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CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Longest Night (1972)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Longest Night was on the CBS Late Movie on November 14, 1974; April 19, 1977 and January 2, 1978.

Based on the 1968 Barbara Mackle kidnapping by Gary Steven Krist, this was the ABC Movie of the Week, airing on September 12, 1972.

Karen Chambers has been kidnapped and placed in an underground coffin with an air supply and water while the criminals try and get the money. Karen is played by Sallie Shockley, which is kind of interesting because The Candy Snatchers is pretty much the same movie — well, this is made for TV and doesn’t get quite so rough — and the female protagonist of that movie was played by another alliteratively named actress, Susan Sennett.

This was directed by Jack Smight, whose resume includes The Illustrated Man, Damnation Alley, The Traveling Executioner, No Way to Treat a Lady and Airport 1975, which is the very definition of an eclectic resume. He’s working from a script by Merwin Gerard, whose TV movie credits are The Screaming Woman, The Victim, She Cried Murder and The Invasion of Carol Enders. He also created the series One Step Beyond.

The cast is great. There’s David Janssen as the father, Phyllis Thaxter (Ma Kent from the Superman movies) as the mother, James Farentino as the lead kidnapper, Skye Aubrey as his partner and Mike Farrell as an FBI agent.

Beyond being referenced in the aforementioned The Candy Snatchers, this was also filmed in 1990 as 83 Hours ‘Til Dawn. There’s also an episode of Quincy M.E., “Tissue of Truth,” that is ripped from these headlines. This movie only aired once, as there were issues with who owned the rights to the story.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival: Strange Darling (2023)

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Director and writer JT Mollner — working with producer and cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, who shot this in 35mm — has created a twisty tale that is “one day in the twisted love life of a serial killer” yet also one that unfolds in the narrative technique that Tarantino used in Pulp Fiction. Read that as time doesn’t matter and expectations are continually dashed.

Told in six out of order chapters and an epilogue, this is the cat and mouse survival battle between The Demon (Kyle Gallner) and The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald), as well as the people pulled into their storyline, often at the cost of their lives, such as Genevieve (Barbara Hershey) and Frederick (Ed Begley Jr.).

An opening text explains that — just like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — that we’re about to see a real story. Except just like that film, this sets us up for a true crime experience that isn’t. There’s even Jason Patric’s voice narrating a true crime story later in the film. The truth in every frame of this movie, every single moment in fact, is subjective and ever-changing.

It even knows when to slow down, as the leads discuss a sexual encounter before it happens. The Lady says, “Do you have any idea the kind of risks a woman like me takes every time she decides to have a little bit of fun?” She declares that women love casual sex just as much as men. The difference is, they don’t die more often when they have it.

While I’d love to tell you more, I want you to go into this as cold as I did. Just let me tell you, it combines giallo style lighting, as well as the forms embrace of kink and ambiguous motivations. Some may be put off by the fact that it narratively takes such wild jumps, almost feeling like a totally different film from moment to moment. Yet that’s the joy of this, a movie that is going to win over audiences if they give it just 15 minutes.

It’s as close to perfect cinema as I’ve seen this year with Fitzgerald making the kind of star turn that young actresses often only dream about.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival: Possession: Kerasukan (2024)

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This is a hard movie to review. Possession is one of my favorite movies of all time, a movie that I described by writing “They should attack you. They should change your consciousness. They should take your psyche like a rock tumbler and slam you against the walls over and over until you emerge better.”

It seems like director Razka Robby Ertanto and writers Lele Laila and Andrzej Zulawski have set up an impossible task to remake this movie. Yet Indonesian and world cinema often takes films that have existed before — America does the same — and puts their own spin on the film. Sometimes, it works. Often, it doesn’t.

The title “Official Indonesian Remake” was interesting, because I remember the days that things could just be ripped off and no one knew. But now the internet exists.

The other person who has a huge mountain to climb is Carissa Perusset, who plays Ratna, the Anna (or Helen, right?) of this movie is always going to be compared to Isabelle Adjani, the only actress I know to win Best Actress at Cannes for a movie that ended up on the Video Nasties list. She shares the burden with Sara Fajira, who plays Mita, the actress who gets to re-enact Adjani’s spectacular subway freakout moment. Ah, who knew 2024 would be the year that more than one more would cover Possession? Unlike The First Omen, this one had to have that scene or we’d be upset, like when a band doesn’t play its biggest hit.

