can be) tale of a homeless child and her adult companion, which builds to a wonderfully demented and disturbing climax.

Norman J. Warren in conversation with Tristan Thompson

The first guest at the festival was British horror director Norman J. Warren. Warren’s films – including Satan’s Slave and Prey – are sometimes called ‘New Wave horror’, as they were known for an explicitness (in terms of both sex and gore) quite unlike earlier horror offerings from the UK. In conversation with Tristan Thompson, Warren talked about his early love of cinema, and his early work on filmsets. Thompson’s prompts allowed Warren the opportunity to share many interesting – and funny – stories about the ups-and-downs of low-budget filmmaking (including some pointed comments about why some of his films had such low budgets). This session was enjoyable for the warmth and affection for cinema (and the insights into the nuts-and-bolts of the industry) that came through, which is characteristic of the festival as a whole. Warren’s films may not be ‘academic’, but his understanding of the power of film for audiences was palpable.

Inseminoid (dir. Norman J. Warren, 1981)

Following the Q&A with Norman J. Warren it was, of course, appropriate that we watch one of his films. In-keeping with the sci-fi horror theme of the festival, the next screening was Inseminoid. While this might usually be a ‘so bad it’s good’ film choice, watching it after hearing Warren talk about making it meant gave the screening a different vibe. There was a lot of affection from the audience and, while there were undoubtedly lots of laughs, it felt more like we were in on the joke, rather than that we were mocking the film. Inseminoid is a film about a spaceship crew beset by a hostile alien presence, which impregnates one of them (and, as we’d see, this is going to be a recurrent subject for this year’s festival). Low budget effects, just-the-right-side-of-hammy acting, and a gross impregnation sequence (which, as we’d learned in the Q&A, was effected with the help of ‘lots of Swarfega and raw eggs’) make for a riotous and gory space horror. One of the things I like about Inseminoid is that, although there is a bloodthirsty alien on the rampage, much of the tension comes from the messed-up relationships between the crewmembers who, at various points in the film, needlessly put one another at risk. They bicker, squabble and boss each other about, as the creature picks them off one by one, and their colleague Sandy goes through an accelerated and monstrous pregnancy. While this might be standard fare for a horror film, it is very enjoyable here, and it was good to see the film again on the big screen. I’d forgotten just how ruthless (and hilarious) Stephanie Beacham’s Kate is in her desire to save herself and the ship from the invading predator. If only the others had listened to her…

Unfortunately, my poorly head couldn't cope with a late night, so we had to miss the last screening again. Sadly, this time we had to miss Why Don’t You Just Die! (dir. Kirill Sokolov), which we were told is very good.

My next post will have reviews of the films we saw on Thursday and Friday.

Review: Abertoir: The International Horror Festival of Wales 2018 (Saturday and Sunday)

13th-18th November 2018
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales

And so... here's the final part of my three-part review of this year's Abertoir horror film festival, with reviews of the films (and events) we saw on Saturday and Sunday.

You can read the other two parts of my review here: Part 1 (Tuesday and Wednesday), Part 2 (Thursday and Friday)

Saturday, 17th November

Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club

I’ll be honest – I wasn’t looking forward to the first half of today. The first two things on the programme seemed like they wouldn’t be my cup of tea. First, there was something that was described to me as ‘a bit like Mystery Science Theater 3000’, and then we had something that a reviewer has called ‘the best zombie film since Shaun of the Dead’. I don’t really like MST3000 or Shaun of the Dead (seriously, don’t @ me), so I was expecting to spend the first half of the day watching other people laugh with a slightly baffled look on my face. How wrong can you be??? Turns out, these were two of my favourite screenings of the festival. First up: Nicko and Joe’s Bad Film Club… comedians Nicko and Joe put on a gaspingly awful film, and then give a commentary on why it’s so awful. They encourage audience participation, talking (jeering) and sweet-eating throughout. I suspect the reason I enjoyed this so much was that, unlike MST3000, Nicko and Joe’s style of comedy is much more my sense of humour (it’s a subjective thing, after all), and so their commentary had me laughing my head off. However, there’s more to it than that: their double act has a pitch and rhythm to it that makes what I’m sure is a carefully-honed comic routine feel like you’ve just wandered into an off-the-cuff chat between tetchy friends. The film screened was Demons of Ludlow – which is so very bad it’s almost impossible to describe (suffice to say a lot revolves around a haunted piano, and there are some… interesting directorial decisions). It’s tempting to say that the film was the real star here, but that would do a disservice to the comedians who presented it. I absolutely loved this!

