80s Fear

I’m a bit late updating this news, but I’ve been away for a few days… Anyway, Frightfest have made their first confirmed announcement of films screening at this year’s event - An American Werewolf In London!

This is interesting news for a few reasons. First of all, I’ve been going to Frightfest regularly for a couple of years, and I’m hoping that I can make the full 4 1/2 day event this year. Usually, it’s a decent batch of movies but they all tend to be new releases, often UK, European or even world premieres. However, as good as that is, there’s always been a desire to see classic horror movies on the big screen with a crowd of like-minded horror fans. American Werewolf is indeed both a classic, and the new documentary that will accompany it (entitled Beware the Moon) has been well received elsewhere.

Most excitingly, the director John Landis has been confirmed as a Q&A guest, along with lead actress Jenny Agutter. Landis is a very interesting person in interviews and always makes an interesting speaker even though he’s not really a horror director and hasn’t made a truly decent movie (IMHO) since Coming To America. Not only that, but the cinema where this year’s event is taking place (the Empire in Leicester Square, London) is just around the corner from where the climax of the movie was filmed. The new venue will also apparently allow 2 screens to be used for the festival, opening up the possiblity of repeat or alternate screenings of movie… all for the same price as last year’s festival

I can’t wait for the full lineup to be announced on the 3rd July, then the tickets go on sale on the 4th  July… here’s hoping I can get a full weekend pass!

Clive Barker’s second movie Nightbreed, made in 1990, is one of the great butchered movies. Like Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons and William Peter Blatty’s Exorcist 3, Nightbreed was a fantastic movie, heavily re-edited by clueless studio executives who failed to understand the movie they were watching. Also like those two movies, the cut footage was considered lost.

However, a workprint has been discovered with not only the 20 minutes known to have been cut, but a whole 45 minutes of extra footage! At the moment, it’s only on VHS and not of releasable quality. But, you can help get this lost masterpiece released uncut on DVD or Blu-Ray (so far, only a barebones region 1 DVD of the cut version has been released - way to help piracy, guys!). How? The official Clive Barker website is collecting emails and tweets to show the studio that there’s enough support out there to justify the cost of DVD/Blu-Ray production.

Director: Thom Eberhardt

Writer: Thom Eberhardt

Starring: Robert Beltran, Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Sharon Farrell, Mary Woronov, Geoffrey Lewis, Peter Fox

Taglines: “It was the last thing on earth they ever expected.”

“They came. They Shopped. They saved the world!”

“The comet’s coming, and the world will never be the same.”

“The last time it came the dinosaurs disappeared”

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Slightly off-topic, but I had to post this teaser trailer for REC2. Obviously a sequel to the fantastic Spanish movie REC (remade in the US as Quarantine), this seems to be taking a more action-based vibe with police or soldiers entering the apartment block and fighting off the hordes of infected. Unless I’m mistake, this could be to the original what Aliens was to Alien. I can’t wait, and haven’t been this excited about a sequel for a long, long time. Here’s hoping that it will play at Frightfest when I go this year!

One of my guilty pleasures is reading sites and blogs that cover bad movies and obscure B-movies. These include The Agony Booth, BadMovies.org, and members of the B-Masters Cabal.

The owner of one of these sites, Cold Fusion Video, has just uploaded a fantastic resource for out-of-print movies. These are mostly extremely hard-to-find movies that have never been released on DVD and in some cases may never be (you think George Lucas will allow the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special on an official print?). The movies vary in quality and some are available for download, some streaming, but it’s a good place to find movies that you’d never find otherwise. Hell, where the movies are unavailable to buy officially at any cost, that’s the one way I condone “piracy”.

Anyway, you can find the site here: Tachyon City. There’s only a few films there at the moment, mostly sci-fi and obscure stuff. Of most interest to me are Moontrap (Bruce Campbell and Chekov!), Attack of The Beast Creatures (famously bad, will have to review it here at some point and Scavenger Hunt (a comedy I remember liking when I saw it on TV as a kid but I’ve never seen it since).

Director: Satoru Ogura

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Directed by: Chih-Hung Kwei

Written by: Chih-Hung Kwei & On Sito

Starring: Phillip Ko, Bolo Yeung, Somjai Boomsong, You-hsing Lai, Wai Lam, Hak Shun Leung, Chih Tai Lin

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Directed by: Jeff Lieberman

Written by: Mark Arywitz, Jeff Lieberman, Jonas Middleton

Starring: George Kennedy, Mike Kellin, Chris Lemmon, Gregg Henry, Deborah Benson, Ralph Seymour, Katie Powell, John Hunsaker

Music by: Brad Fiedel

Taglines: “Will Anyone Survive Those Hours Just Before Dawn?”

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