If you’re looking for that strange octopus creature that wormed its way between Adjani’s thighs, well, it’s been replaced by a pocong, a ghost that looks like a person wrapped in a funeral cloth. In Islamic funerals, dead bodies must be covered in white fabric tied over the head, under the feet and on the neck, as well as being firmly tied at multiple junctures to maintain its position during the journey to the grave. Upon placement into the grave, it is believed that the knots must be undone or the corpse will animate and haunt friends and family as a pocong.

Faris (Darius Sinathrya) is a soldier who has just returned home. Instead of his wife Ratna reacting with joy, she demands a divorce. She’s been acting strange for some time, a fact that his son Budi (Sultan Hamonangan) can see when he isn’t speaking in the third person, directly to the audience or screaming that both of his parents are demons. Faris has an easy answer, thinking she’s cheating with the movie director she scripts for, Wahyu (Nugie). Or at least that’s what Mita thinks. Then again, she’s always wanted Faris.

This movie is, well, horny. Where the original had sex — cold and horror-filled sex — this is clad in deep reds and mixes giallo-esque danger and furtive alleyway couplings mixed with stab wounds and bodies sailing downward onto cars. By the end of the film, Perusset’s moans have nearly become the soundtrack. Everyone is so overloaded with lust that even the exorcist, Toni (Arswendy Bening Swara) is more interested in making love to the tied up Ratna than saving her.

Żuławski made Possession instead of killing himself after his divorce. I wonder what these filmmakers had in mind, as the original seems to be so effusive that it’s hard to say who is to blame. Here, it’s definitely every man who appears on screen except for Budi, who literally pulls the curtain back at the end, telling us that he’s too young to watch this movie.

The only downer is that this descends into jump scares and possession scenes at the end, forgetting that while the title of the movie does reference that element of the supernatural, it’s truly about the emotional gulf that happens when love goes away.

I don’t regret the time I spent watching this, but it won’t replace the film I already own.

Announcing the Pigeon Shrine FrightFest UK 2024 line-up

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Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024, the UK’s No.1 horror & fantasy film festival, will, for the first time, present its five-day extravaganza at The ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, London, taking over all seven screens, including the two ODEON Luxe West End screens.

Running from Thursday August 22 – Monday 26 August, Pigeon Shrine FrightFest will showcase sixty-nine  features from across the world, including twenty-five main screen premieres and forty-five Discovery Screen titles, embracing the famed ‘First Blood’ strand, the latest genre documentaries, and some exciting restorations and retrospectives. Plus, there’s the regular short-film showcase (to be announced later), panels, and some surprise 25th edition extras. This year there are twenty-eight world premieres, with eleven countries represented, spanning four continents.

Co-director Alan Jones comments: “FrightFest, the Dark Heart of Cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years. An incredible quarter of a century that has seen major challenges and transformations to the global film industry that FrightFest has embodied, embraced and emblazoned. Our past 25 glorious years have shown FrightFest in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop. So let the 25th Anniversary FrightFest begin”.

The festival opens with the World premiere of Broken Bird, the directorial debut feature from actress/filmmaker Joanne Mitchell. Based on an original story by Tracey Sheals and Mitchell’s subsequent award-winning short Sybil, this is an absorbing and disturbing tale about a mortician (played brilliantly by Rebecca Calder), whose dark desires are becoming more insatiable and progressively out of control.

The closing night film is the English premiere of The Substance, the second thrilling shocker (after Revenge) from French writer/director Coralie Fargeat. The Cannes 2024 award-winning sensation is a Visionary Feminist Body Horror, starring a fearless Demi Moore as fading celebrity Elizabeth Sparkle who uses a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Also putting in a fearless performance is actress and singer Bella Thorne, who shines as the serial-killing teenager in the UK premiere of Saint Clare. FrightFest will also be showing the UK premiere of Bella’s short film Unsettled, her directorial debut.

