BLACK LAKE: THE K / XI INTERVIEW

Despite its old-school horror title, Black Lake is one of the most unique genre visions to emerge from the U.K. independent sector in many years. Inspired by an act of brutal sexual violence in South Delhi in 2012, it tells the story of an isolated artist who must cope with the presence of a Churail, a vengeful South Asian spirit. A work of both stunning beauty and chilling intensity, Black Lake is a remarkable achievement for writer/director/star K Pervaiz, aka K / XI, the London-based head of Bad Wolf Films, whose Pakistani heritage became central to the narrative. “I was personally invested in the film,” she told SCREEN-SPACE, ahead of her film’s World Premiere on the Women in Horror Film Festival…

SCREEN-SPACE: It has been a long journey to bring Black Lake to the screen. What has inspired you, kept you invested in the project?

K / XI: I wanted to bring a monster to the screen, one that I had not come across outside of Bollywood cinema. She appears as a beautiful seductress and killer of men, [with] long black hair, backwards feet and contorted limbs, which I have never seen on screen. I discovered a history of violence against women who did not conform to society and were raped, and or/murdered for it. These were the women that were said to come back as a Churail.

SCREEN-SPACE: The cyclical nature of violence against women is central to the story…

K / XI: My research tied in with the case of Jyoti Singh, a young woman who was coming back from the cinema on a bus and was brutally gang-raped, dying a few days later. This turned ‘Black Lake’ into a complex monster film, which not only deals with violence against women, but the cycle of violence which continues, often by the hands of the abused. Women in South-Asia rarely have an option to talk about the violence that they are subjected to. I wanted to be that voice, because at times in the past, I too had no voice. (Pictured, right and below; K / XI as Aarya in Black Lake)

SCREEN-SPACE: Why did exploring such themes within a genre/supernatural framework appeal to you? 

K / XI: What I love about horror is it can be used to call for social justice whilst also be enjoyed for being beautiful, artistic, entertaining. The violence of the Delhi bus crime affected me so deeply. I wanted to create a horror film that toned down on the violence and one was beautifully shot [but] unsettling at the same time. I wanted audiences to feel their heart racing in fear, but also not be able to look away. Attention is drawn to the ‘horror film’, but also challenges audiences to look beyond. The Churail in ‘Black Lake’ is a supernatural product of violence against women, and this origin story of sorts worked well with the themes of the film.

SCREEN-SPACE: In ‘Aarya’, you take on the complexities of an artist seeking inspiration, a woman of South Asian heritage and a family member struggling with the ties that bind…

K / XI: I have always been told to write what you know, and I am all those things. I had never seen anyone like me on screen so rather than focusing on differences, I wanted to capture everyday moments of my character Aarya, to make her relatable; eating cereal, drinking coffee, working out and watching a movie. ‘Black Lake’ relies on Aarya being a character that people can hopefully look up to because she is independent, strong willed, takes risks and doesn’t spook easily.

Aarya the artist had to be strong yet sensitive, to allow her to be open to experiences. The painting scenes were some of the toughest moments in terms of performance because they were wild, intimate and ritualistic. As audiences we so often see anger portrayed in films that deal with violence against women, and I really wanted to show the other side of that, which is reflection, understanding and transformation. (Pictured, above; K / XI, right, with co-producer Sei-Kai Leung) 

SCREEN-SPACE: You made the decision to reshoot much of the movie, a production that had already tapped you creatively and financially. Tell us about the struggle that lead to that moment...

K / XI: Black Lake was going to be shot entirely in Pakistan. When I got there, my cast and crew dropped out because they were terrified of the concept of the Churail. Spooky things had happened the last time I filmed there. I filmed a prologue in a village near Makhli Necropolis, where I had met a young beggar girl called Naseema (pictured, left). We started paying the villagers, but local authorities would turn up with guns and take the money, putting the villagers at risk. I decided to make do with the footage I had.