One Cut of the Dead (dir. Shinichirou Ueda, 2017)

And so next it was the ‘best zombie film since Shaun of the Dead’. I’m not sure how to review this one, as One Cut of the Dead is a film that is best seen without any expectations. Even a hint of a spoiler would be massively unfair. Before the film began, we had an introduction from one of the festival organizers, who gave a bit of context. One Cut of the Dead is a (very) low-budget indie Japanese film. It initially opened on just two small screens in Japan, and the filmmakers had zero marketing budget. However, the film quickly garnered word-of-mouth publicity, and it went on to become a surprise hit. And I really do mean hit – I checked listings after the screening, and it’s in the Top 10 highest grossing films of 2018 in Japan (beating some really big studio productions). Gaz’s introduction also pointed out that the ‘one cut’ of the title refers to a single shot take – the first 38 minutes of the film is a one-shot take. And that was all the explanation we got – the only other thing Gaz said was that, no matter how we felt about that first opening take, we should just stick with it. Trust me, he said, something will happen after the first 38 minutes that will change everything. And so we did trust him. And we watched the first 38 minutes with no idea of where it was going… and then something happened that changed everything. And by the end, we’d fallen completely in love with this utterly unexpected, very funny, clever and audacious little film, and it was clear why it was such a runaway hit in Japan. I’m not going to say anything more about it, but you should definitely see this film. Trust me.

Assassination Nation (dir. Sam Levinson, 2018)

Well, what a contrast with the next film. Assassination Nation is quite a different beast to One Cut of the Dead – and my feelings towards it were rather different too. I didn’t enjoy Assassination Nation much, and to be honest the more I’ve thought about since, the more it’s annoyed me. It’s a flashy, garish and exploitative film that screams its (ultimately shallow) political message from the very first shot. In the town of Salem (yes, Salem), a hacker is set on revealing the town’s deepest secrets to the world (based on the premise that everyone’s secrets are stored on sim cards, and that the world would be the slightest bit interested in the mundane peccadillos of a small Massachusetts town). Things descend from here into Purge-like violence, and four young women are caught up in a cycle of accusation and retribution (because… Salem… do you see?). Assassination Nation falls flat in several ways. The main characters are unlikable and implausible. Given that we’d already seen Blue My Mind, the film’s depiction of teen girls and their friendships rang hollow – imagine Regina George’s Plastics with guns. The film’s attempts to signal its wokeness are also flimsy at best, and offensive at worst (a ‘lynching’ sequence, clearly evoking historic acts of violence, has a rich white trans girl as its victim and heroic survivor… while the film’s two black women spend most of their much shorter screen time simply screaming and crying). This feels like a film written by 40-somethings about how they imagine teens see the world – the ‘hacking’ plot mostly involves Gen Zs using technology like they’re Gen X (do kids today really say ‘for the lulz’?). The film then ends with the main character literally delivering the socio-political message direct to camera. Definitely not a recommendation from me.