This year FrightFest celebrates a host of our past alumni and showcases their latest offerings. In the main screen we have Bookworm which gloriously reunites the Come To Daddy team of star Elijah Wood and director Ant Timpson, Azrael: Angel of Death, the wordless flesh-eating creature feature from E.L. Katz, the director of Cheap Thrills; the lean, mean jolt of true crime horror Invader from director Mickey Keating (Psychopaths), haunted house thriller Ghost Game, the latest from Jill Gervargizian, director of The Stylist and André Øvredal (Troll Hunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) brings us his stunning Dracula adaptation, The Last Voyage of the Dementer, never shown in the UK before.

Other main screen attractions include the International premieres of An Taibhse (The Ghost), the first Irish Language horror film ever made, and The Death Thing, a stunning neo-realist take on The Invisible Man for the online dating era. Then there are European premieres for JT Mollner’s twisty serial-killer chiller Strange Darling, A Desert, the powerful feature debut from Joshua Erkman and Cold Wallet, a witty, cyber suspense thriller presented by Steven Soderbergh. Plus, there is a World premiere for sci-fi high of the year Test Screening, and UK premieres for the twisty, engrossing Dead Mail, gripping Luxembourgish drama The Last Ashes and post-apocalyptic thriller Survive.

Tales of supernatural terror are given contemporary twists this year with the dread-filled Traumatika, the hilarious male stripper caper Member’s Club, with Steve Oram and Peter Andre, queer ghost story anthology Hauntology, the visually haunting paranormal thriller Shelby Oaks and Ladybug, where a gay artist (Anthony Del Negro) is haunted by a homophobic serial-killer. Then there is DW Medoff’s I Will Never Leave You Alone which explores personal mental health themes, and Dark Match, where wrestling champion Chris Jericho, comes up against some pretty hefty demons in the latest from Wolfcop director Lowell Dean.

The main screen also plays host to The Invisible Raptor, the monster hit of this year’s FrightFest Glasgow event and genre icon Christopher Lee is intimately brought back to life in the World premiere of innovative documentary The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee.

This year’s Discovery strand once again reflects the festival’s legacy in championing emerging and established voices from across the world and sees the return of many talented filmmakers discovered over the years. Graham Skipper is back with his heart-felt post-apocalyptic tale The Lonely Man With the Ghost Machine, which he directs and stars in. Carnage for Christmas is another signature fun, gory shocker from 19-year-old, transgender filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, who brought us T Blockers and Brian Hanson, director of The Black String, returns with The Bunker, an alien invasion shocker, which stars horror icons Tobin Bell and Tony Todd 

The UK is richly represented this year with seventeen Discovery screen gems, including the World premieres of Jonathan Zaurin’s unflinching crime thriller Derelict, Cinderella’s Curse, Louisa Warren’s blood-spiling twist on a familiar fairytale, pitch-black female avenging psycho-dramas Cara and Charlotte, vampire road movie Bogieville, Damon Rickard’s cat-and-mouse horror Never Have I Ever, Elliott Léon’s eerie adult fairytale The Flights of Fancy and Warren Dudley’s unsettling terror tale Fright. Also showing, twenty-five years after its release, is a 4K restoration of Jake West’s playfully subversive vampire gore-fest Razorblade Smile.

Then there is FrightFest’s first blood strand, which continues to shine the spotlight on emerging british talent and this year there are six world firsts – Sophie Osbourn’s The Monster Beneath Us, Aled Owen’s Scopophobia, Joy Wilkinson’s 7 Keys, Tony Burke’s Protein, Benjamin Goodger’s Year 10 and Josephine Rose’s Touchdown.

The range of documentaries on show further proves how important to film historians the genre strand has become with subjects such as exploration of tech-centric genre cinema (So Unreal), the rise of boutique specialty collector labels (Boutique: To Preserve And Collect), and the huge wealth of early millennial genre films (Generation Terror). Then there is Children of the Wicker Man, where Robin Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic journey through the complex nature of independent filmmaking and fatherhood.

