The FrightFest All-nighter

Back in August I attended FrightFest at London’s Odeon West End and had a great time. However there were some upcoming horror flicks that I dearly wanted to see but the festival organisers were unable to acquire, one such film being George Romero’s Diary of the Dead. So when the line-up for the FrightFest all-nighter at the ICA was announced and not only was Diary kicking off the event but the great man himself was going to be there, attending was something of a no-brainer.

So on Friday Dan (of Is There Food) and I took the train to London, wondering if we’d survive until morning. With five films spread across ten hours (starting at 9pm) this was going to be even more of an endurance test than the full festival. Still the films promised to be worthy of the effort, alongside Romero’s latest was Robert Rodriguez’s half of the Grindhouse project, Planet Terror, Savage Streets starring Linda Blair and a couple of French goesfests - Frontiere(s) and Inside.

We arrived a little after 9pm (sadly missing out on Mr Romero’s signing session) to find the place full. We quickly made our way to two of the few remaining seats and almost as soon as we sat down things got underway.

George Romero is the godfather of the modern zombie movie. How many people can lay claim to have reinvented a classic monster so successfully that it’s overshadowed what came before? When I think zombie, it’s George’s flesh eating walking dead that come to mind first, not some dusty old voodoo zombie, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Land of the Dead, Romero’s previous film, had been a disappointment but it was a disappointment because it was a Romero zombie movie not because it was a bad film. Had it been made by anyone else it would have been greeted more favourably but when your name is George Romero and you’ve made the three best zombie films ever committed to celluloid…well let’s just say expectations are higher than normal. With Diary of the Dead he’s gone back to his low budget roots, leaving the restrictions of Hollywood behind and in doing so he’s rediscovered his mojo.

Chronicling the exploits of a group of college film students (and one alcoholic professor) who try to make their way home to there families when the dead start to get up and walk, this is Night of the Living Dead for the modern world, a world obsessed with the media, where everyone has not only an opinion, but a platform to voice it on. How do you kill something that’s already dead? What happens if you get bitten? These are questions the protagonists have to discover the answers to, often the hard way and at great personal cost.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, as we get treated to one of the funniest characters ever to appear in a zombie film. Samuel is pure comedy gold but Romero doesn’t let him outstay his welcome. In fact he gets everything right, the effects are superb but the film never becomes an effects show, the young actors are a perfect ensemble cast with everyone getting time in the spotlight, and the films message isn’t heavy handed, coming as it does from the films basic concept.

Diary of the Dead is the film Zombie Diaries wanted to be, it’s a film that can hold it’s (severed) head up alongside Romero’s original Dead trilogy. Horror can be scary, gory fun and still make a point or two about modern society and Diary is the film that shows how to do it.

The Q&A after the film showed George to be a funny, self deprecating talker and the crowd gave him the welcome he deserved. I wish I hadn’t missed out on the pre-film signing, not just because it would have been nice to get something signed (I’d brought my copy of The Zombies that Ate Pittsburgh with me) but because I’d like to have shaken the guy’s hand and said thanks for entertaining us all these years.

Next up was Planet Terror; could Robert Rodriguez manage to keep me awake? The answer was yes, with a film packed full of explosions, blood and over the top violence how could anyone fall asleep? Planet Terror isn’t high art but it is cheesy fun of the highest order.

The cast all got into the spirit of the z grade style the film was aiming for. Rose McGowan was an obvious standout but for me Josh Brolin steals the film as the barking mad Dr William Block. Brolin gets better with every film and really should be a big name by now; hopefully the Coen’s No Country for Old Men will see him move into the big time.

Well with Planet Terror we’d had imitation Grindhouse but with Savage Streets we got a taste of the real thing. Before the event I though this would be the film I’d have trouble staying awake through most but thanks to a cup of black coffee and a Yorkie bar I was probably more awake than at any other time during the night.

I don’t think I’ve laughed so much at a bad film since…well since I watched Ultraviolet a couple of weeks ago. Bad dialogue, an ‘80s soft rock soundtrack, some of the most well developed high school students you’re ever likely to see and John Vernon playing the school principle as if he’s in Animal House 2, what more could you want? I was half expecting Vernon to say “The time has come for someone to put his foot down. And that foot is me” at one point.

Setting the scene for Savage Streets was Trailer Trash, a collecting of trailers for some very bad films (although I like C.H.U.D.). Pick of the bunch was Abby, a hysterical blaxploitation take on The Exorcist.

The first of the French films followed. “Oh god, subtitles at 4am!” thought I, but in fact they helped keep me awake. Having to read meant having to concentrate more and that kept my mind active (relatively speaking).

I’m not sure what to make of Frontiere(s). It started off like some kind of subversive action movie before heading into the country and introducing us to the most fucked up family since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In fact, imagine the family from Chainsaw only with Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man as the head of the cannibalistic clan and you’ll have some idea of what this hugely derivative film has to offer.

It’s short on original ideas and instead tries to outdo the likes of Haute Tension, Sheitan, Ils and The Ordeal in being relentlessly grim and explicitly violent. In that it succeeds but the French obsession with what’s been dubbed “torture porn” is getting a little old. Still at least they’re better at it than the Yanks and I’d be interested to see Frontiere(s) again when I’m a bit more alert as I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of socio-political message in there that my mind was too fuzzy to grasp.

I’d have said it was impossible to fall asleep watching the night’s final film, Inside, but for the fact that there was a gentleman at the back of the auditorium snoring loudly during some of the early scenes. It’s another grim film from France but instead of aping other movies, directors Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury have come up with something original and truly scary.

There isn’t much plot, pregnant woman terrorised in her house pretty much sums it up, but what they do with that basic idea stands as probably the most intense and horrific hour and a half I’ve ever spent in the cinema. There are shades of ‘70s Italian giallo, scenes that have a hint of Asian horror, and of course the graphic violence that is the trademark of the new wave of French horror, but it never overplays its influences like Frontiere(s) does.

Not only did I not have trouble staying awake, once it had finished I wondered if I would ever get that final nightmarish image out of my mind and be able to sleep again. It’s an image that would come back to haunt me a few days later when watching an episode of Nigel Neale’s ‘70s TV series Beasts, giving the somewhat dated TV production far more power to shock than it would otherwise have had.

Bustillo and Maury are currently working on the Hellraiser remake and for once this is an updated version that I really want to see. Let’s just hope they live up to their promise and don’t disappoint as Alexandre Aja did with his The Hills Have Eyes.

So that was it, we’d made it! Best film of the night? I’m torn really, Inside was without doubt the scariest but Diary of the Dead was definitely more fun and will no doubt be the one I watch more often when they come out on DVD. Here’s hoping the mooted Argento Three Mothers night comes off.

November 8th, 2007 Posted by Ian W | Rants & Raves | 2 comments