The 2006 NYC Horror Film Festival
Barry Meyer

Descending upon the Big Apple like a horde of flesh eating zombies thirsting for brains, the NYC Horror Film Fest once again crashed New York City’s Halloween scene with a feast of gory flicks ripe for consumption.

This is the second year that the festival has been held at their new venue, the Tribeca Cinemas on Canal St., a two screen theater that allows for more films to be shown than in previous years at the old Tribeca Theater, a one screening room location on Greenwich St.  Even nicer, the venue hosts a bar right on the premises, so all the filmmakers and fans could mingle about in a relaxed, buzzed and friendly atmosphere.

The selection of films seems to have improved over the years. For those inclined to the gruesome side of entertainment there were a slew of scary shorts and some frightening features roped in for the competitive part of the festival.  Along with these were some drive-in classics and some debut features for the hardcore fans.

“Each year we see approximately 350 films,” says festival director Michael Hein, explaining the grueling selection process.  Including himself and programming director Anthony Pepe, there are five judges culled from the horror film industry who sit on the selection committee. “We start taking submissions in January and it ends in September. Each film is graded on its own merits in six categories, then an overall score is given. When the submission period is over, the highest scoring films are selected to screen.”

With hundreds of films to mull over, Penny Blood wanted to know what it was in the selected films that struck a chord with the judges.  “The most important thing we look for is competent storytelling, acting and a solid script,” Hein answers.  “Filmmaking is art and all art is subjective. Everyone on the selection committee is aware of this and we do our best to look at each film individually and on its own merits.  We never think ‘will this film appeal to a wide audience?’ or ‘is this too brutal to show?’”

Once the films are screened at the festival, it’s up to a panel of three to select the winners in seven categories:  Best Feature, Best Short, Best Cinematography, Best Special Effects,  Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay – there is also a prize for the audience favorite.  This year’s panel was comprised of Fangoria Editor Michael Gingold, Eve Blaack of Hacker’s Source Magazine, and film producer Eliot Saltman.

The Short End 

The selection of shorts was replete with the usual suspect gimmickry that unfortunately plagues these horror events: the hackneyed horror spoofs (Deadly Tantrum; The Thing About Bannon’s Lookout…), the well worn thrillers with this-is-so-clever plot twists (Woman’s Intuition; Witchwise; Binding Science; Where’s Julie?…). There was the pretentious…  The Eyes Of Samir took an ostensibly prying look at the possible relationship between terrorist and victim that leads up to the horrendous beheadings that have become ubiquitous in the “War on Terrorism.”  It begins as a brazen examination of the terror inflicted upon the victim by fervent zealots.  The victim desperately pleads for freedom, while the terrorists grow anxious, wanting so much to put their own personal stamp on the notorious event.  But then, suddenly the seemingly helpless victim morphs into a hideous creature just seconds before the blade is about to strike. What was promising to be a bold examination of a dreadful contemporary phenomenon quickly devolves into a wearisome Predator-like monster-and-mouse chase.  With the shocking real-life images so freshly ingrained in our collective psyche, and with blameless victims still being tortured and executed overseas, exploiting these insane proceedings without making commentary or observation seemed wholly irresponsible and in poor taste.

And there were the near-misses…  Rogairi was an exquisitely photographed period piece that told a Brothers Grimm style Irish fairytale about a slain woman’s spirit that exacts revenge upon the wicked husband who took her life. The nasty payback that befalls the pig-headed husband turns out to be anticlimactic, since the audience is well ahead of the outcome, having been deluged with explicable clues to the cad’s coming retribution.  Delirium And The Dollman was another visual stunner, telling the story of two young girls who ascend into an Alice in Wonderland nightmare world as they try to escape the reality of their own twisted home life.  Director Andrew Lobel does a helluva job with the fantastical imagery, infusing just enough perversity into the child-like nightmare world to reflect the perplexity the innocent sisters would likely have in response to the unfamiliarly kinky behavior between their mother and their vulgar stepfather. The only problem with the film is that Lobel gets so wrapped up in the fun of his nightmare world that he forgets to keep the plot rolling.  Not anywhere near as visually stunning, or even as well produced or acted, was Reverie, a tale of a young woman who is reluctant to tell her boyfriend that she is pregnant.  As she searches for the opportune moment to reveal the news, she finds that she is reliving her day over and over – not all at once, but in variable increments, and with ominous clues that hint to how the warped day will end.  The film starts off quite shaky, with film school camera work and performances that seem more attuned to a bad Grade School play.  But once the cyclic plot unfolds a bit, the film finds a clever rhythm between the predictable and the unanticipated.  

