Following the success of last May’s inaugural MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER, the Monster Fest team have announced the return of the three-day mini-festival to Cinema Nova in Melbourne from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th of July.
For the very first-time in Monster Fest history, the program will be completely composed of retrospective films, each one presented in head-spinning 3D, from all-time classics to unsung genre greats, spanning decades of horror cinema. Several films in the line-up will be making their Australian big screen debuts.
Once the celebration wraps in Melbourne, the MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER 3D hits the road to interstate EVENT Cinema venues in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th of July.
Despite having performed strongly at the U.S. box office, 2013’s TEXAS CHAINSAW was passed over for cinema release in Australia, providing Monster Fest with the opportunity to boast Theatrical Premiere rights on the film’s 10th anniversary. Director John Luessenhop foresaw the star power of Alexandra Daddario (pictured, right) and Scott Eastwood, casting them in early career roles, helping the film to a solid $50million global gross and re-energising the franchise.
In what could arguably be considered to be the last great sequel to 1979’s The Amityville Horror, Monster Fest will present a 40th Anniversary Screening of Richard Fleischer‘s AMITYVILLE 3-D. Along with its practical effects and eye-popping visuals, this installment in the franchise is notable for featuring America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan in an early role.
Director André De Toth’s evergreen classic HOUSE OF WAX (pictured, left) will celebrate its 70th Anniversary at the Weekender screenings. One of the first studio-produced 3D colour features, it stars Vincent Price as the malevolent and memorable Professor Henry Jarrod.
Penned by Todd Farmer (Jason X) and directed by Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry), MY BLOODY VALENTINE is one of the rare remakes that not only stands tall with its predecessor (which suffered terribly under the censor’s knife upon release) but gives you more of what you want, now with epic gore and in glorious 3D.
Lavishly bathed in garish viscera, Andy Warhol‘s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (pictured, right), written and directed by Paul Morrissey, is an undisputed classic of cult cinema and returns for its 50th Anniversary, restored in 4K and presented in 3D.
Lensed by Gerald Feil, the cinematographer responsible for Friday the 13th part III 3D, the 1984 slasher SILENT MADNESS remains somewhat obscure locally as it suffered distribution woes and ultimately landed direct-to-video in the late-eighties. Monster Fest will present the film for the first-time on Australian cinemas screens, in a 4K restoration and as intended in 3D.
MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER 3D screens July 7-9 at Cinema Nova in Melbourne, then July 14-16 at EVENT Cinemas George Street (NSW), Innaloo (WA), Marion (SA) and Brisbane Myer Centre (Qld). Session and ticket details can be found via the Monster Fest website.
Monster Fest is bouncing back from two years of COVID disruptions with a national screening program called ‘Monster Fest Weekender’. The three-day program, which acknowledges the loyal and hungry horror fanbase that have supported Monster Fest through good times and bad, includes new works from such genre greats as Dario Argento and Phil Tippett as well as the World Premiere of remastered Stephen King anthology.
Monster Fest Weekender has wrapped in Melbourne, where Cinema Nova hosted the Australian Premiere of Argento’s Dark Glasses as the opening night attraction. The next wave of Weekender dates are May 13-15, at Event Cinema sites in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Sydney. The following week sees the New Zealand debut of the Monster Fest brand, with 'Weekender' playing in Auckland from May 20-22.
Opening the Australia-wide and NZ legs will be Mad God (pictured, top), a nightmarish vision featuring insane scientists and pig warriors crafted to cinematic perfection by stop-motion animation legend, Phil Tippett. This dazzlingly dark work represents a decades-long obsession for Tippett, who began the film in the late ‘80s only to shelve it when CGI effects became dominant. Urged on by fan and industry support, he finally completed Mad God a whopping 35 years later and has spent much of the past year touring it around the international horror festival circuit to enormous acclaim.
