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Modern Hollywood really IS Roger Corman’s World

2012-03-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

Respectability is overrated, especially in the world of film. It leads to polite cinema, cinema based on books and plays. Cinema that may win the occasion BAFTA or Oscar nod, or pick up some critical attention at Sundance, but cinema that very rarely offers any kind of challenge to the viewer. Truly great filmmakers are rarely respectable. Orson Welles wasn’t. Neither was Fassbinder. And Lars Von Trier certainly isn’t. Great filmmakers are boundary pushers and nose thumbers. They do not pander. Respectable cinema, on the other hand, does precisely that: it appeals, briefly, to the intellectual and moral values of the middlebrow audience of the time, but in retrospect is something of an embarrassment. Does anyone, looking back, truly think DANCES WITH WOLVES deserved any of the critical acclaim it garnered? Is it truly more deserving of awards than GOODFELLAS? Of course not. But it benefited from the zeitgeist. It appealed to the mood of the moment.

The classic example of this phenomenon would be William Wyler’s THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. At the time of release in 1946, this solidly-crafted, decent, humane study of three US soldiers returning after World War II and attempting to rebuild their lives was critically acclaimed, universally popular, and won every award imaginable. It chimed with the mood of the times. Never mind that legendary film critic Manny Farber later famously dismissed it as "a horse-drawn truckload of liberal schmaltz" - at that moment, the world needed a film about healing and renewal, and this one did the job better than the rest. Of its kind, it’s an excellent film. But filmgoers in search of the darker realities faced by returning soldiers would have to seek them elsewhere, in the tough, shadowy crime dramas that began appearing around the same time; tales of alienated loners, many of them ex-servicemen, who find themselves out of their depth in plots they cannot hope to fathom, in environments where they cannot hope to succeed. These were the films that actually appealed to the returning soldiers themselves. Conceived at the time as potboilers and pulp action movies, they were later championed as offering a far truer portrait of the era, particularly by French critics, who coined the term by which such films are now known: Films Noirs.

These days, whole university media courses are dedicated to the study of Film Noir. Critics have built whole careers writing about it. The films themselves are regarded with the utmost seriousness. But they did not start out that way. They were not respectable at all. They were “B Movies”, designed to play in support to headlining “A Movies” (such as THE BEST DAYS OF OUR LIVES}; humble genre films, often made quickly, and subject to fewer big studio checks and guards. And so they were better able to capture the uneasy atmosphere of the time.

Which brings me, at last, to the subject of this particular blog, the maestro himself, Mr Roger Corman. Roger Corman has never really sought respectability either, though he has attained something like it over time.

Roger Corman has always maintained that he makes B Movies, rather than exploitation films. In doing so, he is not being mealy-mouthed, or disingenuous. He is identifying himself with a noble tradition of maverick, under-the-radar filmmaking. His autobiography, HOW I MADE A HUNDRED MOVIES IN HOLLYWOOD AND NEVER LOST A DIME is no idle boast. Though he might gleefully adopt the role of opportunistic, bandwagon-jumping, penny-pinching movie mogul, famously telling author Brian Aldiss during the shooting of FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND that his company was “a cheap outfit”, and though no-one could doubt he is a shrewd, hard-headed businessman, Roger Corman is without question one of the most significant influences on American Cinema of the last 50 years.

Had he simply directed his legendary “Poe Cycle” with Vincent Price, Corman would surely earn a place in the pantheon of any genre fans favourite directors. But he was also behind such droll classics as BUCKET OF BLOOD and THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, the visceral anti-racism drama THE INTRUDER, nihilistic biker movie THE WILD ANGELS and the still startlingly experimental THE TRIP. As a filmmaker he is idiosyncratic, even groundbreaking, and was among the first to incorporate experimental filming, lighting and editing techniques pioneered in Underground Cinema into mainstream film.

As a Producer and Talent Scout he was responsible for the discovery and /or encouragement and promotion of such talents as Jack Nicholson, Robert de Niro, Nicolas Roeg, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Monte Hellman, Jonathan Kaplan, George Armitage, Richard Rush, Paul Bartel, Lewis Teague, John Sayles, Robert Towne, Charles Beaumont, Chuck Griffith, Lazlo Kovacs, Daniel Haller, Les Baxter, Bruce Dern, Peter Fonda, Jane Asher, Susan Strasberg, Diane Ladd, William Shatner, Luana Anders.

Corman freely admits he worked with young up and coming talent, and aging, no-longer-in-demand talent because they were cheaper to hire and grateful for the work: “I get the ones on the way up, and the ones on the way down.” And yet, far from feeling exploited, filmmakers who worked with Corman at American International Pictures in the Sixties and Seventies describe it as The Corman Film School. Considered objectively, from without, it might look like a sweatshop, a factory farm.

Yet it was also a place to learn your craft by doing; that encouraged speed and decisiveness and creativity on the wing. AIP films at their best display a unique breed of inventiveness and innovation, born of thrift and limited time and resources. Corman was (in)famous for his ability to recognise talent, and for an almost laissez-faire approach to getting the best from that talent. His method: to re-use EVERYTHING. He was master of economy of scale, of getting the absolute most from his resources. If he had an actor for three days, he would have that actor in as many films as possible during that period. He would shoot several films simultaneously on the same set, or the same location. His crews would be working continually, virtually round the clock, as various directors shot various films in the same space with the same people. The idea was always to get films in under budget and in less time than scheduled - because then an extra film might be squeezed in using the resources.

If Corman had spare footage, and actors and facilities available, he would sometimes throw together a new film just to use them - THE TERROR, for example was assembled by Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, and Jack Nicholson - who also starred alongside Boris Karloff - from some footage shot but not used in THE RAVEN, and because Corman still had the two lead actors available for another day or two to shoot new scenes, using the same sets. Peter Bogdanovich would later be given Boris Karloff footage shot but not used for THE TERROR, plus a day’s shooting with Karloff, and would make the truly startling TARGETS. Corman’s only proviso to his filmmakers was that the film contain some exploitable elements that he could use to sell it - a (once-) famous face, horror or crime elements, sex / nudity, some counter-cultural element, such as rock and roll, psychedelia, drug use or beatniks, hippies or bikers (depending on the era).

It ought not to have worked at all. It ought to have produced nothing but cynical, bandwagon-jumping crap, but due to Corman’s own talent, his eye for the talent of others, and, yes, his eye for the market, and above all, perhaps, due to that strange alchemy that occurs when young, talented, eager, hungry, creative people are brought together and given free rein, some remarkable films were made.

Modern Hollywood was born out of the “Corman Film School” - not just in terms of the talent Corman discovered / encouraged, but also the counter-cultural spirit he fostered in the 1960s, which would shape the classic American films of the early 70s, and be an inspiration to independent filmmakers everywhere.

Grimm Up North pays tribute to one of the greats of American Cinema, and one of our own personal heroes, with a screening of the acclaimed documentary CORMAN’S WORLD, alongside the recent cult gem SHARKTOPUS, at the Anthony Burgess Foundation on Friday 16^th March, from 7.30pm. No true film buff will want to miss it.

Steve Balshaw

FROM THE GRINDHOUSE TO THE ARTHOUSE… AT THE DANCEHOUSE.

2012-02-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

Steve Balshaw considers our Arthouse doublebill screening on the 23rd February.

Whenever I am asked what I look for in a film, my answer is always the same: Something I haven’t seen before. The problem is, increasingly, I’ve seen it all before - the perennial hazard of the Film Programmer’s profession. Of course, when it comes to horror films, half the fun, sometimes, can be the way in which certain expectations are set up, exploited, toyed with, and either fulfilled or deconstructed. The horror film audience is a very knowing audience, and filmmakers play up to this.

But still, sometimes, it is nice to see a film that takes familiar elements and well-worn tropes and twists them into new shapes, taking the viewer somewhere unexpected in the process. So it is with our latest double bill of slightly off-centre shockers.

First up, A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE offers a startlingly low-key, mumblecore-influenced take on the serial killer film, that plays like a cross between HENRY PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER and ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANY MORE. The wife of a former serial killer tries to rebuild her life in a new town. Meantime, her ex-husband escapes from prison and cuts a bloody swathe across the country as he journeys to find her. The film has the understated, icy precision of Lodge Kerrigan’s nightmarish CLEAN, SHAVEN, unshowy naturalistic performances and dialogue, and a shooting style - handheld, lots of focus pulling and lens flare - reminiscent of classic early 70s films such as TWO LANE BLACKTOP. The film’s depictions of quiet desperation and desperate violence build towards an inevitable, possibly controversial final twist, which takes the film finally into more familiar horror territory, but in a cruelly ironic manner.

Then there’s AMER, which was a big hit at Grimm Up North back in 2010, and one of my own favourites from that year. This is the first full-length feature by Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet, whose work I‘ve loved since their astonishing early short THE YELLOW ROOM back in the early 2000s. Cattet and Forzani specialise in boiling down all of the more fetishistic tropes and stylistic ticks of Italian giallo slasher movies into sexually charged, tense, S&M-tinged mood pieces. Really visually rich and beautiful, often using stills rather than moving images. And very unsettling. AMER takes this approach even further.

Chronicling three stages of a woman's life, from childhood fear, to burgeoning, dangerous teenage sexuality, to memory-haunted, terrified adulthood, it is steeped in cinematic reference; starting off in Bava / Argento psychedelic gothic territory, then veering off into the kind of charged, voyeuristic Mediterranean-based eroticism of Jesus Franco. It‘s visually gorgeous, and has its own wonderful, woozy, dreamlike logic; not so much a narrative film as an exercise in cinematic reference and mood. Anyone who has any love whatsoever of 1970s European exploitation cinema should be totally entranced.

In short, then, a double bill that toys with expectations, delivering those familiar frissons of fear in unfamiliar patterns. Film buffs, fright fans, and seekers of the strange should join us for the show. Steve Balshaw

SHOULD YOU REALLY BE TAKING YOUR KID TO WORK?

2012-02-08T10:04:00.000-08:00

Steve Balshaw takes a look at Shogun Assassin.

Ah, the 80s… What an ugly time it was: Horrible politics, horrible music, horrible clothes, horrible haircuts, and horrible movies. Everything was backcombed, hairsprayed, box-jacketed, skinny-tied, patent-leathered, overproduced, overlit, garish, loud, greedy, and right wing. In the USA, Bret Easton Ellis smirked thinly at what he saw around him and nailed it cold, but the best we could manage in the UK was the laboured, snotty public schoolboy satire of Martin Amis. It is an era about which nostalgia should be all but impossible, and yet…

And yet for a brief period of time, on VHS, it was a time of Anything Goes. A golden era, when the BBFC had no jurisdiction over what was being released onto video for domestic rental. It was the era of… The Video Nasty, when fly-by-night companies with the ethics of grave robbers and the publicity instincts of pornographers unleashed whatever the god-damn hell they could get their sweaty hands on before the bleary, bloodshot eyes of an appalled public: American exploiters from the Drive-in and Grindhouse circuits; mean-spirited semi-underground slashers, dripping with angst and misanthropy; gory Italian gialli, zombie and cannibal films galore, mad-eyed martial arts massacres and sleazy Shogunate savagery from the East.

It was into this grainy, garish, still-unregulated straight-to-video world that SHOGUN ASSASSIN first slashed its way into the British consciousness. I first saw it, or rather some of the bloodier highlights, playing on a continual loop in a long-since shut down night club in the centre of Manchester. It was the kind of film that the clubbers would stand around watching, cheering on the katana-wrought carnage. By the time I found out what the film was, it had been banned, and the video recordings act had come into being, ruining everything for everybody.

Fast-forward a few years. What I didn’t know at the time was that SHOGUN ASSASSIN was itself a kind of “edited highlight”; dubbed into English by a voice cast including, somewhat improbably, Sandra Bernhardt, and pieced together from SWORD OF VENGEANCE and BABY CART AT THE RIVER STYX the first two films in a six-film sequence derived from the legendary, long-running Japanese Manga comic strip LONE WOLF AND CUB, by writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima. The films were hugely successful in Japan, just as the original manga had been.

In the West, however, the films’ popularity was largely limited to the straight-to-video grind house fans, and would find themselves endlessly referenced by the Quentin Tarantinos of this world. Ironically, it was Koike and Kojima’s original manga that would have the wider impact. Championed in America by Frank Miller, whose own art was heavily influenced by Kojima’s deft, impressionistic brushwork, it was acknowledged by Max Allan Collins as the primary influence on his and Richard Piers Rayner’s now-classic graphic novel ROAD TO PERDITION, the basis of the critically-acclaimed Sam Mendes film, starring Tom Hanks. Strangely, Besson's LEON also springs to mind!?

Grimm Up North offers a unique chance to see the much-loved video nasty SHOGUN ASSASSIN, alongside the third film in the Lone Wolf sequence, BABY CART TO HADES. And while you are watching this brace of blood-splattered bushido blockbusters, just remember - the American remake of this film won an Oscar. Both films screen on the evening of Feb 17th in MCR. www.grimmfest.com for more info.

LOVE IS COLDER THAN DEATH

2012-01-23T03:27:00.000-08:00

“Have you seen Dylan’s dog? It’s got wings, it can fly…” - Patti Smith

While we’re certain that none of our red-blooded Grimmlins are going to want to miss our Italian giallo double bill, and that the prospect of seeing Maestro Argento’s long out of circulation early masterpiece FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET is a mouth-watering enough prospect on its own, DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE [AKA CEMETARY MAN], directed by Argento’s (and Terry Gilliam’s) sometime AD, Michele Soavi, is an equally flavoursome treat. Described by Martin Scorcese as one of the greatest Italian films of the 90s, this wild-eyed, darkly comic tale of love and death, or at least, of sex and zombies, features Rupert Everett as a lovelorn cemetery caretaker plagued by restless graveyard residents, unable to convince local bureaucracy to do anything to combat the problem, and troubled by increasingly disturbing erotic encounters.

Literally translating as “Of Death, Of Love”, the film is an adaptation of a novel by Tiziano Sclavi, best known as the creator of DYLAN DOG, the most successful comic strip character in Italy, whose adventures sell over a million issues a month, and number Umberto Eco among their fans. Francesco Dellamorte, the film’s protagonist, is a kind of alternate version of Dylan Dog, and has appeared in several of the comic strips. The film emphasises this connection by casting Rupert Everett, who had been artist Claudio Villa’s original visual inspiration for Dylan Dog, and dressing him in Dylan’s trademark black jacket, blue jeans and red shirt. As the, uh, somewhat sanitised American film version of DYLAN DOG, featuring erstwhile Superman Brandon Routh, hits US cinemas, here’s a welcome taste of author Sclavi’s original horror vision in all of its dark, weird, surreal, and melancholy glory, beautifully realised by the still-underrated Soavi…

Steve Balshaw

BALSHAW'S BAH HUMBUG XMAS BLOG

2011-12-21T03:18:00.000-08:00

YOU’D BETTER WATCH OUT, YOU‘D BETTER BEWARE!

Did you hear about the dyslexic Satanist? He sold his soul to Santa.

It’s a silly joke, but I think it captures a truth we have all felt: Father Christmas, Santa Claus, St Nicholas. Call him what you like, there’s something not right about him. Something ambiguous, even sinister. Perhaps it’s because the first lie our parents ever tell us is about the existence of Santa. Perhaps it’s because the nature of that lie is so diametrically opposite to what we are being told elsewhere. In this modern, paranoid world with its increasingly amped-up fears about home invasion, where children are brought up to believe all doors and windows must be lock at night and they must never talk to, never trust a stranger, how unnerving must it be for those same children to suddenly be told that there is this old guy on a flying sledge who can get into their home and prowl around their bedroom with impunity, and that they must be good and do as he says or they won’t get any presents. Think about that for a moment. Think about the darker implications. Talk about a mixed message.

