The 9th Fantastic Film Weekend

Members of the Leeds Savage Club, Hannah Bisson and Peter Etherington, review the horror and sci-fi weekend at Bradford’s National Media Museum.

A draught droned through the crack in the door. Looking through, all I could see was black. Something lurked within. And this was just the toilets under the Pictureville screen of Bradford’s National Media Museum. Pushing through the door, the lights came on and crappy pop music began to play. The illusion was dispelled. Nothing lurked inside except urinals.

We were at the museum’s 9th Fantastic Film Festival. It ran 4th – 6th June, a varied celebration of horror, fantasy and sci-fi films. Plus special guests from the creepier niches of the movie and TV world, like film-makers Stanley A. Long and Michael Armstrong, along with Jeremy Dyson, best known for The League of Gentlemen, and one of the festival’s patrons.

PE: We’d picked nine films and two TV screenings to watch. We weren’t sure if we’d make it through all the horror. I feared my mind would be zombie-gnawed mush by Sunday.

Disappointingly, we failed to attend any of the guest talks. I was looking forward to hear Jeremy Dyson discuss how to write a horror story. I had to make do with buying his books of short stories, The Cranes That Build the Cranes.

HB: So, arriving on the Friday night and after a good introduction by Tony Earnshaw, Artistic Director of the FFW, we were hoping for something stimulating and exciting to kick off our weekend.  What we got, in the form of Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General (dir. Michael Reeves, 1968), was definitely not this.

Set in Cromwell’s Britain and based on truth, Witchfinder General turned out to be a comedic mix of swashbuckling and torture, interspersed with the equestrian equivalent of car chases.  The Witchfinder General himself, Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price), is an expressionless, sinister character who has a penchant for taking advantage of young witches before he executes them.  How lovely of him.  His stereotypical brute of an accomplice was suitably vulgar and both come to a bloody end at the hands of the hero, Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy).  However, the constant ‘catalogue man’ poses that Hopkins and Marshall strike seem to soften whatever horrific forms of torture the Witchfinder performs.  The ending is fittingly bloody and, although I’m sure that back in its time it shocked the audience, for me, it was all just a bit too tame.  Oh, and the fake blood was hilariously bad.  Tomato purée, anyone?

PE: The second film was Zone of the Dead: Director’s Cut (dirs. Milan Todorovic, Milan Konjevic, 2009), the world’s first Serbian zombie film. Its director of photography, Steve Brooke Smith, popped along for a short interview before the film. He’s worked as a camera operator on Eyes Wide Shut (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and an effects cameraman on Harry Potter films and Band of Brothers, among other things. You’d think if he worked on Zone of the Dead, that too might be pretty good…

After the country’s recent wars, I can imagine Serbs want some fantasy violence for a change. It’s just a shame this film is so bloody awful. I know it’s a zombie film, and zombie films aren’t known for subtlety, but Christ… this was low budget with a capital LOW. Nothing wrong with that, but you’d hope the film-makers would be forced into inventiveness to make up for it. Nope. Laughable script, shocking acting, vacuous plot. The only saving graces were Ken Foree, who was in proper horror films once (Dawn of the Dead and From Beyond). And the zombie make-up was pretty good. And there were lots of guns at the end. But it was nothing you’ve never seen before. Sigh.

Saturday began with the revelation of the festival – Three Cases of Murder (dirs. George More O’Ferrall, David Eady, Wendy Toye, 1955). Three different stories in one film, each one with a different director. And each one introduced by Eamonn Holmes. How unusual. The first story – In the Picture – was brilliant. In a picture gallery, the glass of a landscape smashes and a man appears. He meets the assistant curator, Mr Jarvis, and befriends him, taking a strange interest in his matches. Then… well… I could say, but it’s better if you just watch it. The other two stories are also good, especially the last one starring Orson Welles with his dulcet tones and charismatic performance as Lord Mountdrago. Overall, this film’s got it all – ingenious ideas, engaging characters, wit, humour, excellent acting, a clever plot, spookiness, effective music, originality… even impressive effects (for 1955). There should be more of this type of thing! More, I say!