There are three Discovery screens this year and the range of films on offer truly displays the rich vein of emerging global talent within the genre. From the USA we have, evil rising The Daemon,  traumatic time-bending The A-Frame and Things Will Be Different, the grisly Happy Halloween, Dean Alioto’s The Last Podcast, the unique and experimental Agatha, Jeff Daniel Phillips trippy Cursed In Baja, scary Retrotech romance Video Vision, hellish road movie Drive Back, and the slasher maniac is back in Mutilator 2.

Then, from Canada, there is wild creature feature Scared Shitless, from Iceland the mythical haunter From Darkness, from Sweden the unholy In the Name of God and the tormenting Delirium, and from France there is avenging thriller Schlitter: Evil In The Woods and Aurélia Mengin’s shocking visual extravaganza Scarlet Blue.

From Japan we have the kiss-ass, time-altering A Samurai In Time, and, to celebrate its 40th Anniversary, there is a screening of Mermaid Legend, a rare exploitation cult movie that has never played any film festival outside of its native Japan.

Finally, FrightFest has once again teamed up with Warner Bros to celebrate the 40th anniversary of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Wes Craven’s classic shocker that re-energised the teens-in-terror stalk-and-slash cycle and proved getting a good night’s sleep can severely damage your health.

The festival guest line-up and full details for the Short Film Showcases and other events will be revealed soon.

Passes on sale from Sat 13 July, noon

Single tickets on sale from Sat 20 July, noon

https://www.frightfest.co.uk

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2024 WRAP UP

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Man, what a ride. I made it through 118 movies and shorts in less than a week. My eyes are beat! Seriously, Chattanooga Film Festival is my favorite of all fests and the highlight of my movie watching year. You can check out all of the films on this Letterboxd list or just click on the links below.

Shorts

Dangerous Visions

  • 13th Night
  • Butterscotch
  • Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded
  • Let’s Go Disco
  • Accidental Stars
  • The Influencer
  • Pitstop
  • Souling
  • The Thaw 
  • Dream Creep

So Long and Thanks for All the Dangerous Visions

  • Nian
  • Consumer
  • The Noise
  • Apotemnofilia
  • Giallo
  • Night Feeding
  • Come Back Haunted
  • The Little Curse
  • Strange Creatures
  • Spooky Crew
  • Outer Reaches
  • That’s Our Time
  • The Cost of Flesh
  • When Shadows Lay Darkest
  • Roger Is a Serial Killer

WTF (Watch These Films)

  • The Shadow Wrangler
  • Two Women Make a Lunch Plan
  • Make Me a Pizza
  • Like Me
  • One Happy Customer
  • The Rainbow Bridge
  • Body
  • Cart Return
  • The Curse of the Velvet Vampire
  • Gum 
  • Type A
  • Stairwell
  • We Joined a Cult
  • The 44th Chamber of Shaolin

Bride of WTF

  • Krampuss
  • A.A.
  • Disciple
  • A Visual Poem
  • All Is Lost
  • Catacombs
  • Burn Out
  • Don’t You Dare Film Me Now
  • Fck’n Nuts
  • Hunky Dory
  • Ouchie
  • Shadow
  • The Crossing Over Express 
  • Quiet! Mom’s Working! 

Fun Sized Epics Vol. 1

  • Spiral to the Center 
  • Amos’ Bride 
  • The Dumpster Dive
  • Honk
  • Hot Soda
  • Redcoat
  • Caller 102: A Ballad of Cyberspace
  • We Need Some Space
  • Dumpster Archaeology 
  • Seraphim 
  • Cotton Candy Sky 
  • Villa Mink 
  • Get Me Off This Fucking Planet Quincy

Fun Sized Epics Vol. 2

  • Dark Mommy
  • Madame Hattori’s Izakaya
  • The Garden of Edette
  • Eyes Like Yours
  • Volition 
  • INKED
  • Floater
  • Mort
  • Up On the Housetop
  • Robbie Ain’t Right No More
  • Good Girls Get Fed
  • Lost Boys Pizza
  • The Kindness of Strangers 
  • Vespa
  • The Loney Portrait
  • Carnivora
  • Too Slow

CFF Salutes Your Shorts! (TN and Student Filmmakers)

  • Analog Exorcism
  • A Portrait of Elizabeth
  • Big Break
  • Dead Presidents
  • Descension
  • Hope Chest
  • Implications of the Bootstrap Paradox on Spatiotemporal Continuity
  • Kino Kopf
  • Out of Order
  • Washed Up

Full length

Red Eye

Chattanooga Film Fest has year-round events that you can support with their Patreon. Consider making a donation!