Back in London, I amended the script, put another team together and took the production to an isolated house in Scotland, but things did not go to plan. We lost our lead actress a month before the shoot. The cast and crew were not connected to the story; I was told by one crewmember that I wasn’t Hitchcock or Kubrick and that I should hurry things along. We got the whole film shot, entirely self-financed; I remember crying on the last day, alone by the lake, because a traumatic story now felt more painful. I edited the film, but all I felt was the negative energy.

I was in such a dark place. The story was too important to let go and needed nurturing. I made the tough decision to act the lead, despite being camera shy; after all, I knew Aarya better than anyone. I replaced the crew with people who were focused on seeing the film right through to the end.

SCREEN-SPACE: The music plays such an integral part of Black Lake. What direction did you give BurningTapes to achieve the beautiful soundscape? 

K / XI: I know exactly what I want, but I am always open to innovative ideas people bring. When I first sent the movie over to Darren [Page] of BurningTapes, I had music in place for key scenes to explain the emotions I wanted conveyed. We both loved certain horror movies, so when I would make a reference and say ‘I’d like more of that feeling’ or ‘more worms’, he would know what I meant. That was really special. I would listen to [their] score with my eyes closed and if my body responded, [with] a tear or if my hairs stood on end, I knew it was perfect. We released the score on limited edition vinyl a year ago and sold out in a day! It was important to me that people heard the sounds of the Churail before they saw the movie. That was my way of giving her a voice and allowing her to be heard. I could also finally sleep with the light off.

BLACK LAKE will have its World Premiere at Women in Horror Film Festival, Marietta, Georgia on February 28. Check the official event website for ticket and session information.

WIN COLOR OUT OF SPACE 'B1G1F' TICKETS!

(Australian Residents Only) With just a week to go before the Australian cinema release of director Richard Stanley's chilling sci-fi/horror vision, COLOR OUT OF SPACE, Screen-Space and Umbrella Entertainment are thrilled to give you the opportunity to WIN 1 of 10 ‘Buy 1 Get 1 Free’ passes to see the film during its exclusive theatrical season!

Based upon a short story by horror icon H.P. Lovecraft, COLOR OUT OF SPACE  won the Golden Monster awards for Best Film and Best Director at FANGORIA x MONSTER FEST PART VIII: MONSTER TAKES MELBOURNE and was the Closing Night feature at the FANGORIA x MONSTER 2019: MONSTER TAKES AUSTRALIA events in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth & Canberra.

COLOR OUT OF SPACE is the first feature to be directed by Stanley (Hardware, 1990; Dust Devil, 1992) in over two decades and features a suitably manic performance by cinematic titan Nicolas Cage (Mandy, 2018), matched in its ferocity by the extraordinary Joely Richardson (Red Sparrow, 2018).

A mesmerising mash-up of B-movie alien invasion thrills and trippy, psychedelic visuals, COLOR OUT OF SPACE is the story of The Gardners, a family who moves to a remote farmstead in rural New England to escape the hustle of the 21st century. They are busy adapting to their new life when a meteorite crashes into their front yard. The mysterious aerolite seems to melt into the earth, infecting both the land and the properties of space-time with a strange, otherworldly colour. To their horror, the Gardners discover that this alien force is gradually mutating every life form that it touches…including them.

For your chance to WIN, all you need to do is LIKE our FACEBOOK or TWITTER post and COMMENT under the post with your answer to, "My FAVOURITE Nicolas Cage move is..."

Buy 1 Get 1 Free Ticket requires the purchase of one ticket to enable the second ticket to be complimentary.

Entry details and conditions:
Competition closes at 11:59am AEDT Monday February 3rd 2020.
Open only to folks residing in Australia.
One entry per person.
Winners will be notified in the comments.
This is a game of creativity and skill.
Buy 1 Get 1 Free Ticket not valid on Saturdays after 5pm.
Buy 1 Get 1 Free Ticket not valid on Cinema Discount Days
Our Privacy Policy can be found here

For a full list of participating venues, click here.

COLOR OUT OF SPACE opens in Australian cinemas on February 6th.