Parents might try to delude themselves that it’s part of “magic of Christmas” to perpetuate this myth, but behind that popular image of the laughing, jolly red-faced man in the fur-fringed red costume, Santa is just another bogeyman. A myth our parents tell us to make us behave. Think of the words of the classic, oft-covered song, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In3sApWlY1s

You better watch out
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list
And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who's naughty and nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
O! You better watch out!
You better not cry
Better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town

Does this sound like anyone you’d want to meet? Would you want to sit on his knee, or would you want to run and hide? This Santa sounds more like some kind of moral vigilante. The Punisher with a white beard and a sack of toys, or perhaps the sadistic Lord High Executioner from Gilbert and Sullivan’s THE MIKADO:

“I’ve got him on the list / I’m sure he won’t be missed!”

Scant wonder that Diamanda Galas referenced the lyrics of this song in “Double Barrelled Prayer”, when referring to the savage dogs of hell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T29Lqpi2RQ

They know when you are sleeping.

They know when you’re awake

How fast your heart is beating

So be ready or too late…

They can smell your blood inside

It’s too late to go and hide…

Behind that jolly mask, then, Santa is a figure who sits in judgement, who weighs lives in the balance. Like God. Or the Devil. Or Jason. Or Michael Myers.

Yep. Sorry, boys and girls, but Santa never really was one of the good guys. The modern, iconic image of Santa, in his red suit, hemmed with white fur, has its origins in the work of 19^th Century illustrator Thomas Nast, but was actually fixed in the public consciousness by the art of Haddon Sunblom - in a series of advertisements he created for Coca-Cola, beginning in the 1930s (a decade which also saw the composition of “Santa Clause is Coming To Town”). The Santa we are most familiar with was a simple marketing gimmick, dressed, conveniently enough, in the Coca-Cola colours. Thus, over time, Santa has become a symbol of the crass commercialism of Christmas, his motivations distinctly suspect. Billy Bob Thornton’s drunken department store heist man is not alone in using that familiar red and white outfit for questionable aims - horror cinema is filled with “Bad Santas”: Silent Night, Deadly Night and its various sequels, Christmas Evil, Psycho Santa, Santa Claws, Santa’s Slay, Satan Claus, and of course Freddie Francis’s horror anthology Tales From The Crypt, featuring what may well be the original Santa serial killer in the tale “And All Through The House”. And that’s if we stick solely to the US and UK. Grimm Up North’s recent festive double bill of Rare Exports and Saint offered a suitably startling reminder that there are other versions of Santa out there; that behind the smiling shill for a fizzy drink company lies a far older, far darker, more ambiguous entity.

The name Santa Claus is an American-English corruption of the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself a corruption of “St Nicholas”, the Christian saint famous for his generous gifts to the poor. So “Santa Claus” is nominally Christian. But the figure of Father Christmas is entirely secular, a figure representing good cheer, originally all in green, and later in red and green, and most likely derived from the pagan figure of the Green Man, symbol of fertility, the changing seasons, and of rebirth, and thus a figure whose appearance at the year’s end, the Winter solstice, is entirely logical, signifying as he does the hope of a new year, and the arrival of Spring.

The connection of this figure directly with Christmas probably dates back to the 14^th Century verse narrative SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Perhaps the earliest, and one of the greatest of all festive stories, this epic poem is an attempt to reconcile the Christian and Pagan traditions, as the two are brought into quite literal conflict. It is Christmas at the Court of King Arthur, and in the midst of the celebrations, a knight arrives, demanding audience. He is clad all in green; even his hair and flesh are green. This Green Knight sets a seemingly absurd challenge: he will allow any knight who dares to cut off his head, and then, the following year, the knight in question must allow the Green Knight to do the same to him. Gawain takes up the challenge, and strikes off the Green Knight’s head. But the Green Knight does not die. He simply picks up his severed head and replaces it. Gawain is faced with having to go to the Green Knight’s own castle in a year‘s time, where he must risk his own head.

The story is filled with both Christian and Pagan symbolism. Gawain is the perfect Christian Knight, faced with martyrdom. The Green Knight is of course the Green Man of pagan tradition. Gawain is being tested for his faith, and for his chivalry as a knight. In the end, he does not lose his head, because he proves true, and the narrative ends with another Christmas celebration. Here Pagan and Christian are finally reconciled, albeit uneasily, and not without tension. And it is the Pagan world, interestingly, that sets the rules and parameters for the contest.

This is perfectly understandable, and entirely appropriate. The early Christian Church had been very smart in its efforts to convert the pagans, retaining many of the symbols and fetish objects and much of the iconography of pagan worship, and merely assigning them a new, Christian value and purpose. Christmas time itself is the Pagan Yuletide or Winter Solstice. The images of death and renewal, of the old year giving way to new, the turning of the seasons so essential to pagans, are assigned a new value within the Christian faith. The evergreen holly and ivy, originally used in druidic practice become symbols of Christ. The result, however, is that the symbols become ambiguous. And at Christmas, this ambiguity is rife. For Christian believers, it is a time of celebration of their faith, of their belief that they are redeemed, that mankind is renewed. But underlying this are pagan beliefs and fears. As Winter draws in, and the days get shorter and the nights longer, the promise of Spring’s renewal seems further and further off.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT is a tale of high chivalry and courtly love, and ends in celebration and renewal, but it is also links Christmas quite explicitly with the pagan world and the supernatural. It adds a touch of dread to the festivities. And in the ambiguous, menacing Green Knight, it introduces the idea of a figure who sits in judgement, who “knows if you've been bad or good”, and who thus decides whether you deserve a good Christmas. And this figure has persisted ever since, distinct from any Christian interpretation that might be placed upon him. Christmas, then, is not simply a time for celebration and good fellowship and overeating. It is also a time to reflect upon who we are. And to confront our darkest fears.

Christmas, as we know it, was pretty much invented by the Victorians. It is no accident that the second most famous, most celebrated, and most performed Christmas story, after that old chestnut about the kid being born in the stable, and the shepherds and the three kings and whatnot, should be Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL. Originally published in December 1843, Dickens’ classic tale has never been out of print, and has been adapted for stage and screen a multitude of times. It has been an opera, a musical, the source of numerous pantos. There are versions featuring the Muppets, Blackadder and Dr Who. There is even, horrifyingly, an updated version starring Ross Kemp as one “Eddie Scrooge”. The result is that while we are all-too-familiar with the story, we tend to know it second hand, in reduced, simplified form; to regard it as a warm-hearted, sentimental tale of a hateful miser, made to see the error of his ways by visits from the three spirits of Christmas.

And yet Dickens’ original story contains some genuinely disturbing images. The narrative follows a redemptive arc, but there is a palpable sense of dread, too. The visions Scrooge is offered tap into all of our worst fears about being unloved, alone, isolated; of dying forgotten, or worse, actively hated. The final, sentimental, celebratory Christmas scenes are made all the more rosily appealing by the dark alternative we have been shown. Tiny Tim’s words, “God bless us, every one!” have an undercurrent of fear and pathos. Scrooge has seen a future in which the boy dies, and that future might still happen. Dickens knew full well what Christmas was like for the desperate and the destitute. His father had been sent to debtors’ prison when Dickens was only twelve. And the recent Poor Laws had made life even worse for the poorest in society. A CHRISTMAS CAROL in its condemnation of selfish greed and call for social responsibility is very much a product of Dickens the social critic and reformer.

But the story is also a product of Dickens the great myth-maker of his age. It was written during a period when there was something of a national preoccupation with Christmas. Prince Albert had imported a number of festive traditions from his native Germany, including the Tannenbaum or Christmas Tree, and the giving and receiving of greetings cards, and there had followed a widespread revival of interest in early British Christmas traditions, such as the Yule Log, mistletoe, and holly and ivy. The Victorians were creating a whole iconography of Christmas that remains with us to this day. And whether they were conscious of it or not, a lot of that iconography is essentially pagan, and pre-Christian in origin. Charles Dickens did much to consolidate that iconography in the national consciousness, to fuse Christian and Pagan into a vision of Christmas that is essentially fairly secular - a time of family, of celebration, of goodwill to all, of the opportunity for redemption, where God is mentioned only in passing, where essential human decency prevails. For all of the darkness along the way, essentially, yes, a comforting vision.

That Dickens should choose to present this vision in the form of a ghost story might seem perverse, but again it simply shows his understanding of his audience. The Victorians loved tales of the sensational and supernatural. This was beginning of the great age of the English Ghost Story, and Dickens was a key player in its development. But in making his Christmas Myth a ghost story, Dickens achieved something else. He ensured that the Ghost Story became as much a part of Christmas as trees, and cards and goose and plum pudding, and carol singing, and all of the other festive traditions his story celebrates.

And the tradition has continued ever after. The great Edwardian master of the ghost story, MR James wrote all of his tales originally as Christmas entertainments for his students, to be consumed no doubt with mince pies and a glass of good port. More recently WOMAN IN BLACK author Susan Hill has taken to releasing a ghost story in time for Christmas (though ironically, we will have to wait till the New Year for the new film version of her most famous work). It is thus entirely appropriate that many of James’s stories should have been adapted for TV over the years, invariably as part of the Christmas season’s viewing, and that TV and film companies should continue to choose Christmas-time as much as Halloween as a suitable time to release their. There is something almost… cosy… about ghosts and horror at Christmas.

So all of you Grimlins out there planning to spend that Jesus kid’s birthday watching a Filipino Zombie movie marathon are just following in a great tradition dating back centuries. Just don’t eat any of the guests. That would be wrong.

GRIMM UP NORTH 2011 FESTIVAL HGHLIGHTS

2011-10-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

Steve Balshaw takes a look at his personal highlights from this years festival.

It’s over. The great darkness has lifted from the city of Manchester . It is no longer Grimm Up North.

Here at Grimm Central we’ve finally managed to get the bloodstains out of the soft furnishings and explained away all of that screaming to the local authorities, so now we can sit back with a glass of 19^th Century vintage absinthe and reflect a while…

It has been, as we promised, a Hell of a Festival. 17 movies and one seminar in less than four days. We’ve had our biggest and best audiences yet, and some of our intensest screenings. We’ve dined out in casinos with rock stars and screen legends, and got drunk and traded tales of terror with our loyal Grimmlins. We’ve had premieres and previews and a couple of creepy classics, and at every show there was a free raffle, and putrescent prizes to be won.

Looking back, it’s all a bit of a bloodsoaked blur of appalling activity, but a few things stick like fish-hooks in the brain:

Our red carpet premiere of the gripping, emotionally harrowing psychological three-hander, RETREAT, where Director Carl Tippetts and producer Gary Sinyor regaled us with tales of the high-stakes nature of making a low-budget film with A-list Hollywood stars (Our thanks to our festival patron, TV ghost-hunter Yvette Fielding, for hosting the Q&A).

The Black and Blue panel discussion and subsequent screening of their latest release, STALKER, which saw producer Jonathan Sothcott, actors Billy Murray and Jane March, and one-time Spandau Ballet and Eastenders star Martin Kemp, whose debut as writer-director the film was, talking with disarming honesty about the realities of independent filmmaking in the UK and with engaging enthusiasm about genre cinema generally.

An all-too-brief panel discussion on the politics of zombie films with authors David Moody and Wayne Simmons, following on from our screening of the highly political THE DEAD. David’s been a friend and supporter of the festival since day one, and it’s always good to see him. Wayne proved an equally entertaining and thoughtful speaker, and this was one discussion that really could’ve gone on a lot longer.

The festival “hot tickets”, SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE and THE WOMAN, the first a charming, surprisingly sweet-natured black comedy, the second a visceral, confrontational and controversial exploration of sexual politics, suggesting just how diverse our Grimmlins tastes really are.

The warm response received by some of the programming team’s own favourites - the cerebral Science Fiction film BY DAY AND BY NIGHT and the HP Lovecraft Historical Society’s remarkable retro-style THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS. Good to see our faith in these films was justified.

Ending the festival on a real high, with the regional premiere of THE WICKER TREE, Robin Hardy’s follow-up to THE WICKER MAN, and having Robin himself there to talk about the film as well as his plans for his next project, which will take the themes of the first two films still further (our thanks to Andy Murray for leading the Q&A). It’s often a disappointment to meet one’s heroes, but not in Robin’s case. He proved to be a gracious guest, an entertaining speaker - and excellent company over dinner as well.

Festivals are as much a social event as they are an excuse to screen movies, so one of the most enjoyable elements for us, as always was meeting people - the various guests, celebrity or otherwise, as well as journalists, bloggers and of course our loyal Grimmlins - hanging out together over a few drinks and just generally chewing the fat about genre cinema and related issues. It is at moments like these that we remember why we subject ourselves to the stresses and strains of running a film festival.There was so much on offer this year, this is just a handful of my own highlights, everyone who came, I'm sure, have their own!

We will be back. Probably when you least expect it.

2011-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

CINEMATIC GEMS STILL TO BE DISCOVERED AT GRIMM UP NORTH!

At any festival, there are always some films that get more attention than others. Either the advance word is good, or a degree of notoriety has been acquired already, there are famous or popular actors or directors attached, or the film is part of a familiar brand or franchise.

So, as we ready ourselves for the first day of the festival, we thought it might be an idea to highlight a few of the films you may not be familiar with, but really shouldn’t miss.

Revenge: A Love Story

(Saturday 10.15pm)

Police are investigating a serial killer who targets officers’ pregnant wives. A suspect is eventually captured and brutally interrogated, but finally has to be released without charge. But is he actually innocent?

Following standing ovations for screenings of little seen Thai movie SLICE and Korean revenge movie BEDEVILLED last, we’re delighted to be presenting this darkly-glittering cinematic gem from Hong Kong; the latest release from Josie Ho‘s 852 films, and the follow-up to Pang Ho Cheung‘s full-on splatter satire DREAM HOME also screened last year. Successfully balancing gripping character drama with harrowing, visceral horror, this smart. sharptly-scripted shocker has real psychological and emotional depth underpinning director Ching-Po Wong often disturbing and graphically violent imagery. Censors have made a series of cuts to the film in its home territory, but we will be screening the film in all of its emotionally intense and gory glory.

Urban Explorers

(Friday, 5.25pm)

A chance for any armchair urban explorers out there to discover the disused and derelict architecture beneath the city of Berlin in the company of a murderous psychopath.

Suspenseful, spooky, and at times downright nasty, this tense, claustrophobic and visually stunning cat-and-mouse thriller combines striking and original locations with deaths gruesome enough to shake even the most hardened gorehounds. Just the thing to screen here in macabre Manchester, which has a vast underground cityscape of its own - directly beneath our festival screening venue!

Kidnapped

(Friday, 10.00pm)

A middle class Spanish family move into their new home, unaware that they are about to be the target for a gang of ruthless career criminals who know exactly how to apply pressure to get what they want…

The violation of one’s home, the threatening of one’s family, the destruction of one’s comfortable life. These universal, primal fears are the beating heart of this terse and remorseless home invasion thriller from the producers of the recent hit movie CELL 211. Cruel and claustrophobic, the film offers a nightmare vision of a familiar environment turned into an inescapable trap, where bonds of love and loyalty start to break down and fly apart in a tooth and nail struggle for survival. A tight, brutal little thriller that does not let up for a second, and goes to some very dark places indeed.

Adam Chaplin

(Friday 12.10 am - or is that Saturday Morning?)

When his wife is brutally murdered by depraved gangsters, implacable bad ass Adam Chaplin enlists dark and demonic forces in order to avenge her. The corrupt and fallen city of Heaven Valley won’t know what hit it. Brutally and repeatedly. In the face.

For our Friday Night Midnight movie, we present the World Premiere of this phantasmagorical full-on Faustian revenge fantasy, which mashes up THE CROW, FIST OF THE NORTH STAR and the most outrageous of 80s straight to-video vileness to create a new benchmark in demented, bone-crunching action and blood-soaked carnage. Nasty and blackly funny in equal measures, this is a guaranteed Grindhouse cult hit of tomorrow..... If you enjoyed last year’s late night screening of ALIENS VS NINJAS, you’re going to love this.

Deadheads

(Saturday 12.25am - or is that Sunday Morning?)

