This was the screening of Night of the Demon and Vampire Circus arranged by Scare Sarah and Cyberschizoid as part of their Classic Horror Campaign. It was an awesome event at an excellent venue full of fantastic people and I hope they do more of them. Check out their trailer:
So in my last post I was raving about how good Night of the Demon is, when I actually hadn't seen it for a few years. It was even better than I remembered. I think next to The Haunting it's one of the few examples of a near perfect horror film. Every scene has moments of pure genius, including the seance scene which I'd completely forgotten about - it's a perfect mix of humour and scares and sums up everything the film is about. Here's the scene I'm talking about (if you skip to about 1.30 that's where the awesomeness kicks off):
It also struck me that despite the appearance of a gigantic demon, the film can still be read as a study on the power of belief as well as a supernatural horror film. There's nothing to say the supernatural events in the film are actually happening outside what the subject has been made to believe is happening and the film walks this thin line between reality and the paranormal rather well.
My only criticism is that Peggy Cummins doesn't have enough to do, but for me she'll always be Annie Laurie Starr so I can never quite see her as the damsel in distress.
Vampire Circus is a quirky and odd vampire film with some of the most innovative vampire-killing techniques I've ever seen on film:
There is lots of awesome hair, a bizarre dance routine and a dwarf clown who rips his own face off.
On a side note I met some very cool people at the screening including horror author A.M Esmonde who has also talked about the event on his blog. Check out the trailer for Terminus, a short film he produced based on characters from his books:
And on a non-horror note, I also got chatting to his brother Wayne who plays guitar with Welsh rock band V0id. I've since been listening to their latest album Zer0 and it's pretty awesome - they're kind of like Feeder but a bit rockier.
In other news I've been having various Jenny Ringo meetings/conversations/drinking sessions recently and will post a full update soon. It's looking like we're getting very close to being finished, although there may still be quite a bit of work to do on the sound.
Now I'm spending the rest of the bank holiday weekend finishing the other rewrite I was supposed to do in March and not playing Bioshock. And if I get time I'll start writing up the epic blog about my trip to Italy a couple of weeks ago...
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