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Boston Fantastic Film Festival
The Brattle Theatre, October 13 - 16, 2005 |
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| General Information | ||
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It's full-steam ahead for this year's third edition of our sci-fi/horror/fantasy/etc. festival here at the Brattle. As with previous years you can expect a batch of some of the best genre films from the U.S. and from all over the world. Each year we present many U.S. and regional premieres as well as a selection of some of the most interesting archival prints available today. Previous highlights have included the Boston premieres of Saw, Infernal Affairs, Ju-On: The Grudge, Appleseed, A Tale of Two Sisters, Mamoru Oshii's Avalon, Robot Stories, and Undead, as well as special archival screenings of Robert Wise's The Haunting, Alien: Director's Cut, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now Available: Download a PDF of the BFFF program, which includes all of the information available here! Unless otherwise noted, tickets for the 3rd annual BOSTON FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL are $10 general public / $8.50 for Brattle members. Festival Passes, which provide unlimited access to screenings, are $75 / $50 for students. Tickets and Festival Passes are available here. To be added to next year's BFFF mailing list please send an email to bfff@brattlefilm.org. |
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Showtimes
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Thursday, October 13
Friday, October 14
Saturday, October 15
Sunday, October 16
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Film Descriptions |
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East
Coast Premiere! (2002) dir Michael Costanza w/ Stephanue Dees, Johnny Burton, Vera Madeline [80 min] "A revolutionary
experiment in the supernatural, director Michael Costanza's tense
exercise in terror is that rare example of a hyper-low budget shocker
that actually manages to be creepy, scary, devilishly inventive
and captivating. When his girlfriend Rebecca Miles (Stephanie Dees)
went away to college garage worker Johnny (Johnny Burton) thought
webcams would help them keep in touch. But chatting on her birthday
idle curiosity leads to dark secrets being uncovered when they contact
on-line psychic Vera Madeline. For she tells them the house Rebecca
has rented was the site of horrific murder. Worse, the slaughter
was all tied to a deadly ancient French cult that worshipped at
altars drenched with the blood of human sacrifice. Packing more
genuine fear in its short running time than a host of mega-million
horror blockbusters, Costanza's inspired premise is conceptually
clever and atmospherically chilling. Well acted by the very likable
leads, superbly written with the accent on total believability,
masterfully directed (the moody black-and-white inserts rival the
visual hallucinations in The Exorcist) and expertly edited, the
final heart-pounding 30 minutes is classic genre moviemaking." Opening Night Selection! (2004) dir Christopher Smith w/ Franka Potente, Sean Harris [85 min] So this is what happens when you fall asleep in a subway station. Kate (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) is a London party girl with big plans. Apparently, George Clooney's in town and, after knocking back a few drinks at a little soiree, she decides to seek him out. Unfortunately, by the end of the night, she finds herself with a far less attractive mate. Unable to find a cab, Kate decides to wait for the last subway of the night. Already intoxicated, she has a few more drinks and nods off in the station. When she awakes, the station is empty, the last train is gone, and Kate is locked in. Frustrated by the inconvenience, she soon learns that things are far worse than they seem. As it turns out, the subway is home to a sadistic, demonic creature with an appetite for human flesh (24 Hour Party People's Sean Harris). Stuck with only a homeless guy and a dog for protection, Kate must contend with rapists, rats, and even the occasional subway train as they join the beast in a night of torment that she will not soon forget... Spanning a single night and roughly one
location (a subway station), CREEP demands that Franka Potente sustain
the panic and desperation of Run Lola Run for another 90 minutes.
With a breakneck pace and virtually no lulls, this is the kind of
action-oriented horror that is all too rare these days. Dark, dirty
and claustrophobic, the film has a bleak view of humanity that only
serves to magnify the threat of its demented villain. The beast
in question is unusually disgusting and vaguely resembles SIN CITY's
sadistic man-monster, Marv. He tears bodies apart and conducts himself
with a minimum of moral rectitude, even by homicidal monster standards.
While this diabolical fright fest won't wow you with its subtlety,
if you're looking for good old-fashioned thrills and chills, CREEP
will definitely creep you out.
New England Premiere! (2005) dir Paul Fox w/Kate Greenhouse, Aidan Devine, Gordon Currie [80 min] In this taut psychological thriller, psychiatrist Samantha Goodman decides to spend a quiet weekend at her winter cottage with husband David and younger sister Melody. But a surprise visit from a former patient changes everything. Harlan Pyne is a violent sexual offender seeking twisted revenge for the treatment he received. With no escape possible, Harlan and his accomplice Adrian force their victims to play a series of devious games, mirroring the psychological tests Samantha subjected him to in the asylum. Unexpected secrets are forced into the light, as Samantha struggles to turn the tables on her tormentors. "In spite of the genre reaching popular
heights not seen in two decades, it has become increasingly rare
to encounter a genuinely hard-edged horror film, let alone a Canadian
one. With THE DARK HOURS, Paul Fox has brilliantly reworked a vicious
horror subgenre that was a staple of the subversive '70s, creating
an engrossing film that is equally intelligent, moving and ferocious!
