El Gigante Puts Both the Lucha and the Gore into LuchaGore

With the right balance of horror and heartbreak, mostly horror or course, LuchaGore Productions latest film El Gigante (based on Muerte con Carne by Shane McKenzie) shows that they are a force to be reckoned with in the world of indie horror.

Dead on Film Festival 2014

So once again The Rio Theatre's Dead on Film Festival, featuring short films where someone has to die, has come to pass. Well one of the people to die was me, in the short film Dangerous Waves! Unfortunately I wasn't able to get there in time to see it since it was the second film to be shown, but I saw it today and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.

VIFF 2013: A Field In England

Five men, a hole and some hallucinogens. The latest creation from the mind of Ben Wheatley, known best for Kill List and Sightseers, A Field In England is a period piece with very authentic costume design from what I could tell. The men actually looked grubby, as if they didn't own very much clothing in the first place. The movie grabs your interest from the very beginning with a battle leading to violence and gore within the first ten minutes.

"This is so much fun!" Yes, following what appears to be a possessed person on a leash is always fun!

The film truly illustrates the things people will do for beer. The plot starts with men abandoning the battle to escape to a tavern. Except for our protagonist, the rest of the motley crew are very crude men especially in their rude form of humour. That just adds to the feeling of accuracy the film has. The plot can be rather confusing at points, with alchemists and buried treasure and what not.

Please, please, just one pint good sir.

A few times a rather artsy technique was used where the actors held still as if they were the people in a painting. Just when I thought that that looked cool things really got into the artsy trippy realm. There was actually a disclaimer before the movie telling people to not watch the film if they might suffer from seizures. Good thing they had that disclaimer, it really did get that trippy. For a while I just thought the movie was weird for the sake of being weird, but then I remembered, most of the characters are high on a certain type of a hallucinogen that you might find in a field in england. If you enjoy strange movies, definitely check this out, less confusing than Eraserhead and with some great comedic moments.

VIFF 2013: Willow Creek

Now here is the case of me buying a ticket for something that I really had no idea what it was about except for one word "Sasquatch" and yes I call it Sasquatch not Bigfoot because I'm Canadian yo. When I sat down in the theatre I had forgotten that it was a found footage film which was an unpleasant surprise until the film actually started, but I'll get into that later. Even the director's identity eluded me, Bobcat Goldthwait, I wasn't sure if he was who I thought he was or not. Turned out it was.

This is the role I know him the best for, I feel less bad about my lack of certainty.

Turned out Willow Creek focussed on a couple first exploring the Bigfoot-centric community of Willow Creek, then heading to the sight of the Patterson-Gimli "Bigfoot" footage. Of course they ignore the warnings of locals and as the classic adage goes, bad things happen to good people, well, stupid good people. The chemistry between the two leads felt honest and I was happy to see my second favourite officer from Death Valley get some more work. As well in the beginning of the film it seemed that they were actually using real locals to play the locals rather than actors who may have judged the characters. For instance did you know that there are more songs about Bigfoot than just the one by Tenacious D? I certainly didn't.

I used to be worried about aliens when camping, now I have to worry about Sasquatch too?

Watching this film felt very reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, except this time I actually cared about what happened to the characters. They took the original found footage movie, learned from it and improved on it. In his introduction Bobcat was very proud of the limited amount of edits they used in the film and when it gets to the tent sequence it pays off. The tension in that scene was enough to put even a horror hound such as myself on the edge of my seat. I can honestly say that this is one of the best found footage movies I've seen, so if it comes to your town I would highly recommend getting yourself a ticket.

Dead on Film Festival, Zombies, Guns and Jane Levy

Well August was quite the busy month. First there was the Dead on Film Festival at The Rio Theatre which was a festival of short horror films where the only requirement was that somebody had to die. Now it was all local films, some of which made specifically for the festival and let me tell you there was quite a variety of quality levels. The best by far though, which also won the festival, was Halloween vs. Battle Royale by LuchaGore Productions. As you can probably guess it was about what would happen if Michael Myers were to choose some of the girls from Battle Royale to be his next victims. We were also treated to some horrific burlesque as the audience votes were tallied and I must say burlesque is so much more interesting when fake blood is involved.

The next big thing to happen in August was my first time being paid to be on set! I was an extra on a tv show who had completed a zombie walk (I'll tell you the show once the episode has come out). I had to come in my own costume and makeup for the part:

Selfie!

I also took another step towards becoming "The Most Badass Woman You Know" by going out into the country to shoot a gun for the first time. Turns out I'm not as terrible at it as I had expected. I apparently got a few "kill shots" on my target. While I didn't get to fire them I also got to handle a cross-bow as well as some more powerful guns than the one I was shooting.