Slacker dude Mike Kellerman wakes up to discover that he’s been dead for two years and is now a zombie. The last thing he remembers, he was going to ask his girlfriend to marry him. Encouraged by fellow undead dude, Brent, he determines to go ahead with the plan…

Championed by Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, this zom-rom-com road movie combines splatter with patter, and plays like Day of the Dead re-imagined by Kevin Smith. Filled with stoner humour, pop-cultural references, and a surprising amount of romantic idealism, the film nevertheless doesn’t stint for a moment on the exploding heads, severed limbs and spilled guts, and delivers a twisted sucker punch ending that will touch the heart even as it sickens the stomach. A perfect Saturday night post-midnight treat.

The Dead

(Sunday, 1.50pm)

A zombie plague has torn an unnamed African country apart. A stranded US military and African military deserter form an unlikely partnership as they cross the tundra in a beaten up vehicle, the engineer looking for a way back to the US and the deserter searching for his lost son both of them trying to survive the ever growing zombie holocaust.

THE DEAD was a film we couldn’t screen last year due to its other festival commitments. And that always rankled a little. So we’re delighted to offer a rare chance to see the Ford Brothers stunning debut feature on the big screen before its eventual UK release on Bluray and DVD. An allegorical exploration of western post-colonial guilt and the bitter legacy of decades of civil war and mismanaged Aid schemes wrapped up in a gripping and gory white-knuckle thriller, this plays like HOTEL RWANDA might had it been part of Lucio Fulci's Zombie series…

HP Lovecraft's Whisperer in Darkness comes to GRIMM UP NORTH

2011-10-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

To celebrate our screening of HP Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness on Sunday 9th Oct (11.30am AMC cinema, Manchester), Steve Balshaw Grimm Up North's film programmer takes a look at the man himself.

HP Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was one of American horror fiction’s most unique visionaries, and its greatest mythmaker. His work transcends its pulp and genre roots, influencing authors as diverse as Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates, Jorge Luis Borges and even misanthropic French miserablist Michel Houellebecq. He has provided inspiration for a multitude of books, paintings, sculptures, films, music, comics and graphic novels, cartoons, and even role-playing and computer games. The Mythologies he created, with their weird mixture of folklore, both real and invented, gothic horror, exoticism, and science fiction have found their way into popular culture in myriad ways, many of which would have surprised and quite possibly appalled their reclusive and eccentric creator.

The effect of such widespread appropriation of his creations, one might expect, ought to be a dilution of their effect, and ultimately a reductio ad absurdium. For every effective and intelligent usage by others of Lovecraftian mythology and storytelling tropes, there are dozens which really have no connection with his work at all, beyond a little arcane name-dropping. It is these latter which have done much to harm Lovecraft’s reputation in certain quarters, to suggest, as his detractors have, that his stories are often little more than roll-calls of bizarrely named Elder Gods and forbidden texts, referenced with ever-increasing hysteria as each narrative progresses to its climax. But this is to entirely miss the purpose of Lovecraft’s created mythologies, and his often deliberately overwrought use of language.

Myths are generally created as a means of telling us things about ourselves and others. They are parables, serving a symbolic or illustrative purpose. They open a window into the unknown, and try to make it comprehensible. Lovecraft understood this clearly. In his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, he begins by observing:

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”

Not love, or hatred, or greed: Fear.

He goes on to point out how early man, confronted by a world that was largely inexplicable, would weave around those inexplicable phenomena: “…personifications, marvellous interpretations, and sensations of awe and fear…”

Lovecraft sees this instinct towards fearful myth-making not as a primitive instinct, but as a primal one: “though the area of the unknown has been steadily contracting for thousands of years, an infinite reservoir of mystery still engulfs much of the outer cosmos, whilst a vast residuum of powerful associations clings around all the objects and processes that were once mysterious, however well they may now be explained.”

We are still, at heart, primitives, afraid of the dark, and our own accumulated superstitions. The role of the writer of the supernatural, for Lovecraft, is to tap into the reader’s existing sense of “cosmic fear”. Here’s how he begins one of the most celebrated of his weird tales, the one in which so much of his unique mythology was given shape, The Call of Cthulhu:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

It is passages such as this that lead Michel Houellebecq, in his perceptive biographical and critical essay H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life to describe Lovecraft has having: “An absolute hatred of the world in general, aggravated by a particular disgust for the modern world.”

This is, I suspect, true. But behind the hatred and disgust lies Lovecraft’s “oldest and strongest emotion”, FEAR.

Detractors such as Michael Moorcock have emphasised the neurotic racism, misogyny and fear of sex that they see as permeating Lovecraft’s work, and it is true that such elements are there - but they are part of a larger, more general terror of existence. And it is this primal, crushing terror that drives his work, and gives it much of its visceral impact.

A little biographical information about Lovecraft might prove useful at this point.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, a place he very rarely left. His mother’s side of the family, the Phillips, could trace their ancestry back to the 1600s. His father, a travelling salesman was committed to an asylum when Lovecraft was only three years old. The cause of dementia was syphilis, though whether Lovecraft ever knew this is uncertain. Lovecraft was raised by his mother, grandfather and two maternal aunts, and he grew up with a strong notion of belonging to a grand family with a noble history. He was a sickly child, subject to night-terrors, during which he believed himself to be assaulted by horrific "night gaunts." His grandfather’s death when Lovecraft was 14 threw the family finances into disarray. They lost the family home, and Lovecraft had a nervous breakdown, with the result that he never completed his formal education to his own satisfaction. Recuperating, he lived what he described as “a hermit’s existence” with his increasingly depressive and unstable mother, who was herself finally committed to the same psychiatric hospital as her husband. Following his mother’s death, Lovecraft made his only real attempt to engage with the normal stream of life. By now an established author, he attended an amateur journalist convention in Boston Massachusetts, where he met Sonia Greene. They married in 1924, and moved to into her apartment in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn. The marriage was not a success. Sonia was Jewish and “in trade”, which created hostility from Lovecraft’s aunts. Lovecraft could not find work in New York to support them both, and his wife was forced to move to Cleveland for employment. Alone and isolated in Brooklyn in the midst of a large immigrant population, finding himself utterly unemployable, Lovecraft became increasingly consumed by racial paranoia. He returned to Providence, to live with his aunts. He never returned to Sonia, and they finally agreed to an amicable divorce, though this was never finalised. He remained in Providence, a struggling writer in ever poorer health until his death, aged 47 from cancer of the small intestine.

The details of his life are significant, because in them we find the roots of all of Lovecraft’s literary obsessions: inherited guilt and degeneracy, racial anxiety, the grand family that is not what it seems, the continued, lurking terror of madness, of encroaching, mutating disease, of basic contact with others. Above all, the sense not simply of alienation, but of otherness, of outsiderdom.

True, Lovecraft was not entirely alone. Indeed, over time, he found himself the head of a kind of “literary circle”, with other writers who shared some of his obsessions, and whom he considered friends. But these were literary friendships, conducted by correspondence. And it is significant that the authors to whom he felt closest (neither of whom he ever met) were the manic-depressive mother’s boy Robert Ervin Howard, creator of Conan The Barbarian and other hyper-violent arrested-adolescent power fantasies, and the eccentric Clark Ashton Smith, who lived in the California dustbowl with his aged parents, writing purple-prosed, fin de siecle style decadent fantasies, filled with gaudy phraseology and exotic, gothic orientalism. All three men are remarkable, brilliant in their way. And all are equally odd; loners, existing in isolation both from the literary mainstream, and apparently from life itself. Yet Lovecraft is the most alienated of all. Even in his letters to those he feels kinship, he emphasises his difference, his distance, describing himself in letters written in his 30s as an old man, a “grandfather”, when he was actually only 3 years older than Ashton Smith.

This conscious emphasising of his own otherness, even when expressed humorously, is clearly not an assumed posture, but a reflection of his own deepest sense of self. It is pathological, and lies at the core of Lovecraft’s writing.

It is often seen as significant that so many of Lovecraft’s admirers, including Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell and Michel Houellebecq discovered him when young. This has led him to be dismissed as an essentially adolescent writer. Charles L. Grant has gone so far as to observe that: “when you grow up you discover that what attracted you when you were fourteen was his rococo style and very little else”. This is palpably untrue. The style is barely relevant at that age. What makes Lovecraft speak so strongly to adolescents is his overwhelming sense of alienation, something which every anxious, spotty teenager knows all-too-well.

To illustrate my point, I’ll end this posting with a personal anecdote. I discovered Lovecraft’s work at the age of thirteen. The first story of his I ever read was THE OUTSIDER - about as evocative a title as any lonely teenager could wish for. The subject, too, has particular resonance. The solitary, unhappy protagonist, seeking only human warmth and company is brought quite literally face to face with the reason he can never experience it: because he is a monster, a “ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity and dissolution.” He flees back into his darkened solitude, taking bitter consolation in that he has learned: “I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men”.

This is the fear of every neurotic, self-loathing adolescent writ large: I am not what I believed myself to be, I am not like others, I will always be alone. And these are not fears we ever truly grow out of. They do not leave us with age. They recur, in some ways they deepen over time.

I last read Lovecraft about three years ago. His stories disturbed and haunted me just as much as they did thirty years earlier.

That fear never goes away. Steve Balshaw

CHRISTOPHER PRIEST - THE ISLANDERS

2011-09-22T02:03:00.000-07:00

Christopher Priest, one of our guests of honour at last year’s Grimm Up North festival has a new novel out, THE ISLANDERS. We think Grimmlins should read it, and here’s why.

Christopher Priest is a master of illusion, defter than any of the magicians who populate perhaps his most famous work, THE PRESTIGE. The only one of his books, thus far, to be filmed, this tale of feuding magicians might seem a natural subject for a medium as concerned with illusion as the Cinema - and yet it was nevertheless long considered unfilmable until Christopher Nolan took up the challenge. Nolan made a creditable job of translating the novel’s complex Chinese box structure and multiple unreliable perspectives into cinematic language, but only by simplifying and streamlining some of the book’s complexities.

Priest’s other novels might prove even more resistant to film adaptation. At last year’s Grimm Up North, he spoke wittily and with surprising honesty about the realities of such adaptation, both from the point of view of having one of his own books transformed into a big-budget Hollywood feature, and also as a writer who has produced “novelisations“ of successful movies. As an author whose own work so often deals with the slippery nature of perception, it is perhaps not surprising that he should focus particularly on the problems of (mis)interpretation that invariably occur when translating someone else’s ideas from one medium to another. Priest seems more attuned than most to this particular issue, perhaps because themes of interpretation and understanding loom so large in his own fiction.

Nothing in Christopher Priest’s books is ever quite as it initially seems. The prose itself is deceptive; its elegant, clipped, formal precision, its apparently cool objectivity, mask a world and characters that are the exact opposite. Here, landscape and environment can suddenly turn themselves inside out, forming new shapes and new structures. Narrators are not simply unreliable, they are delusional, or pathological, or blatant liars, even to themselves. Existing already in a work of fiction, they have an unsettling tendency to further fictionalise the world they inhabit, so that our sense of that world grows ever more tenuous.

For Priest, reality is not simply subjective; it has always had an element of the virtual about it. It can shift and twist under you. It cannot be locked down. This is particularly true of the various stories set in and around the fictional collection of Islands known as The Dream Archipelago. The name is a good indication of the environment here. This is as much a landscape of the mind, of the imagination, as it is a real place.

So it is somewhat startling that Priest’s new novel, THE ISLANDERS should present itself initially as a tour guide to the Dream Archipelago. Except, of course, it isn’t. Far from it. Filled with allusions to earlier stories, but never self-indulgently so, the book’s ostensible exploration of the people and places of the Archipelago only serves to emphasise their unknowability. And our guide is someone with a very definite agenda. Gradually, a story of rivalry, trickery and murder begins to emerge. But how much of the story is “real”…?

THE ISLANDERS is out now. We heartily recommend it. It will widen the gates of your perception. Steve Balshaw

New Quad Poster For Grimm Up North 2011

2011-09-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

Were back in early october

2011-07-27T03:28:00.001-07:00

Yep, thats right, despite various setbacks, grimm up north rides again early october at a new brilliant venue here in Manchester. Well be making the official announcement very soon, but suffice to say, were really excited by what weve got lined up. Also were setting up a whole lot easier and flexible ticket system. Watch this space over the next day or so.

STRIGOI – GRIMM 09 fav now on Itunes & DVD.

2011-07-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

Actual, Real Romanian Vampires for a Change.

Bram Stoker has a lot to answer for; especially as far as the Romanians are concerned. Stoker’s use of the historical figure of Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, better known as Vlad the Impaler, as the basis for his vampiric count, Dracula (Drăculea was Vlad III’s family name) has led to endless misrepresentations and distortions of Romanian culture in novels, films and television ever since. So the last thing one might expect to see is a Romanian vampire film. Surely, they’d be sick to the back teeth of vampires by now.

Well, yes and no. STRIGOI is an attempt to set the record straight; to reclaim Romanian vampire mythology from the distortions it has been subjected to over the years. The film takes the ancient legend of the Strigoi – one who has returned from the dead to avenge a wrong, but must feed on blood to survive – and uses this as the basis for a darkly comic parable about rural Romania struggling to adapt to the modern world, and the seemingly inescapable legacy of the Ceaucescu regime. As the film’s writer and director Faye Jackson explains, Strigoi are “the people you just can’t get rid of, even when they’re dead” – an ideal metaphor for “the way corruption survives and infects even those who seek to destroy it, and the way violence and injustice echo down the generations, seeping into the very soil.”

STRIGOI’s mix of political satire, bucolic comedy, and ghoulish shocks went down a storm at the very first Grimm Up North back in 2009. Faye Jackson and Producer Rey Muraru joined us to introduce the film and kept everyone entertained with their tales of shooting in rural areas of Romania where such legends still persist, and the screening was a real festival highlight.

So it’s good to hear that STRIGOI is now available via iTunes, and will be released on DVD in the UK in August. It’s well worth catching it.

GRIMM Attends the premiere screening of DESPERATE MEASURES

2011-07-12T06:16:00.000-07:00

A man dances, drunk and drugged off his face in a nightclub. He collapses and is dragged off. He wakes up on a filthy mattress, in a bare, windowless room with walls of grubby, whitewashed stone. Who is he? Where is he?

So begins DESPERATE MEASURES, a low-budget independent feature film, written and produced by Chris Green, and directed by Steve Looker, whose earlier short COLD BLOOD screened at the very first Grimm Up North back in 2009. The Grimm team were there for the film’s Premiere, prior to its DVD release, at the Vue Cinema in Salford, along with the great, the good, and the not so good of the region’s filmmaking community, and a sizable number of the filmmakers’ family and friends. We all had a Hell of a good time.

The film stars local boy and sometime Eastenders face Stephen Lord as Ross Hadley, a cynical, embittered young man with a serious substance abuse problem, who finds himself held hostage in a deserted Yorkshire farmhouse by thuggish Cockney ex-squaddie Jack (Ricci Harnett) and the older, more world-weary George (Max Beesley, Sr). To discover just who they are and what they want from him, Ross must play along with their games and the routines they impose on him, but more importantly he must face up to his own past actions and continued failings.

Beginning as a gritty, claustrophobic little thriller, the film gradually shifts into a tale of tough love, failure, loss and redemption. If I’m honest, I saw some of the film’s narrative twists coming, but this really doesn’t matter that much. The film is far more about the characters and the developing relationships between them, and here is where it excels. The dialogue is sharp, the characterisation is strong, complex, and well-observed, the emotional journey is powerful and the performances of the three leads are excellent. Stephen Lord conveys Ross’s journey of self-discovery admirably, never glossing over his character’s unpleasant aspects but retaining audience sympathy throughout. Ricci Harnett displays the brutish Jack’s unexpected levels of vulnerability and sensitivity with real empathy and Max Beesley Sr perfectly captures George’s complex mixture gruff decency, anger, resignation and sorrow. The film also has a nicely judged, low key but weighty supporting turn from Steven Hillman, as a character whose arrival at the farmhouse forms the turning point in the narrative.

