Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 26, 2005, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
You never know who you’re going to run into on the streets of Montreal when the Fantasia festival (see Part One and Part Two of this report) is underway. As my friends and I are heading to the Concordia Hall theater for Friday’s screenings, I hear Scooter McCrae call out, “Hi, Ray!” and turn to see none other than Ray Harryhausen and his traveling companions getting out of their car in front of their hotel. Harryhausen’s here to introduce his classic Jason and the Argonauts, give a Q&A and receive the fest’s Lifetime Achievement Award; more on that below.
I’m tempted to hit the Hall for DJ XL5’s International Zappin’ Party 2005, a collection of outrageous shorts including Jennifer Shiman’s “30 Seconds With Bunnies” series and Don Hertzfeldt’s truly berserk Rejected. But, fan of odd indie features that I am, I instead head over to the J.A. de Sève for Colin Miller’s low-budget comedy All Babes Want to Kill Me. The writer/director also stars in the movie as Vatchel Cho, one of three brothers trained by their father to be martial arts champions—but the only one of the trio afflicted by a curse that makes beautiful women want to attack him. Though billed as a kung-fu comedy, the movie spends much more time on Vatchel’s attempts to defeat the curse, and his nasty older brother’s schemes to cheat him out of an inheritance, than it does on humorous mayhem. That’s a particular shame because when it does arrive, the lengthy climactic rooftop brawl is both funny and impressively choreographed.
Back at the Hall, the night’s big attraction is Survive Style 5+, which has been winning quite a rep via previous fest play and an eye-popping trailer that has been shown several times here. Directed by award-winning Japanese commercials veteran Gen Sekiguchi and written by another ads vet, Taku Tada, the movie blends together a collection of off-the-wall characters including a hitman whose victim refuses to die, a family whose father undergoes a life-changing experience at a hypnosis show and Guy Ritchie veteran Vinnie Jones as a visiting Brit thug who wants to know what everyone’s purpose in life is. Aggressively eccentric and production-designed within an inch of its life, Survive Style is lots of fun on a moment-to-moment basis, though its lack of a narrative spine keeps its pleasures on the surface—until a final reel that ties everything up in unexpected, and unexpectedly moving, ways.
After that, it’s back to the de Sève to witness Lloyd Kaufman’s “How to Make Your Own Damn Movie” seminar, a tongue-in-cheek lecture on how to make it in the B-movie business by the Troma head honcho, accompanied by actress Isabelle Stephen and a shorter-than-I-remember Toxic Avenger. Afflicted by the same kind of technical glitches that mark Troma’s cinematic oeuvre (mostly involving an uncooperative DVD player), the presentation is still pretty entertaining. I’m not around for an even more memorable “live event” later in the night, when a young woman in the Hall audience for Three…Extremes faints during one of the most disturbing moments and has to be taken away in an ambulance!
Saturday afternoon’s all right for fighting—specifically, the monstrous fisticuffs of the Japanese hero Ultraman. The new theatrical feature Ultraman: The Next is what’s listed in the program, but beforehand there’s an unannounced special treat: the first episode of the new Ultraman Max TV series, directed by kaiju specialist Shusuke Kaneko (Gamera trilogy). The filmmaker brings his usual verve to the battles between the towering robotic champion and his pair of foes (a lava monster and a freezing monster), with impressive FX for a shot-on-video production. With any luck, the entire series will eventually be imported for DVD release in the States.
The Ultraman feature, directed by Kazuya Konaka, takes a more adult approach to the material, focusing on the emotional trials of a Japan Self Defense Force pilot who wants to give up the military to spend time with his family (including his gravely ill son). An encounter with a UFO changes both his life and his physical being, as he becomes imbued with the power to transform into Ultraman—and needs it when a soldier who previously encountered the same UFO begins mutating into a rapacious, ever-growing reptilian beast. The serious, toned-down approach to material previously aimed at kids is a nice change, though what we have here, as Joe Bob Briggs would say, is a bit too much plot getting in the way of the story, with only one monster brawl up until the 70-minute mark. The last 20 minutes or so, however, are worth the wait, with seriously cool, eye-popping combat between the gigantic foes. As a bonus, a lucky member of the audience wins a drawing to receive a special Ultraman guitar, one of only five ever manufactured.