HB: What we were to experience next was a completely different beast.  Taken from the museum’s own archives, we were presented with the surreal animation of Faust (dir. Jan Svankmajer, 1994).  This film is a wonderful blend of live-action and stop-motion storytelling based on the legend of Doktor Faustus, a man who sells his soul to the devil.  It is jam-packed with dark images including sinister life-sized puppets, a creepy clay baby that ages into a skeleton and a man who prizes the legs of car crash victims.  The sound effects are artistically exaggerated and mid-film there is a cacophony of noise that will have you reaching for the aspirin.

It was challenging, to say the least, and by the end of it, my head felt like it had had a door slammed against it repeatedly.  Yet, despite this sensation of total discombobulation, I loved it.  It is thought-provoking and disturbing; beautiful and bizarre.  It really is a work of art and a dream-like piece that you will never forget.

PE: The evening brought on the double bill of 28 Days Later… (dir. Danny Boyle, 2002) and 28 Weeks Later (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007). More zombie films, and streets ahead of Zone of the Dead, and not just because of the larger budgets and proper actors.

In 28 Days Later… the entire UK population become infected with a rage virus that turns them into homicidal blood-puking maniacs, making them pretty good at infecting other people. By the time the hero Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up from a brain operation, he finds himself wandering about an evacuated London. Empty cities in films are always good. Apart from in I Am Legend which is rubbish.

Anyway… this treats a zombie-type apocalypse with as much realism as a zombie apocalypse can support. The hero grieves for his dead parents, he has dreams about being left alone, all he can find to eat is sweets and cans of pop from newsagents, and there’s no sentimentality when someone gets infected. They’re killed as soon as it happens. Wallop. A good film with some good jumpy bits and believability. And some good eye-gouging to boot.

HB: After a quick trip to the bar to procure some bottles of Landlord, we settled down to watch the sequel 28 Weeks Later.  It picks up six months after the original outbreak of the virus where we find that London has been declared virus-free.  However the wife of Don (Robert Carlyle) re-emerges from hiding and inadvertently re-ignites the spread of the virus.

The first of this double-bill tends to be looked upon as the better of the two, but I thought 28 Weeks Later was a credible sequel.   It has some deliciously squeamish bits with more eye-gouging, as in the first film, and there are some particularly heart-stopping moments in the scenes in the Underground.   It is fast-paced, has a powerful yet haunting soundtrack and the fear factor is certainly there – I admit to jumping a couple of times, the wuss that I am.  It’s not a perfect film and there are a few implausible bits in it but then this is a zombie film, after all.  When was the last time you saw one walking down the street?!

PE: Sunday began, as all good Sundays should, with murder and insanity, when we watched Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). I’ve seen it before, like almost everyone else, but it was still enjoyable, and it was fun to compare it with Three Cases of Murder which was made five years before. Hitchcock’s film was so much more shocking and violent than Three Cases, so although by today’s standards it’s pretty tame, it was easier to see how it would have been a bit of a jolt to the audience of 1960. And the six minute Psycho trailer, presented by Hitchcock, was a little masterpiece in its own right, with the portly Englishman taking the audience on a tour of the Bates motel and alluding to horrible murders, teasing us with titbits of information and doing comic sinister looks to camera. A Hitchcock box set for myself is overdue, I think.

HB: Feeling suitably disturbed, we took a breather from madmen and mayhem and scurried up to the TV Heaven screen to view the first episode of Children of the Stones (dir. Peter Graham Scott, 1977).  This is a children’s television drama produced by HTV West and is about an astrophysicist and his son after they move to the small village of Milbury.  The village is built in the midst of a megalithic stone circle and the stones, naturally, have weird psychic powers.  People can’t leave the village and the super-intelligent ‘affected’ say “Happy Day”, all day, to each other.

I know this is a series for kids, and perhaps after a few more episodes I might have got into it, but the truly atrocious acting, especially by the father, Adam (Gareth Thomas of Blake’s 7 fame), was a big turn-off.  The best bits were the deeply unsettling choral vocalizations and the ending to the episode.  Adam touches one of the stones willingly, but when he does, he hears ancient voices and sees strange visions just before a strong surge throws him into the air.  Oops, sorry for the spoiler there!