Steve Looker’s deft direction is taut and stylish, but unobtrusive. He focuses on telling the story well, keeping it moving, keeping the audience gripped. He gets the best out of everyone and everything, trusting to the strength of Chris Green’s powerful, emotive yet witty script and the strong cast, and making great use of the striking locations. The result is a formidable piece of filmmaking that should turn heads and open doors. Shot on a tiny budget, the film is a triumph for everyone involved in its production, and another sign that the North West’s filmmakers are now a serious force to be reckoned with.

Desperate Measures is out now on DVD. Check it out. by Steve Balshaw

2011-07-09T04:03:00.000-07:00

Does Michael Bay's 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' Recycle Old Movie Clips? (Video)

Movie buffs on the web are abuzz over a video suggesting car chase scenes from the action movie and his 2005 film “The Island” are similar.

Is Michael Bay ripping off himself?

The Internet is buzzing over a video suggesting that the director recycled clips from his 2005 film The Island in his latest movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

A YouTube user has posted a video comparing car chase scenes from the two movies, in which certain shots are strikingly similar. [Watch below.]

VIDEO: Shia LaBeouf Jokes 'Transformers 3' Is ‘Crap’ on 'Jimmy Kimmel'

Dark of the Moon, the third installment in Bay’s Transformers franchise, opened Wednesday and has become the third best worldwide debut of all time, smashing records and grossing a whopping $372 million through Sunday.

With the actual July 4th holiday still to go, the movie should finish Monday with a total opening gross of $405.8 million.

STORY: 'Transformers' Now on Track to Earn $180 Million Domestically Through July 4th

Dark of the Moon stars Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Tyrese Gibson and Patrick Dempsey.

LaBeouf has suggested this will be his last Transformers film.

The Island, a thriller starring Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor, earned $163 million at the worldwide box office during its theatrical run.

STORY: Shia LaBeouf: 5 Things You Didn't Know

STORY: 'Transformers 3' Earns $37.3 Mil, Best Opening Day Gross of 2011

STORY: 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon': How the Sequel's Star Cars Were Cast

R.I.P. GENE COLAN: COMIC MASTER AND CO-CREATOR OF BLADE by Steve Balshaw

2011-07-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

American comic book artist Gene Colan died at 11pm on June 23^rd 2011, after a long fight against liver disease.

He was 84. He had been ill for a couple of years, and no doubt many of the obituaries that have appeared since that date had been prepared for a while. His death was hardly a shock when it came, and yet it still shook me. It has taken me this long to sit down and think about how much I loved Colan’s work, how important it was to the medium in which he worked, how substantial his influence was, and will continue to be.

Gene Colan can legitimately be described as a legend in the field of American comics, where he worked from 1944 until 2009, when he became too ill to continue. He started out drawing Crime comics, War comics, and Romance comics, and became something of a specialist in the latter.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that Colan began working on the Marvel superhero titles that would make him famous. At the time Stan Lee encouraged all artists working for Marvel to study the work of Jack Kirby and to try to emulate it as much as possible. Often this resulted in inept Kirby clones, but Colan was able to assimilate the force and dynamism of Kirby into his own very different drawn-from-life naturalism to create art that had all of the required dramatic impact, but also a level of elegance, fluidity and narrative sophistication that would allow for more subtle character interplay and narrative detail than the work of many of his contemporaries. He offered a heightened, stylised vision of the world that was nevertheless solidly grounded in carefully-observed reality, and did much to push comic book storytelling in a more adult direction. His skilful orchestration of mood, in particular his use of shadow, made Colan particularly suited to stories of the supernatural. Indeed, he claimed never to have felt much affinity for superheroes.

Nevertheless, Colan thus became the definitive artist for pretty much every superhero character he ever drew, and failing that, the artist who helped entirely REdefine the character for a new audience. It was Colan who made the previously clunky Iron Man’s body armour look sleekly plausible and the Submariner’s lush undersea world look startlingly real, while his Captain America, second only to Kirby’s, was the first to be confronted by the contradictions and social upheavals of the country whose flag he wore. Colan also co-created The Falcon, one of the first black superheroes, born out of his desire to see more black faces in the comics he drew. But it was Daredevil who would be his signature character. Colan worked on the comic for 80 issues, and was the first artist to suggest the character’s affinity for shadow and darkness. Little wonder that when Colan fell out with Marvel in the 1980s, DC immediately offered him Batman. Of all the superheroes Colan worked on, however, Dr Strange was the one he was clearly best suited to - appropriately enough, the character least like a superhero. Dr Strange gave Colan a chance to combine his skill at depicting the real world with his love of the shadowy, the supernatural and the plain weird, and the character went from being a superhero with spells up his sleeves to being a credible “Master of the Mystic Arts”.

But Colan’s finest work of all was outside of the field of superheroes. With Howard the Duck, he returned, strangely enough, to a theme that had characterised his run on Captain America - a character “trapped in a world he never made”, trying to come to terms with what he finds there. But this time around the intention was angrier, crazier, more satiric. Colan’s naturalistic depiction of 70s America, contrasted with the Disneyfied stylisation of the title character, served to emphasise the sense of dislocation and alienation and made the force of writer Steve Gerber’s satire all the more pungent. A number of collaborations with writer Don McGregor saw Colan’s art being reproduced for the first time from his original pencils, a trend that would continue until the end of his career. Particularly notable were Raggamuffins, a sequence of sour little tales about loss of childhood innocence, and the noirish private eye series. Nathaniel Dusk.

Above all, however, it was Colan’s collaborations with the improbably (but appropriately!)-named writer Marv Wolfman on several supernaturally-themed comics that finally established his legendary stature in the field, and should recommend him to our loyal Grimmlins, if they are not familiar with his work already. In Marvel’s 1970s Tomb of Dracula, Colan and Wolfman were able to transform a catchpenny horror title into a sophisticated exploration of Faith, moral choice, and the nature of evil. They subsequently returned to many of the same themes in the cult 80s DC title, Night Force, and indeed teamed up again to create an entirely different take on the Dracula character for Dark Horse in the 1990s. But it is Tomb of Dracula that has the lasting legacy: it introduced the world to Blade the Vampire Hunter, Hannibal King, and Deacon Frost, all of whom would turn up in the successful film and TV franchise. And yet it wasn’t until the second Blade film that Colan got so much as a credit. It was ever thus.

Gene Colan, R.I.P. Another of my heroes gone, but not forgotten.

SUNDAY AT THE 10TH FANTASTIC FILMS WEEKEND, BRADFORD, UK.

2011-06-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

What an interesting find, LETS SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971) screened first up, late morning. In the introduction to the film Tony Earnshaw (Festival Director) explained how horror aficionado Kim Newman (In an interview on his career) was asked what his favourite film was and this was the answer, an obscure early seventies low budget affair that has gained cult status over the years but hasn’t really gained major recognition. After an extensive search, Tony tracked down an old discoloured 35mm print of the film from Paramount pictures dusty library.

What a find! If you like 70’s paranoia movies, this will be right up your street. Apparently influenced by THE HAUNTING, director John D. Hancock (Twilight Zone, Hill Street Blues) first movie should have gained him more recognition than it did. Only now does it seem to be getting the acknowledgment it deserved. A really interesting movie taht make a virtue of its low budget and never really gives you solid answers to the complexities of its plot. What starts out as a story about a couple leaving the rat race for a backwater town and an empty old house, moves into psychological territory as we discover that Jessica has recently been released from a psychiatric hospital. When spooky things start to happen around the house and then the locals start acting very oddly, were wrapped up in a quagmire of themes, each hinting and suggesting at a different outcome. Is there a conspiracy to ‘Scare Jessica to death’? Why does the strange traveller girl look just like the ancient fading family picture in the attic? Why do the locals all sport weird scars and act as if they are possessed? LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH is like THE HAUNTING meets INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS with a healthy chunk of Lynchian obscure weirdness thrown in for good measure. See it if you can!

Choices, choices! Next up I chose THE STUFF, Larry Cohen’s (Q THE WINGED SERPENT, IT’S ALIVE) mid eighties schlock piss take parable on modern consumerism is actually rather satirical and pretty funny, despite its exploitation movie facade. THE STUFF is a tasty yet deadly living organism that overcomes the mind and takes over the body. Somehow this highly addictive substance has become the top selling, vigorously marketed dessert in the US. Ex CIA agent Mo Rutherford is hired by a rival company to investigate what dubious secrets lie behind its success. I was pleasantly surprised at THE STUFF’s spin on genre classics like THE BLOB and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Quirky performances from Michael Moriarty and Paul Sorvino make it really quite cutting edge in many ways. This film made me laugh with it not at it.

THE BEAST MUST DIE (1973) is really an AMICUS ‘B’ movie and not one of their best BUT with , as is so often the case withAMICUS, a really interesting cast. Peter Cushing (Of course), Anton Diffring, Charles Gray, a very young Michael Gambon and Calvin Lockhart. Heres the cheesy concept (And thats all you really have to know!) A big game hunter invites a motley group of guests to his remote home, convinced one or more are werewolves. BUT and this is the cheesy fun part, before the end of the movie we are forewarned that we, the audience, will be given the chance to guess who we think the wolf is. A clock ticks down as you consider briefly the clues given, just before the truth is reveal. Did you guess correctly? What fun! Interactive media before the xbox was even a glint in Microsoft’s eye. Great concept but overall the plots a bit naff really. Fun while it lasts though.

Missed Hammer’s COUNTESS DRACULA and new horror shorts unfortunately, just can’t see everything. Managed to get a little time to investigate the museum itself and discovered a great section on the history of animation and some interactive stuff on optics, moving images, photo techniques, etc, great for kids and big kids alike. Tried to check out the new Ray Harrehausen collection but failed (the archive was closed on Sunday).

So onto the evening’s entertainment. I mentioned in the last blog that there is also a classic TV section to the festival and the highlight of Sunday’s selection was a screening of Jonathan Miller’s 1968 BBC film WISTLE AND I’LL COME TO YOU based on a classic M.R. James ghost story and a post screening audience with the man himself, interviewed by my very own college tutor (Too long ago to mention) and well known art historian Christopher Frayling. A fascinating and quite unexpected session that covered Miller’s intellectual theories on, well, all sorts of things. Frayling tried to keep it on track, referencing his TV work on ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1966) and the connection between Miller the physician and Miller the director of Film, Theatre and Opera but the good doctor did have a tendency to take his answers in whatever thought provoking directions that sprang to mind. Miller was fascinating and often humorous with among other things, anecdotes on working with Peter Sellers and Peter Cook. The M.R. James adaptation, starring Michael Horden is considered one of the best produced although I personally found it rather slow. You imagine Horden is an older version of Miller himself (He was only 34 when he directed it for BBC’s Monitor programme), an intellectual who holds a healthy scepticism for anything considered remotely otherworldly. He theorises and ponders on the human construct that lesser minds describe as ghosts only to find himself seriously disturbed by a series of events that alternatively could be passed of as bad dreams or supernatural happenings. It’s as if Miller is discussing and critiquing James’s writing while also (Loosely) adapting it.

In sharp contrast to the intellectual complexities of Miller’s mind, we closed the festival with a 35mm uncut version of Stuart Gordon’s RE-ANIMATOR. It’s been many years since I last saw this film and I have to say it holds up against modern schlock horrors pretty damn well. It’s confidently written and performed and blackly funny. Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West, the medical student with a new procedure that can reanimate the dead is wonderful. The grizzly consequences of his actions unravel in darkly humorous but rather gory mayhem. As a film maker myself, what struck me was how well structure but simple the plot was and the limited locations. This was a cheap film to make but it’s avid pace and visceral nature keeps you totally involved so as not to notice its budget limitations. Many contemporary low budget horror film makers could learn a lot from this! Me included!

So that’s it, all over. A great weekend. If you check out Ozzy Beck's blog you’ll see that he basically did everything i didn’t do and he still had a great time. Hats off to Tony for putting on such a full and engaging line up of films. If you check the Fantastic films facebook page, you’ll see he’s plotting next year’s line up already!!! For more new horror movies later this year, check out GRIMM UP NORTH festival this October in Manchester.

SIMEONS SATURDAY AT THE 10TH FANTASTIC FILMS WEEKEND, BRADFORD

2011-06-13T09:26:00.001-07:00

Thanks to festival director Tony Earnshaw, I managed to secure a weekend pass for the festival at the very last minute. Unfortunately I couldn’t make the busy Friday line up of films and events as I was directing a promo trailer for a new Feature film project called THE RETURNED. An exciting scifi film project that I’ll reveal more about over the coming weeks.

So, I missed out on prolific Hammer director Peter Sasdy talking about his work which included movies such as HANDS OF THE RIPPER, DOOMWATCH, COUNTESS DRACULA and WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY. I also missed a 35mm screening of HANDS OF THE RIPPER, Peter’s personal favourite. THE EXORCIST: DIRECTORS CUT and THE DEAD and a whole bunch of other horrific delights played out and from all accounts delighted the crowd.

Alas I missed them all but started nice and early on the Saturday morning, catching, first up, a 35mm screening of Hammer’s PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, a rarely screened 1965 foray into zombie territory that beat the Zombie king, Romero, to the screen by a couple of years! As with much of the Hammer stuff, it looks a bit laboured by today’s standards but its interesting how much of the, now taken for granted, zombie tropes began gestation with Hammer’s movie. Possibly a lot more influential than its been given credit for.

Before I continue; a little about the festival as a whole. Very much the brainchild of Tony Earnshaw, the festival artistic director and, I think, an archivist at the Bradford media museum. Over the weekend, I came to learn a little more about Tony and discovered that he also wrote the definitive book on the making of NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), one of my favourite British horror movies (I Should have guessed by the festival logo!).

The museum has a library of old movies and the festival is able to make use of both archived 35mm prints the Cubby Broccoli and Pictureville screening theatres. There’s even a TV fringe element to the festival where they play some really interesting scifi, fantasy and horror stuff from the extensive TV archives. So, yes, its very much a retro fest with a healthy chunk of 60’s, 70’s and 80’s movies but they also screen a number of new horror movies (This year including THE DEAD and HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN). I’m guessing Tony is a bit of a purist and if possible sources his festival movies on 35mm, which is great for the punters. Sometimes he endeavours to hunt down missing or forgotten prints in order to present genre gems which have often been overlooked by time.

One of my issues with the festival is that there is just too much damned choice, sometimes with three presentations happening at once! On Saturday I also caught Aussie psychological thriller ROADMAN, Hammer’s Karnstein Trilogy (THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE and TWINS OF EVIL) and finally HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN.

ROADMAN is a pretty accomplished piece considering it was made on such a low budget. An impressive debut from director Peter Leovic, its a tense, engaging chiller about the double life of a serial killer, Max Greif, reaching out for normality. Ironically what makes it interesting as a psychological drama is what makes it somehow a little unfulfilling as a suspense thriller because we really come to feel something for Max as he leads a double life.

Despite his sometimes, very unsavoury behaviour, we come to identify with Max’s awkward attempts to woo his attractive but isolated neighbour Lorraine and his battle with the memory of his domineering father. And so when Lorraine settles down with him but ultimately discovers the truth about his murderous past we don’t really feel the threat. By the end Lorraine kinda comes to understand his psychological problems and embraces his faults. Its a character shift that I found hard to embrace totally. Maybe if we were given a little more about how Greif suffered at the hands of his father, we’d also understand his complex emotions and actions more. Still, a very interesting concept but for me more a psychological drama than a horror/thriller. I don’t think its available in the UK, which is a pity. It definitely deserves at least DVD release.

Theres something about Hammer movies that hold a fascination for people who grew up either watching them at the cinema or, like me on TV reruns in the late 70’s, early 80s. The Karnstein movies were the ones you were slightly embarrassed to watch with your dad! the ones with, X rated nudity and gore. Now, they’d probably draw little reaction from an audience of ten year olds! But back in the early 70’s they were considered boundary pushing! It’s amazing how things change!