Two of the most talked-about horror entries of 2022 will screen for Australian audiences for the first time. The feature debut of director Kate Dolan, You Are Not My Mother (pictured, above right) is a Dublin-set supernatural chiller in which a daughter (the terrific Hazel Doupe) begins to doubt whether the return of her mother (Carolyn Bracken) in the days before Halloween is such a good thing. And Finnish director Hannah Bergholm’s first film Hatching, one of the breakout hits of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, follows a young girl’s obsession with an egg that grows to dangerously foreboding dimensions.
Documentaries are afforded a high profile in the Weender title roster. Filmmakers John Campopiano and Chris Griffiths dive deep into the making of the landmark 1990 TV mini-series with Pennywise: The Story of It, honouring a small-screen production that defined horror for a generation of fans when they were exposed to the author’s sewer-dwelling clown-faced entity. Director Mike Schiff draws a direct line between horror films and heavy metal music with his rousing analysis, The History of Metal and Horror, featuring such fan favourites as actor Michael Berryman, muso Alice Cooper and crossover artist Rob Zombie.
Genre history is recounted with the screening of two highly-anticipated retrospective titles. From 1985, the Stephen King-penned anthology work Cat’s Eye has been afforded a 4K remaster courtesy of Studio Canal and will World Premiere on the big screen for Australian audiences. Featuring Drew Barrymore, Candy Clark and James Woods, it was an underperformer upon its initial release, but the Lewis Teague-directed film has developed a legitimate cult following in recent years.
And ‘80s C-grade action is afforded some fresh love and appreciation with the screening of the so-bad-it’s-great opus Miami Connection (1987), an all-but-forgotten schlockbuster from director Woo-sang Park and starring…well, nobody really. Rediscovered in recent years by the team at the Alamo Drafthouse, the plot follows, “a kick-arse rock band, whose members also happen to be martial arts masters, [who] decide to take on Miami’s seedy underbelly.”
Ticketing and session details for the MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER program can be found at the festival’s Official Website and via the Event Cinema page.
Alexandre O. Philippe has crafted a body of work that is unique in film circles. He studies cinematic greatness, then paints his own film canvas inspired by the brilliance of others. From his take on zombie film culture in Doc of the Dead (2014), to his frame-by-frame study of Hitchcock’s ‘shower scene’ in 78/52 (2017), to Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019), a journey into the nightmarish psychology of Ridley Scott’s deep-space shocker, Philippe has redefined the ‘making-of…’ documentary with works that expose not only the filmmaking process, but the filmmaker themself.
His latest is LEAP OF FAITH, in which he sits director William Friedkin down in a comfy chair and unravels the mind behind the most terrifying film in movie history. Ahead of the film’s screening at Monster Fest 2020 and wide release via Shudder, Alexandre O. Philippe spoke with SCREEN-SPACE about forging a bond with the enigmatic movie brat, now a revered elder statesman of cinema, and how Friedkin’s legacy will always include a turning point in cultural history...
SCREEN-SPACE: You create these deeply artistic, very personal works in service of other people's artistic works. It's a very unique way to make movies, to look at films. How do you describe what you do?
ALEXANDRE: That's a really good question. I sort of see myself, in retrospect, as a bridge between what you might call cinema studies and the general public. There's a sense that this idea of deconstructing film [is] cinephilia, something that can only be enjoyed if you have studied X amount of years. But just trying to do your own deep dive into films is so much fun and should be accessible to the general public. I make films thinking about the most hardcore cinephiles [but] also for people who may never have even watched the film. Nothing makes me happier than when we screen 78/52 and my first question to the audience is, "Has anybody here, not seen Psycho?" There's always a few hands, and they're always very tentative. I'm like, "Well, wait a minute, you're here to watch a documentary about a scene from a movie you haven't seen that came out 60 years ago. That's incredible stuff." So I think there's hope in humanity, when that happens and it gives me great pleasure to provide. I mean, I'm glad you said that because I think the idea of making those films cinematic to me is very, very important.
