DARK NIGHTS FILM FEST ANNOUNCES INAUGURAL JURY MEMBERS

Australia’s new horror and dark genre film event, Dark Nights Film Fest has revealed the esteemed jurors onboard for its first three-day event, to be held at the iconic Randwick Ritz cinema from October 11-13.

The festival is calling for submissions from emerging and established Australian and international filmmakers and screenwriters to help the organisers celebrate the best new independent visions from the more tenebrous corners of cinema.

Feature film judges include rising Latino filmmaker Gigi Saul Guerrero, whose short El Gigante led to a first-look deal with Hollywood horror studio Blumhouse; Australian director Andrew Traucki (pictured, right), whose creature features Black Water and The Reef have garnered critical and commercial success globally; and, prolific U.S. producer and documentarian Sylvia Caminer, whose debut narrative feature Follow Her won Best Film honours at the prestigious Fantasporto festival in 2022.

Short film judges are Natalie Richards, the founder and director of Australian youth horror festival Bloodfest; horror expert and genre academic Dr. Tara Lomax; and movie freak-geek, cinephile and podcaster, Adam Lovett.

Tackling the unproduced screenplays are script guru Anthony Egan, whose work includes such genre pics as Needle, Crush, Wanted, The Devil’s Work, Mortal Fools, and Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau;, author and commentator Emma Westwood, co-host on Triple R's weekly Plato's Cave radio show and author of books that examine David Cronenberg's The Fly, John Frankenheimer's Seconds and James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein; and, Dr. Adam Daniel, a filmmaker and Associate Lecturer in Communication at Western Sydney University.

The winning feature film and short film screenwriters in the unproduced screenplay competition will be given the opportunity to be mentored by Robbie Miles, an internationally experienced producer and development executive, and an AFTRS alumnus. 

“We want audiences to immerse themselves in an atmosphere that redefines and pushes boundaries and leads them into new, unknown or lesser-known territory. Not just visceral horror, but psychological thrills, dark fantasy, cosmic dread, neo-noir, other kinds of dark genre vibes,” states Dark Nights’ festival director Bryn Tilly (pictured, left).

PREVIEW: 2023 A NIGHT OF HORROR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Australia’s longest running showcase of horror and dark genre cinema, A Night of Horror International Film Festival (ANOH) is back for its 15th year, with a typically frightening program. From 28th September to 1st October, the Festival will take over Dendy Cinemas Newtown, screening the very best in freaky, macabre and spine-chilling films from around the globe.

ANOH will present a total of ten features and 31 short films, hailing from different corners of the world, including Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Spain, Austria, Lithuania, Brazil, Switzerland, France, Denmark, India, and New Zealand.

“The calibre, ingenuity, and range of submissions this year truly surpassed all expectations. We were astounded by the exceptional talent and diversity on display, making the selection process a both challenging and exhilarating journey,” said Festival Director, Bryn Tilly.

“This year’s final line-up has films from all shades of the horror spectrum, and, as one would expect post- pandemic, many of them deal with grief and trauma, each promising to send shivers down your spine, immersing you in delightfully bizarre worlds and blood-curdling nightmares.”

Opening Night Thursday 28 September will see the world premiere of The Devil’s Work, the third instalment in Ursula Dabrowsky’s award-winning Demon Trilogy (Family Demons, Inner Demons). All three films stand alone, yet share similar themes of survival, revenge, and the loss of innocence.

Sydneysider Jack Dignan follows his 2022 ANOH award-winning debut feature After She Died with Puzzle Box, a riveting and deeply unsettling found footage purgatory tackling addiction and psychological trauma. Marie Alice Wolfszahn’s Austrian Mother Superior (pictured, right), winner of Best Film & Best Director at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2022, is a unique delve into witchcraft and folk horror.

The Festival’s much-loved signature event, the Australian Shorts Gala, will feature nine of the very best short-film shockers from these shores. The International Shorts Showcase will take place Sunday 1 October, showcasing a selection of the creepiest, freakiest new short films from around the world.

