After Toronto After Dark
Events / 10/29/2007 4:02:31 PM
The
screaming, tearing of limbs, and spurting of blood have sadly come
to an end for another year at
Toronto After Dark.
After seven days of movie, popcorn and licorice consumption (and the
obligatory post-film beer at the
Pub After Dark) the Killer-works team is gloriously satiated
with the visual imagery of gratuitous violence lingering in our
synapses.
Stand-outs in the line up of horror (the festival also has fantasy and sci-fi) included the comedic Troma film, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, by Lloyd Kaufman. Despite the expected outrageous content (Dancing chicken zombies! Yummie!) we discovered Kaufman to be quite well adjusted and personable during the Q&A. (He even signed our Rep's copy of "Make Your Own Damn Movie"!)
Alone also sucked us in. This slow building creepy ghost tale from Thailand had some great visuals, a plethora of boo-ya's, and an interesting plot puzzle. The Tripper, by David Arquette, logged in an assemblage of grand moments in axe wielding and drug tripping. The Regan-masked killer has a lovely scene cherry picking body pieces from a group of concert campers too stoned to scream. Paul Ruebens played the bit part of the sleazy promoter for the hippie concert in the woods. My favorite quote of his was rallying the workers to speed things up, "...Rome wasn't built in a day...I say, Fuck Rome! This is America!!"
Especially enjoyable was the pairing of horror shorts with all the features. I knew I'd love the six minute killer rampage in the white box of Mime Massacre by Colin Decker. (Really, who doesn't like exploding mimes?) Also enjoyed the quirky line drawing cartoon of a boy and his Chocolate Man in Sweet Strangers by Peter Ricq and the disturbing dinnertime monologue of a man to a pig head on a stick in Swine by Sean Linton.
Oh, and we discovered that Murder Party (the festival's block-busting closing film) and Blood Car (a debut dark-comedy that we missed - dang it!) will be touring the United States in select theatres together. Keep your eyes peeled for that.
After all the movie-house dust has settled and we've recovered from the Bovine Sex Club closing party revelry, Killer-works is left with the warm fuzzies about season two of the Toronto After Dark Film Festival; A well organized and friendly horror event to go get your scare on with a group of twisted like minds. Get yourself to Toronto (Canada) next October and I'll see you again, after dark!
Yours in satisfied gore, Jill
p.s. Stay tuned for a special Halloween edition Killer-works article from Killer-Rep, Miguel about his Zombie Walk experience with Toronto After Dark! Wooooo Scary!
