Movies
‘Celluloid Screams’ Heard From Sheffield and a Festival Poster to Die For
With the best month for horror fans fast approaching, that call to the movie theatre to watch something sinister & scary whistles through the collective mind of every Tom, Dickhead & Harry. It’s always a risk taking that trip to the multiplex for a horror flick that could end with idiots adding their own commentary & light source to the feature presentation. The humble film festival is generally a haven to watch movies with those in the same mind set, ready to respect the silver screen by powering off their portable one. The UK has a particularly nice cinematic event path across the Queen’s fair land. Northern England’s Celluloid Screams just announced their line up along with a beautiful quad poster to banner their 6th annual edition.
From the press release:
Celluloid Screams: Sheffield Horror Film Festival, Friday 23 – Sunday 25 October 2015, returns to Showroom Cinema for its sixth edition, with a weekend packed full of the best new and classic horror. We are very pleased to announce the programme for Celluloid Screams 2015 in what is set to be the festival’s best year yet.
Here’s the full lineup of what’s in store for Celluloid Screams 2015…
CLAUDIO SIMONETTI’S GOBLIN performing PROFONDO ROSSO LIVE (SHEFFIELD HALLAM UNIVERSITY CLOSING GALA)
Director: Dario Argento | Italy | 1975 | 2hrs 6 mins
For our centrepiece event for 2015, we are delighted to welcome our guests of honour, Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin to perform a live rescore of Dario Argento’s seminal 1975 film. One night, musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings, Blow Up) witnesses the brutal axe murder of a woman in her apartment. Racing to the scene, Marcus just manages to miss the perpetrator… or does he? As he takes on the role of amateur sleuth, Marcus finds himself ensnared in a bizarre web of murder and mystery where nothing is what it seems…OPENING GALA: THE INVITATION
Director: Karyn Kusama | USA | 2015 | 1hr 37 minsWhen Will (Logan Marshall-Green) is invited to a dinner party at his former home, he is haunted by the memories of a family tragedy that led to his separation from his ex-wife Eden, who is now remarried. As Will reconnects with Eden, their mutual friends and her new husband David, he begins to suspect that something is very, very wrong and that Eden and David may have ulterior and altogether more sinister motives for gathering them all together.
GOODNIGHT MOMMY (UK PREMIERE)
Director: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz | Austria | 2014 | 1hr 39 minsIn the confines of their ultra-modern rural home, twin brothers Lukas and Elias await the return of their mother, who has undergone cosmetic surgery. When she arrives, their mother’s face is covered with bandages and her behaviour seems erratic, leading the twins to suspect that the woman under the bandages is not their mother at all but an imposter. Disconnected from the outside world, Elias and Lukas decide to take matters into their own hands to find out the truth about the identity of the woman claiming to be their mother.
YAKUZA APOCALYPSE
Director: Takashi Miike | Japan | 2015 | 1hr 55 minsJapanese gangster lore and bloodsucking vampires collide in this mindboggling opus from Japanese master of mayhem Takashi Miike! In the shadowy underworld of the yakuza, no one is more renowned and feared than boss Kamiura, due in no small part to the fact that he is secretly a vampire. However, when Kamiura is slain by a mysterious assassin from a crime syndicate, his most dedicated disciple vows to take revenge on those responsible. With bone-crunching violence, outrageous gore and trademark Miike flourishes, Yakuza Apocalypse has come to mangle your brain.
THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE
Director: Perry Blackshear | USA | 2015 | 80 minsTroubled individual Wyatt turns up on the doorstep of his old friend Christian, in an attempt to reconnect their friendship. After spending some much-needed time together, it emerges that Wyatt has a deep-seated suspicion that those around him are actually malevolent shape-shifters. They look like people… but they’re not. Wyatt begins to question whether he needs to protect his only friend from an impending war, or from himself.
