MINI MONSTER FEST MAKING BIG NOISE WITH WEEKENDER LINE-UP

Monster Fest is bouncing back from two years of COVID disruptions with a national screening program called ‘Monster Fest Weekender’. The three-day program, which acknowledges the loyal and hungry horror fanbase that have supported Monster Fest through good times and bad, includes new works from such genre greats as Dario Argento and Phil Tippett as well as the World Premiere of remastered Stephen King anthology.

Monster Fest Weekender has wrapped in Melbourne, where Cinema Nova hosted the Australian Premiere of Argento’s Dark Glasses as the opening night attraction. The next wave of Weekender dates are May 13-15, at Event Cinema sites in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Sydney. The following week sees the New Zealand debut of the Monster Fest brand, with 'Weekender' playing in Auckland from May 20-22.

Opening the Australia-wide and NZ legs will be Mad God (pictured, top), a nightmarish vision featuring insane scientists and pig warriors crafted to cinematic perfection by stop-motion animation legend, Phil Tippett. This dazzlingly dark work represents a decades-long obsession for Tippett, who began the film in the late ‘80s only to shelve it when CGI effects became dominant. Urged on by fan and industry support, he finally completed Mad God a whopping 35 years later and has spent much of the past year touring it around the international horror festival circuit to enormous acclaim.

Two of the most talked-about horror entries of 2022 will screen for Australian audiences for the first time. The feature debut of director Kate Dolan, You Are Not My Mother (pictured, above right) is a Dublin-set supernatural chiller in which a daughter (the terrific Hazel Doupe) begins to doubt whether the return of her mother (Carolyn Bracken) in the days before Halloween is such a good thing. And Finnish director Hannah Bergholm’s first film Hatching, one of the breakout hits of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, follows a young girl’s obsession with an egg that grows to dangerously foreboding dimensions.

Documentaries are afforded a high profile in the Weender title roster. Filmmakers John Campopiano and Chris Griffiths dive deep into the making of the landmark 1990 TV mini-series with Pennywise: The Story of It, honouring a small-screen production that defined horror for a generation of fans when they were exposed to the author’s sewer-dwelling clown-faced entity. Director Mike Schiff draws a direct line between horror films and heavy metal music with his rousing analysis, The History of Metal and Horror, featuring such fan favourites as actor Michael Berryman, muso Alice Cooper and crossover artist Rob Zombie.

Genre history is recounted with the screening of two highly-anticipated retrospective titles. From 1985, the Stephen King-penned anthology work Cat’s Eye has been afforded a 4K remaster courtesy of Studio Canal and will World Premiere on the big screen for Australian audiences. Featuring Drew Barrymore, Candy Clark and James Woods, it was an underperformer upon its initial release, but the Lewis Teague-directed film has developed a legitimate cult following in recent years.

And ‘80s C-grade action is afforded some fresh love and appreciation with the screening of the so-bad-it’s-great opus Miami Connection (1987), an all-but-forgotten schlockbuster from director Woo-sang Park and starring…well, nobody really. Rediscovered in recent years by the team at the Alamo Drafthouse, the plot follows, “a kick-arse rock band, whose members also happen to be martial arts masters, [who] decide to take on Miami’s seedy underbelly.”

Ticketing and session details for the MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER program can be found at the festival’s Official Website and via the Event Cinema page.