So here we are on the other side of the Panic Button world premiere at London's Film4 Frightfest 2011.
climbing the stairs to FrightFest 2011 - it all starts with the poster...
i mean the screenplay, yes the screenplay dammit!
My crazy schedule of late meant I could only duck in to Empire screen 1 to check out one other movie during the weekend. And anyone who knows me won't be surprised that movie was 'The Wicker Tree', with Robin Hardy's 70s original being something of a lifelong obsession of mine. The man himself gave the film a fantastic and funny intro, full of the camp humour one would expect from him. The film itself is a curious mash-up of bawdy comedy, religious diatribe & country evangelistic music that (unlike the original) never quite gelled for me. I did get goosebumps during a brief cameo from the one & only Christopher Lee, but even that felt shoehorned in for shareholder value. The eclectic movie was strengthened by a smashing performance from Honeysuckle Weeks as 'Lolly' - she delivered some killer lines and moments ("all the way to 7," hehehe) and is definitely one to watch.
Oh Chriiist! Oh Jeeesus Chriiist! - The Wicker Tree
A brief interval gave me the chance to catch up with some old friends & to make a few new ones, then it was time to head on in for the World Premiere of 'Panic Button'. Frightfest founder (and erstwhile Panic Button supporter - thanks Alan your cheque is in the post!) Alan Jones and producer/co-writer John Shackleton introduced the movie to a packed auditorium. My thanks to John for giving me a shout out during his intro, I was touched (your cheque is in the post too!). It was fun seeing the film on huge screen with a full-on sound mix, amidst a crowd of likeminded horror fans. There was lots of applause, laughs (in all the 'right' places) & a palpable feeling of rising tension during the finale (either that or my Premiere trousers were on too tight). Mr Shackleton took to the stage again for a Q&A after the end credits rolled, accompanied by the main cast members and director Chris Crow. My favourite moment was when an audience member asked (in all seriousness) if the film would be used in schools as an educational tool about the dangers of social networking. "We might have to tone Michael Jibson's dialogue down a bit," came the reply (Michael plays pottymouthed 'Dave' in the film :-)
Panic Button Q&A:
L-R Chris Crow (director), Joshua Richards (Rupert Turner), Elen Rhys (Gwen),
Jack Gordon (Max), Scarlett Alice Johnson (Jo), John Shackleton (producer)
The Empire foyer afterwards was buzzing, and cast and crew took to the red carpet for a press junket of photo calls and interviews - you can see them shine in the Frightfest Day 3 report below (coupla mins in to the video). It was a pleasure to finally meet some of the cast members & to catch up with some of the production team - also to meet the lovely Louise of UK distributor Showbox & raise a glass with some FrightFest friends before hometime.
A slew of reviews has since appeared online, with people Tweeting, Blogging and Facebooking about the movie. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, with a few naysayers out there (but you can't please everybody). One negative Twitter response bemoaned the movie's 'unbelievable' premise - i'd love to hear their thoughts on the premises for 'Troll Hunter', 'Fright Night' and of course... 'The Wicker Tree'! Sorry, but I go to festivals like Frightfest year in, year out, expressly to see films with unbelievable premises - leave banal reality at home on the telly where it belongs. Rant over!
I have tons more films to check out that I didn't get time to see at the festival, including The Kill List, The Woman, The Theatre Bizarre and Troll Hunter, but for now they'll have to wait cos that deadline looms. Until next time...
Hot on the heels of my last post about 'PANIC BUTTON' (see Ain't It Cool News review in previous blog entry below), distributor Showbox Media has released the DVD + Blu-ray disc artwork for the November 7th 2011 UK release.
the following extra features are listed on Amazon:
"Makes 'Catfish' look like 'Cats and Dogs' - a gripping modern horror movie that is very much a product of our times. Just excellent"
(read full review HERE)
And a heads up that there are few tickets left for the World Premiere of the movie FrightFest is calling: "The Social Network of Shocks - a chiller so timely, gripping & smart"
(#1 in Alan Jones' Top 5 FrightFest Picks)
Click HERE for last minute World Premiere tickets if you wanna see it on a huge screen at the Empire Leicester Square!
"British horror at its bloody best" Four Stars (Sky Movies)
And last but not least, am thrilled to tell you that 'Panic Button' has secured UK DVD/Blu-ray distribution thru Showbox Media (who you'll know as the good people behind the fan-favourite Shameless & Cine-Asia DVD imprints). UK release date for the 'Panic Button' discs is Nov 7th 2011.
More (Much more...) from me soon dear readers. Meantime, hope to see you at FrightFest!
Been thinking about my all-time fave author J.G. Ballard of late. I mean, feral gangs smashing and grabbing amidst the tower blocks? How very 'High Rise'. A graphic designer arrested for looting? How very 'Kingdom Come'.