What a cast in VAMPIRE LOVERS! Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing, George Cole, Jon Finch (Hitchcock’s FRENZY and Polanski’s MACBETH) and KATE O’MARA. All three films are based loosely on the 19th Century novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Hammer broke new ground and briefly re-invented itself basically by the introduction of sex! Despite the cast, VAMPIRE LOVERS is still rather clunky but it’s a kitch romp. I doubt younger audiences would understand the fascination with the often rather unconvincing aesthetics of the Hammer output and it’s hard to explain what makes them fascinating, even now. It occurs to me though, that some contemporary film makers are making convincing pastiches of, particularly, 70’s movies (Think Ti West with HOUSE OF THE DEVIL for instance) but I defy anyone to make a convincing pastiche of a late 60’s, early seventies Hammer movie, I suspect it’s impossible. they exist in their own weird bubble!

In LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1970), young beautiful Carmilla, enrols in an exclusive girls finishing school and proceeds to wreak havoc among pupils and teachers alike. Apart from a wonderfully camp performance from Ralph Bates and the sheer beauty (But wooden performance) of Yutte Stensgaard, LUST FOR A VAMPIRE is pretty ropey really. It is, though, high kitch and was maligned by some at the time of release for its nudity and sexual scenes. Was Hammer selling out? How tame these scenes look now! But there's one overriding still image of Yutte, naked and covered in blood, which still prevails and its this one image that keeps the film in our memories more than anything else!

Out of the three movies, the third TWINS OF EVIL holds up the best. better production values, better performances and a more interesting take on the source material. Probably also crowbarred in a healthy dollop of Vincent Price’s WITCHFINDER GENERAL, which was released three years earlier, TWINS has Cushing as a buttoned up puritan witch hunter who faces off against vampire; Count Karnstein but is oblivious to the fact that his two beautiful nieces have come under Karnstein’s evil spell. Its classic Hammer!

Last movie of the day, Jason Eisner’s HOBO WITH A SHOT GUN. You've probably heard of this movie if you are into new horror releases. Legendary Rutger Hauer is a homeless drifter who arrives in Scum town (A kind of eighties style, washed up shit hole ruled over by a freaky Dennis Hopper like gangster and his nasty couple of sons, who look just like Tom Cruise in RISKY BUSINESS!) and finds himself morally challenged by what he witnesses, finally taking the law into his own hands with a shotgun! Its
pure grindhouse untra-violent, trashy cinema. Also recalls early John Carpenter offerings. It’s tongue firmly in cheek, its actually very funny, if you have a black sense of humour! Released 1st August on DVD in the UK. Worth a watch!!

Sundays line up reviewed tomorrow! For the full festival line up, go to: http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/nmem/fantastic/2011/diary.asp

For more info on GRIMM UP NORTH FESTIVAL, this October in Manchester: www.grimmfest.com

ITS ALL OVER!!!

2011-05-21T10:16:00.001-07:00

Were at Nice airport, waiting to depart. The Cannes market is over, the festival closes today and the winners get announced tomorrow. Von Trier goes home in shame with a little black moustache and a greasy side parting, while we go home fatigued but happy! Saw some interesting movies, had some productive meetings and drunk a lot of free booze! Just wanted to mention the Friday highlights. We caught an unexpectedly sublime movie called THE ARTIST, directed by Michel Hazanavicius and starring Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, James Cromwell and Missi Pyle (With a cameo from Malcolm McDowell). It's essentially a silent movie about a silent movie star, George Valentine who's life falls apart as he fails to embrace the rise of the talkies. This is one of the best films I've seen in ages. It's perfection in everyway. It's not horror or scifi but it's something really special. We'll try hard to secure it for Grimm 2011 but if we don't you MUST seek this film out. Speaking of Malcolm McDowell, we then caught a lecture from the man himself all about his career and his work with Kubrick (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Lindsey Anderson (IF, OH, LUCKY MAN) and Paul Schrader (CAT PEOPLE). Funny and informative, McDowell seemed very down to earth and revealed some fascinating insights into some of cinema's geniuses. After a few drinks courtesy of the Bordeaux region of France we then caught our final film, Takashi Miike's HARA - KIRI: DEATH OF A SAMURAI. If you are familiar with his work, you'll know that Miike is damn prolific and not afraid to go places other film makers fear to tread, with films like THE AUDITION and ICHI THE KILLER. His latest is actually in competition at Cannes (A surprise that such a maverick has made it to the Cannes pantheon of auteurs!) Strangely, the film is somewhat of a restrained affair. It's rather slow and melodramatic and so very different from much of his previous frenetic work. The film was presented in 3D and looked great but it's a slow burner. Don't expect too much blood and guts but it does hold a particularly nasty suicide scene.

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MONDAY, MONDAY!!!

2011-05-19T09:58:00.001-07:00

Monday was a busy, busy day on the hunt for GRIMMFEST content. Too many horror screenings in fact! I missed an early screening (Cos I'm rubbish at getting up early!) of THE WICKER TREE, the sequel to the original THE WICKERMAN and directed by Robin Hardy (The man behind the original). Although I've heard rumours it's not that hot!

I chose morning screening of new UK (Screen Yorkshire and Warp X) horror KILL LIST over Xavier Gens (FRONTIERS) new movie THE DIVIDE, which I hope to find out more about soon. KILL LIST is a really interesting movie with great naturalistic performances from its key cast which includes Myanna Buring (The DESCENT 1 +2), our guest at GRIMM UP NORTH 2009. As the plot unfolds we come to realise that our slightly unbalanced family man lead character is actually a contract killer with a list of victims he must take down for cash. As you might suspect, things don't go to plan and slowly we come to realise that something is very wrong in this world. The film takes an unexpected change of direction in the 3^rd act (ala DUSK TILL DAWN) into classic horror territory which surprises shocks but also mystifies a little. I'm not sure the jarring plot totally adds up but it's certainly a visceral and involving watch, sometimes violently shocking, sometimes very funny! Definitely worth a watch. Think it's gonna screen at FRIGHTFEST later this year and if its not released by October, we'd be keen to screen at GRIMM.

THE SPEAK is an interesting little US supernatural thriller, cleverly utilising the one take visual style we saw in THE SILENT HOUSE recently. Despite the restrictions you might associate with this technical and stylistic choice the film manages to remain atmospheric and at times pretty scary, it also has a cameo from Tom Sizemore.

Sacrificed screenings of Kevin Smith's RED STATE and new UK horror HOLLOW for the Screen international party. Was it a mistake? Well, the UK Minister for Culture, Ed Vaizey and Gregg Dyke (head of BFI) talked to the crowd of UK film talent and expressed their political differences but also their joint commitment to British film. After the demise of the UK film council and the move of responsibilities to the BFI, it's not yet clear if anything has really changed? Here, I also bumped into Piers Tempest who produced new ghost thriller THE CALLER which stars Stephen Moyer of TRUE BLOOD fame and comes out later this year in the UK. The trailer looks intriguing.

We finished at the Finnish party! I wasn't sure I'd find much on the horror/fantasy side of things here until, of course, I remembered that Nazi Scifi movie IRON SKY is a Finnish film. The part crowd source financed movie revolves around WW2 style Nazi's who have hung out on the darkside of the moon until now. They mean to take back Western Europe and the rest of the world! It's a crazy concept, which looks visually spectacular; utilising major CGI effects work on a pretty limited budget. The film gets a UK release later this year. I talked to the producer and discussed the potential of bringing the movie to GRIMM this year. Watch the trailer here: www.ironsky.net

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ABOUT LAST NIGHT

2011-05-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Last night was a real treat for me and probably my highlight of Cannes this year. I persuaded Rachel to join me for a screening of CORMAN'S WORLD, a new documentary about the king of exploitation movies, Roger Corman, not realising we were actually attending the official festival screening. The film is in competition and so Roger himself was in attendance along with sixties rebel rouser and icon, Peter Fonda. What a treat! The documentary was a fantastic insight into Corman's life and work and includes interviews from so many of the famous people whose careers he helped to kick start. Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Martin Scorsese, etc, etc. A brilliant insight and also bloody funny in places! Were very keen to secure this for this year's GRIMM UP NORTH!!!

Desperate to blag our way into the Corman after party but failing miserably, we found ourselves at the 5 DAYS OF AUGUST after party. I haven't managed to catch this new offering from Action Maestro Renny Harlin yet but it looks more in the tradition of UNDER FIRE or THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (Journos in a war zone). Great cast, Rupert Friend, Val Kilmer, Andy Garcia, etc. Unfortunately we didn't spot any of the cast at the party although Renny himself was in attendance. The cocktails flowed and the music kept us gyrating, somewhat precariously, courtesy of Val and co. Brilliant party and surprise meet up with the director and producer of Grimmfest 2009 movie, THE FALLOWFIELD. Leigh Dovey and Colin Arnold told us all about their current movie projects. Leigh has written a number of new horror screenplays and Colin has just completed a new music documentary, which is being compared in some quarters to RATTLE AND HUM! Nice work guys.

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WEDNESDAY. FATIGUE IS TAKING HOLD!

2011-05-19T09:55:00.003-07:00

Sleep isn't something you do a lot of in Cannes! Drinking, yes, chatting, yes, Watch movies, yes but sleep....

Wednesday, I caught a screening of Honk Kong movie REVENGE: A LOVE STORY. A strong and violent crime thriller (of which this part of the world do so well). It's bloody, very bloody! The initial plot revolves around the hunt for a serial killer who picks on pregnant mothers and cuts the unborn child from their wombs. Uncomfortable stuff! But, the film stays true to its title. What starts in slasher territory does manage to embrace not only bloody revenge but also a central love story between the killer and a young girl, whose violent treatment at the hands of the local police is what triggers the killers actions. A clever time shifting structure unravels a really interesting plot. Like SLICE that we screened last year, this film will undoubtedly divide audiences.

Also caught a little US teen scifi movie called RECREATOR, which drops three teenagers on a desolate island only to find that the scientist who once worked there had developed cloning technology. Essentially the film revolves around our hero's battle for supremacy against their cloned doppelgangers. Interesting concept, well made but could have pushed the concept further, I feel. RECREATOR'S sales company Cinemavault have also offered us a new movie called WARGAMES, which I'm yet to view but the trailer looks cool!

There's a lot of horror movies here in the market place and too many to mention here but a couple I've picked up on are: The new film from the Soska sisters AMERICAN MARY. I don't think it's finished yet but anticipation is growing already! Cuban zombie movie JUAN OF THE DEAD, franchise revival, THE HOWLING REBORN, US horror, THE TOOLBOX MURDERS and a new low budget UK psychological thriller from Nick Lean (Grandson of David) called HARD SHOULDER. Female lead Angela Dixon shared dinner with us and told us all about the production, which sounds fascinating. Well be beckoning the movie for GRIMM this year.

TUESDAY IN CANNES

2011-05-19T09:55:00.001-07:00

Didn't catch many films on Tuesday but did manage to hook up with a number of sales companies to discuss potential movies for GRIMM UP NORTH 2011. First off, It was great to catch up with an old friend of mine who works for IM Global a very large US sales company who brought us PARANORMAL ACTIVITY amongst other things. IM GLOBAL also sell all the AFTER DARK movies. I'm hoping I've secured a GRIMM screening of a new fantasy/action movie they have called BAKARU which stars Woody Harrelson, Demmi Moore, Josh Hartnet, etc. The film was shot in Eastern Europe and the trailer reveals a heady mix of martial arts, crazy futuristic cityscapes and violent action. Fascinating!

Bleiberg Entertainment are selling EPISODE 50, a supernatural found footage movie, that's getting some good coverage in the market as is Sundance selected THE WOMAN. Finally, CMG are plugging DEADHEADS a horror zombie comedy.

Our own movie SPLINTERED is being sold by Kaleidoscope distribution who also have a new UK comedy chiller called ELFIE HOPKINS which brings father and daughter Ray and Jaime Winstone together for the first time in a comic tale of small town cannibals.

I can also report that GRIMM friend and director of last year's golden scythe awarded 13 HOURS, Jonathan Glendening is also about to start lensing a new movie called STRIPPERS VS WEREWOLVES, which is also being handled by Kaleidoscope. One can only guess at the content!

To round off the day I caught a screening of THE HUNTERS a French psychological thriller by actor/director Chris Briant but with an English speaking cast. It's a contained and gory action thriller set primarily in an abandoned fort and delving into uncomfortable psychological territory as our hero (Briant) uncovers a group of very unsavoury characters, who hunt humans for pleasure. A well shot and at times gripping thriller that amongst others, stars UK actor Steven Waddington.

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Greetings Grimmlins from the Cote D’azure.

2011-05-16T08:30:00.001-07:00

Just grabbing a little moment between film screenings, drinks receptions and meetings (It’s a hard life but someone’s gotta do it!) to report on what I’ve seen so far here in Cannes 2011. What’s wonderful about coming to the Cannes film market is that I can discover new horror and scifi movies, often before they’ve even been picked up for distribution in the UK. The trick is to predict which ones are going to get UK films fans buzzing when released and secure them for premiere screenings at GRIMM UP NORTH. Never an easy prediction but our aim, as always to bring the best new movies to Manchester from all round the world. Stuff you won’t have seen yet cos it’s brand spanking new or stuff you are unlikely to see in your local multiplex cos it’s not a US studio picture.

So, what and who have I seen so far? If your into US independent horror movies, you are likely to know of AFTERDARK FILMS, who over the last few years have been running a horror label called ‘8 films to die for’. Originally they picked up completed films and distributed them in the US. They have expanded quickly and now they are producing their own genre features which are being distributed in the UK by G2 pictures. You may have noticed movies like HUSK and PROWL which are now out on DVD in the UK. I caught PROWL here last year, the film was directed by Norwegian Patrik Syversen who’s first feature, MANHUNT got strong international recognition. PROWL was edited by our very own Celia Haining (Who cut our movie SPLINTERED). PROWL is a strong visceral vampire piece, well worth a look BUT I caught one of their other movies, 51 on Saturday. As the name suggests its about Area 51. It’s essentially a low budget monster movie which traps a bunch of military types inside a contained bunker with an alien threat. Very low budget, cardboard performances (Even Bruce Boxlighter from TRON) tries his best with wooden dialogue but fails. The concept is fine but the direction is pretty poor. Having worked as a production designer for years, I was particularly aware of the shoddy sets! The prosthetics and alien effects are probably the best element. It’s essentially a low budget riff on ALIENS.

Ironically, as soon as I came out of the movie I was summoned to dinner and found myself sitting next to Courtney Solomon, the man behind AFTERDARK FILMS!!! Cannes is strange like that! I asked Courtney about the movie and tried not to be to negative about it, bigging up PROWL instead! He explained that 51 has been produced primarily for the Scyfy channel, which explains why its production values are very TV! While there Courtney showed us a trailer for a new apocalyptic zombie movie that he’s producing, which looks awesome! So watch this space for more on that.

Sunday brought a whole bunch of interesting and varied horror movies as well as a few chance meetings with well known UK horror filmmakers. First up DARK SOULS from Norway, directed by two French men Mathieu Peteul and Cesar Ducasse. An interesting movie which is best described as a mix of DRILLER KILLER and THE STUFF. What starts out as a serial killer hunt evolves into an oil industry conspiracy thriller, in which comatosed drilled victims begin to puke up oily bile and come on like zombies. The plot doesn’t bare close inspection but it runs a fine line between uncomfortable, scary and funny! Certainly worth a watch. The film has screened at a few UK festival and hasn’t yet gained a UK release so we may look to screen at Grimm!

The latest from US (HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) maestro Ti West, THE INNKEEPERS was a spooky supernatural affair, with a cameo from Kelly McGillis. Like his previous HOUSE OF THE DEVIL it’s a slow burner with bags of atmosphere and a sense of directorial confidence. I really liked HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, which came on like a total seventies pastiche, even down to the title sequence. THE INNKEEPERS, although set in present day, also feels like it could have been made a few decades ago. It’s contained and low budget but it’s assured and gripping. Not a gorefest, more a gradual build of supernatural suspense which I admire. Not sure when its released in the UK but I’m keen to bring it to GRIMM this year!

