It's that time of year again,Mayhem!
Now in its 14th year MAYHEM film festival ran for a glorious 4 days from 11th-14th October at Nottingham's wonderful Broadway Cinema.
Me and Emma had both booked the time off work as well as a hotel in town for the weekend,We planned to do all the films every day and we made it! We also booked the Monday off of course. Here are my thoughts on Day 1 and 2 of this year's festival.
As always with MAYHEM when the films are announced I always thinks what's that? What's this? And I'm rarely disappointed and I have to say for me personally who has attended the last 7 years this year's for me was hands down the best one yet.
First up on the Thursday we had Anna and the Apocalypse. Described as a zombie musical set at Christmas the concept most certainly grabbed my attention. Now, I love zombies but hate musicals so I for one couldn't wait to see what they came up with and I was blown away, it's was 107 minutes of pure fun. I was relieved to see that whilst there were plenty of songs in it(all apparently sung by the cast) the dialogue was actually dialogue and not singing. But never mind my grumpiness on the song front it's one I'll definitely be adding to my collection. The young cast were superb, plenty of gore and Jokes and a brilliant role of "Savage" played by the great Paul Kaye. The director John McPhail was in attendance and did a fantastic Q&A . I've linked the video here from my good friend and fellow blogger Michael Mad Mike Nagy.
Next up was Nightmare Cinema, A collection of creepy stories from directors Alejandro Brugués
Joe Dante,Mick Garris,Ryûhei Kitamura and David Slade.
The premise was great, people wandering past a seemingly empty cinema at night and being drawn in by what they had seen on the billboard. Once in it was only them in the theatre, The lights dimmed the movie started. Each individual that entered had there own nightmare story shown. The first two stories were fantastic but for me the ones after those weren't so great. Maybe it was the fact that the first two for me were so solid the others seemed a little weak in comparison. I also felt maybe if they had kept it at just 3 maybe 4 stories it would have held it's own a bit better. Still a great watch though and definitely worth your time. One of the story's was a grim one about plastic surgery then Mickey Rourke appeared in the theatre as the projectionist and Jesus Christ that face on a big screen was one of the scariest things I've seen in ages! Stay away from plastic surgery kids!!
So that was Thursday done. We headed for a quick beer at Brewdog next door then a taxi home in the hope of getting some sleep without Mickey Rourke' s face hanging over me like Gary Oldman's Dracula! Fish lips!!
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Five film Friday was upon us, Starting with the brilliant 1952 obscure The White Reindeer from Finland, Set to be finally released in 2019 this was a film i'd never heard off but it was brilliant, It tells the story of a lady who occasionally turns into a vampire reindeer! Yes yes i know it sounds ridiculous but it wasn't one of your cheap 50's "B-Movie" it was beautifully shot and a fascinating story, If your into your obscure classics this is definitely one you should pick up as i will doing.
Up next was a big screen adaptation of the Ryu Murakami novel Piercing. Anyone who has seen the other Murakami adaptation classic "Audition" will know that this would be pretty messed up and it certainly was! Unlike Audition which had an Asian adaptation this was adapted for the cinema by Nicolas Pesce director of the fantastic Eyes Of My Mother which i will say if you have yet to see that you really should. It tells the story of a potential serial killer who calls up a call girl to have a bit of BDSM then kill her in a particularly grisly way. She arrives at his hotel room but then of course it all goes wrong, Very, Very Wrong. As with Audition it has a small but stellar cast, great locations and cinematography oh and of course violence! Its well worth a watch and i hope that it does really well as it well deserves to and you never know fingers crossed he may well do another Murakami novel" In The Miso Soup" which would also make a fantastic movie.
So up next we had Night shooters,From director Marc Price, Most famously known for hi smash hit ultra low budget zombie movie "Colin" this was a fantastic return and for me one of the highlights of the festival. It tells the fairly basic story of a film crew making a movie in an office block that is due to be demolished so they get one night to shoot their movie, all is going well until they look over to the office block opposite and witness a gangland killing, The trouble is that they have not only seen it but the gangsters have spotted them. The gangsters then head over and block all exits in pursuit of the filmmakers. The head gangster is hilarious, He looks like a cross between Peter Kaye and Demis Roussos!Its full of gore,Action,Humour and extremely colourful language and one of the best Kung Fu kills i have ever seen! The fights scenes are absolutely breathtaking and when you hear how it was done it's even more impressive, Thanks again to Michael Mad Mike Nagy for a video of the Q&A with director Marc Price. All i can really say about Night Shooters is that you need to see it as soon a you can, It's fantastic!!
As far as wrongness goes i thought Mayhem had outdone themselves with a previous year showing at the festival of The Greasy Strangler but this years showing of Puppet Master:The Littlest Reich outdid that on so many levels!!!!
A reboot of the classic puppet master series it stars the always brilliant Udo Kier as the puppet master, A homophobic Nazi, Yes that's right! The gore and offensive levels are turned up to a Spinal Tap level 11, Its bloody great! The good thing about it is the fact that amongst our group there were some that had never seen a Puppet Master movie but that doesn't matter, If your easily offended maybe it's not for you but i would say turn off you political correctness radar for 90 minutes, sit back and have a blast, The reboot was superb and another huge hit at MAYHEM and i personally cannot wait for more from the Franchise.
On to our final movie of the night, 10.30PM showing of the new Nicolas Cage movie "MANDY". I had read and heard a lot of great things about this and also some bad things, In the weeks leading up to the showing the hype machine seemed to have snowballed about how amazing it was. I am a Nicolas Cage fan but for me personally it didn't like it, He was great in it but it seemed to me especially in the scene where he is downing a bottle in his underpants that he had just become a cliche of himself or maybe i have just got that wrong, I spoke to many people after the showing and during the weekend that loved it but also hated it, Either way i would say watch it and make your own mind up, In saying that it was probably one of the films of the weekend that we amongst us most talked about and it was great to see the late night showing was a complete sell out.
So the first two days were done and it went so fast! Quick pint then taxi home to pack our bags for our weekend hotel stay, Starting Saturday at 12PM with One Cut Of The Dead one of the films of the festival i was most looking forward to. Saturday at MAYHEM coming next!
Thank you for reading,
Jonny T
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