CUT TO 20 YEARS LATER: AN ORAL HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA'S CULT SLASHER FILM

FANGORIA X MONSTER FEST 2019: In 1999, four young men set about resurrecting a neglected narrative within the Australian film industry – the horror film. They had little experience – for screenwriter Dave Warner, producer Martin Fabinyi, director Kimble Rendall, their collaboration represented each one’s feature film debut; composer Guy Gross had industry cred (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 1994; Blinky Bill, 1992), but he had never scored a horror film. Together, they conceived of a slasher film deconstruction, a teen splatter film set within a teen splatter film; the project would be called Cut, a pun riffing on the central themes of murder and movie-making, and it would star Molly Ringwald, Kylie Minogue and Jessica Napier.

Twenty years later, to celebrate Umbrella Entertainment’s 4K restoration of the film, the four men were brought together by Fangoria x Monster Fest | Sydney to revisit an ambitious, fascinating and wholly undervalued slice of Ozploitation cinema. For a Q&A hosted by Festival Director and SCREEN-SPACE’s Managing Editor Simon Foster, the team behind Cut recalled its conception, production and reception; an edited transcript of the evening reveals the passion and frustration it took to bring home-grown horror back to Australian screens… (pictured, above; from left, Fabinyi, Rendell, Gross and Warner)

Dave: We’d been working on a Mushroom Pictures documentary and Martin said to us at the Bayswater Brasserie one day, "I have been thinking we should do a horror film, because one of the things we have in Australia is young talent on shows like Neighbours and Home and Away." Kimble and I said, "Yeah, that is a great idea." It was just before Christmas. I didn't go away that year and in the six days of Christmas I wrote a script, and that started it. (pictured, right; Kylie Minogue as director Hilary Jacobs in Cut)

Martin: We worked on it fairly consistently together. I remember being in your office at Flat Rock on Bayswater Road, and we worked on it there with Kimble.

Kimble: We met at a Chinese restaurant and ended up in a cinema watching I Know What You Did Last Summer. At that time, there were no Australian horror movies. Even though there's a great history of making genre films here, going back to the days of 10BA, there was none of them being made. We thought we could do it low budget with some soapie stars. I'd worked with Kylie on a short film called Highway to Hell. Martin was at Mushroom, the home of Kylie. So it was, "Ok, we'll get Kylie in it".

Kimble: Originally, we were going to cast Daryl Hannah, and Martin went to Los Angeles, because apparently Daryl Hannah bought a horse every time she did a movie, so every movie was worth a horse or two.

Martin: She agreed to come out and do the movie, and so we started pre-production and we were halfway through and then she dropped out because her boyfriend told her it was bad karma to do a horror movie, or something like that.

Martin: Yeah, she was a very weird person. So Molly came on board and she was far, far better, and loved it. She loved the experience. (pictured, left; Molly Ringwald as actress Vanessa Turnbill in Cut)

Kimble: Molly was the biggest star in the world at one point, and everyone loves Molly. We approached her and she got the joke and the whole concept. We started in New South Wales and ended up filming in South Australia, and Kylie and Molly turned up and away we went.

Martin: We shot in July 1999, in the dead of winter and it was in the mountains in the Adelaide Hills, so it was particularly cold.

Dave: We had this foreign minister called Alexander Downer. He was famous for the photograph of him wearing silk stockings. That was the house that he grew up in. That was his family house. (pictured, right; Rendell, right, on the set of Cut)

Martin: So it already had a horror element to it (laughs).

Dave: Adelaide, as you know, is a great place to shoot a horror movie. Then we were lucky enough to get a great composer, in Guy.

Guy: I was another Mushroom staple, part of the Mushroom world. We hadn't worked together; we got thrust together. This was the days of old synths, of low budget, so it was a seven foot rack of synthesizers doing that orchestral score. And it was nice working with those old clichés and dipping back and forth into both old film and new film [styles]. I love absorbing whatever I hear and I did hear some old horror films, and went oh, that's the harmony. It's a musical thing you do. You have to just absorb yourself in a style and then dive into it.