It is a harrowing portrait of psychological mutation in the face
of physical decay, anchored with strong, authentic characters and
themes of conscience and ethics. Fox infuses the proceedings with
a subtly surrealistic nightmare tone that gets increasingly distorted
throughout the film's duration, hitting the finale in a smoldering
state of quiet, bloody dementia. The direction, writing, performances
and use of sound are stellar. This film conveys a white-hot sense
of trauma that few manage to achieve and, at times, it is almost
unbearable in its intensity. New England Premiere! (2000) dir Takashi Miike w/ Kazuya Nakayama, Ryosuke Miki, Ken'ichi Endo, Susumu Terajima, Beat Takeshi [128 min; in Japanese w/English subtitles] Almost defying description, Miike's film opens with found documentary footage about sperm-production in young males and then turns to a graphically violent recreation of the execution in 1865 of the 28-year-old Okada Izo, a low-born samurai who killed in the service of the anti-shogun rebel Hanpeita Takechi. Fast-forward through 15 decades of Japanese history: suddenly Izo's spirit possesses the body of a street-sleeper in an alley of Tokyo's financial district. The reincarnated assassin goes on a killing rampage through time and space, from the Warring States period to the day after tomorrow, slaughtering everyone from a Buddhist elder to the prime minister ("Beat" Takeshi in one of dozens of star cameos), not forgetting his own mother. Nothing can stop him, because Izo is negation itself: the contradiction spewed up by the "perfect system" that is Japan. Nothing is immune to his attack, except perhaps the godlike emperor (Matsuda Ryuhei, dishy in silk) and the maternal goddess of mercy (the ineffable Momoi Kaori). Standing to one side, watching and commenting in song, is Tomokawa Kazuki, a radical folkie from the 1960s. So, is this the first philosophical splatter film? A demolition of Japan's body politic? Or maybe a sensitive account of the programming of male hormones? Miike's answer is up there on the screen, and my guess is that he's smiling. - notes from the Vancouver Int'l Film Festival New England
Premiere! (2000) dir Takashi Shimizu w/ Yuuko Daike, Makoto Ashikawa, Kahori Fujii [76 min; in Japanese w/English subtitles] Depressingly, for those of us who are over
30, the director of this intense, endlessly-replicating, somewhat
viral franchise is only 31 years old. Takashi Shimizu's first professional
job "The theme of the first JU-ON is shadow and darkness. The theme of JU-ON 2 is motherhood," says Shimizu , and sure enough, while the first movie is a fever dream haunted house movie that's had its chronology hacked to pieces and stitched back together again with rotten flesh, the second focuses more on the plot and characters, and really goes to town with baroque set pieces involving strange knockings, the infamous throat clicks, and oceans of black, greasy hair. Besides Shimizu and Ichise, who both worked on the US remake, the only two people to make it through both V-cinema films, both Japanese JUON films, and the US remake are Takako Fuji, who plays the horrifying, silent-screamed ghost girl, and Yuya Ozeki who plays the little dead boy, Toshio, whose face has become as common a sight in Japanese video stores as the big, sweaty, hairy eyeball of The Ring. Hailed as the scariest Japanese movies
of all time, the JU-ON films don't disappoint with their disorienting,
non-linear slide down a slippery slope to gibbering, surreal madness.
No blood, no gore, no cheap tricks... just pure, skin-crawling,
gut-tightening terror. New England Premiere! (2004) dir. Takashi Shimizu, w/ Shinya Tsukamoto, Tomomi Miyashita, Kazuhiro Nakahara [92 min; in Japanese w/English subtitles] A fear-obsessed freelance cameraman (Shinya
Tsukamoto) investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits
that haunt the subways of Tokyo, leading him to a disturbing discovery
"Not only is it [Shimizu's] most interesting
and accomplished work to date, it is also one of the finest horrors
to come from Japan in a long time. Fear junkies certainly won't
come away wanting! Taking his macabre vision one step further with
this Lovecraftian voyage into the netherworld MAREBITO proves that
you don't need big bucks to create big chills, and that a supernatural
horror movie shot on video doesn't have to look like The Blair Witch
Project." New England Premiere! (2004) dir Masaaki Yuasa w/ Koji Imada, Sayaka Maeda, Takashi Fujii [103 min; in Japanese w/English subtitles] Nishi, an awkward young manga artist in
Osaka, has had a longstanding crush on Myon. Thing is, Myon's got
a thing for rugged Ryo. Matters come to a head at her sister Yan's
yakitori restaurant, in the presence of the girl's dissolute father
Based on the underground cult manga series
by Robin Nishi, MIND GAME is the magnum opus from Koji Morimoto's
maverick anime outfit Studio 4-C and director Yuasa Masaaki. The
studio's staff has previously been responsible for contributions
to Katsuhiro Otomo's Memories and the Animatrix series, but MIND
GAME is far more directly in line with Masaaki's work on Cat
Soup,
a half-hour brain-bender from 2001. Bearing little if any relation
to the rigidly delineated aesthetics of anime, MIND GAME is
far
closer to the kaleidoscopic psychedelia of Yellow Submarine and
the philosophical freak-out Waking Life. It's free-association