Prom Night (dir. Paul Lynch, 1980)

After the rollercoaster of the previous two films, it was quite a relief to get back to a classic. The screenings finished a little earlier tonight, as there was a bit of a disco on. In-keeping with the festival theme, it was a Valentine’s/Prom Night affair… so there was really only one option for the pre-disco screening. During the Q and A with Sean S. Cunningham, I was struck by one of the inspirations he listed for Friday the 13th… Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. With the post-84 rise of the big-name supernatural slasher (Freddy has a lot to answer for), it’s easy to forget the And Then There Were None-ness of the pre-franchise slasher, but Prom Night is one of the films that really makes the template clear. The film opens in 1974, with a group of kids playing in an abandoned convent. A young girl tries to join in the game, but things go horribly wrong and she dies. The kids swear never to speak of it again. Jump to: 1980, and the preparations for prom. The kids are teenagers now, but it seems someone knows what they did last summer (okay, six summers ago). Strange pictures appear in lockers, stabbed with shards of glass. It’s only a matter of time before a masked killer arrives to follow through on the threats. Admittedly not the most well-loved slasher – and certainly far from the most violent – Prom Night has a charm and style all of its own. For me, it’s interesting in the way it plays up the ‘past crimes back to haunt them’ element over the expected hack-and-slash aspect (there are no gratuitous deaths here – though a couple are accidental). It’s an enjoyable bit of fun, and a great way to end another day of screenings.

Sunday, 18th November

Abrakadabra (dir. Luciano Onetti and Nicolás Onetti, 2018)

Abrakadabra is a mystery thriller in the giallo style, which pays homage to films of the 60s and 70s. It’s painstaking in its period detail – not just in terms of set dressing and costume, but also cinematography, sound design and direction. The film begins with the accidental death of magician Dante the Great during a difficult trick (you may be able to guess which trick he’s attempting – it’s a standard reference in pop culture films about magicians now). We then move forward 35 years, and Dante’s son Lorenzo (now also a magician) arrives in town for a show. Not long after this, of course, the murders begin. True to the giallo mode, the murderer is a shadowy, secretive figure who seems to haunt the protagonist (though he may also just be an innocent pawn in the killer’s game – or a patsy set up to take the fall). The murders are brutal, and all seem to revolve around the world of magic. Lorenzo is forced to investigate the deaths – and the death of his father – to work out how (if at all) he is involved in this twisted plot. I’m in two minds about Abrakadabra. I loved the film’s opening, and the denouement and reveal were really good too. Plot-wise, it was a lot of fun. However, the middle section did seem to drag a little, and I struggled with the stylized characterization (though this was somewhat redeemed by the ending). It’s a brave – interesting? – choice to make a film in a mode that, some would argue, ended its heyday over forty years ago, and there were times when the film threatened to tip into style-over-substance territory. This isn’t a satire or pastiche – it is a giallo film, but I’m not sure it really does much to update or interrogate that.

Silent Shorts Vol IV

Something a bit different next – the first time we’d seen it, but the fourth time Silent Shorts had been featured on the Abertoir programme. This was a selection of – surprisingly enough – silent short films, all of a horror (or comedy-horror) bent. The shorts were soundtracked by fantastic original compositions by pianist Paul Shallcross. Shallcross also provided some introduction, background and context for each of the selected films. The striking thing for me at this screening was the variety in the films. I was also impressed by the way each of them made use of techniques and technologies that were highly innovative for the time – a reminder of just how creative a genre horror can be. We began with Georges Méliès’ 1903 The Monster (and who doesn’t want to see a Méliès film on the big screen?), which makes use of practical effects, superimposition and stop tricks to create an illusion of magical transformation that almost makes you forget that cinematography was only eight years old at the time. Next, it was Suspense, a 1913 short written and directed by Lois Weber. Again, this film has some notable new technologies on display – it has an early example of a split screen and an ambitious chase sequence. The third film was a bit different – not least because it was made in the era of sound (and Technicolor), and so its existence as a silent black-and-white short is stylistic, rather than circumstantial. Meshes of the Afternoon is a 1943 experimental film that uses repetition of motifs, slow motion and non-naturalistic camera angles to create a study of the subconscious, evoking both surrealism and film noir. Finally, we had Dr Pyckle and Mr Pryde, a 1925 parody of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, starring Stan Laurel. You can probably imagine how that one went!