Dave: I loved horror movies. When Scream came out, that was really exciting for us, because it completely re-enlivened that genre.

Kimble: Wes Craven, John Carpenter and of course, Alfred Hitchcock. I've wide, eclectic tastes, but I love the classic horror movies. From a filmmaker's point of view they're great fun to make, all the prosthetics and visual effects stuff. I would like to have another go at the prosthetics in Cut, but in those days we had the incredible guys from Makeup Effects Group. They did the baby in The Matrix and they've done some fantastic stuff since. (pictured, below; actor Frank Roberts with Makeup Effects Group artist transforming into Scar Man)  

Kimble: In Australia, it did okay. In France, it was the second most popular [Australian] film, after Strictly Ballroom, and it did really well all around the world, so it did connect to audiences.

Martin: It actually made its money back, internationally, which is really remarkable for a local film.

Kimble: It's the marketing. I'd been working on some commercials, which ended up being the most successful anti-smoking commercials in the world. So I said to UIP, the distributor, "Why don't we bring in the creative team behind the ad campaign?” These guys came up with some great ideas. Instead of creating our own posters, we were going to slash everybody else's posters; we were going to have fake murders in cinemas and have people carrying bloody stretchers out. So I took the two guys into this meeting with UIP and said, "These guys can help us," and all the marketing guys from the film side said, "There's no audience for horror in Australia." I said, "I don't think that's correct. I think if you market to that audience, then it'll connect with them." They said, "Well, we're going to release it on Gay Mardi Gras weekend.” I said, "Um, you've got Kylie and Molly in it, so…I guess." They literally never spoke to us again. It came out but it didn't really connect and it was to do with the marketing. Overseas, it got into a festival and there were hundreds of people who’d seen the film throwing snowballs at me, yelling, "We love Cut! Cut, we love it!" and I thought wow, there is an audience. They had a fantastic marketing campaign.

Guy: Technically, we've got a lot more control these days and synthetically, I could create much fatter and big sounds, but it sounded orchestral. I was happy, not embarrassed. I'll walk out chest out (laughs). For me, the film rocks along quite fast. I expected it to be a lot, lot slower than it's come out. Credit to you guys. It really stood up well.

Kimble: I actually haven't seen it since I went to that festival. That's not uncommon. You make a film and you don't watch it again, so I was quite happy. Of course, there are things I would have loved to have another go at, but I have a soft spot for it. You love a film, sometimes you don't. I enjoy it, I think it looks good and you listen to the score and you go, that's a really good score. It's fantastic. (pictured, above; the villainous Scar Man)

Martin: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I jumped and laughed seeing it again 20 years later. Literally, I haven't seen it since 2000. I think the number of people who worked on the film who've gone on is remarkable, including everyone here. I just think it was a real fun time, as much as films can be. (pictured, below; Stephen Curry as Rick Stephens in Cut)

Dave: I was in awe of the filmmaking ability of Kimble and Guy. They did a fantastic job. For me, I really wish they'd filmed my fucking second draft (laughs), which I thought was a lot better than the final one. It's a weird thing when you're a writer and you've got elements to it but not the whole thing. Despite that, I enjoyed it because of the great craft of those guys and Martin for putting it together. Compare that to what you've seen from other people with a lot more tools at their disposal, I think it was a brilliant job.

Kimble: A scene that we cut out had Scar Man on the balcony of the house and we're playing music and he did this mad rap dance thing. One of the producers, the really insane one, said, "You've got to have that in the movie. It will be a hit if you put it in." He might have been right, but we didn't think so, so we took it out. He wasn't right. (pictured, below; Jessica Napier, star of Cut)

Dave: I always think that in classic horror [narratives] somebody has breached a moral code, which we may not know about until [it’s] too late, so I was careful. I can see [my] overall story arc - there's a tragedy on a film set 20 years ago and then a new crew returns to finish the cursed production. Halfway through our film, a different producer took over and rewrote my script, so it's a weird experience because you conceive of something that changes. In fact, in the original one, it was a #MeToo film really. I didn't have Scar Man in the original. It was purely within the character, so there wasn't a supernatural element to it at all. Once those building blocks are gone, it's hard to re-scramble the egg, but if you've got talented people working on their craft, it doesn't matter. They get the essence of what's going to work, so I wouldn't change anything of that. But if you went back two drafts or three drafts, yeah, it changed quite a bit.