To finish off the month I think I had a celebrity encounter of relevance to this blog. I'm pretty sure I ran into Jane Levy (of Evil Dead remake fame) while I was walking home from work. It felt like a scene out of mean girls as we locked eyes and I started to recognize her. It wasn't until I was out of earshot that I realized who I thought it was and my friend asked if I would like to go back and say hi. Nope, wasn't going to embarrass myself like that!

First Horror Role Part 3: The Fake Festival

Now I am sure you are all wondering "How did the Evil Dead in 60 Seconds do?" Well on the 15th of February we found out that we had made it into the top 25, it was a pretty great birthday present. Some of the crew also managed to win enough tickets so that everyone (who didn't have other commitments) was able to come. Now there was a theme to this party, movie characters. Let's see if you can figure out who I chose to go as:

Carrie, I'm Carrie. Being bloodified by Reagan from The Exorcist.

Actually all the girls in our group went as horror characters (Carrie, Reagan, Lady Jigsaw, One of the twins from The Shining and The Black Swan) the men however, not so bloody... well except for our Ash, who went as Ash (although really isn't Ashley a bit of a girl's name?).

Alright, alright fine I'll tell you how we did. We were huddled together as we watched them present the five nominations for best picture. They showed Jaws, Bourne Identity, Wreck It Ralph, then this lovely little cabin showed up on the screen and we got to watch our video as a part of the top 5. The last nominee was Life of Pi. And when they announced the winner it was... Wreck It Ralph. Yes, there were some tears cried (I won't say by who), but personally I'm impressed that a film with tree rape could even make it into the top five of a non-horror film competition. It just goes to show what an awesome job the directors, cast and crew did putting it all together.

Even Minnie Mouse loved it!

First Horror Role Part 2: The Film

Alright, awesome news, The Evil Dead in 60 Seconds was released on Friday! Since I know you all are desperate to see it, here it is:

So now that you have seen the video vote for it by going to the Virgin Fake Film Festival website and click the like button below the video! ...or else.

Feeling demonic today?

When it was released on Friday I was pretty much doing a social media frenzy along with everyone else involved and it was the most successful social media...ing I've done. It may sound dorky but I was super excited to be retweeted by horror directors like Nicholas Humphries and The Twisted Twins (Jen & Sylvia Soska) as well as The Rio Theatre and The Storm Crow Tavern. Even my Grampa loved the video!

The short has also had some pretty damn good reception on horror websites, here is a list of links to articles that have been written so far:

Bloody Disgusting
Dread Central
Horrormovies.ca
Daily Dead (I think they chose an awesome picture to represent the film)
Horror Society
i09?
We Came From The Basement

I can't express in words how excited I am that something I worked on is getting exposure on all these websites (and hopefully more to come). Some of them even mention my name!!

Next up in the last instalment of this series of articles is how we did in the festival (vote for us so we do well!)

First Horror Role Part 1: On Set

If any of you have been wondering why I haven't posted in a while it is because I have been VERY busy and this series of posts is about one of the many things that has kept me busy, MY FIRST EVER HORROR ROLE! It is an entry in this year's Virgin Radio Fake Film Festival. I'll give you some clues to see if you can figure out which film it was we made a 60 second version of. 1.) There is a remake of it coming out this year 2.) Contrary to popular belief the monsters aren't zombies, but Candarian Demons 3.) My character's name is Cheryl 4.) Seriously you haven't figured it out yet? Fine, it was the film that brought Bruce Campbell into popular culture. That's right, the film we remade was:

For a behind the scenes look read on.

Rio Grind Festival: Shorts Program

Well it has certainly taken me long enough, but I'm finally posting about the shorts I saw at the Rio Grind Film Festival. This is going to be rather rapid fire as the shorts just kept coming and I couldn't even stay for the entire thing.

Really hope this festival becomes an annual event.

Rio Grind Festival Part 1: John Dies at the End

Last Friday I had the priviledge of being at the BC premiere for the movie John Dies at the End, based on David Wong of Cracked.com's novel of the same name. I doubt I will be able to do much aside from gush about this film. In the theatre I was literally just sitting there with this goofy smile on my face. This is one of my favourite films I've seen this year. It felt like watching Naked Lunch, but it made more sense and I just fell in love with the dialogue. The film was so enthralling that I was barely able to take many notes so all I can tell you are a few of the random things you will see watching the movie.

A cover of the original novel.

DEDfest Part 2: Creepshow

The second film I had the pleasure of viewing at DEDfest was the anthology film from the minds of George A. Romero and Stephen King, of course you know what it's called (and if you don't please just google horror anthology films and come back once you have watched the top ten from your research). Right off the bat I will tell you it starts in a classic way that every parent should learn from, NEVER throw away your child's comic books... EVER.

He clearly missed parenting 101

Also their monster host felt a lot like a Crypt Keeper knock-off, but perhaps this was before the Tales From the Crypt Keeper movie yet, I'm not in the mood to look it up right now so for more info you're on your own.

Click on to read the rest of the review.