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2024: The Wheel of Heaven (2023)

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This movie feels like it’s several films all colliding at once, so I feel like I should review it in the same way, taking the many times that I’ve seen parts of it and what I thought as it’s grown into a much larger film.

Blood of the Dinosaurs: Once, we went to a Mystery Spot and after we walked toward the center of the room, it kept pushing us into the walls and I was young and trying to hold my mother’s hand and it made me cry. Then, we all got on a train and it went through a forest and animatronic dinosaurs appeared and the driver told us to reach under our chairs for guns to kill the rampaging lizards and I yelled and ran up and down the length of the train begging for people to stop and that we needed to study the dinosaurs and not kill them. This was not a dream.

Another story. I was obsessed with dinosaurs and planned on studying them, combining my love of stories of dragons like the Lamprey Worm with real zoology, but then nine-year-old me learned that they were all dead and I had to face mortality at a very young age which meant I laid in bed and contemplated eternity all night and screamed and cried so much I puked. This is also a true story.

The Blood of DInosaurs has Uncle Bobbo (Vincent Stalba) and his assistant Purity (Stella Creel) explain how we got the oil in our cars that choke the planet but first, rubber dinosaurs being bombarded by fireworks and if you think the movie gets boring from here, you’re so wrong.

Can The Beverly Hillbillies become ecstatic religion? Should kids have sex education? Would the children like to learn about body horror and giallo? Is there a show within a show within an interview and which reality is real and why are none of them and all of them both the answer? Did a woman just give birth to the Antichrist on a PBS kids show?

When I read that he was influenced by the Unarius Cult, my brain climbs out of my nose and dances around before I slowly strain to open my mouth and beg for it to come back inside where it’s wet and safe.

The Wheel of Heaven (preview, watched in 2022): Badon describes this project as one in which Purity (Kali Russell) is dealing with her car breaks down on a dark empty street in the middle of the night when she has a chance encounter with a mysterious party host (Jeff Pearson) and his strange guests, which leaves her with an existential dilemma: break free of her meaningless existence or simply just succumb to it’s meaninglessness.It’s also his love letter to not only the classic Choose Your Own Adventure novels of the 80’s, but also Starcrash, The Color of Pomegranates, The Twilight Zone and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

You got me again, Joe.

Purity may also be Marge Corn and she may be locked in starship battles with Doctor Universe or maybe she’s just talking to ger grandmother or perhaps she’s being chased through a horror movie by her evil twin dressed like Santa. Or is it all a movie? Because there’s Joe, directing Marge as she sits on the set of a science fiction movie.

If you’re not paying attention, this is not the movie for you.

While this is just the first part of this four part miniseries, I’m already along for the ride. This is beyond well made and is strange not for the sake of it and without some bigger plan, but feels like being taken on a ride with no idea where you’re going to end up or even who you’re going to be when you get there. It may not be the journey everyone is ready to take, but I say unbuckle that seatbelt and get weird.

And now…

Purity (Kali Russell)  who finds The Wheel of Heaven in a second hand shop and finds herself part of the stories, or is she also becoming pulled into a public access channel? Or is this a mixtape and we get to hear about it directly from its creator?

Is this Star Trek? Is this Twilight Zone? Is Purity also Marge? Is Marge Purity? Who is real? Are the characters really watching me?

Leave it to the IMDB trivia section to sum it all up. “It’s a feature film that has a mini-series inside of it. And that mini-series is inside of a fake public access channel complete with credits and fake commercials between each chapter. All the while, the audience is also watching the behind-the-scenes footage on the making of the film.”

I wouldn’t be more surprised by Badon’s films if he showed up with a camera right now in my house.