Kimble: Martin went on to make Chopper and Wolf Creek. Guy, of course, went on to do some amazing films, as did Dave. I went to this whole Hollywood world as well. It was the start of our journey, the film that sort of kicked it off, strangely.

LARRY VAN DUYNHOVEN AND THE GUTS IT TAKES TO MAKE HORROR GREAT AGAIN

You would not know it by looking at his normal-in-every-way Aussie male exterior, but Larry Van Duynhoven creates movie moments that remain seared in your memory. From the infamous head drilling in Sean Byrne’s The Loved Ones to the battlefield carnage of Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge to the man-machine mayhem of Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade, the special effects make-up and prosthetic wizardry of Van Duynhoven is legendary, both in the Australian production sector and to horror fans the world over.

His latest masterwork can be seen in The Furies, director Tony D’Aquino’s all-or-nothing homage to the stark, splattery slasher pics of the 70s (notably, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and the 80s (Friday the 13^th, et al). Following the film’s recent screening at Fangoria x Monster Fest in Melbourne (where it won Best Australian Film), Larry Van Duynhaven spoke with SCREEN-SPACE’s Simon Foster before an enthralled crowd about creating horrible, beautiful viscera for your viewing pleasure…

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “When Tony came to Melb and we started talking about it, one of the first things I said to him was, “Can we get an R-rating?” And he said, “Sure, why not?” And I was frank, letting him know that so many horror films have been made over the last few years that don’t really hit a mark. I wanted to go a bit more crazy with the gore, otherwise we were only going to get three people in the cinema – you, and the producer and the projectionist. I told him, “Don’t think about Australia, think about the world” and he agreed and we kind of got on straight away.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “It was a $1.5million film, which is not a lot of money, but it forced us to really go for practical effects. And that was good for me. These days, you’re on-set a lot, and there’s a lot of just (overseeing) the CGI, that attitude of ‘We’ll put a bullet wound in later.’ There’s so much green everywhere, it’s just taken over. So, yeah, we got to do pretty much all of it practical, with just a couple of CG shots to clean things up later.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN:  “I don’t normally get to blow up heads myself. We make it, give it to the special effects guy who then get to put their explosives in, do all that fun stuff. But there was no affording that on this budget, so we had to build the rigs. So me and my team got to do almost everything, which was nerve-wracking. I had another effects make-up artist called Sheldon Wade and a young assistant Rachel Scane on-set, so it was just the three of us, plus Helen Magaleki doing make-up and hair, who helped us a lot. It was a bit crazy, but a lot of fun.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “In the six weeks pre-production time, I worked with a conceptual artist called Seth Justice. He’s a good friend, so I rang him and had him on board right from the start, thinking up some cool designs; Seth’s quite smart, not like me. Tony came with some ideas, which were terrible (laughs). No, not really, but we’d sort of seen them before – bunny rabbits, stuff like that, from Donnie Darko and You’re Next, a bit jumbled. I was trying to persuade him to go in another direction. And he was very open, he’s very good like that, but coming up with an idea that suited (the premise) of the film was hard to do.”

VAN DUYNHOVEN: “Seth came up with some very cool ideas that we ran with. The guy that’s wearing human skin, we tried to make him resemble ‘The Scarecrow’ in The Wizard of Oz. Tony wanted this babyface-type of character, so we modelled that a bit on Pinocchio. It was fun to take well-known characters from different films and stories and interpret them in this way.”

