The Mayhem Festival in Nottingham has gone from
strength to strength over the last few years, comfortably positioning
itself with the horror festival elite thanks to a range of films
that reflect the breadth and depth of the genre, and a great atmosphere.
Not to mention the fact that the Broadway is several steps up
from the sort of venue where these events often take place, with
comfy seats, plenty of leg-room and top notch projection. And
a nice bar!
Extending
out to four days this year, the event kicked off on October 28th
with the demented Hong Kong splatter satire Dream Home,
which saw Josie Ho doing everything it took to secure a good price
for her dream apartment in the overcrowded and expensive HK property
market. The film features some extraordinary moments of gore,
combined with a very dark sense of humour that certainly ramped
up Mayhem's 'wrong-meter' right away. An error on the print saw
the subtitles appear in the centre of the screen for a while,
which actually added to the delirium of the movie!
Straight
after this came the remake of I Spit on Your Grave.
This was the BBFC cut version, but the cuts have been applied
so smoothly that you wouldn't notice they'd been made if you didn't
know - and I'm still unsure where exactly they occur
- and there is still a lot of nastiness on display. The film doesn't
hold back, but unlike the original, this is a Horror Film and
so it behaves accordingly, with somewhat protracted and implausible
revenge scenes and characters who actually seem less rounded than
those of the original. It's an interesting movie, but I'm not
really sure it's a good one.
Friday
opened up with Scary Shorts - a selection
of ten short films that inevitably varied considerably in style
and quality. A lot of people seemed to like the three minute,
Japanese influenced cartoon Meow, but to me it
seemed more like a music video - with horrible music - than a
film, and so I took advantage of it's brevity to visit the toilet
(too much information?). In The Night, In The Dark
was a single gag movie that worked well thanks to a tight two
minute running time, while most of the other films curiously hovered
around the 12 - 14 minute mark - clearly an unofficially agreed
standard for shorts these days. Scott Watson's Containment
mixed 28 Days Later and Saw
to no great effect, while the M.R. James-based The Wailing
Well was scuppered by the worst acting performances I've
seen in many a year. Shannon Lark and Stacie Ponder seemed to
have taken a time machine to 1989 to shoot Lip Stick,
which had some interesting ideas but did look like one of the
ropier entries into the Cinema of Transgression canon from that
period.
Jennifer
Eiss and Prano Bailey-Bond's Short Lease was
an effective old-school horror tale, while The Furred
Man showed what decent actors and a tight, witty screenplay
can do for a short film - it would've been the film of the collection
had the show not ended with the hilariously gory Papa
Wrestling, where a masked Mexican wrestler takes insanely
brutal revenge on the bullies who stole his son's lunch. This
is available online, so stop now and go watch it - we can wait.
Welcome
back - hope you loved that!
Following
the shorts, Friday night became Fish Night - as it should be -
with two very different films featuring aquatic beasties. The
Reef received its first UK showing, and proved to be
a tense, slow-burn shocker that clearly owes a lot to Open
Water, being the (allegedly true) story of a bunch of
people who find themselves lost in the ocean after their yacht
sinks. This being Australia, there a plenty of sharks in there
too, and as they attempt the seemingly-impossible task of swimming
to land, the four survivors soon start to be whittled down. Shark
movies always work best by exploiting the monster-under-the-bed
fears of the unknown swooping up from below to grab you, and this
film ramps up that fear very effectively, with some impressive
shots of sharks slowly, seemingly tauntingly, circling the hapless
protagonists.
If
The Reef offered sublime chills, then Piranha
3D gave us plenty of the ridiculous. I'd missed this
unrepentantly schlocky film during the original release, so it
was great to catch up with it, especially on the Broadway's huge
screen and with 3D glasses that I was assured by those who know
were several steps up from the ones you'll be forced to buy at
multiplexes (admirably, the cinema doesn't charge extra for 3D
movies). I guess most of you will have seen this already, so suffice
to say I loved it - an entirely gratuitous mix of nudity, wild
gore, insane performances (yes Christopher Lloyd, I mean you!)
and delicious exploitation movie thrills. Mayhem have held Friday
midnight movie shows of Birdemic and Human
Centipede during this year, and Piranha 3D
fitted wonderfully into that slot! Also in attendance for the
film were the Thrill Laboratory, who had volunteers wired up and
wearing gasmasks to monitor breathing, heart-rate etc as the film
unspooled, with the results broadcast to the bar downstairs. Results
on whether the gory piranha attacks or Kelly Brook's nude swimming
scene caused the most heart palpitations are not available...
Extending
out to four days this year, the event kicked off on October 28th
with the demented Hong Kong splatter satire Dream Home,
which saw Josie Ho doing everything it took to secure a good price
for her dream apartment in the overcrowded and expensive HK property
market. The film features some extraordinary moments of gore,
combined with a very dark sense of humour that certainly ramped
up Mayhem's 'wrong-meter' right away. An error on the print saw
the subtitles appear in the centre of the screen for a while,
which actually added to the delirium of the movie!
Straight
after this came the remake of I Spit on Your Grave.
This was the BBFC cut version, but the cuts have been applied
so smoothly that you wouldn't notice they'd been made if you didn't
know - and I'm still unsure where exactly they occur
- and there is still a lot of nastiness on display. The film doesn't
hold back, but unlike the original, this is a Horror Film and
so it behaves accordingly, with somewhat protracted and implausible
revenge scenes and characters who actually seem less rounded than
those of the original. It's an interesting movie, but I'm not
really sure it's a good one. 
Jennifer
Eiss and Prano Bailey-Bond's Short Lease was
an effective old-school horror tale, while The Furred
Man showed what decent actors and a tight, witty screenplay
can do for a short film - it would've been the film of the collection
had the show not ended with the hilariously gory Papa
Wrestling, where a masked Mexican wrestler takes insanely
brutal revenge on the bullies who stole his son's lunch. This
is available online, so stop now and go watch it - we can wait.
If
The Reef offered sublime chills, then Piranha
3D gave us plenty of the ridiculous. I'd missed this
unrepentantly schlocky film during the original release, so it
was great to catch up with it, especially on the Broadway's huge
screen and with 3D glasses that I was assured by those who know
were several steps up from the ones you'll be forced to buy at
multiplexes (admirably, the cinema doesn't charge extra for 3D
movies). I guess most of you will have seen this already, so suffice
to say I loved it - an entirely gratuitous mix of nudity, wild
gore, insane performances (yes Christopher Lloyd, I mean you!)
and delicious exploitation movie thrills. Mayhem have held Friday
midnight movie shows of Birdemic and Human
Centipede during this year, and Piranha 3D
fitted wonderfully into that slot! Also in attendance for the
film were the Thrill Laboratory, who had volunteers wired up and
wearing gasmasks to monitor breathing, heart-rate etc as the film
unspooled, with the results broadcast to the bar downstairs. Results
on whether the gory piranha attacks or Kelly Brook's nude swimming
scene caused the most heart palpitations are not available...