More quality grue than you can shake a spleen at…
The 12th Edition of Scotland’s Dead by Dawn fantastic film festival kicks off on 21st April and do they have a good line up (so far), or what?
There are two takes on escalating urban nightmares. One is the UK Premiere of The Dark Hours from frm Canadian film-maker Paul Fox – the story of a shrink with whose hipocratic oath hasn’t stopped her from testing a potential cure in a non-FDA-approved drug on one of her seriously unstable patients. Sadly for her and those she loves, he survives long enough to start asking some deeply unpleasant questions. It all culminates in a game of truth or dare. Which he insists on playing with a pair of pliers…
Another glorious discovery is Jim McMahon’s movie Bloodshed. On an American farm, a man and his traumatised younger brother try to survive in the wake of a family tragedy. Only, malicious local gossip has it that the brothers murdered their parents. Who knows. They certainly seem a bit odd. Happily for horror movie fans, a bunch of arrogant local teens decide to taunt the brothers and as is the way of these things, incur the wrath of two men capable of much worse than even the rumours could ever guess. Director Jim McMahon, his co-writer, the leads and other cast and crew will introduce and discuss this World Premiere.
Those loveable Irish characters behind 2001′s Braineater are back with a follow up debut feature Dead Meat – an Irish zombie invasion…
There’s an indie Japanese feature Gusha no bindume (The Bottled Fools) which is a bizarre little claustrophobic, skin-crawly surreal nightmare…as if lifts weren’t horrible enough already.
From Germany comes, Night of the Living Dorks, billed as the funniest German horror-comedy since Premutos… In factm it’s probably the only German horror-comedy since Premutos.
Also there’s Jeff Lieberman’s return to the genre, Satan’s Little Helper which promiseds to be a sick and twisted return to sadistic horror from the man who gave us Squirm.
Alex Turner’s excellent civil war horror movie Dead Birds, after screening at Midnight Madness in Toronto gets its UK Premiere.
On the guest front, two words: Ken Foree.
On the short film front there are two retrospectives from two British directors who rock.
One is a retrospective of Sam Walker’s work. Sam is the right kind of twisted. Just wait till you see these three shorts – Duck Children, Pool Shark and Tea Break. The first will make you feel so wrong, the second is for just when you thought you’d got over Jaws and the third seems to be the result of someone who’s had too much time on their hands and bile in their blood while stuck in a temp job… Sam, his writer and art director will all be present to introduce and discuss his work.
Second is a retrospective of Robert Morgan’s work. We’ll be showing all four of his films, which will include a chance to see Seperation again, along with The Man in the Lower Left Hand Corner of the Photograph, The Cat With Hands and his first fully live-action short, Monsters. Robert will also be present to introduce and discuss his work.
This year, the festival is also going to include a series of short films which aren’t technically horror films, but are still horrific. Any horror film (at least, any horror film worth mentioning) attempts to make its audience feel vulnerable, unsettled and upset. And the four films in the What You Make It section promise to do exactly that.
Elsewhere in the shorts programme there’s a film to stop you using tweezers ever again, proof that you should never stop for petrol in the middle of nowhere, a lesson from hell in being a better roommate, reasons why you should never try to take credit for the devil’s work, some seriously nasty scarecrow business, something to put you off surgery (and relationships) for life, an old-fashioned dark-and-stormy-night ghost story, the sneaky truth about corporate competition, lessons in home protection and yet more reasons why the countryside should be avoided at all costs.. And much, much more.
Neil Marshall, the man behind the sublime Dog Soldiers, is in the process of editing his new movie The Descent but although the film won’t be ready in time for the festival, he will be there to introduce the trailer (Dead by Dawn audience will be the first people anywhere to see it) and to do a Q&A too.
Dead By Dawn runs from 21st to 24th April in association with the Edinburgh Filmhouse.