Next up THE DEVILS ROCK a New Zealand movie from director Paul Campion, set on the Channel Islands on the brink of the D-Day landings, two NZ commandos are sent on a mission to destroy a German bunker on a small island only to find that Hitler’s SS have been busy summoning something horribly demonic from ancient local text (Apparently, witches were rife on the channel islands in the middle ages!). Again a very contained movie with limited cast and locations but despite this it’s an interesting ride. The film relies somewhat on its two central performances, a kiwi commando and an SS officer and their struggle for supremacy, while the real threat comes from the demon that, with echoes of SOLARIS, has the ability to take on human form in the image of victims loved ones.

Very good gore effects and creature design from WETA workshop. Nice concept, strong performances, limited budget.

To top all that, I also bumped into Marc Price, director of the hugely popular ultra low budget zombie movie COLIN, who’s currently prepping his WW2 monster movie THUNDER CHILD. At the same event I managed to grab JAKE WEST, cult director of brit horror flicks such as DOGHOUSE. Jake has kindly agreed to come to GRIMM UP NORTH later this year as our special guest (Work permitting).

That’s about it for now. But watch this space for more over the next few days. I’ll be reporting on movies such as new BRIT horror KILL LIST and the latest from the totally cool Soska Sisters, makers of DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK!!

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Grimm in 2011 and Submissions

2011-05-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

We've got some big ideas for 2011 for Grimm Up North. We can't reveal too much right now as we're busy finalising and confirming the details, but announcements will follow soon, so stay tuned.

We will be opening the call for submissions very soon. As always we will be looking for horrific hits and sci-fi shockers in both short and feature length movies. So if you've got anything truly original in either the horror, sci-fi or fantasy genres that you're burning to show then keep an eye on the Grimm channels for news on this front.

So keep your ears to the ground Grimmlins. Grimm Up North is back and we'll be keeping you up to date with the plans for this year's festival as they unfold.

Prepare yourselves...

2011-05-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

Grimm Knows Best

Last year our eagle-eyed team spotted the potential in the grindhouse gore-fest Dead Hooker in a Trunk and held its UK premiere at Grimm up North 2010. Since then Dead Hooker has become an underground hit, securing UK distribution with Bounty Films and due for release on May 23rd. The film has received praise from critics but has also courted controversy recently in Canada; the film was pulled from a screening after public outcry over its sensational title, but hey there's no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Other films gaining success since the festival include slowburning Mexican cannibal shocker We Are What We Are (Jorge Michel Grau), which achieved a nationwide cinema release and great critical acclaim. Praise for Amer (Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani), an homage to classic Italian masters like Argento, continues to pour in from numerous sources, including Mark Kermode's Movie Round-Up noting its "broiling visual style" and "splatter-tastic end".

We would also like to support Sushi Typhoon, the makers of the insanely hilarious Alien vs. Ninja (Seiji Chiba), screened at Grimm 2010, who are travelling the USA screening their back-catalogue of films in a campaign they've titled "Splatter Matters" to raise funds for the victims of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami.

Trash Cinema @ The New Continental

2010-10-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

In my largely forgotten childhood, The Continental (my local pub) was best known for monkey bars, Captain Coconuts and its proximity to a scenic park. Flashforward (Joseph Fiennes style) and I’d be hard pressed to believe that a pub could be transformed into a stage for plays, a cinema for films and an exhibition space for artists. However on a cold rainy night in Preston, seeing was believing.

Chaired by serial blogger and cinephile Robyn Talbot, we were treated to a viewing of Sergio Martino’s 1973 gory Italian exploitation masterpiece Torso. Tables with candles were set out in front of a 14ft high definition screen and with a bar nearby, I haven’t seen a film in a more relaxed and sophisticated setting.

The night was also the national launch of the upcoming ‘Lucio Fulci’s Box of Terror’ set, which for ethical reasons I was not able to win in the raffle but nevertheless I was privy to Torso, a cult horror masterpiece that never skimped on the blood, nudity or murderous and largely inventive set pieces.

The night was capped off with a chance for me to plug Grimm Up North but even without an ulterior motive, it was nice to see film and culture brought to Preston (which is a mere 35 minute train ride away from Manchester I’ll have you know). The north will forever be in the shadow of the south but its endearing that people like Robyn and venues like The New Continental are willing to take a chance and put on a good show.

For more information on all the events The New Continental has coming up visit www.thenewcontinental.net

JD Douglas-Walton
Writer for Grimm Up North

Steve's Review - Alien Vs Ninja

2010-08-23T05:41:00.001-07:00

Grimm Up North Movies: ALIEN VS NINJA (Seiji Chiba)

The title pretty much writes the review. This really is exactly what is says on the box - Ninjas fighting Aliens.

No subtleties of characterisation, no intricate narrative set ups. Just 80 minutes of martial arts mayhem and cartoonish gore; a delirious pop-pulp-trash mash-up, harking back to the much-loved catchpenny monster slugfests of Toho Studio’s golden era. The plot, such as it is, is simple to the point of idiocy. Essentially, it’s the set up of PREDATOR in the landscape of THE WATER MARGIN. Two parties of Ninjas are sent out into a large forest to investigate a mysterious meteorite which has fallen close to a neighbouring, rival Han. Their Feudal Lord fears it might contain something of value that he does not wish his enemies to get hold of. In reality, however, it contains - yeah, you guessed it - alien beasties.

From there on in, it’s one long wire-work-enhanced fight to the death. The Ninjas, clad in black leather armour and sporting rockstar haircuts, look more like members of a Japanese heavy metal band (Except, obviously, for the fat, bald, screaming, cowardly comic relief character, who has to be the world’s most unlikely assassin). The aliens look like men in rubber suits - but let’s face it so does Ridley Scott’s ALIEN, probably because that’s what it was.

However, ALIEN VS NINJA director Seiji Chiba is far less concerned than Scott was with creating a credible alien menace. In fact, he’s less concerned than Edward L. Kahn was in IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. AVN is all about the ass-kicking. This is cinema as Pro Wrestling. It’s a mindless monster manga come to life and coming to a midnight movie screening near you. And it’s a laugh a minute.

Prepare to choke on your popcorn.

Steve's Review: All About Evil

2010-08-21T04:37:00.000-07:00

ALL ABOUT EVIL (Dir: Joshua Grannell)

Why do we love horror movies? What is it that we love about them? What needs do they fulful for us? These are the questions posed by Joshua Grannell’s outrageous feature film debut ALL ABOUT EVIL, which interrogates even as it celebrates the wilder excesses of genre cinema.

The film tells the story of Deborah Tennis (Natasha Lyonne), a mousy librarian, who inherits a grind house cinema specialising in cult b-movies and gory 70s and 80s horror flicks. Haunted by her failure to become the child star her beloved father dreamed she would be, tormented by her cruel and rapacious mother, Deborah is driven over the edge into committing murder. But her crime is caught on camera, and accidentally screened to her cinema audience to rapturous applause. Suddenly, all of Deborah’s dreams of cinematic success start to come true. She is feted as a visionary director; her screenings become the hottest ticket in town. The only problem is the continual need to find new performers to appear in her films. Fortunately, however, Deborah has a lot of rage issues to work out. Enlisting the aid of her embittered elderly projectionist Mr Twigs, degenerate hustler Adrian and psychotic twins Veda and Vera, she quickly builds the ideal crew for her cinematic endeavours, and sets to work. Meanwhile, horror film buff Steven, her biggest fan, longs to get to know her better…

Were I pitching the idea to Hollywood Executives, I’d probably describe it as WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE directed by Hershell Gordon Lewis… And of course they wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about, because the people financing films today have no sense of Cinema History - particularly the less “respectable” parts. ALL ABOUT EVIL, however, is steeped - soaked! - in that bloody history. Grannell is better known as his demonic drag diva alter-ego Peaches Christ, host of San Francisco’s infamous “Midnight Mass” screenings, celebrating all that is camp, gory, and gloriously tacky in cinema past and present. Grannell’s love for the horror genre is evident in every frame of his film. Opening with a beautiful title sequence, incorporating re-imagined versions of dozens of classic B-movie posters, and crammed with visual and verbal in-jokes, arcane allusions and mischievous references galore, this is a cult cineaste’s delight, a multi-layered slice of self-referential meta-cinema, with even the title being a cheeky bit of wordplay on the seminal Joseph L. Mankiewicz / Bette Davis movie ALL ABOUT EVE.

Yet however post-modern the film may be, this is not at the expense of narrative, character and sheer creative chutzpah. Grannell never forgets that first and foremost his film should be fun. ALL ABOUT EVIL’s purpose is above all to entertain, and in this it is a roaring success, both as a fast-paced 80s-style slasher movie thrill-ride, and as a blackly comic parody, with the cast catching the tone perfectly. Natasha Lyonne’s star turn as Deborah is a cunning compendium of filmic femmes fatales, skilfully leaping from Mae West, to Bette Davis, to Joan Crawford (or perhaps Faye Dunaway’s nightmarish caricature thereof in MOMMIE DEAREST), to Queen of the New York Underground Lydia Lunch. The rest of the cast deliver equally well-judged turns. Cult character actor Jack Donner (you name it, he’s been in it!), exudes seedy, gleeful malice as Mr Twigs, and there is a magnificently witchy turn from the Amazonian Julie Caitlin Brown, as Deborah’s vile mother. Ironically, but altogether appropriately, it is the stars most associated with camp who are given the warmest, most sympathetic roles: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark herself, Cassandra Peterson, is effectively cast against type as Steven’s bemused but understanding mother, while John Waters regular Mink Stole brings unexpected humanity and pathos to the role of the elderly spinster chief librarian whose well-meant interference Deborah so resents.

The result is a riotous splatter-satire, which is not afraid to mix laugh-out-loud black comedy with some genuinely queasy moments of violence and gore. The casting nod to the “Pope of Trash” John Waters is entirely fitting. The film’s closest relative is probably Waters’ CECIL B. DEMENTED - another lament for everything that has been lost in this blanded-out world of pre-sold, pre-tested, corporate-sponsored, product-placement-stuffed multiplex fodder. Joshua Grinnell - or is it Peaches Christ? - offers us a chance to enter a world where the carnival barker antics of William Castle, and the blood-drenched excesses of H. G. Lewis, the cartoon bawdiness of Russ Meyer and the huckster genius of Roger Corman, are not forgotten. Where Cinema remains…magic!

- STEVE BALSHAW,Film Programmer, GRIMM UP NORTH

Noel's Review: Amer

2010-08-12T02:54:00.000-07:00

Directed by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, Amer is a Belgian, French language movie that I've been lucky enough to see ahead of FrightFest. Going in, I was aware of suggestions that it owed much to the work of directors like Argento, Fulci and Bava and was something of a love letter to the giallo style of horror film making. Of course, this was enough to peak my interest, but I have to say that ultimately I was in no way prepared for what lay in store for me.

Without going in to too much detail on plot, what I can say is that Amer evolves over a very tight 90-minute, three act narrative. In its first section, which is arguably its most heavily inspired by Argento, we follow a young girl exploring the creaking hallways and rooms of her childhood home. As she wanders from one place to another, catching the tail-ends of her parents' conversations and hiding from her terrifying lace-clad grandmother, we're treated to some of the most compelling and engaging cinema I've seen in as long as I can remember. With a light dusting of Guillermo Del Toro, this thrilling exploration of childhood fear and confusion moves comfortably between outright creepiness and mind-bending surrealism.

For the second act, we rejoin our heroine - although this time she is in her teens and outside the confines of her large and imposing family home. However, this new freedom brings with it a level of burgeoning sexuality that regularly seems as if it might explode on the screen at any moment, but manages to be intermittently subdued by moments of tension and the intervening touch of her authoritative mother.

In its final third, we return the house that had such a presence in the film's first half hour, along with the giallo-esque aesthetics that made it so powerful. However, this is not before a beautiful and hazily-paced taxi ride in which the threat of overwhelming desire is ramped up to new heights for its lead, this time a fully-fledged woman in her sexual prime.

In its first five minutes, Amer had me absolutely gripped and I stayed that way for every remaining glorious 85. Sure, in parts it more than a little reminiscent of 1970s European horror, but this is by no means the only trick it has up its sleeve. As a piece of art, this is a film that is as visceral as any I've ever seen. It has a visual style that is surpassed only by its stunning sound design, making every breath, every gasp and every bead of sweat as tangible for the viewer as it is for the characters on screen.

Elegantly paced, infinitely watchable and by far one of the best films I've seen this year, Amer is a film I cannot recommend enough. While the plot will undoubtedly leave some scratching their heads, this is an exercise in arthouse cinema that is as sensually involving as anything else you are likely to see this year - possibly even longer.

- Noel Mellor, Web and Social Marketing Co-ordinator, GRIMM UP NORTH

Josh's Review: Inception

2010-07-21T05:51:00.000-07:00

For a film supposedly ten years in the making, writer and director Christopher Nolan delivers a complex and engaging sci-fi/action film that's original as it is epic.

The premise is complicated but easy to understand, its a heist movie at heart but instead of criminals breaking into in a bank, Leonardo DiCaprio is breaking into people's dreams by the process of extraction. DiCaprio heads up a stellar cast of award winners and Hollywood heavywieghts including the handsome Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Marion Cotillard and Michael Caine.

DiCaprio is Dominic Cobb, an extractor, who specialises in subconscious security. Aided by his pointman Arthur (Gordon-Levitt), Cobb and Arthur break into a subject's dreams in order to steal their secrets. The film opens with a botched extraction of businessman Saito's (Watanbe) dreams. Saito has an alternative offer and employs Cobb to perform inception. Instead of stealing information, he has to implant information in a subject's mind, a complex and near impossible feat to perform.

After the brief set up, the film settles into its rhythm, exploring Cobb's past, his relationship with his deceased wife Mal (Cotillard) and the nature of subconscious theft. Cobb assembles of crack-team to infiltrate Fischer's (Murphy) dreams and implant the idea that dissolving his father's massive empire is a good idea.

The majority of film deals with the actual inception and the complications that arise from creating a dream, inside a dream, inside a dream. Despite the slightly convoluted nature of dreams, Nolan carefully weaves in layers of philosophy and narrative complexity. Inception is never overly difficult to understand and comprehend which serves it well but it also never reveals the full picture which kept me hooked from start to finish and constantly had me wanting more answers.

The film's gun play and action is well choreographed and always exciting to watch. Coupled with sublime editing, gripping music from Hans Zimmer and superb direction and vision from Nolan, Inception is one of the most interesting and exciting films I've ever seen. It's visually rich and beautifully shot.

Looking back at the film its hard not to slide into sensationalism and hyperbole when trying to describe Inception but the best comparison I can make is to The Matrix (and by extension Ghost in the Shell). I remember the first time I saw The Matrix and the way it drew me in with postmodern questions about the nature of the 'real' and how it candidly boiled down complicated subjects. Inception outstrips The Matrix in terms of narrative fidelity while the philosophy is still there but it isn't so overt and it seems less pretentious for it.

Ultimately Inception is one of the best films I've ever seen and it certainly is the best blend of sci-fi/action out there.

JD Douglas-Walton
Writer & Networker for Grimm Up North.

Josh's Review: Resurrection County

2010-07-20T06:20:00.000-07:00

A group of four attractive suburbanite campers travel to the remote, sleepy Southern town of Enoch in search of a peaceful getaway - but things in the South are never so simple, as the group soon find out.

With early references to country bumpkin characters and a postmodern nod to familiar stereotypes, it would seem Resurrection County is primly set up to be just another Texas Chainsaw Massacre clone. However, once the exposition is out of the way and the film settles down, it finds a consistently tense rhythm that highlights the story's true colours.

Although these are mainly the green and brown hues of the southern outback, these soon give way to deep crimson (why, I'm guessing, you can work out for yourself). Things begin to first go awry when leading men Tommy and Sam venture off the trail while quad biking the nearby woodlands and come across a gun-toting redneck that seems a little funny about trespassing strangers. From here the real fun begins as it seems like the whole of Enoch is out to get them.

Although it may sound like a backhanded compliment, one of Resurrection County’s greatest strengths is simply that it reminds you of things you've seen before. This may sound negative, but the discomfort this movie offers from the outset allows you to expect the worst to happen - and it isn’t long before it does.