Other features include Sarah Tice’s feature film debut DID I?, a whip-smart, giallo-inspired study of alter personalities and the effects of trauma on the mind, body, and soul; Gareth Carr & David Sullivan’s Saving Grace, winner of Best Horror Feature at Washington DC International Cinema Festival 2023 and Liverpool Indie Awards 2023, a psychological thriller featuring a fierce, compelling performance from rising Aussie star Kirsty McKenzie; and, Nicholas Tomnay’s spellbinding neo-noir thriller What You Wish For, a morality tale roasting greed, told with crisp efficiency, laced with the sharp smack of horror.

Jonas Trukanas’s Pensive (pictured, top), a slasher flick screened in Lithuanian language with English subtitles, tackles social responsibility and identity roles in a very contemporary vein; The Coffee Table by Spanish Director Caye Casa is a pitch-black comedy that balances farce, melodrama, tragedy and absurdism and Winner of Best Film at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival; and, Chris Cronin’s The Moor presents a creeping tale of guilt that pushes the boundaries of folk horror and found footage format into Lovecraftian territory.

Closing out the festival is Steven John Mihaljevich’s Violett (pictured, right), a surreal exploration of trauma, abject grief, and destructive self-preservation, constructed like a poetic puzzle.

A Night of Horror International Film Festival will run 28th September to 1st October 2023 at Dendy Cinemas, 261-263 King St, Newtown. DETAILS HERE.

MONSTER FEST ADDS NEW DIMENSION FOR HORROR FANS WITH 2023 WEEKENDER LINE-UP

Following the success of last May’s inaugural MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER, the Monster Fest team have announced the return of the three-day mini-festival to Cinema Nova in Melbourne from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th of July.

For the very first-time in Monster Fest history, the program will be completely composed of retrospective films, each one presented in head-spinning 3D, from all-time classics to unsung genre greats, spanning decades of horror cinema. Several films in the line-up will be making their Australian big screen debuts.

Once the celebration wraps in Melbourne, the MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER 3D hits the road to interstate EVENT Cinema venues in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th of July. 

Despite having performed strongly at the U.S. box office, 2013’s TEXAS CHAINSAW was passed over for cinema release in Australia, providing Monster Fest with the opportunity to boast Theatrical Premiere rights on the film’s 10th anniversary. Director John Luessenhop foresaw the star power of Alexandra Daddario (pictured, right) and Scott Eastwood, casting them in early career roles, helping the film to a solid $50million global gross and re-energising the franchise.

In what could arguably be considered to be the last great sequel to 1979’s The Amityville Horror, Monster Fest will present a 40th Anniversary Screening of Richard Fleischer‘s AMITYVILLE 3-D. Along with its practical effects and eye-popping visuals, this installment in the franchise is notable for featuring America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan in an early role.

Director André De Toth’s evergreen classic HOUSE OF WAX (pictured, left) will celebrate its 70th Anniversary at the Weekender screenings. One of the first studio-produced 3D colour features, it stars Vincent Price as the malevolent and memorable Professor Henry Jarrod.

Penned by Todd Farmer (Jason X) and directed by Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry), MY BLOODY VALENTINE is one of the rare remakes that not only stands tall with its predecessor (which suffered terribly under the censor’s knife upon release) but gives you more of what you want, now with epic gore and in glorious 3D.

Lavishly bathed in garish viscera, Andy Warhol‘s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (pictured, right), written and directed by Paul Morrissey, is an undisputed classic of cult cinema and returns for its 50th Anniversary, restored in 4K and presented in 3D.

Lensed by Gerald Feil, the cinematographer responsible for Friday the 13th part III 3D, the 1984 slasher SILENT MADNESS remains somewhat obscure locally as it suffered distribution woes and ultimately landed direct-to-video in the late-eighties. Monster Fest will present the film for the first-time on Australian cinemas screens, in a 4K restoration and as intended in 3D.

MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER 3D screens July 7-9 at Cinema Nova in Melbourne, then July 14-16 at EVENT Cinemas George Street (NSW), Innaloo (WA), Marion (SA) and Brisbane Myer Centre (Qld). Session and ticket details can be found via the Monster Fest website. 