SCREEN-SPACE: There's a fascination that I have with documentaries that provide not only an insight into the filmmaking rigour, but the minds of the director; films like Hearts of Darkness and Burden of Dreams. And I think that's where your films excel.
ALEXANDRE: Well, thank you. I'm very interested in meaning; why those films, why those moments, why those scenes continue to resonate with us. Let's face it, those are not just movies, they're cultural moments. I think they mean a lot to us. And so I think, as a culture, we need to understand why those things matter so much to us. I think it's a sort of a window into our collective unconscious. (Pictured, above; Friedkin with actress Linda Blair, as Regan, on the set of The Exorcist)
SCREEN-SPACE: Mr. Friedkin has been talking about The Exorcist, for what feels like a thousand years. What were you hoping to achieve that was a fresh perspective?
ALEXANDRE: He talks a lot about ‘Gifts from the Movie Gods’. I think this was a gift in the form of William Friedkin, coming to me, and saying, "If you find an angle, just let me know." Those were his words. I will always remember that. To me, the angle was his process as a filmmaker. So I proposed to him, "I would like to use the Hitchcock/Truffaut model of interviews. But instead of chronologically going through your entire filmography, we're going to just focus on The Exorcist. And we're going to crack it open, and we're going to break down every moment, every scene, every image, every technique. I will structure it into sessions. We're not going to talk about special effects. We're going to talk about art and music, about influences and inspirations." And his response was immediate; "This sounds great and ambitious. Let's do it. How many days do you want?" So,we started with three, and then added a fourth, and then a fifth, and then a sixth. Then, we'd have these conversations, or he'd invite me for lunch and we'd start talking about stuff. I'd be like, "What? You haven't told me about this. We need another day. Let's add another day." We could still be talking about The Exorcist, frankly. For me the real pleasure was to just let him talk. You have to find these questions that you know are going to unlock something in him. And then he'll just go, and it's astonishing the... I mean, he is a true Renaissance man.
SCREEN-SPACE: What do you know about him that maybe his fans don't know? And I don't mean personal details of course, but what have you learned about him from being a friend, that you can impart to us?
ALEXANDRE: His sense of humor is pretty extraordinary. I will never forget this one lunch we had where the entire lunch he talked about two things - Citizen Kane and Beavis and Butthead. He is obsessed with Beavis and Butthead. I hope he won't mind me saying this, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't. He had Mike Judge record his answering machine in the voice of Butthead. And he sent me a cel, like an animation cel, by Mike, of Beavis and Butthead on the couch with William Friedkin in the middle, just sitting on the couch in between them, with a Judas Priest t-shirt. Amazing stuff.
SCREEN-SPACE: The Exorcist represents a landmark moment in film history. A major studio film containing these extraordinarily shocking scenes; the notion that a studio would take those sort of risks today is incredible. That's why I consider the '70s to be like the last golden era of Hollywood movie making. From your studies and your understanding of Mr. Friedkin and the film, what's your take on its place in film history?
ALEXANDRE: It's one of those few films that became a game changer. If you adjust for inflation, it's number nine at the all time box office, which tells you something about the popularity of the film. There's nothing like it, because it's just an extraordinarily powerful piece of filmmaking, grounded in some extraordinarily bold choices. Bill says that he was really the only person who knew how to make this film, which I don't think he means in a cocky or pretentious way. I think he truly was the only one who could, as he says, see it in his mind's eye. It's just one of those films that could have been ridiculous, easily. Just as Alien could have been ridiculous. I mean, if you think about the chest burster, right? The execution of the chest burster could've completely killed the movie. And yet, it's the execution of the chest burster that really made Alien the great film that it is. It makes it completely believable. And Hitchcock with Psycho, utilising source materials that are almost unfilmable. But, comes along the right director, at the right time, who figures it out. The works are so great and so powerful, translated to the screen in such a powerful way, they transcend the medium. Whenever something like this happens in cinema, we have to cherish those moments because they're few and far between. There's a lot of great films being made, but when something like The Exorcist happens, it goes beyond being just a great movie. It's just one for the ages, as they say.