THE FURIES will screen Thursday October 31 at 9.30pm in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra and Perth as part of Fangoria x Monster Fest Takes on Australia 2019. Visit the event’s official website for full details.  

Photo credit: Jordan Hayne, ABC News.

MONSTER FEST MUTATES INTO MEGA HORROR MARATHON

Friday the 13^th under the glow of a full moon seemed an entirely appropriate time for the Monster Fest team to launch the final wave of films in their mammoth 2019 program. The official program of the 8^th annual horror hoedown dropped to excited gorehounds at Cinema Nova last night, most of which hung around for a special event screening of Travis Steven’s cult-hit-in-the-making, Girl on The Third Floor.

The announcement that Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett’s Ready Or Not (pictured, above) and Richard Stanley’s Color Out of Space – two of the hottest horror properties of the year – will have their Australian debuts in Melbourne meant that not enough hours in the day exist to accommodate the expanded roster of first release features, industry events, short-film sessions and retrospective celebrations.

After the Opening Night carnage on October 10, when director Rob Zombie’s 3 From Hell is unleashed, the newly-monikered Fangoria x Monster Fest Part VIII: Monster Takes Melbourne will blow out to October 18. This will allow ample time for the six World Premieres and 20 Australian Premieres on offer amongst the features, as well as four short-film showcases, four retro-sessions, two industry panel chats and a VHS swap-meet.

Richard Stanley’s return to the director’s chair with Color Out of Space is one of the most highly anticipated resurrections in recent cinema history. Best known for being fired from his ill-fated 1996 reimagining of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, Stanley’s adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft alien-invasion classic is his first narrative feature since 1992. Starring Nicholas Cage and picked up for US distribution by the team who backed the actor’s most recent cult-hit Mandy, the film bowed in the Toronto Film Festival’s Midnight Madness strand last week. Trade bible Variety noted that the film, “sports a directorial personality distinct enough to make one grateful for Stanley’s return.” (Pictured, above: l-r, Cage, co-star Joely Richardson and Stanley, on-set)

Featuring a star-making turn from Australian actress Samara Weaving, Ready or Not is the blood-soaked tale of a wedding-night parlour-game gone bad, forcing a shocked but increasingly self-sufficient bride to fight back against her new in-laws and their murderous intent. Also starring Adam Brody, Henry Czerny and a snarling Andie McDowell as the mother-in-law from Hell, the U.S. indie has proved one of the sleeper hits of the American summer, taking US$27million and earning a Best Picture nomination at the prestigious Spanish genre fest, Sitges.

Maxing out the Fangoria x Monster Fest schedule are such locally-made must-sees as Stuart Stantons’ No Such Thing as Monsters, a bush-set bloodbath earning comparisons to Wes Craven’s 1977 classic, The Hills Have Eyes; Tony D’Aquino’s splatter shocker The Furies, already earning global festival kudos; and, Justin Dix’s stylish haunted high-seas romp, Blood Vessel.

The always-popular retrospective screenings are fronted by the Australian Premiere of Stewart Raffill’s fully-restored 1994 oddity Tammy & The T-Rex (pictured, right), in which a teenage Denise Richards falls for a re-animated dinosaur that has become possessed with the spirit of her late boyfriend (the also-late Paul Walker). Umbrella Entertainment will debut their 4K restoration of Kimble Rendall’s 2000 slasher pic, Cut, starring Molly Ringwald and Kylie Minogue; the 30^th anniversary of the Aussie no-budgeter Houseboat Horror will be celebrated with a post-screening QA; and, a rare showing of Brian De Palma’s 1974 rock opera Phantom of The Paradise will be accompanied by Malcolm Ingram’s fan doc, Phantom of Winnipeg, which ponders the question, “Why was the Canadian city the only place in the world that De Palma’s notorious flop was a huge hit?”

The full Fangoria x Monster Fest Part VIII: Monster Takes Melbourne program can be found at the event’s official website.  

Screen-Space editor Simon Foster is the Festival Director of the 2019 Monster Fest Sydney event.