Once the blood starts spilling and the unhappy campers are fighting for their lives, you soon get a glimpse of why these Southern god-fearing bumpkins are so blood thirsty. One of the film's most endearing qualities, however, is that apart from a slight lull in the second act, it remains solidly built throughout. Direction, editing, music, acting, the brilliant and believable special effects all blend together nicely.

Resurrection County is well worth a watch. You’ll have seen countless films like it but it holds up well in both technical and thematic terms. Beautifully shot, gripping, violent and bloody as hell, the movie even offers a few lines that will make you crack a smile. Check it out.

JD Douglas-Walton

Writer & Networker for Grimm Up North

Noel's Review: Burning Bright

2010-07-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

Scheduled to play a Friday morning slot at this year's FrightFest, Burning Bright is an odd little tale that takes a high concept threat and spins it out into a full-length feature.

So what is the high concept at the centre of the movie? Well, basically it's 'girl trapped in house with Bengal tiger' - a premise that I have to admit I've been more than curious to see unfold. But how do we get to this terrifying and dramatic point in the story? Well, read on…

Kelli (Briana Evigan) is a promising young girl with dreams of going to college. She's already been accepted to a high profile institution, but following the recent suicide of her mother she's unwillingly inherited the responsibility of looking after Tom - her autistic younger brother. Having resigned herself to the fact that she can't take proper care of him, she decides to enroll him in a school of his own - but quickly discovers that the money left for his education has been squandered by her stepfather.

Has he drank the thousands of dollars left in his deceased wife's will away? Spent it all on drugs and cheap hookers? Frittered it away at the tables of local casinos in a fit of grief and depression? No, he's arranged a roadside meeting with Meat Loaf to buy a Bengal tiger as part of a wider plan to turn his home into a Safari Ranch - smart.

Anyway, Kelli comes home and challenges her stepfather, who is busy preparing the family home for an incoming storm. Nailing the last of the windows and doors shut, he heads out to a bar, leaving the teenager and her younger brother home alone. At which point, someone mysteriously lets the caged animal into the house and for the next hour we a deadly game of cat and mouse - except the cat is a tiger and the mouse is a hot teenage girl in her pants. Nice.

It’s a great concept that's dealt with pretty admirably by director Carlos Brooks. With only one other such credit to his name (2008's Sundance featured Quid Pro Quo), Brooks does well delivering high tension and intrigue in such a enclosed space. Although the film is not without its faults, there's definitely enjoyment to be had watching a starved tiger stalking two people trapped in a building with all the windows and doors nailed shut - and those who like to shout instructions at the screen during films will have a great time telling Kelli what she should or should not be doing.

The brutal truth of Burning Bright is that it is a problem that is easily fixed. While Kelli is busy dragging her brother from room to room making one failed attempt to escape after another, you quickly see that her time would be much better spent barricaded in one specific place. But once you get over the fact this would make for a pretty dull horror thriller, you should find there's some good old-fashioned harmless fun to be had here.

Noel Mellor
Grimm Up North Online Marketing Co-ordinator

Simeon's Postcard From Cannes!

2010-07-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

I just found the postcard I sent from The Cannes Film Festival back in May, behind the radiator. It reminded me of some of the great movies and gossip we picked up there and so, I thought I should share some of it with you. The truth is - I really don't know how I managed to fit so much text onto one little piece of card!

The sun is shining (intermittently) and the beach is wrecked, must have been some storm! Been doing my bit for GRIMM UP NORTH, but God its hard work - watching all those movies, attending so many exclusive parties, after a while it's tough to keep up! But I've also been doing my fair share of research, checking out the trade mags, looking at reviews and finding market screenings on a whole bunch of horror and associated movies. Can't always get into screenings - as I don't have an expensive Cannes Market badge - but have managed to sneak into most! So what's hot? Well, I have seen a whole bunch of films from all over the world and all, as yet, are unreleased in the UK.

Pick of the bunch - CHATROOM. Hideo Nakata, famous for RINGU (RINGU not PINGU), tries his hand at a British movie. Not really horror, more thriller as the movie blends the beautifully visualised virtual world of the internet chat room with the real world, following a band of friends seamlessly from one plane to the other. Aaron Johnson (fresh from his success in KICK ASS and still only 19) plays the messed up lead, who's hatred of his own life leads him to destroy others through the virtual world. Nice concept!

THE SILENT HOUSE is definitely worth looking out for. An 83 minute one take wonder from Uruguay. You have to see it to believe it and its stylish and scary too! Plot logic leads a little to be desired but putting that aside, it's a hell of an achievement on a real low budget.

KABOOM, the latest crazy conspiracy filled bi-sexual romp from prolific US director Gregg Arraki caught my eye. It's quirky and really quite enjoyable, even scary at times. Definitely worth a watch.

BEDEVILLED, seemed to just call out to me from the trade mags and when I charmed my way into a private screening, I wasn't disappointed. A very dark Korean movie about a city girl going home to an insular isolated island society and finding her sister's husband is the most abusive, twisted man you could imagine. Needless to say the film ends in VERY bloody revenge. The film builds and builds and when the inevitable violent retribution (don't underestimate the graphic nature of this, either) finally comes, you find yourself empathising with every visceral murder. Extreme!

GOSSIP. Seems everyone was talking about A SERBIAN FILM and I was warned by its sales company, that it wasn't for the squeamish, it's apparently very extreme in its content. Haven't yet seen it but its reputation goes before it. I'm guessing it might well screen at FRIGHTFEST this August (Turns out our Simeon was right, clever boy - Noel).

SHADOW. A Italian horror from rock star Frederico Zampaglione. A real mix of sub genres in this piece, verging from psychological twists of the JACOB'S LADDER variety, through to clear homage's to the grand guignol of classic Argento - really quite fun, but a little schizoid in tone.

PROWL, is one of the '8 films to die for' strand, which you may well of heard of. We screened DREAD and THE GRAVES from last year's lineup. This year they are actually producing their own movies, rather than just picking up existing movies and PROWL is one of them. I was particularly interested in this film, as it was edited by Celia Haining, who also cut my own movie SPLINTERED. As the second film from MANHUNT director Patrik Syversen, PROWL isn't bad but is a little slow to build. Set in the states and shot, I think, in Eastern Europe, it kinda shows! Still, it holds some great action scenes as our heroin finds herself at the mercy of a pack of wild vampires holed up in a disused factory. Nicely edited, I might add, but then I'm biased!

Sooooo… what else, what else? Well, I missed THE PACK, French zombie movie, which was due to be screened on the outdoor beach screen but didn't happen. But caught Greek Zombie movie EVIL IN THE TIME OF HEROES, which has been picked up for Edinburgh, it's kinda crazy, funny and scary at the same time. If a Zombie film can be camp, then, I think this is it. It's even got Billy Zane in it! Overall, this has some nice action scenes, pretty high production values and nasty deaths to keep you entertained - along with unfathomable logic and mystifying plot. Could just become a cult classic!

I've got a feeling I posted a second card from Cannes, but not entirely sure. The combination of being drunk or hung over tends to blur the mind. But if I find it folks, you'll be the first to know.

That's it for now.

Simeon halligan
Festival Director

You Really Don’t Want To See That! - The Unfilmable Novels of Jim Thompson

2010-07-13T01:46:00.000-07:00

This year, at Grimm Up North, we will be looking directly at the transition from page to screen, with a series of discussions, seminars and screenings in association with the Manchester Literature Festival. We’ll be seeing how accurately that transition can be made, what is lost and what is gained in the process. We’ll be looking at genre writers who have made the move onto the big screen, considering why some have had more success there than others, looking at what translates well, and what doesn’t.

It might seem a strange observation for a film programmer to make, but there are certain things which really do defy the art of film. There are books that are genuinely unfilmable. There are images which should remain on the printed page.

Fear not, Grimmfans, I am not getting all morally self-righteous here. I am not advocating censorship, nor would I ever. The first rule of cinema is Show Not Tell. And this goes double for horror cinema, where the purpose is to expose an audience to its fears - to everything that sickens, appals and traumatises.

And yet there are some horrors best left to the written word - not because they are too much to bear, but because they simply do not translate to the screen. I found myself thinking this during a recent viewing of Michael Winterbottom’s film version of Jim Thompson’s classic hardboiled noir novel THE KILLER INSIDE ME.

James Myers Thompson (1906 - 1977), the “Dimestore Dostoyevsky”, is cited by Stephen King and Harlan Ellison as their favourite crime writer. Stanley Kubrick described this particular novel as “probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered”. But significantly, though Kubrick collaborated with Thompson on a couple of screenplays, he never even attempted to film any of his books. He knew better than to try. Nevertheless there have been various noble efforts to capture Thompson‘s worldview on screen, most notably Sam Peckinpah in THE GETAWAY, and Stephen Frears in THE GRIFTERS. But none really comes close to the original books.

And now there is Winterbottom’s KILLER INSIDE ME. The film of course generated acres of press controversy over its graphic depiction of violence against women, with defenders claiming this was true to the book, and detractors claiming the director was glamourising the violence. This is a very minor illustration of the difficulty of translating words on the page into images onscreen. It is one thing for Thompson to talk of a woman’s face being pounded to “stew meat, hamburger”. It is another to show it. But, hell, we’re hardened horror fans, here, right? We can cope with a few shocking images of violence? Of course we can.

But this is not my bone of contention. Where I think the film actually falls down is in failing to understand how dependent the novel’s success is on its entirely interior perspective of events. THE KILLER INSIDE ME is a first person narrative by a paranoid schizophrenic, and it is the worldview of this narrator, Sherriff Lou Ford that unifies what is actually a rather ramshackle and rambling plot. So dominant is Ford’s voice in the book, that I was convinced that the film had added all of the messy unconvincing scenes towards the end. It was a real shock to go back to the original text and discover that the film was following the book verbatim. The narrative failings were Thompson’s, not Winterbottom’s. And yet the novel succeeds where the film does not, because the narrative is less important to Thompson than the narrator. This is a study of Lou Ford’s gradual exposure and mental collapse. Once events are exteriorised, objectified, separated from the perspective of Ford himself, all we are left with is a series of loosely connected events and a melodramatic conclusion. What works on the page does not work onscreen.

And this is one of Thompson’s more straightforward, least grotesque novels. His is a world of political and social corruption, dominated entirely by baser instincts and emotions, and peopled by psychotics, sociopaths, paranoids, hysterics, self-loathing neurotics and oedipal wrecks. The only half-way decent human being in this world is the huckster-lawyer, Isidore Kossmeyer, one of Thompson’s very few recurring characters, who for all of his liberal values and championing of the underdog is more than half-charlatan. Written quickly, even carelessly at times, Thompson’s novels start in a recognisable hardboiled pulp-exploitation world of randy bellboys, womanising travelling salesmen, bank robbers on the run and hitmen on a job, and end up somewhere truly nightmarish. Functional, meat-and-potatoes pulp prose suddenly grows floridly poetic, wryly satiric, or startlingly experimental. Narratives break down just as effectively as their narrators. The novels eat themselves alive, perform their own literary deconstruction. They implode or explode as messily and spectacularly as their protagonists and narrators. Thus, Frank Dillon’s account of events in A HELL OF A WOMAN becomes ever more unreliable, and self-deceiving, until it finally splits right down the middle. In SAVAGE NIGHT, Charlie Bigger, the undersized hitman, increasingly beset by feelings of inadequacy and his own shrinking influence, ends by describing his own gory dismemberment as the thematic and metaphoric suddenly becomes horrifically literal. Thompson’s novels bleed into one another. A situation one character finds himself in at the close of one book may be a stepping off point for a whole new novel about an entirely different set of characters. Partly, this is the result of a pulp writer’s instinct for getting as much mileage as possible out of an idea, but more importantly it reflects Thompson’s seeming need to take every idea to its darkest, most troubling place. And then find a different approach in a different novel that will enable him to go even further with it.

Thompson has been an inspiration for several generations of literary extremists, in a variety of genres, as well as in supposedly more “serious” fiction, and whether it be through adaptation, or appropriation of theme, his influence dominates contemporary noir and crime cinema, from Quentin Tarantino to John Dahl. But nothing onscreen could ever come close to the horrors Thompson left between the pages of his 20-odd grubby paperback originals.

- STEVE BALSHAW,Film Programmer, GRIMM UP NORTH

Noel's Review: Frozen

2010-07-12T13:12:00.000-07:00

Having had the chance to meet Frozen writer/director Adam Green (alongside his close friend, Wrong Turn 2 helm Joe Lynch), it's clear to see how the director has fashioned such a cult following with genre fans.

At last year's FrightFest, the pair were almost omnipotent and seemed to be reveling in getting down to some serious fun and frolics with everyone and anyone around. Their homage to An American Werewolf in London was a festival highlight and their presence was enough to make me - and probably many others - seek out their work when I got home.

Green will return to the Leicester Square event in August this year with the UK premier of his sequel to the 2006 rural hack-a-thon Hatchet that made his name - although I must admit that, having now seen the original, this isn't one I'm champing at the bit to catch. However, the premise of Frozen, which is set to be launched by Momentum in September, is one that is well capable of sparking curiosity.

Where Hatchet was set to the misty backdrop of a New Orleans swamp, Frozen uses a desolate ski resort to inflict terror on its trio of victims. Three teenagers - one of whom is bizarrely named Joe Lynch - manage to scam a late night trip down the mountain having bribed the chairlift operator. When a mix up at the controls sees them stranded in the chair, the gang must face the fact that due to the harsh conditions and real possibility they'll be stuck there for days, they are going to have to take action - or die.

It’s a great high concept premise that's backed by some pretty engaging performances and, for the most part, provides some pretty enjoyable fare. The relationship between the three leads, a young couple and a male best friend who feels he is being squeezed out, is enough to give the simple narrative a little extra drama. The introduction of an extra threat in the second act could be deemed unnecessary by those looking for a deeper, more contemplative piece of film. However, it's not really enough to derail what is a pretty entertaining 94 minutes.

Some slightly odd dramatic choices involving the female lead allow the music to swell to a score that is a little reminiscent of Michael Giachinno's work on Lost - which makes for some pretty strange moments. Here, I felt myself questioning whether I was witnessing a directorial misstep, but feel it may have more to do with Green's own sense of humour. But all in all, these are mild criticisms for a film that - while not achieving its full conceptual potential - is well worth your time.

Noel Mellor
Grimm Up North Online Marketing Co-ordinator

The Fear

2010-07-11T05:41:00.000-07:00

(I only posted this picture to prove how hip I am because I know a song by Lilly Allen)

The beauty of horror films comes from throwing the audience into a world that is so vile and disgusting, so far removed from normal life that you can’t help but sit, stare, clench your teeth and stick it out.
This provides the basis for this blog post. I’ve picked out some choice moments from cinema (and video games) that have stuck with me for all the wrong reasons. These aren’t the scariest films or games ever to be produced but they have certainly had a lasting effect on me.

The first is The Fly (Cronenberg 1986). It’s worth pointing out that I feel physically sick even thinking about this film. I hate any kind of body transformation, mutilation, transmogrification or any combination of the previous. So it’s safe to say that the story of an eccentric scientist (have you ever met a scientist that wasn’t eccentric?) who, through a failed experiment, begins to morph into a fly.

I originally watched this a few years ago on TV, I knew a little about the film so I thought why not? Despite being repulsed from start to finish, I stuck it out and god was that a mistake.

The worst bit? Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) vomiting on his food so he can eat it.
I’m desperately struggling to think about sweets and kittens in order to get The Fly out of my head. Maybe my next pick will help.

Super Mario Bros. (1993) (according to Wikipedia, no less than three people directed this film so that goes some way to describing what a mess this is). Anyway you’re probably rolling around on the floor laughing (or whatever the kids are doing nowadays) but bear with me.

Bob Hoskins has publicly said that it’s the worst thing he’s done, not the worst film he’s done, but the worst thing he’s done. Hoskins stars opposite the ‘great’ John Leguizamo so you know you’re off to a winner. Anyway I could rant about this all day...