storyline,
using the most minor narrative fulcrum to spin off in the strangest
directions, leaves one no choice but to expect the unexpected Archival Screening! (1979) dir James Frawley w/Kermit, Fozzie Bear, Ms. Piggy, Gonzo, and the whole Muppet gang + Charles Durning, Milton Berle, Mel Brooks, James Coburn, Dom DeLuise, Elliott Gould, Bob Hope, Madeline Kahn, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, Telly Sevalas and Orson Welles! [95 min] The original is back! After being out of
release for many years, THE MUPPET MOVIE has resurfaced in this
brand new 35mm print! We're thrilled to be amongst the first venues
to feature the film. Now we can once again enjoy the onscreen origin
of one of the greatest performance troupes ever created. Jim Henson's
muppets are beloved by millions and, in this charming musical fantasy,
we follow in the footsteps of Kermit The Frog as he sets out from
the swamp to pursue a career in, what else, showbiz! Hooking up
early with vaudvillian funny-bear Fozzie, Kermit treks across the
country gathering new and interesting friends along the way New England Premiere! (2004) dir Su-Chang Kong w/ Woo-seong Kam, Byung-ho Son, Tae-Kyung Oh [107 min; in Korean w/English subtitles] July, 1971, somewhere deep in the Vietnamese
countryside. Of the 18 U.S.-allied Korean soldiers sent into
the
area designated Romeo Point on a scouting mission, only one, struck
blind and traumatized, survives. Six months later, however,
the
voices of the missing unit have been mysteriously picked up by
the intelligence service's radios. Another team, this time eight
men,
is likewise sent to the ominous R-Point, around which certain uncomfortable
rumors seem to circulate. At the head of the team is Choi Tae-in,
himself also the sole survivor of another battle. Guilt, and a
deeper, murkier sense of unease, quietly plague Choi as he and
his troops
pass the stone that marks the entrance to R-Point The war movie and horror film are two genres
that are rarely fused together, perhaps because the heat of battle
and the civilian's aftermath offer so much all-too-real horror as
it is. But R-POINT explores a different kind of wartime fear, one
no amount of bullets, bravado or disciplined tactics can confront.
There are no Viet Cong, no snipers or booby traps in this godforsaken
corner of the jungle Saturday Night Spotlight! (2005) dir Dave Payne w/ Devon Gummersall, Derek Richardson, Tina Illman, Scott Whyte, Arielle Kebbel, Michael Ironside [100 min] When a lonely highway is inexplicably closed,
five students sharing a ride to a party in the desert find themselves
trapped at a deserted travel oasis. Refusing to let the new circumstances
interfere with their fun, they settle in only to be interrupted
by odd, haunting visions of severely mutilated travelers. Gruesome
sighting may explain the sudden abandonment of the motel and diner,
but the appearance of a retiree with a missing wife (cult actor
Michael (Scanners) Ironside) confirms their worst fears. He too
has seen the dying people "A good, bloody time in the desert." New England Premiere! (2004) dirs Takashi Miike, Chan-wook Park, Fruit Chan w/ Kyoko Hasegawa, Mitsuru Akaboshi, Byung-hun Lee, Hye-jeong Kang, Won-Hee Lim, Miriam Yeung, Tony Leung Ka-Fai, Bai Ling [118 min; in Cantonese, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin w/English subtitles] Exploring the outer limits of the macabre, three of East Asia's most compelling directors (Japanese cult figure Takashi Miike, Hong Kong's Fruit Chan, and South Korea's award-winning Park Chanwook) offer a triptych of horror stories. In Chan's Dumplings (shot by acclaimed cinematographer Christopher Doyle), a retired actress wants the rejuvenating effects of a doctor's "special" dumplings, but discovers they contain a horrifying ingredient; in Park's Cut, a film director is abducted by a vengeful stranger and forced to make an impossible choice; in Miike's Box, a beautiful female novelist receives a mysterious invitation to meet at the site of her twin sister's death. We're extremely pleased to be presenting the New England premiere of this highly anticipated trio of stories by three of the most exciting directors working in genre film today. "[Dumplings] is incredibly absorbing! [Box]
challenges a person's sense of perception! I was dying to see where
[Cut] was going." New England Premiere! (2005) dir Ian Allen w/ Johnny Kat, Emily Riehl-Bedford, Monique LaForce [70 min] We all know Mormons are evil, but, good
God... this?! Isoldi Keane (New York drag kingpin Johnny Kat) is
the top recruiter in all of Mormondom Produced by Cherry Red Productions, a performance troupe with a nine-year history of producing horny, hoary theater in Washington DC, TRAPPED BY THE MORMONS was filmed over just four weekends at a makeshift studio built in a warehouse storage space. In the months following the shoot, the film was meticulously "aged" utilizing all the latest technology (like scraping it with dirt). Voila, a silent film for twenty first century! "A sexy, hilarious, Grand Guignol of mesmerism, vampirism, and physical stirrings, wrapped up in a flickering black-and-white bow!" -Washington Post "Mormonism's answer to Reefer Madness is back, in a remake ... that exceeds the original's campy silliness! Three words: Polygamous zombie vampires!" -Salt Lake Tribune |
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