Scala Forever! A Presentation by Jane Giles

Next on the programme was another talk, and about something I know little about. Jane Giles is the author of Scala Cinema 1978-1993, a new book from FAB Press about the Scala Cinema in King’s Cross. Giles was a programmer at the cinema – which has variously been described as infamous, influential and iconic – and she talked us through the cinema’s history (from its predecessor sites to the King’s Cross venue) and what came to be its signature style. She also talked about Scala’s relationship with horror cinema, with some great anecdotes about some of the notable screenings. While the history of the cinema itself was really absorbing, I was also quite taken with one of the details about the venue – prior to its becoming the ‘legendary’ Scala Cinema, the venue had a short life as Cyril Rosen’s Primatarium, an educative ‘experience’ designed to raise awareness of primates and their habitat.

Anna and the Apocalypse (dir. John McPhail, 2018)

The final film screening of the festival! I can hardly believe it! The last film to be shown on this year’s programme was the British Christmas zombie musical Anna and the Apocalypse. Anna is coming to the end of her time at school and dreaming of going travelling (though her dad wants her to go to university instead) – but all that is about to change when the zombie apocalypse hits. Instead, she’s going to be battling for her life along with a band of other survivors – and breaking into song at various points. Sadly, this film did not work for me. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t think it really succeeded at any of the things it attempted. It’s a British film, but it has no clear sense of place. The accents are a mishmash of North-East and Scottish, and the town of Little Haven doesn’t quite feel like it’s in the UK. It’s a Christmas film, but it seriously lacks the promised ‘feel-good’ element that you want from a festive film. No one learns the true meaning of Christmas, and no one discovers that love and joy are more important than material things. (Mostly because of the zombies, to be fair.) It’s a zombie film, but it’s zombies-by-numbers. There’s nothing interesting or different about its undead. And while there’s a ‘don’t fear the zombies, fear the other survivors’ element, it involves the arbitrary and implausible madness of an individual (played at the highest possible pitch by Paul Kaye). There’s no real fear or angst here – just excuses for Anna (played by Ella Hunt) to stab zombies with a giant candy cane. Finally, it’s a musical (in the High School Musical fully-integrated mode), but the songs aren’t catchy or memorable. Sigh. Just call me the Christmas zombie musical Grinch.

Rob Kemp's The Elvis Dead

Although Anna and the Apocalypse was the final film screening, there was one last event on the schedule… a performance of The Elvis Dead by Rob Kemp. The Elvis Dead is Kemp’s award-winning comedy stage show in which he reimagines Evil Dead II through the songs of Elvis Presley. Now, I like Evil Dead II and I like the music of Elvis, so this seemed okay to me. Ironically, I found myself seated between one guy who likes Evil Dead but hates Elvis, and another guy who loves the King but hates Evil Dead. I felt like the middle of a Venn diagram. Anyway, Kemp’s performance is an energetic romp through Raimi’s film – with scenes projected behind him throughout the show – in which he plays both a version of Ash and a version of Elvis. The King’s hit songs are rewritten to capture the action and OTT emotion of the cult horror film. Kemp’s solo performance is exhausting just to watch, as he uses props, make-up and hairspray (fans of the film might guess when that last one is used) to mimic Ash’s various traumatic experiences. And then, he bursts into song. The rewritten lyrics are often very funny – and I can’t have been the only person eagerly waiting to find out which song would be used for the ol’ chainsaw/hand scene (and I wasn’t disappointed there!) – but it’s the interplay between Kemp’s on-stage performance and the film screening that I enjoyed most. It’s a very well put-together show, which oozes affection for and understanding of both its sources. I loved the show… but so did both the other people in our little Venn diagram, and that seems like a success to me. A great laugh, and a fun way to round off the festival. Hail to the King, baby.

And so, our first ever visit to Abertoir came to an end. We thoroughly enjoyed our week in Aberystwyth, and I'm really pleased we were finally able to make it to the festival. Work commitments allowing, we're really hoping to be able to make it to Abertoir 14 next year. Fingers crossed!