I saw this film as a sweet innocent child way back at Christmas, many years ago. I distinctly remember eating a bowl of spaghetti hoops while watching it. The scene that haunts me so much? When Princess Daisy’s Dad (at this point, a giant ball of snot) comes down a pipe. He’s just a ball of goo, he has bits flaking off him, it looks like sick, it reminds me of being sick and it makes me sick! It’s also safe to say that I’ve never actually eaten spaghetti hoops since.

And finally a video game. Resident Evil (the first one). I’ve never been a big Playstation guy and thus I’ve missed out on a lot of classics. A few years ago I got my hands on a PS2 and decided to catch up on what I’d missed. I borrowed the original Resident Evil from a friend and decided to play it. I’m good at games, I don’t like survival horror but I’m good at games, so what’s the problem?

Well I put in the game, watched the opening cutscenes, walked into the mansion (very slowly) and when the zombie dog jumped through the window... I turned it off and I haven’t touched it since.

JD Douglas-Walton

Writer & Networker for Grimm Up North

Review: The Inhabited Island

2010-07-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

The Inhabited Island

2008 Directed by Fyodor Bondarchuk

This a sci-fi action adventure from Russia in two parts, set in the distant future where mankind has harnessed the abilities of the human body giving them superior strength and intellect. They use these abilities to travel vast distances throughout the galaxies. When a young space traveller named 'Maksim' crash lands on an unknown world he finds the local inhabitants at war with one another. Ignorant of Maksim's home world (Earth), the indigenous people are largely a more technically advanced race, but have yet to experience space travel themselves. Maksim's crash landing on the planet has destroyed his ship, leaving him stranded with no hope of rescue. In an attempt to integrate himself into this new society he chooses to join the army, propelling him on an epic adventure in which he must try to uncover the secrets the planet holds and attempt to overthrow the governing rulers known as 'The Unknown Fathers.'

This film is brilliant! It takes the form of two films - each roughly around two hours long - and reminds me of a cross between Riddick and Lord of the Rings. The budget of roughly $36 million seems to have been well spent with some impressively picturesque landscapes and equally impressive CGI. The Inhabited Island puts Night and Day Watch (the only other Russian films I remember enjoying) to shame. The sheer epic grandeur of this film coupled with it's beautiful cinematography makes it a must see.

4.5/5

Jez Blackmore

Noel's Movie Review: Slice

2010-07-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

One of the glorious things about being involved in Grimm Up North is you can fully indulge all of your cinematic desires in films that you may otherwise have never gotten around to seeing. Often these movies will be deep within the horror genre, while others will toe the line with this and anything from sci-fi, comedy, drama and thriller.

Slice is a film that does just that, borrowing from both police procedural slashers like Seven and unrelenting coming of age tales like Slumdog Millionaire. Like Slumdog, director Kongkiat Khomsiri's story takes place in the present but recalls a past fraught with childish mischief and the cruelty of the adult world. But here, the modern day is unconcerned with romance and joy, but instead focuses on bringing a brutal serial killer to justice.

The story follows Tai, an incarcerated ex-cop who has been released and charged with the task of tracking down the murderer, who has taken to removing the genitals of his victims, cramming them where the sun don't shine and often disposing of them in a large red suitcase. It seems some of the behavior of the killer links to Tai's childhood friend Nut and when this link grows stronger it becomes clear he will have to look back at the troubled childhood they spent together if he is ever to see his criminal record wiped clean and be reunited with his wife.

Early on, Slice sets out its stall by appearing as traditional an eastern take on a western thriller as you would expect. Scenes are beautifully crafted and there is an element of suspense that hangs over a plot that, while certainly familiar, delivers plenty of shocks, kills and crime scene investigations.

However, at some point roughly halfway through, I became very aware that what I was watching was not the template for a US remake featuring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, but instead had shifted towards being an incredibly engaging coming of age drama. The story of Tai and Nut's background becomes such a huge part of the narrative that it threatens to run away with the film, only to be brought in to a spine-shattering climax that literally made me exclaim "No, fucking, way" at the top of my voice despite watching the movie alone.

Slice is an absolute gem of a movie that, while shifting slightly uncomfortably between genres occasionally, is nothing short of breathtaking. The beautiful golden locations of some of the flashbacks serve as a stark companion to the grittier neons of the modern street scenes. But this really just gives you more to watch.
Hailing from Thailand and without a release date in many countries, it's difficult to say when Slice will make it to cinemas or store shelves in the UK, but with a thoroughly absorbing story and a mind-blowing last act, you would do well to make a note of its name.

Noel Mellor

Grimm Up North is going to FrightFest!

2010-07-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

The final line-up of films has been announced for this year's annual Frightfest horror movie festival in London and once again the team has put together a whole host of terrifying treats.

Of course, tickets and festival passes sold like hot cakes when they went onsale this weekend and your loveable Grimm Up North! blogger, podcaster and all-round gorehound (me) will be there once again to check out what sinister slices of cinematic filth have been lined up. I'll be reporting back here, writing on my own blog and reviewing on Eat Sleep Live Film over the course of the five-day festival. Plus, as I'll be attending with 35mm Heroes co-hosts Jordan McGrath and Ian Loring (Cinerama), you can expect plenty of audio and video coverage to boot.

So, the tickets are booked, the hotel sorted and the train taken care of and in just under eight weeks time I'll be heading to the Empire Cinema in London's Leicester Square. But what are the movies lined up this year that I'm most looking forward too? Well, read on and you'll see!

The festival kicks off proper on Thursday 26th August in the Main Empire screen at 6.30pm with the latest offering from Adam Green. As one half of the event's unofficial mascots (the other being Wrong Turn 2 helm Joe Lynch), it's hardly a surprise the slasher sequel gets its World Premiere here - but it should definitely get things kicked off with a bang. The rest of the evening promises typically rural terror in Primal and a modern take on Hammer in Dead Cert. The latter features Danny Dyer, but the synopsis sounds pretty interesting so hopefully that will cancel out my general disdain for the one-note mockney monkey. A cast list that also includes Jayson Fleming, Craig Fairbrass and Dexter Fletcher would suggest we can expect Buffy meets Lock Stock here - so this could be well worth a watch.

With the Discovery Screen open for business on Friday, there are some tempting options to be had. But with the day devoted to genre legend Tobe Hooper in the Main Screen it could well be an easy decision for many. First up is a screening of his lost debut Eggshells, a psychedelic sci-fi oddity that leads up to an interview with the man himself and a showing of his 1974 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The rest of the night has Brit crime thriller Isle of Dogs, the mysteriously titled F and an Aussie flick that promises to be somewhere between Halloween and No Country For Old Men - Red Hill. The last of the night's fun in the Main Screen is high-concept slash sockey fest Aliens Vs Ninja, which has to be better than the Paul WS Anderson film it sounds like an offshoot of. Meanwhile, during Eggshells, I plan to be over in Discovery checking out an odd little curio by the name of Burning Bright, the story of what happens when your house gets invaded by a Bengal Tiger.

Saturday pits The Cottage director Paul Andrew Williams' latest Cherry Tree Lane against Switchblade Romance cinematographer Maxime Alexandre's Christoipher Roth - with the latter just tweaking my interest that little bit more. But then my attention falls back to the Main where we have a few premieres, including a European one for the remake of I Spit On Your Grave, the latest remake of a 70s genre classic - which I will have my fingers (and legs) firmly crossed for. One other that seems of particular interest that night is Monsters, a post-apocalyptic feature that seems to take at least some cues from District 9.

An early start again with The Pack and Higanjima: Escape From Vampire Island on the Sunday followed by a quiz and a Short Film Showcase and then we head for a triple whammy of film's I'm hugely excited for. First up is We Are What We Are, the story of modern day cannibalism in the context of a family drama, then slightly lighter fare in teen cult flick Kaboom and finally, the one that is set to have tongues seriously wagging should the Daily Mail ever find out about it - A Serbian Movie. If you don't already know about this, you should check out the early buzz. If it is as shocking as some would seem to suggest, it may be one not to miss.

As the last day of the festival, Monday brings with it my most eagerly anticipated film bar none. Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Video Tape documents what is, for me, one of the most fascinating periods in modern film history and one which I have read, watched and written a great deal about. Running at only 60 minutes, it may not be that long, but a celebrity panel discussion afterwards promises much interesting debate.

Elsewhere, the Discovery Screen will offer the opportunity to check out some of the films that have already been screened and perhaps missed, but it will really be a case of juggling these with the likes of The Dead, Bedevilled and Red White & Blue in the Main before settling in for the UK premiere of the Eli Roth produced The Last Excorcism, with the one and only 'Bear Jew' in attendance to take questions from the audience.

All in all, it promises to be a great finish to a fantastic five days of horror. Frightfest is now a well-established showcase event in the UK movie festival calendar and I am thrilled to be going for only the second time. Watch this space to get an exclusive insight into everything that goes down and which cinematic gems you'll need to keep those eyes peeled for!

Noel Mellor
Grimm Up North Online Marketing Co-ordinator

Blood Games

2010-07-05T03:53:00.000-07:00

Video games are big business. In the last ten years, the industry has grown up. Games receive Hollywood film budgets and make Hollywood film profits. Halo 3, GTA IV and Modern Warfare 2 are just three examples of releases that rival films in terms of profit and marketing hype.

Video games are also prime fodder for film adaptations. Just ask the devil himself Uwe Boll (pictured above) whose responsible for such ‘cinematic’ ‘gold’ as Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead and many, many, many more. But for every film by The Master of Error (thanks Imdb), there’s something like Silent Hill, which despite its flaws and Sean Bean’s ‘American’ accent, managed to capture the atmosphere of what makes the Silent Hill games so unnerving to play. Resident Evil is another good example. It blew the game’s fiction out of the water but it gave people what they wanted, lots of zombies in confined spaces and Michelle Rodriguez dying (can’t just be me!)

Now since this is Grimm I’ve tried to keep it topical and pick out a few horror films that would make excellent if not questionable video games.

My first pitch is for Final Destination the Video Game!
Imagine: Mouse Trap (the board game) and The Sims.

As the omnipotent Grim Reaper your mission is to kill people through increasingly bizarre and elaborate methods. Like The Sims, you’ll have a house and you have set up an array of domino-style ‘accidents’ that ultimately end up with someone getting killed in a humorous and gruesome way. Take the action outside and play with the freeway from Final Destination 2 or the theme park from 3. The fun never ends because you can never escape death!

Would you buy it? No? Then how about....

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Stylish Adventures of Leatherface.
Imagine: Being the most stylish serial killer in Texas!

Playing the often misunderstood titular hero and armed with a chainsaw, you travel around Texas looking for people to chop up. The aim of the game is not to cause terror and bloodshed but to collect peoples’ faces to graft together the best human mask possible. Go online and share your mask with your friends. Use in the in-depth character customisation to create the most stylish Leatherface possible. Exclusive to the Wii and compatible with Wii Motion Plus for 1:1 chainsaw precision!

I have presented two terrible ideas for video games but my final idea is actually something tangible, something I could see working.

The Descent: The Video Game
Imagine: Resident Evil meets Alan Wake.

Survival horror at its best. Dive head first into the claustrophobic, dark and ominous caves of the Appalachian Mountains. Armed with only a pickaxe and a flare you have to navigate caves and escape from the vicious and deadly crawlers.

Now I’m no Uwe Boll but I could see some of those ideas working, or is it just me?

JD Douglas-Walton
www.grimmfest.com

Introduction to Destruction

2010-07-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

Dearest undead, bloodthirsty, deranged and alike, I’m Josh, the new guy.

I’ve been summoned from the unholy depths of grammatical hell to provide my two fleshy cents on Grimm. Despite Grimm’s roaring success last year, I imagine there’ll be many Grimm virgins out there, such pure vessels that have yet to be soiled by Manchester’s one and only horror film festival. So I’m taking it upon myself to give you a little background and tell you what Grimm is all about and what you can expect.
It begins with a question.....

What is “Grimm”?
Grimm is an autonomous, self aware machine.
Grimm is a blood thirsty beast whose hunger will never be satisfied.
Grimm is the creaking floorboard the heavy breathing down the back of your neck and yes we’re right behind you!

Grimm Up North 2 promises to be more even more grotesque, more heart pounding and more terrifying than last year. This isn’t Jaws: The Revenge or a direct to DVD sequel. Grimm 2 is a blockbuster built from the Tarantino School of Excess™.

Leading up to the festival proper we’ll be delivering you breaking film news and previews, all in preparation for this Halloween where Grimm will bring you the best blood soaked premieres from local filmmakers to international gems. On top of that we’ll have a smattering of special guests, Q + As from leading industry professionals, live events and previews of the gaming industry’s latest and greatest.
Gallons of blood are being poured into providing you with the very best coverage of the only horror and sci-fi festival that can satisfy your unrelenting taste for flesh. There’ll be blogs, podcasts, and videos and of course the film set to take the horror world by storm, Splintered.

If you prefer to join our horde of undead followers then Twitter, Facebook and our newsletter will surely suffice.

Keep your eyeballs peeled and remember: evil never dies, the blood can never be washed away and you can never, never escape.

JD Douglas-Walton
www.grimfest.com

Lets get horror back on telly! A letter to the BBC.

2010-06-26T05:48:00.000-07:00

Hello Grimm Folks!

Today I noticed a tweet from @cyberschizoid regarding a campaign to get classic horror double bills back on the BBC. I was genuinely enthused at the idea of seeing some legendary and some pretty much forgotten movies on national TV and astounded at the blog post that showed how things used to be.

I would encourage you all to take a moment to sign the petition and/or get onboard the Facebook campaign - come on folks, this is actually worth doing!

Oh, and if you can't be bothered, you can always cut and paste the email I sent below to Points Of View and The Radio Times, I have also noted down the addresses for you!

To: pov@bbc.co.uk; radio.times@bbc.co.uk

Hello BBC,

My attention has been directed towards a campaign which I believe is very worthwhile and is being spearheaded online with a petition and twitter campaign.

As you will see, this relates to bringing classic horror movies from the likes of Hammer and Amicus back to the beeb - something I feel could be hugely beneficial for people who have never had the chance to revel in this part of our national cultural heritage.

Obviously, I realise taking over BBC 1 or 2 late on a Saturday night is way beyond impossible, but I seriously think (even if its just a season) horror double bills would be a great addition to, say, BBC 4 on a late evening slot.

I am a licence fee payer who feels that there is currently nothing for me on your weekend primetime schedules. I have no interest in ballroom dancing, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Dr Who or Casualty/Holby, but I don't feel the need to complain about this as they are all part of a broad remit that I understand you have to serve - and the truth is they are all bloody popular.

However, I do feel that a part of our British cinematic culture has been allowed to fall off the face of the planet and in a world where "horror" has become less theatrical and engaging, it would be great to educate the "SAW" generation that there is much more to the genre than just heads being chopped off.

I hope this campaign - and indeed my email - gets the attention it deserves, please consider reinstating this great slice of British history to the place it truly deserves.

Noel Mellor
www.grimmfest.com

Grimm Up North 2 - We're back!!

2010-06-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

After a fantastic first year, the Grimm Up North! team have reconvened and as previously announced are currently mad busy putting together a bigger, better, scarier festival for 2010!

At the moment the crew are trawling through screeners of some of the latest and most exciting horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies to make sure we bring you the absolute cream of the crop when Grimmfest 2010 arrives in Manchester this Halloween.

In addition to all this, we will be amping up the ways in which you can interact with us and plan a number of things designed to give you more to read, watch and listen to both during, before and after the event itself.

This means more Podcasts and opportunities to connect and win through our Email, Facebook and Twitter channels. But for the first time we will also be introducing Video Podcasts, available on our YouTube Channel and a blog where you will be able to keep up with what some of the festival organisers are watching (which may include some clues as to what will be playing at the festival!!)

So, if you want to keep up with all this, the blog posts will soon start appearing here with some entries from your own 'Brothers Grimm' Simeon Halligan, Steve Balshaw and me, Noel Mellor - watch this space!!!

Noel Mellor