I first read Ballard's latter novel a couple of years ago, while still living in LondonTown. It resonated deeply with my innate hatred of, and perverse fascination with, shopping malls and rampant consumer culture in general.
As parts of London, and Birmingham, and then Manchester burned behind the cool indifference of my tellybox screen, I reached for Ballard on my shelf again. The terrifying prescience of his writing is at times a peculiar comfort.
In particular, I found myself recalling an exchange between the protagonist Richard Pearson, and wacky psychiatrist Dr Maxted (thanks to Laura Hird's excellent book review site for saving me the effort of typing this extract) :
”Elective insanity is waiting inside us, waiting inside us to come out when we need it. We're talking primate behaviour at its most extreme. Witch-hunts, auto-da-fes, heretic burnings, the hot poker shoved up the enemy's rear, gibbets along the skyline. Willed madness can infect a housing estate or a whole nation.'
'Thirties Germany?'
' Good example. People still think the Nazi leaders led the German people into the horrors of race war. Not true. The Germans were desperate to break out of their prison. Defeat, inflation, grotesque war reparations, the threat of barbarians advancing from the east. Going mad would set them free, and the chose Hitler to lead the hunting party. That's why they stayed together to the end. They needed a psychopathic god to worship, so they recruited a nobody and stood him on the high altar. The great religions have been at it for millennia.'
'States of willed madness? Christianity? Islam?'
'Vast systems of psychopathic delusion that murdered millions, launched crusades and founded empires. A great religion spells danger. Today people are desperate to believe, but they can only reach God through psychopathology. Look at the most religious areas of the world at present - the Middle East and the United States. These are sick societies, and they're going to get sicker. People are never more dangerous than when they have nothing left to believe except in God.'
'But what else is there to believe in?' I waited for Maxted to reply, but the psychiatrist was staring through the picture window at the dome of the Metro-Centre, fists gripping the air as if trying to steady the world around him. 'Dr Maxted?'
'Nothing. Except madness.' Maxted rallied himself and turned back to me. 'People feel they can rely on the irrational. It offers the only guarantee of freedom from all the cant and bullshit and sales commercials fed to us by politicians, bishops and academics. People are deliberately re-primitivizing themselves. They yearn for magic and unreason, which served them well in the past, and might help them again. They're keen to enter a new Dark Age. The lights are on, but they're retreating into the inner darkness, into superstition and unreason. The future is going to be a struggle between vast systems of competing psychopathies, all of them willed and deliberate, part of a desperate attempt to escape from a rational world and the boredom of consumerism.'
'Consumerism leads to social pathology? Hard to believe.'
'It paves the way. Half the goods we buy these days are not much more than adult toys. The danger is that consumerism will need something close to fascism to keep it growing. Take the Metro-Centre and its flat sales. Close your eyes a little and it already looks like a Nuremberg rally. The ranks of sales counters, the long straight aisles, the signs and banners, the whole theatrical aspect.'
'No jackboots, though,' I pointed out. 'No ranting fuhrers.'
'Not yet. Anyway, they belong to the politics of the street. Ourstreets are the cable TV consumer channels. Our party insignia are the gold and platinum loyalty cards. Faintly risible? Yes, but people thought the Nazis were a bit of a joke. The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness. You can see it here already.'
'In bosky Surrey? I don't think so.'
'It's coming Richard.' Maxted pursed his lips, as it to shut out all possibility of a smile. ‘Here and in the towns around Heathrow. You can feel it in the air.'
II believe we are living in the Age of Greed. A society built on the 1980s culture of me-me-me consumerism, and blended with the entitlement culture of the 1990s & 2000s (under a Tory 'coalition' government intent on squeezing the British Isles tighter than ever) is liable to burst. To tear apart at its sweatshop-stitched seams.
Colour me chuffed. Huge congrats to the cast & crew!
If you're in London in August and fancy seeing 'Panic Button' on one the largest screens in the cinematic universe, individual tickets for the FrightFest World Premiere (with Director & Cast in attendance) are selling like hot potootees.
Frazer Lee is the writer/director of award-winning horror shorts 'On Edge' and 'Red Lines' (Robber Baron Productions UK, both starring Doug Bradley of 'Hellraiser' fame), and is screenwriter of 'Panic Button' (horror/thriller feature, Movie Mogul Films/Film Agency Wales UK), 'Simone' (horror short, 386 Films USA) and many more optioned and commissioned screen works. Frazer's fiction is published in print and digital by Samhain Publishing, Bloody Books and others in the UK and USA. Master of Horror Tobe Hooper ('Texas Chain Saw Massacre') said of Frazer's work, "Gave me the total creeps...he knows how to do it guys!"
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