HE NEVER DIED
Director: Jason Krawczyk | USA/Canada | 2015 | 1 hr 39 mins
An exceptionally prolonged life brings depression and a detachment – No one knows this better than Jack. He buys stolen blood from a hospital intern, plays bingo daily, sleeps fourteen hours a day, watches television six hours a day, and lives alone. This is his life and he has shelled himself away from social interactions. The fuse is lit when Jack’s past comes back to rattle him. Jack must now walk the tight rope of sobriety and try to eat as few people as possible in this violent and comical tale of personal responsibility, self worth and cannibalism.
EXCESS FLESH
Director: Patrick Kennelly | USA | 2015 | 1 hr 43 mins
After last year’s Starry Eyes took aim at the Hollywood star factory, Excess Flesh casts a similarly scathing light on the LA fashion scene. The story centres on two young women; stick-thin, bitchy model Jennifer, and the average-size Jill, whose jealousy of her roommate leads to binging and purging to maintain her weight. The tension builds and Jennifer resorts to mocking Jill’s issues, causing the rivalry and recrimination to come to a head. Jill lashes out and violently imprisons Jennifer in a twisted attempt to bring them closer together.THESE FINAL HOURS
Director: Zak Hilditch | Australia | 2013 | 1hr 27 mins
It’s the last day on earth, twelve hours before a cataclysmic event will end life as we know it. James makes his way across a lawless and chaotic city to the party to end all parties. Along the way, he somewhat reluctantly saves the life of a little girl named Rose who is desperately searching for her father. Stuck with the unexpected burden of responsibility, James is forced to come to terms with what really matters in life as the final hours tick away.
THE WITCH
Director: Robert Eggars | Canada/USA | 2015 | 1hr 30 minutes
New England, 1630: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life, homesteading on the edge of an impassible wilderness, with five children. When their newborn son mysteriously vanishes and their crops fail, the family begins to turn on one another. ‘The Witch’ is a chilling portrait of a family unraveling within their own fears and anxieties, leaving them prey for an inescapable evil.
CELLULOID SCREAMS SECRET FILM
Director: TBC | Country TBC | Year TBC | Running Time TBCMuch like the alien lifeform in John Carpenter’s The Thing, our annual secret film lies in wait in amongst our lineup waiting to take shape and reveal itself. It could look like anything and you’ll only know what it is as it’s about to begin…
EMELIE
Director: Michael Thelin | USA | 2015 | 1 hr 20 mins
After their regular babysitter can’t make it, the Thompson family turns to her friend Anna to supervise the children while they go out to celebrate their anniversary. At first Anna’s casual attitude proves popular with the kids, who delight at the prospect of playing with things that are usually off-limits. As her behaviour becomes increasingly strange, the Thompson kids discover the dark nature of Anna’s true intentions and realise that they may be in very real danger.
SCARED SAFE: REAL HORROR FROM THE PUBLIC INFORMATION FILM ARCHIVES
Directors: Various | United Kingdom | 1hr 5 minsFor 65 years, the UK government’s Central Office of Information produced marketing literature and films to inform and educate the British public on all manner of subjects, often in dramatic and shocking fashion. This special screening, curated by Celluloid Screams, delves deep into the archives to revisit a selection of public information films that terrified a generation during the 1970s and 1980s.
THE CORPSE OF ANNA FRITZ
Director: Hèctor Hernández Vicens | Spain | 2015 | 1 hr 16 mins
The death of beautiful young actress Anna Fritz sends shockwaves across the world, with fans and media mourning her sudden and unexplained demise. After she is interred at the morgue of a local hospital, Pau, a young orderly takes a photo of the actress’ lifeless body and sends it to his friends, who duly arrive to get a look at her in the flesh. Once alone inside the morgue, one of them suggests they take advantage of their situation, in this frighteningly contemporary horror tale that delves deep into our relentless obsession with celebrity (even in death) and all of the morally reprehensible and horrific attributes that come with it.