 

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2024: Video Vision (2024)

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When an old VCR mysteriously shows up at digitizing facility Video Vision, Kibby (Andrea Figliomeni) starts to be affected by it. She’s also in love with a trans man named Gator (Chrystal Peterson) who brought in old VHS tapes of her father’s band destroying computers. But in spite of this new relationship, her body is changing in supernatural and dangerous ways because of this smelly ancient VHS. That’s because Kibby has unlocked the dark dimension of Dr. Analog.

Directed and written by Michael Turney — who played Danny Pennington in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — this movie has characters to fall in love with, like Video Vision owner Rodney (Shelley Valfer), as well as Kibby and Gator. Their relationship feels authentic and there’s an intriguing hook about the way that we move from format to format in the same way that people can transform their bodies based on their true sexuality. In the same way that people wonder why those spend money on physical media when streaming exists, Kibby wonders if she can be with someone whose genitals may not match her needs. She’s lucky that Gator is understanding and patient. And that’s before she starts transforming herself into some analog video cassette monster. Or, as Gator says, “I’ve accepted that I’m male, maybe you should accept the fact that you’re turning into an obsolete entertainment device, all I know is that you’re making my dysmorphia feel normal.”

The social commentary may be a bit ham fisted and look, there’s no way that this is going to make everyone happy. A science fiction film is not the best way to navigate trans relationships or how we see them. Is the movie entertaining? Sure. And as a CIS male, I have no idea how off it is or if I should be offended. More clued in people will tell me that. I liked the ideas in this and isn’t it strange that all these years after Videodrome, we’re still hailing the new flesh?

Chattanooga Film Festival 2024: CFF Salutes Your Shorts! (TN and Student Filmmakers)

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Our festival has grown in ways we never anticipated over the last eleven years and has been blessed with honors from The 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World to our recent (and surreal AF) write-up in Money Magazine. But no matter how much we grow or how far we go, we’ll always make a place in our lineup for a selection of some of the best local and upcoming talent that’s crossed our desks that year. This year’s Salutes Your Shorts showcase features incredible student works and a selection of killer talent from right here in our backyard. As always, we’re grateful for the support of the TN Entertainment Commission, who’ve been working with us to present this block since the first year of our festival.

Analog Exorcism (2023): When three friends accidentally awaken a ghost that haunts a VHS tape, one of them becomes possessed. How can the others save their friend? Director Jim Shashaty, this reminds me of how I keep telling my wife that when I die, I’m going to put my spirit into my Jess Franco blu rays and if she wants to see me again, she has to watch the absolute filthiest in cinema. I think that’s romance. This was fun but also makes me wonder if my beta of House On the Edge of the Park has a spook inside it.

A Portrait of Elizabeth (2023): Grace (Mary Beth Gray, who wrote this with directed Corey Simpson) is trying to deal with her grief by painting a portrait of her dead wife. Then, as you can imagine, strange things start to happen to her as she becomes haunted. Filled with gorgeous camerawork and practical effects, this shows how horror can help us deal with complex emotions.

Big Break (2023): Director Harrison Shook said of this film, “The conceptualizing and writing process began when I was a student in film school, and the project was born out of my tumultuous relationship with it. While moved away from studying film formally, the ideas swirling around my head at the time continued to linger and become intertwined with interests in philosophy and theology. I was interested in the intersections between these disciples and how cinema can be used as a means of exploring questions larger about the self, autonomy, and choice. And, at that time, I was REALLY interested in film not only as a vehicle, but an allegory itself. So, I sought out to make a meta-narrative student film about making a student film. It was an audacious and perhaps arrogant attempt, and while I’ve certainly grown in my beliefs about film, art, and their purpose since that time, Big Break serves as a reflection of the complex state it was born out of.” This film is about Peter, a frustrated young screenwriter who has to deal with how far he has to go to make his dreams come true. Sometimes, life has a way of asking you if those passions are worth it.

Dead Presidents (2023): With no plan and packing heat, stoner brothers Mark (Galen Howard) and Chris (Blake Sheldon) decide to rob a bank for some money. Directed and written by Ryan Lilienfield, this finds two men who may have seen Point Break too many times. Yet seeing a crime spree and being in the middle of one are two different things. Lucky for them, they’re in a film handled by a true talent. This looks and feels like the kind of caper that you want to spend hours and not minutes watching. We need more weed movies this good. Actually, we just need more movies this good. I can’t wait to see what Lilienfield does next.

