Philosophically speaking I see myself fulfilling an important role for my group of friends. I am the guy who sees enough movies to tell you what not to see. Don’t get me wrong, as a cinephile my first day of Fantastic Fest was great, but there were only three things I think any of you would have been excited about, and two of them only appeal to the straight males in the audience.
Oculus – as an independent short film, this <30 minute piece starts out really strong in it’s powerful visual simplicity and Scott Graham’s solid performance. Toward’s the end, though, both of those elements degenerate and the film becomes a run-of-the-mill Outer Limits episode — or maybe that show the kids are watching now-a-days on Showtime, Masters of Horror. The story concept, and the story line possibilities in this multi-chapter epic about a mirror that can do no right is pretty cool.
Haze – the actor/writer/director of this short feature film, Shinya Tsukamota, is known in Japnese-culture fanboy circles for his lead role in the cult film Tetsuo, the Iron Man. Just like the short that played before it, Haze is based on a great story idea and starts out strong, but unravels near the end. The film opens on a man waking up in a confined space with claustrophobic tunnels that lead to dead ends, spikes and razors and all manner of extreme discomfiting strangeness, and finally to a room full of diced people where he meets a woman who, like himself, has no idea how she got there. I hope not to spoil it for you, but the unsubtle metaphor should have hit you already…and you haven’t even seen the ending, yet.
Trailer Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny – this was the first high point of the evening for me, and I think everyone reading this is excited to finally see some clips from this eagerly anticipated celluloid quest.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning – if gore-or is your thing, ala Saw and Hostel, or you’re just dying to know how Leatherface came into being then TCM:TB is your movie. Otherwise, it was fairly unoriginal and formulaic. R Lee Ermey, Jordana Brewster, the dude who plays Leatherface and the producers and director were in attendance for a post-film Q&A that, ¡surprisingly¡, drew very few questions. The highlight of the film (and the second exciting point of the evening) was Jordana’s low-cut jeans and butt cleavage, and the highlight of the Q&A is that the unrated DVD will be even gorier.
Full Moon Entertainment – Charles Band is the man behind Full Moon Entertaiment and Full Moon is the production house behind such classic schlock films as Puppet Master and Ghoulies. Band has a traveling show where he shows clips from his upcoming and past films (over 270 of them!); clips of now-famous actors who started in his films like Demi Moore, Helen Hunt and Viggo Mortensen; auctions some of his props to the fandom; guillotine’s a volunteer’s head; and directs a short scene with volunteers from the audience. The third and final highlight of the evening was Band convincing one of his “actresses” that what his scene really needed was for her to flash her boobs…which she did. I think Band’s point was: directors get actresses to do inappropriate things.