2023 BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL: PREVIEW

The 23nd annual Boston Underground Film Festival (BUFF) returns to Harvard Square’s arthouse hub The Brattle Theatre with five days of vanguard cinemania from March 22-26. This year’s lineup is stacked with fearsome folk horror, mendacious miscreants, godless god-complexes, eco-chillers, sensational sci-fi, and all manner of midnight madness.

BUFF will host the World Premiere of the Massachusetts-based horror thriller The Unheard (pictured, below) for a homecoming heroes’ welcome on Opening Night. Starring Lachlan Watson, director Jeffrey A. Brown’s haunting feature follows a deaf young woman ensconced in a signal-to-noise mystery of dueling truths and realities. Brown (The Beach House, 2019) and local screenwriters Michael and Shawn Rassmussen (Crawl, 2019) will attend a post-screening Q&A.

Fresh off its world premiere at Sundance, Eddie Alcazar’s retro-sci-fi, singularly WTF masterpiece Divinity (pictured, top) will have its U.S. East Coast premiere at BUFF. Starring Stephen Dorff, Scott Bakula, Bella Thorne, and produced by Steven Soderbergh, this deranged, drug-addled, dystopian vision, where beauty and grotesquery abound, is 100% uncompromising underground cinema.

Also fresh from a SXSW debut is writer/director Bomani J. Story’s The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster. Teen science genius Vicaria (The Equalizer’s Laya DeLeon Hayes) plays god when she embarks on a quest to find the cure for death; a disease, she theorizes, versus an inevitability. Breathing new life into Frankenstein’s monster, Story’s electric feature debut challenges conceptions of mortality and monstrosity through a Black lens.

BUFF will present a double-dose of international folk horror with both Tereza Nvotová’s Nightsiren (pictured, below), which examines the chokehold grip of toxic patriarchal structures on a remote Slovakian village, and mark Jenkin’s sumptuous cinematic stunner Enys Men, which follows the sole inhabitant of a craggy Cornish island’s descent into madness. 

Other BUFF highlights include Daniel Goldhaber’s high-stakes, heist-style thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline, the story of young environmental activists and their mission to sabotage a Texas pipeline; Quentin Dupieux’s French dark comedy/quasi-horror superhero sendup Smoking Causes Coughing; Kristoffer Borgli’s Scandinavian unromantic comedy Sick of Myself, which takes toxic relationships to the next level..

Off-kilter factual filmmaking is repped by Kiwi journalist David Farrier’s Mister Organ, a chronicle of his encounters with multi-hyphenate scammer Michael Organ, an extortionary, mercenary antique shop parking lot enforcer with a wild history of false identities and insane lawsuits, and Ryan Worsley’s latest Stand By for Failure: A Documentary About Negativland a history of the culture jamming, plunderphonic prophets.

BUFF’s commitment to the beautifully weird and otherworldly continues with Berlin-based visual artist Ann Oren’s sensuous debut Piaffe, which follows the story of Eva (The Untamed’s Simone Bucio), an introvert who discovers the joys of foreplay and horseplay when she starts growing a tail. Equally allegorical and hypnotizing is Ryan Stevens Harris’ gorgeously photographed Moon Garden, which follows a comatose child on a dark Gilliamesque odyssey back to consciousness. 

BUFF’s 2023 program teems with the topical themes of families in crisis, most notably the inclusion of Kirby McClure’s atmospheric debut Spaghetti Junction (pictured, right), a deft blend of sci-fi, fantasy, and social realism in a tale of a Southern family grappling with life after a devastating loss. 

To close out the festival, BUFF will screen Belgian directing duo Adil & Bilall’s personal and challenging feature, Rebel. Known for the recently-shelved Batgirl production, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah’s poignant, and bold melange of action, drama, and musical centres around a Muslim family caught in the crosshairs of jihadist radicalism. Having premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, the film earned waves of critical support; Cineuropa called it a, “fascinating work [that] proves why it's essential for cinema to have a diverse range of voices,” while Slashfilm said the film is, “An emotional gut punch.”

THE BOSTON UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVALOfficial Program details and ticketing information can be found here.

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.