Descension (2023): Riddled with guilt after the death of his mother (Andrea Pister), Gonzalo (Fernando Villegas) falls into a nightmare of his own making. Directed by Valery Garcia, whose Harmonious was a highlight of the Salute Your Shorts block at last year’s CFF, this was produced by Ryan Lilienfield, who made the aforementioned Dead Presidents. So much of modern horror is about dealing with loss through the genre and this takes that and runs with it. Really well shot and an intriguing premise. I also really liked how this has a great poster, which contributes to the feel of the film. The total package is something so many young filmmakers miss.

Hope Chest (2023): This was one of my favorite shorts that I saw at all of CFF. It starts with a class assignment: “An oral essay on your hopes and dreams for your future.” Eve starts her speech with this phrase: “I hope the FBI agent who finds my body is predisposed to sadness.” Directed and written by Dycee Wildman and Jennifer Bonior, this takes the dark inspirations of a moody teen and writes them large into the psyche of everyone that must sit and listen to them. Just a perfect short and so much fun.

Implications of the Bootstrap Paradox on Spatiotemporal Continuity (2023): Directed and written by Shaler Keenum, this has two theoretical physicists, Rose (Catherine Richard) and Bree (Aedin Waldorf), discussing a time-travel device and changing history. It’s pretty amazing that this is such a deep and involving treatise on time paradoxes — shout out to time travel consultant Abbie Young — and also such an emotional movie, yet one made on a budget short of time and cash. While we never see time become broken, we do feel it through the performances. An intriguing film that I loved to watch. An intriguing film that I loved to watch. I’d like to watch this again knowing what I know from the end of the film, as I think I may rank it even higher.

Kino Kopf (2023): Kino Kopf is the first of its kind. A sentient humanoid VHS camera, it was given life by its artist mother (Gowri Shaiva) and shown to the world by  fits greedy father (Mike Ackerman). For a short time, Kino Kopf spurs a technological revolution, but is soon forgotten and alone as new machines surpass it. Does Kino Kopf have a soul? Directed and written by Jack Cosgriff. this is as strange as that description, with wild visuals and a story with heart.

Out of Order (2023): What a gorgeous short! This parody of French new wave crime films follows a gangster through every step of his day, from the ordinary to the criminal. Directed by Catherine Mosier-Mills, this looks unlike anything else I’ve seen in some time. The director says that she based this on some of her favorite films, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge and Le Samourai; and Claude Lelouch’s La Bonne Anne and Le Voyou. I love this statement that she uses to talk about how she got here: “When starting this project, my question was: what is this extraordinary, fascinating, rare Alain Delon, Jean-Louis Trintignant, or Yves Montand-type like when he’s not “on”? Or is he always “on”? How would he fare in the rather mundane requirements of everyday life? Is he indeed a compelling person, or just adept at finding great lighting to commit crimes? Having never been a stylish gangster myself, I worked backwards from the tropes to see what might be there.” Learn more at the director’s site.

Washed Up (2023): Mike (Brendon Cobia) is about to be a father and has decided to stop being a criminal. But his friend Aaron (Christopher Dietrick) has talked him into one last job. They’ll rob a car wash, a place where no one will be, and get away with it. Except things go wrong when the handles of the bags they’ve brought break and they can’t get the money out before the cops arrive. Mike soon has to make a decision: a new life or to give up on his friend. Directed by Thomas Bayne, who wrote this short with Connor Savage, this is such a well made short and a film I have thought about several times since I watched it.

You can watch so many of the films at CFF by buying a pass on their website. I’ll be be posting reviews and articles over the next few days, as well as updating my Letterboxd list of watches.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: Another Son of Sam (1977)

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Bleeding Skull’s Top 50 (July 7 – 13) The middle-brow champions of low-brow horror, Bleeding Skull has picked out some of their favorites from the SWV catalog. They neglected to put I Drink Your Blood or EEGAH! on the list, but I think I can forgive them since they included Ship of Monsters. 