A SHUDDER Original Presentation, LEAP OF FAITH: WILLIAM FRIEDKIN ON THE EXORCIST screens Sunday November 1 at 2.00pm at Event Cinemas sites in George St Sydney, Innaloo Perth, Myer Centre Brisbane and Marion Adelaide. Full ticketing and session details can be found at the Monster Fest 2020 website.
The legendary Lloyd Kaufman, the oldest ‘enfant terrible’ in showbusiness, is back, this time with an adaptation of The Bard’s The Tempest that American society didn’t know it needed. The lovable showman, still head of the underground cult giant Troma Studios after nearly 50 years, directs himself in #ShakespeareShitstorm, a brutal, brazen takedown of cancel culture, the opioid crisis, SJW influence and Big Pharma.This nakedly ambitious, garishly grotesque freakshow has found some serious festival love worldwide, and comes to Australia on October 31 as part of the 2020 Monster Fest line-up.
From his home in New York, Kaufman spoke with SCREEN-SPACE (“I'm happy if anybody pays attention to Uncle Lloyd,” he bemoans, half-seriously) about his ongoing battle to defy the mainstream, even as the U.S. slides closer to a Troma-like reality...
SCREEN-SPACE: Why The Tempest? What link was there between Shakespeare's work and the satire you were aiming for with #ShakespeareShitstorm?
KAUFMAN: The Tempest has always been my favourite Shakespearian play. Prospero deals with magic [and] I create magic with the movies. Prospero has been banished, as I have to the deep, deep underground by the mainstream. So, I love The Tempest. I went to see it with my mommy when I was nine years old. She took me to Stratford on Avon in Connecticut and I loved it. We studied it in eighth grade at Trinity School. Saw it numerous times on stage and a lot of the movie iterations. I very much liked Derek Jarman's version, as well as the television version with Lee Remick, Roddy McDowall, Richard Burton as Caliban. It's got a monster in it and Troma's big on monsters. It's got fairies. It's very druggy. I learned about drugs at Yale. That's about all I learned. Well, I learned about Marvel Comics at Yale, too, which is why I was friends with Stan Lee for 50 years. (Pictured, above; Kaufman, left, as Prospero)
SCREEN-SPACE: You work with your Troma troop again; Doug Sakmann, Monique Dupree and Debbie Rochon all return. Are you at that stage now where they know what you're thinking, what you want as the director? What’s a Troma set like?
KAUFMAN: Well, we attract fans. Everybody who worked on #ShakespeareShitstorm was a fan. The director of photography came from California to New York and got paid about 10% of what he would usually receive. The first cameraman came in from Denmark, the production designer from Japan. People came from all over the world to do something that they believed in and to disturb the shit a little bit. My wife was one of the producers. My assistant Justin Martell convinced us to go to Albania, becoming the first American feature film to shoot in Albania. So it really was a labor of love. It was probably the most wonderful group we've ever had. People got married; people [fell in] love with each other. There's a whole family of these people now all over the world, and that's been true of the last 20 years.
SCREEN-SPACE: Do you keep things tight when shooting? You don’t strike me as 12-take kinda director.