And there were the couple of blood drenched crowd pleasers… Story Of The Dead and Recently Deceased are a pair of flicks that couldn’t be more opposite, but both came with their A-game.  Story Of The Dead is a pulse pounding zombie flick about three twenty-somethings traveling cross country to a concert. Their relationship seems friendly, but one of the two guys has a secret crush on the other’s girl.  This uncontested secret rivalry winds up pitting the friends against each other once they become trapped in a house filled with ravenous zombies.  Where Story Of The Dead is an unrelenting nail-biter, Recently Deceased is an unyielding laugh fest. These horror events are often filled with unimaginative parodies that simply poke fun at the genre clichés by rehashing them with wide-eyed glee. Recently Deceased, however, takes the clichés and sets them on their head, resulting in a highly original comedy – one with genuine laughs!  Jim (the recently deceased in the title) is dead, but that’s only half the problem. He still has a to-do list that hasn’t even been started.  So Jim shakes off the dirt from his shallow grave and heads out to fetch the groceries, water the plants, take out the trash, and get a headband.  No one seems to notice Jim’s condition, since it’s Halloween. But when his friend Reggie (who neurotically labels everything in his sterile white house) sees his pal walking among the living, he’s a bit distressed.  That’s because he killed him the day before.  Director Chris McInroy could’ve easily dropped the usual zombie-comedy chestnut on the heads of the audience, but instead he delivers some fresh comic material in this ingenious farce. 

The beauty of an independent film festival is that you’re sure to see filmmakers at their most free. Some use this independence to honor their favorite genre flicks with the sincerest form of flattery (and we all know what that is), others take the liberty to indulge themselves in their favorite FX or genre gimmickry.  And then there are the ones who take the audiences on a rare journey, exploring new and diverse avenues of storytelling. 

“The most unusual gift any adult can give a child.” The eerie tagline sets up Happy Birthday 2 U, David Alcade’s unsettling mix of psychological horror and torture chic (Eli Roth needs to take a lesson from this guy) that will surely make any horror hound cringe (in delight as well as fright!).  A social worker gets herself wrapped up in a particular case involving a young boy whom she has been having trouble keeping tabs on.  Her superiors insist the boy is a lost cause. With no records of his whereabouts, he has seemingly fallen off the face of the earth after being abandoned by his father.  Before long the woman’s diligence is revealed to be more along the lines of an obsession.  The young woman has become plagued by bizarre dreams that involve the lost boy – most disturbingly, there’s one in which she tracks him down at the playground, spinning him around to find a cat’s head where the boy’s head ought to be – and she has been keeping a secret cache of photos of the lost boy, gathered together with pictures of several other boys.  [Spoiler alert!! I recommend that you see this flick without any prior knowledge.  So stop here if you plan on seeking it out] Her clandestine search finally pays off when she tracks the boy down at a rundown apartment building, where she believes the boy to be living alone.  Before she knows it, she’s been knocked unconscious and gagged and bound to a bed in a dingy room, where the shelves are lined with jars of body parts.  The door bursts open and the boy’s father enters, followed by the child, both donning rain slickers and carrying various instruments of carnage:  a saw, scissors…  “Happy birthday!” the father announces to his boy.  Most kids like to dissect a frog or two, or pull the wings off a fly.  As luck would have it, the woman has stumbled across a boy who likes to cut people up alive!  But, just as the boy is about to make the first slice, he discovers something in the woman’s purse – he finds that she has been carrying her own instruments of carnage.  Ones that she used on the little missing boys in the pictures, and was intending to use on this lost boy when she finally found him.  [End spoilers]  I would recommend you try and find this short film.  There doesn’t seem to be much about it online, but maybe the NYCHFF will add it to their upcoming volume of Killer Cuts, seeing that it took the prize for Best Short Film.

And Now, Our Feature Presentation

Besides the crowd pleasing bonus features:  The Devil’s Rejects; Lucio Fulci’s Zombie; and two premieres from the second season of Masters Of Horror (Mick Garris’ Valerie On The Stairs and Tobe Hooper’s The Damned Thing), there were seven features up for competition.

The Entrance is a convoluted mind-effer that boggles the brain more than tickles it.  It’s sort of like Sean Penn’s The Game and Denzel Washington’s Fallen, only without a lick of real tension.