PE: On Sunday afternoon we watched four Spooky Animations from Channel 4 in the TV Heaven screening room. The first was The Sandman (dir. Paul Berry, 1991), which used model animation. It was weird and nightmarish, with a gaunt, haunted-looking mother and son in a big, dark house. The boy was sent to bed, and the journey up the stairs hearkened back convincingly to the time when night-time, even in your own house, could be scary for a youngster. But what happened next was even darker, with the moon-faced Sandman stalking the boy and eventually doing something really rather gory. The kind of thing E.T.A. Hoffman’s Der Sandmann would do, an evil version of the normally benevolent bringer of sleep. It was unsettling but beautifully well done.

HB: Next up was Not Without My Handbag (dir. Boris Kossmehl, 1993).  This 12 minute film made by the acclaimed Aardmann Studios, is a brilliantly executed short.  The plot revolves around a little girl and her auntie who is sent to Hell for failing to keep up the repayments on her washing-machine, as specified in the small print in her contract.  It is humorous, slightly weird and very witty.  An unexpected treat and a pleasure to watch.

PE: The third animation was The Grotlyn (dir. Benji Davies, 2005), a kind of reverse Murders in the Rue Morgue. It used drawn animation and moving cut-outs to portray a spooky world where terrible events were taking place in a city. An atmospheric poem accompanied the images, describing the dark deeds that were taking place, only to have the troubling mood completely changed at the end. Good stuff.

HB: The final Spooky Animation ended our time in TV Heaven with a bang.  How to Cope with Death (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2002), is a four minute piece where an old hag dozing in her chair is visited by a flying and feathered Death, carrying the biggest scythe you have ever seen.  As he goes to kill her, she leaps up, strips off all her clothes except her undies and, with fists a-flying, beats him up.  The scene ends with her smashing a chair over his head.  It is a punchy, quirky little piece that is surprisingly violent but incredibly funny.  Loved it!

Faust apart, our penultimate film of the weekend, Videodrome (dir. David Cronenberg, 1982), gets the award for Film Most Likely To Mash Your Head In. Cronenberg (whose other films include Crash,  The Fly, and Dead Ringers) shows what happens when the owner of a TV channel, Max Renn (James Woods), on the quest for new material of the ‘exotic’ sort, becomes obsessed by a pirate broadcast he comes across.

The film is unbelievably confusing at times, switching between Max’s hallucinations and reality.  Although it starts with a plausible chain of events, it soon turns into the darkest of sci-fi horrors.  It has squishy, pulsating video tapes which are inserted into Max’s belly as if he was a Blockbusters letterbox, a gun-cum-hand dribbling goo, and a certain amount of sadomasochism.  Quite an assortment!  It’s scary, compelling and sick but, for all this, weirdly beautiful.  Surrealism, sex, violence and horror all blending together to make a masterpiece.   A memorable film which has had me puzzling over it ever since.

PE: The last film we saw was the savage comic book brilliance of Robocop (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1987). It’s still breathtakingly violent, despite being more than twenty years old, and retains its reckless, entertaining feel –  you can imagine the makers thinking, “Let’s just put in as much blood, swearing, and aggression as we fucking feel like. And cool robots.” But it’s also a biting satire of unfettered capitalism, with the corrupt businessmen acting as savagely as the criminals to make their money and fix things to suit themselves. At the end of the film, when Robocop remembers who he is and says his name is Murphy, the audience broke into applause. Can’t remember the last time that happened at the pictures. It was a great end to a great weekend of weirdness.

Seeing all these very different films in such a short space of time provided a fabulous opportunity to compare them. It doesn’t really matter what the budget is, or what special effects you have. It’s the script, the acting, the characters that matter. Obvious, I suppose, but reinforced by this festival. The older films such as Three Cases of Murder and Psycho were unable to have incredible special effects, so they rely more on wit and performance. Modern films can be far more convincing and intense and are technically superior to the older films. And, as such, they don’t have to rely so much on a good script – the realism of the visuals is what it’s about a lot of the time. Avatar (dir. James Cameron, 2009)  – shown at the festival – epitomises the modern film, with breathtaking special effects but an uninspired script. If you could merge contemporary effects with the charm of Three Cases, you’d be onto a winner. Someone should bring back Hitchcock as a zombie.

Peter Etherington’s fiction blog is at mainlyfiction.blogspot.com. His blog is mainlylowbrow.blogspot.com.

Hannah Bisson’s work can be found at moxie-mouth.blogspot.com.

Visit The Leeds Savage Club.