After a brief dinner break, it’s back to the Hall for Night of the Living Dorks (pictured above), which sounds like it could be a cheesy shot-on-video effort, but is in fact a slick and polished German production. Written and directed by Matthias Dinter, the film uses the framework of a generic American teen comedy (complete with a dorky hero who ignores the cute girl next door ’cause he’s in love with the school babe, the bully dating said babe, a wild party, etc.) and puts a comic-horror spin on it by having the dork and his two friends become reluctant zombies. Against the odds, Night finds fresh ways to mine territory previously gone over by everything from My Boyfriend’s Back to Shaun of the Dead, with plenty of well-timed gags, brisk pacing, spirited performances and more nudity and crudity than you’ll find in the recent crop of PG-13 U.S. comedies. It’s preceded by The Netherbeast of Berm-Tech Industries, Inc., a hilarious short about a literal corporate horror that has the audience rolling for all of its six minutes. (Speaking of shorts, I was remiss in my previous Fantasia ’05 columns in not noting and praising Darren Curtis’ blackly funny The Christmas Miracle, screened before The Devil’s Rejects, and Robert Morgan’s disturbing Monsters, shown prior to Harry Cleven’s Trouble.)
I manage to avoid fainting during Three…Extremes when I see its encore screening next, which could be because I’ve already seen Fruit Chan’s feature-length expansion of his Three segment, “Dumplings,” which so afflicted that unfortunate viewer last night. Even given this familiarity with the material, I still find “Dumplings” to be the creepiest of the trio, focusing on a woman whose titular culinary creations can restore youth and beauty—thanks to a secret and unnerving ingredient related to another service she provides. Park Chan-wook’s contribution, “Cut,” is a showy and gripping revenge saga in the vein of his celebrated feature OldBoy, centering on a movie extra’s elaborate torment of a successful director. Like OldBoy, though, the piece doesn’t leave you with much at the end beyond the experience of having witnessed some truly unfortunate events. I still, however, much prefer it to Takashi Miike’s “Box,” a dreamlike (i.e., slow and inscrutable) examination of memories and guilty fantasies that haunt a woman who once performed a magic act with her sister. The shortest of the three stories, it feels to me by far the longest.
Or maybe I’m just anxious about the midnight premiere of Shadow: Dead Riot, which follows right after Three and which I’m here to represent as the scriptwriter, accompanied on stage by producer Carl Morano, who’s here with the film’s other producer Csaba Bereczky and several more from the Fever Dreams/Media Blasters team. I’ll leave it to others to judge the movie and our Q&A, except to say that it’s heartening how many people stick around for the latter when the movie ends near 2 in the morning, and that I’m nonplussed when the first question about this women’s-prison zombie film regards why I wrote in the shower and scantily-clad-women scenes.
The subsequent carousing leads me to return to my hotel past 4 in the morning, yet somehow I’m able to wake up Sunday morning in time to check out of my hotel and make it to the Hall in time for the Harryhausen show. It’s great to experience Jason and the Argonauts, see Harryhausen’s famous setpieces (all of which receive rounds of applause) and hear Bernard Herrmann’s stirring score in a theater again, and the FX veteran’s talk afterward is just as memorable. In addition to revealing current plans to produce a series of Edgar Allan Poe shorts (great news!) and to oversee the colorization of a few of his early features (mmm, not such great news), Harryhausen delights the crowd with observations on everything from the current state of special FX movies (“Today there’s an explosion every five minutes, and you couldn’t do that with Greek mythology”) to Peter Jackson’s upcoming King Kong (which he’s looking forward to, though he states that “there’s still only one King Kong”).
From there, it’s a series of goodbyes to my Montreal pals Owen (hope you were able to use the pass!), Isabelle, Rick and others, big thanks to Mitch Davis and the rest of the Fantasia staff for another amazing festival, and then into the car to try to get back to New York before midnight. We succeed, though not without another coincidental meeting along the way—somehow, we wind up stopping at a roadside gas station at the exact same time as the Media Blasters gang! It’s positively supernatural…
