Calling all cult film fans. London is the place to be this October for an embarrassment of riches courtesy of The London Film Festival and FrightFest.
Beginning Wednesday 8th October, the London Film Festival boasts a treasure chest of horror, fantasy and cult fare that should whet the appetites of those who know their Golan-Globus from their wire-fu. Click the films below to be taken to the respective festival pages.
Left-field film aficionados must check out Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films. Tracking the chaotic partnership of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus as they ran the Cannon Group through ten turbulent years, it’s affectionate, warts n’ all and harks back to a time when breakdance movies, ninja epics and delirious Chuck Norris actioners were eating up the video shelves.
From America there are the strong word-of-mouth shockers It Follows and the remake of The Town That Dreaded Sundown, plus UK co-production Monsters: Dark Continent, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Gareth Edwards’ original. And movies get no wilder than the work of Japanese madman Sion Sono, whose Tokyo Tribe is a hip-hop gang-war carpet-bombing of the senses; funny, violent, surprising and told in rap verse, it’s not to be missed.
Other movies that look beyond Hollywood include Danish werewolf drama When Animals Dream, Spanish Decent-alike cave shocker In Darkness We Fall, Latvia’s credit-crunch shocker The Man in the Orange Jacket and El Nino, a police thriller from the director of the riveting Cell 211.
But, the out-of-the-ordinary is not reserved only for the over 18s. Kids can get in on the act too with the irresistible looking The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow from Korea, the heartrending anime Giovanni’s Island, plus the British Robot Overlords, which could be the giant robot movie we’ve been waiting for.
The wilder side of cinema also invades the Treasures section, with welcome big screen returns for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 40 years after it originally shredded audiences at the London Film Festival, plus King Hu’s long unseen sword and kung-fu masterpiece Dragon Inn.
The London Film Festival runs from Wednesday 8th to Sunday 19th October. But, for those needing another boost of imaginative and subversive cinema, the FrightFest Halloween All-Nighter returns to Leicester Square’s Prince Charles Cinema on Saturday 25th October.
In the words of festival co-director Alan Jones: “The Prince Charles Cinema is where it all began 15 years ago and this Halloween you can join us for an intimate trip down memory lane and an ultimate shock around the clock experience”.
Among the highlights, The ABCs of Death 2 boasts short films from Inside directors Bustillo and Maury, American Mary creators The Soska Sisters, Stage Fright helmer Jerome Sable and master fantasy filmmaker Vincenzo Natali.
The Last Shift looks like another visceral thrillfest from Anthony DiBalsi, the director of Dread and Cassadaga. And The Editor is described in must-see terms as the “Airplane! of giallo movies”.
Completing the five film line-up is the college kids meets intergalactic oddness movie Extraterrestrials and supernatural serial killer nasty The Pact II.
Enough for anyone wanting an exhilarating Shocktober.
The official London Film Festival site can be found here.
For information on the FrightFest Halloween All-Nighter, click here.
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