KAUFMAN: We took a long time rehearsing and preparing the movie. By the time we came to the set, we were pretty well prepared. We accept improvisational ideas, such as the Chinese warlord woman singing the Sergeant Kabukiman theme song with the actor who played the Evil One in Sergeant Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. And there were a couple of young guys who are obsessed with Citizen Toxie, who put on diapers and played the nightclub scene naked except for the diapers, to pay homage the Diaper Mafia in Citizen Toxie. (Pictured, right; Kaufman with his biggest star, The Toxic Avenger)
SCREEN-SPACE: It’s great seeing you back in the director’s chair, it must be said…
KAUFMAN: The late John G. Avildsen was my mentor. I learned so much from him, like trying to shoot in sequence. As you go along, if an actor becomes nasty, you get rid of him or her or it. Or you can rewrite, and blah-blah-blah. And since we can't afford to shoot with a union, we can shoot in sequence for the most part. He also suggested that it was much more satisfying to shoot with young new actors rather than famous stars. We made Cry Uncle together, which you can see on Troma Now. He turned what should be X-rated softcore into a hilarious movie. It was Paul Sorvino's first movie. With Joe, he discovered Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon, and then Stallone in Rocky and Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. Every movie he did was wonderful. He never relied on big stars. #ShakespeareShitstorm is dedicated to the memory of John G. Avildsen, and Stan Lee and Monty Python’s Terry Jones, who were major, major influences on me.
SCREEN-SPACE: How do you define Troma's place in the pop culture landscape, and what responsibility does that bring with it?
KAUFMAN: Well, the first step is to thine own self be true. I bought into the auteur theory, which was founded back in the late '50s and '60s by the French journalists Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol and a couple of others, who were transitioning into filmmakers. They propounded the auteur theory, which basically suggests that films should reflect the mind, soul, and heart of the director in the way a book reflects the mind, soul and heart of the writer. I bought into that because I speak fluent French and at the Yale Film Society, they had a stack of these Cahiers du Cinéma, which was the magazine of the Cinémathèque Française, and I started reading that stuff.
SCREEN-SPACE: Troma's has been around now since, what, the Carter administration, the Ford administration? Is American society as rich a source of satirical targets as it's ever been?
KAUFMAN: Since 1974. It's a rich source of satire, but unfortunately, other than South Park, we have free speech here as long as we don't say anything. I think to create real satire, you have to step over some lines. Look who's running for president, both of them; old lying millionaires who have used public service to enrich themselves. I think some of my fans are pissed off at me because I didn't want to #SettleForBiden. In New York State, where I vote, he will get 90% of the vote. So I just couldn't bring myself to vote for him even though he's better than Trump. I voted for the Green Party because I just couldn't bring myself to vote for the better of the two lying sleazebags. (Pictured, above; Kaufman, left with #ShakespeareShitstorm co-star, Debbie Rochon)
#SHAKESPEARESHITSTORM screens Saturday October 31 at 7.00pm at Event Cinemas sites in George St Sydney, Innaloo Perth, Myer Centre Brisbane and Marion Adelaide. Full ticket and sessions can be found at the official Monster Fest 2020 website.
FANGORIA X MONSTER FEST 2019:In 1999, four young men set about resurrecting a neglected narrative within the Australian film industry – the horror film. They had little experience – for screenwriter Dave Warner, producer Martin Fabinyi, director Kimble Rendall, their collaboration represented each one’s feature film debut; composer Guy Gross had industry cred (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 1994; Blinky Bill, 1992), but he had never scored a horror film. Together, they conceived of a slasher film deconstruction, a teen splatter film set within a teen splatter film; the project would be called Cut, a pun riffing on the central themes of murder and movie-making, and it would star Molly Ringwald, Kylie Minogue and Jessica Napier.
Twenty years later, to celebrate Umbrella Entertainment’s 4K restoration of the film, the four men were brought together by Fangoria x Monster Fest | Sydney to revisit an ambitious, fascinating and wholly undervalued slice of Ozploitation cinema. For a Q&A hosted by Festival Director and SCREEN-SPACE’s Managing Editor Simon Foster, the team behind Cut recalled its conception, production and reception; an edited transcript of the evening reveals the passion and frustration it took to bring home-grown horror back to Australian screens… (pictured, above; from left, Fabinyi, Rendell, Gross and Warner)
Dave: We’d been working on a Mushroom Pictures documentary and Martin said to us at the Bayswater Brasserie one day, "I have been thinking we should do a horror film, because one of the things we have in Australia is young talent on shows like Neighbours and Home and Away." Kimble and I said, "Yeah, that is a great idea." It was just before Christmas. I didn't go away that year and in the six days of Christmas I wrote a script, and that started it. (pictured, right; Kylie Minogue as director Hilary Jacobs in Cut)
Martin: We worked on it fairly consistently together. I remember being in your office at Flat Rock on Bayswater Road, and we worked on it there with Kimble.