DEATHGASM
Director: Jason Lei Howden | New Zealand | 2015 | 1 hr 30 mins
As he tries to escape the mundanity of high school life in a small town, teenage metalhead Brodie strikes up a friendship with the rebellious Zakk, and they decide to form a band with fellow outcasts Dion and Giles. As with any under-qualified teenage metal band, they struggle to capture their ideal sound, that is until they get their hands on an unrecorded song from their death metal idol. After blasting through a rendition of the song in their garage rehearsal room, it becomes clear why the song was left unrecorded, as anyone in earshot transforms into a demon and the boys unwittingly summon an ancient evil entity known as The Blind One. In a town overrun with demons, it’s up to our metalhead heroes to save the world from a satanic apocalypse.
Celluloid Screams: Sheffield Horror Film Festival returns to Showroom Cinema for its sixth edition from Friday 23 – Sunday 25 October 2015, with a weekend packed full of premieres, previews, special guests and more.
CELLULOID SCREAMS CLASSIC ALLNIGHTER III
A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
Director: Wes Craven | USA | 1984 | 1hr 31 minsThe sad passing of director Wes Craven earlier this year leaves a significant void in the horror pantheon, not least for this film. In the beginning, before Freddy Krueger devolved into the wisecracking cartoonish caricature that he became in the later sequels, he was a terrifying presence that would haunt your dreams (albeit without the ability to kill you) and that effect is still as strong even today. The landscape of contemporary horror would not be the same without Craven’s influence and this screening is dedicated to his memory.
PHANTASM
Director: Don Coscarelli | USA | 1979 | 1hr 28 minsFrom one iconic horror character to another… Shortly after losing his parents, teenager Mike (Michael Baldwin) grows suspicious of a tall man (Angus Scrimm) he sees lifting a coffin single-handed at the local graveyard, and decides to investigate. It turns out that the funeral parlour is being used as an assembly line for zombie slaves, and it is left to Mike, with the aid of his brother Jody (Bill Thornburg) and ice cream man Reggie (Reggie Bannister), to stop them. Screening from an original 35mm archive print.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2
Director: Tobe Hooper | USA | 1986 | 1 hr 41 minsA cult classic in its own right, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 serves up a heady blend of gruesome gore, socio-political critique and jet-black humour – whilst Dennis Hopper’s unhinged turn as Lefty Enright needs to be seen to be believed! Screening from an original 35mm archive print.
RE-ANIMATOR
Director: Stuart Gordon | USA | 1985 | 1hr 45 minsGory, hilarious and ludicrously entertaining from start to finish, Re-Animator tells the macabre tale of Herbert West, a decidedly peculiar and self righteous medical student (brilliantly played by Jeffrey Combs) who arrives at Miskatonic Medical School with the aim of continuing his highly dubious research into the reanimation of dead tissue. West soon befriends fellow student Dan Cain, who is unwittingly dragged into his twisted experiments, which soon spiral out of control.
CELLULOID SCREAM FESTIVAL PASSES
Passes are on sale now from Showroom Cinema:Celluloid Screams Ultimate Pass (Full weekend pass including the allnighter*) £95/£85 Concessions http://www.showroomworkstation.org.uk/cspass2015
*For anyone not wishing to stay for the allnighter, a reduced rate Celluloid Screams pass (EXCLUDING the allnighter) will be available, priced at £80/£70
Standalone allnighter tickets – £26/£21 concessions http://www.showroomworkstation.org.uk/allnighter
Individual tickets for all films and events, including our closing gala event ‘CLAUDIO SIMONETTI’S GOBLIN perform PROFONDO ROSSO’ will be available on 25th September from http://www.showroomworkstation.org.uk/, by phone on 0114 275 7727 or in person at the Showroom box office.
For all the latest from Celluloid Screams:
http://www.celluloidscreams.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/celluloidscreamshorrorfestival
http://twitter.com/sheffhorrorfest
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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