Rapturious comes from one half of the comedy duo known as The Jerky Boys. Rapturious is Kamal Ahmed’s second feature (God Has A Rap Sheet his other) and first foray into the horror genre.  A white rapper, whose name is used for the title, is haunted by demonic voices and bizarre occurrences after taking a new street drug.

Last Rites Of The Dead is a zombie flick about a young, pretty, normal looking dead girl who gets caught in the middle of a war between the zombie killing militia and the band of flesh eaters they seek to destroy.

The Marsh is clearly the Hollywood bastard of the bunch, starring Gabrielle Anwar and Forest Whitaker.  This contemporary ghost story finds a children’s book author strangely drawn to an old house by a marsh.  Strange legends swarm around the house and the young woman retains a clairvoyant recluse to help her solve the mystery before the violent poltergeists get her.

The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde marks one of three appearances that Tony Todd made on NYCHFF screens this year (also seen in The Eyes Of Samir and Valerie On The Stairs).  This is a train wreck of a movie that depends heavily on an over-the-top duel-role performance from Todd to pull it out of the muck.  Like a throwback to the early Dark Moon cheapos, the look of the movie is as cut-rate as the story and the performances.  Tracy Scoggins plays a helium-lipped detective who is so oblivious to the head-slapping clues that fall straight into her lap, you wonder who the hell she slept with to make Detective.  Funnyman Tim Thomerson is thrown into the mix every so often in an attempt to draw some earned laughs as a wise-cracking CSI-type forensics guy.  Mind you, there were plenty of laughs in this flick, but mostly for all the wrong reasons.  I’m sure Todd’s Hyde was suppose to be a sarcastic bastard of the likes of Freddy Krueger, but his devilish quips got groans, while his more sharp dialogue got unintended guffaws. 

The Lost, on the other hand, was impressive in its rawness.  Culled from a Jack Ketchum novel, this disturbing tale tells the story of Ray Pye, a criminal maniac whose ego and charisma take the audience on a violent whirlwind journey into mayhem.  The low budget production (executive produced by Lucky McKee) has all the appeal of the exploitation flicks from the 70s, but what sets it above the rest is the performance by Marc Senter.  As Ray Pye, Senter is a revelation.  Part Crispin Glover, part River Pheonix, his performance is one of the most genuinely terrifying in years.  For my money, this film should’ve taken both Best Feature and Best Actor.

The honor for Best Feature went to another more polished film, Fingerprints.  There’s a small town legend that speaks of a group of ghostly children who will push any car that stalls over the train tracks that cut through town (it’s said that if you dust the bumper with powder, you can see the fingerprints).  A teenage girl discovers the legend may be true when she comes face to face with a strange little ghostly girl standing by the tracks.  Part 80s teen slasher, part ghost story, this clever flick hits the right buttons to give some good thrills.

I’d Like To Thank…

The festival finished off with the award ceremonies held in the lounge area, in which the winners were honored with trophies that were fashioned in the likeness of black film canisters.  And the award goes to:

Best Feature:  FINGERPRINTS (directed by Harry Basil)

Best Short:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY 2 U (directed by David Alcade)

Best Screenplay:  LAST RITES OF THE DEAD (directed by Marc Frato)

Best Cinematography:  THE MARSH (shot by David Perrault)

Best Actor:  Robert “Opal” Oppel (RAPTURIOUS)

Best Actress:  Gina Ramsden (LAST RITES OF THE DEAD)

Best Special Effects:  THE MARSH

Audience Choice:  EDDIE LOVES YOU (directed by Karl Holt)

Also, on Saturday night, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Mick Garris, who was present after a premiere screening of Valerie On The Stairs.

“You guys were the first to see this,” Garris announced.  “Showtime hasn’t even seen it yet!”

That’s All

All in all the NYCHFF was a great Halloween treat.  There were a lot of great films, and impressive special guest appearances – including Betsy Palmer (Friday The 13th), Tony Todd (Candyman), Bill Lustig (director of Maniac), author Jack Ketchum, Ken Foree (Dawn Of The Dead), Jeff Leiberman (director of Squirm) and of course Mick Garris.

So, what’s in the works for next year?

“A bigger festival overall,” says Festival Director Michael Hein. “More films, more parties, more days. Keep an eye on the web site. Also, the festival's Killer Shorts DVD series will continue this year with Part 3 – which will be available in a few months. We are also working on a box set of all three DVDs. Trust me on this, the series highlights some great shorts.”

See you next year.