Kimble: We met at a Chinese restaurant and ended up in a cinema watching I Know What You Did Last Summer. At that time, there were no Australian horror movies. Even though there's a great history of making genre films here, going back to the days of 10BA, there was none of them being made. We thought we could do it low budget with some soapie stars. I'd worked with Kylie on a short film called Highway to Hell. Martin was at Mushroom, the home of Kylie. So it was, "Ok, we'll get Kylie in it".
Kimble: Originally, we were going to cast Daryl Hannah, and Martin went to Los Angeles, because apparently Daryl Hannah bought a horse every time she did a movie, so every movie was worth a horse or two.
Martin: She agreed to come out and do the movie, and so we started pre-production and we were halfway through and then she dropped out because her boyfriend told her it was bad karma to do a horror movie, or something like that.
Martin: Yeah, she was a very weird person. So Molly came on board and she was far, far better, and loved it. She loved the experience. (pictured, left; Molly Ringwald as actress Vanessa Turnbill in Cut)
Kimble: Molly was the biggest star in the world at one point, and everyone loves Molly. We approached her and she got the joke and the whole concept. We started in New South Wales and ended up filming in South Australia, and Kylie and Molly turned up and away we went.
Martin: We shot in July 1999, in the dead of winter and it was in the mountains in the Adelaide Hills, so it was particularly cold.
Dave: We had this foreign minister called Alexander Downer. He was famous for the photograph of him wearing silk stockings. That was the house that he grew up in. That was his family house. (pictured, right; Rendell, right, on the set of Cut)
Martin: So it already had a horror element to it (laughs).
Dave: Adelaide, as you know, is a great place to shoot a horror movie. Then we were lucky enough to get a great composer, in Guy.
Guy: I was another Mushroom staple, part of the Mushroom world. We hadn't worked together; we got thrust together. This was the days of old synths, of low budget, so it was a seven foot rack of synthesizers doing that orchestral score. And it was nice working with those old clichés and dipping back and forth into both old film and new film [styles]. I love absorbing whatever I hear and I did hear some old horror films, and went oh, that's the harmony. It's a musical thing you do. You have to just absorb yourself in a style and then dive into it.
Dave: I loved horror movies. When Scream came out, that was really exciting for us, because it completely re-enlivened that genre.
Kimble: Wes Craven, John Carpenter and of course, Alfred Hitchcock. I've wide, eclectic tastes, but I love the classic horror movies. From a filmmaker's point of view they're great fun to make, all the prosthetics and visual effects stuff. I would like to have another go at the prosthetics in Cut, but in those days we had the incredible guys from Makeup Effects Group. They did the baby in The Matrix and they've done some fantastic stuff since. (pictured, below; actor Frank Roberts with Makeup Effects Group artist transforming into Scar Man)
Kimble: In Australia, it did okay. In France, it was the second most popular [Australian] film, after Strictly Ballroom, and it did really well all around the world, so it did connect to audiences.
Martin: It actually made its money back, internationally, which is really remarkable for a local film.
Kimble: It's the marketing. I'd been working on some commercials, which ended up being the most successful anti-smoking commercials in the world. So I said to UIP, the distributor, "Why don't we bring in the creative team behind the ad campaign?” These guys came up with some great ideas. Instead of creating our own posters, we were going to slash everybody else's posters; we were going to have fake murders in cinemas and have people carrying bloody stretchers out. So I took the two guys into this meeting with UIP and said, "These guys can help us," and all the marketing guys from the film side said, "There's no audience for horror in Australia." I said, "I don't think that's correct. I think if you market to that audience, then it'll connect with them." They said, "Well, we're going to release it on Gay Mardi Gras weekend.” I said, "Um, you've got Kylie and Molly in it, so…I guess." They literally never spoke to us again. It came out but it didn't really connect and it was to do with the marketing. Overseas, it got into a festival and there were hundreds of people who’d seen the film throwing snowballs at me, yelling, "We love Cut! Cut, we love it!" and I thought wow, there is an audience. They had a fantastic marketing campaign.