Made in Charlotte, North Carolina by one and done director/writer/producer/editor/stunt coordinator/casting director Dave A. Adams, this movie isn’t even about David Berkowitz — or whoever was really the Son of Sam — much less a new version of this occult killer. No, instead, it’s about Harvey.

Who is Harvey, you may ask. Well, he’s a killer escaped from a mental hospital in a movie that has moments that seem to be Halloween a year before that even hit theaters. Don’t think that this has any Carpenter directorial highlights or moments of Dean Cundy-esque camera brilliance. The movie tends to pause for several seconds while dialogue just keeps running and the camera seems to be a window into the mind of someone tripping balls while the coolest synths ever play.

Speaking of music, the real star of this show is a lounge singer named Johnny Charro who still plays shows to this day. Oh yeah, there’s also SWAT officers in action, a stuffed dog who seemingly wants to take a shower with his owner and an abortion, because, well, I honestly have no idea why.

Harvey has been killing people because his mom assaulted him as a child. Why did the cops bring her out to try and talk him out of a hostage situation? Seriously, that’s some giallo-level police buffoonery.

You can get this movie on the AGFA blu ray for The Zodiac Killer or watch it on Tubi.

The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: The Body Shop (1972)

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Bleeding Skull’s Top 50 (July 7 – 13) The middle-brow champions of low-brow horror, Bleeding Skull has picked out some of their favorites from the SWV catalog. They neglected to put I Drink Your Blood or EEGAH! on the list, but I think I can forgive them since they included Ship of Monsters. 

J.G. Patterson Jr. — full name Jr Junius Gustavious Patterson — was only on our planet for 45 years, but in that time, the North Carolina native worked on She-Devils On Wheels, The Gruesome Twosome and Axe, as well as providing effects for Three On a Meathook and The Electric Chair. He was also an actor in movies such as Preacherman, Moonshine Mountain and Whiskey Mountain.

Yet it’s his vanity production — in the best sense of the word — The Body Shop that we’ll be talking about today. In addition to directing, writing and producing this movie, Patterson was also its lead, playing Dr. Brandon. He’s lost his wife in a car crash — shades of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die — so after setting her head ablaze, he decides to just remake her in a perfect body by killing women — again, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die — along with his hunchbacked assistant Greg (Roy Mehaffey).

Patterson got the most important part of being a horror star right. Just like Paul Naschy, he gets to make out with every pretty girl in this movie before killing them and getting to show off his skills at making over the top gore. He also repeatedly cuts to a country star — I use this word in the lowest wattage and I am also not about to refer to the stand up comedian — Bill Hicks, who keeps coming back to tell us that “A Heart Dies Every Minute.”

Hicks may be William T. Hicks, who was also in the Earl Ownsby-produced North Carolina-filmed classics A Day of Judgement, Death Screams and Order of the Black Eagle.

Now that the doctor has Anitra (Jenny Driggers), he wants to keep her away from every other man. He can also control her mind. But you know that women are always smarter than men, even if they are sewn together from the corpses of a model, a secretary and a few other pretty girls.

When this came out on VHS, it had Herschell Gordon Lewis introduce it and the name changed to Dr. Gore. In the credits, it also says that Patterson was America’s #1 magician, which seems like the kind of claim that can be verified. Also known as Shrieks in the Night, this movie is also evidence as to why Patterson died of metastatic malignant melanoma — his death certificate is linked on his IMDB page — because he’s lighting up in every scene, even when he’s in his lab. He also picks his nails with a scalpel, so there’s that.

A few of the ladies in the cast — Jenny Driggers and Jeannine Aber — are also in another North Carolina regional film, The Night of the Cat.

This was also called Anitra while it was being shot. I can tell you that because the clapboard is on screen for a good five seconds. But I loved this. It has 15 gallons of blood in it, which is enough for ten people.

Let me ask you: Does Poor Things have a soundtrack by William Girdler? Does it have the line, “Greg! Put on this lab coat, so they don’t know you’re a hunchback!” Does a cop give up the investigation because the doctor says, “I’m a doctor?” No, it doesn’t. This movie cost a fraction that can’t even be calculated of that Film Twitter darling’s budget and it doesn’t have Bill Hicks and The Reignbeaux singing in a steak house.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.