Guy: Technically, we've got a lot more control these days and synthetically, I could create much fatter and big sounds, but it sounded orchestral. I was happy, not embarrassed. I'll walk out chest out (laughs). For me, the film rocks along quite fast. I expected it to be a lot, lot slower than it's come out. Credit to you guys. It really stood up well.
Kimble: I actually haven't seen it since I went to that festival. That's not uncommon. You make a film and you don't watch it again, so I was quite happy. Of course, there are things I would have loved to have another go at, but I have a soft spot for it. You love a film, sometimes you don't. I enjoy it, I think it looks good and you listen to the score and you go, that's a really good score. It's fantastic. (pictured, above; the villainous Scar Man)
Martin: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I jumped and laughed seeing it again 20 years later. Literally, I haven't seen it since 2000. I think the number of people who worked on the film who've gone on is remarkable, including everyone here. I just think it was a real fun time, as much as films can be. (pictured, below; Stephen Curry as Rick Stephens in Cut)
Dave: I was in awe of the filmmaking ability of Kimble and Guy. They did a fantastic job. For me, I really wish they'd filmed my fucking second draft (laughs), which I thought was a lot better than the final one. It's a weird thing when you're a writer and you've got elements to it but not the whole thing. Despite that, I enjoyed it because of the great craft of those guys and Martin for putting it together. Compare that to what you've seen from other people with a lot more tools at their disposal, I think it was a brilliant job.
Kimble: A scene that we cut out had Scar Man on the balcony of the house and we're playing music and he did this mad rap dance thing. One of the producers, the really insane one, said, "You've got to have that in the movie. It will be a hit if you put it in." He might have been right, but we didn't think so, so we took it out. He wasn't right. (pictured, below; Jessica Napier, star of Cut)
Dave: I always think that in classic horror [narratives] somebody has breached a moral code, which we may not know about until [it’s] too late, so I was careful. I can see [my] overall story arc - there's a tragedy on a film set 20 years ago and then a new crew returns to finish the cursed production. Halfway through our film, a different producer took over and rewrote my script, so it's a weird experience because you conceive of something that changes. In fact, in the original one, it was a #MeToo film really. I didn't have Scar Man in the original. It was purely within the character, so there wasn't a supernatural element to it at all. Once those building blocks are gone, it's hard to re-scramble the egg, but if you've got talented people working on their craft, it doesn't matter. They get the essence of what's going to work, so I wouldn't change anything of that. But if you went back two drafts or three drafts, yeah, it changed quite a bit.
Kimble: Martin went on to make Chopper and Wolf Creek. Guy, of course, went on to do some amazing films, as did Dave. I went to this whole Hollywood world as well. It was the start of our journey, the film that sort of kicked it off, strangely.
Wednesday, May 24, 2023 at 2:36PM 
Once the celebration wraps in Melbourne, the MONSTER FEST WEEKENDER 3D hits the road to interstate EVENT Cinema venues in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth from Friday 14th to Sunday 16th of July. 
In what could arguably be considered to be the last great sequel to 1979’s The Amityville Horror, Monster Fest will present a 40th Anniversary Screening of Richard Fleischer‘s AMITYVILLE 3-D. Along with its practical effects and eye-popping visuals, this installment in the franchise is notable for featuring America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan in an early role.
Lavishly bathed in garish viscera, Andy Warhol‘s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (pictured, right), written and directed by Paul Morrissey, is an undisputed classic of cult cinema and returns for its 50th Anniversary, restored in 4K and presented in 3D.
