DVD Monthly

Exclusive Frightfest Blog!

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

A huge sigh of relief has enveloped Film4 FrightFest central. The single tickets for our main August 21-25 event have just gone on sale at London’s Odeon West End, literally the last piece of the mammoth organizational jigsaw puzzle in place before turning all our attention to putting on the banner Bank Holiday show. We never expected our consignment of full Weekend Pass tickets to sell out in a record 12 hours. Credit Crunch? What Credit Crunch! Or is it just that people are determined to enjoy themselves now more than ever and be damned?

We knew we had been building an ever-growing committed audience over our past nine-year history. And we knew more by accident than design we had assembled a killer programme line-up. But in our wildest dreams we never expected such a frantic box-office meltdown. That unprecedented demand then became a millstone around our necks. If people subsequently logged on to either our website (www.frightfest.co.uk) or the Odeon’s we couldn’t sell anything other than a few Day Passes due to our set-in-stone July 26 single ticket date because of sponsor and media partnerships.

For the past few weeks we’ve all been fielding desperate pleas for advance tickets to our hottest attractions, MARTYRS, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, BAD BIOLOGY and TOKYO GORE POLICE to name just a few. So it has been quite liberating to finally have the single ticket availability off and running. If fans don’t act fast enough to ensure they see their choice of the hottest genre movies around, the talking points of the future, now they really do have only themselves to blame.

It has been amazing to the four Film4 FrightFest organizers how far we’ve come in terms of world recognition, both to aficionados and industry movers and shakers alike. The roster is always on-trend because all our day jobs are part of the entertainment fabric anyway. We know what’s happening out there and can react accordingly. But for many of our repeat audience it’s the amazing atmosphere, the comfortable camaraderie, the star guests being a part of that experience, and the offbeat extras we always throw into the mix that truly does set Film4 FrightFest apart from other fantasy festivals. That’s what makes our UK wide die-hardcore gear their whole year around the long weekend, booking hotels well in advance, organizing their own quiz, relaxing after hours at the Phoenix Artist Club in Charing Cross Road (our official party HQ) and making it an entire horror holiday package.

It was only recently that Guillermo del Toro gave me another reason for our success. Del Toro really is our undisputed patron saint. He delivered the entire HELLBOY cast at that exciting premiere, he allowed us to be the first festival outside Cannes to showcase PAN”S LABYRINTH, and he came through again with his production of THE ORPHANAGE last year. We also owe him our superb ‘Woodstock of Gore’ description. My latest book is about del Toro’s life and work and in my many weeks of grilling him about everything he’s never spoken about before while in London editing HELLBOY II, he revealed this little gem. Because del Toro knows everybody in genre-land, he told me our past guest directors always say how great and intelligent the audience feedback is during our post-screening Q&A sessions. That aspect had never remotely crossed my mind but its yet another explanation why we are now so firmly entrenched on the movie-going calendar.

We never expected that happening when we launched FrightFest in 2000 at the Prince Charles Cinema. Back then it was an attempt to give London a glimmer of what such veteran fantasy festivals as Sitges, Brussels, Trieste, Toronto and Oporto were doing so brilliantly. It was shocking to us that a major capital city didn’t have anything similar. Slowly but surely our audience and profile expanded as studios and distributors recognised our promotional value until we had to move to the more spacious Odeon West End to cope with demand.

Anyone who thinks mounting such an event is a simple case of calling up film companies and asking for a movie is completely misjudging the way the corporate film industry works. Release dates, ownership of the title in question, sales agent demands, whether another major festival wants it or not, and publicity plans all come into play. We lost two great films this year (DOROTHY, OUTLANDER) because their releases were put back until mid 2009 and the companies involved thought us showing them was far too early and wouldn’t fit in with their PR campaigns. That’s the way the global festival cookie crumbles. 

Who are the four horsemen behind the Film4 FrightFest apocalypse? Well, I’ve been reporting on the genre as critic, broadcaster and book author for 30 years now. That’s great from the FrightFest point of view because I visit sets of films in production that could be viable future choices. A good example of that modus operandi in action is our world premiere of FREAKDOG. I went to Belfast earlier this year to cover the making of director Paddy Breathnach’s latest shocker for my horror magazine outlets. We had shown Breathnach’s SHROOMS in 2007, the FREAKDOG script and cast (Arielle Kebbel, Andrew Lee Potts, MyAnna Buring, Martin Compston) were terrific, so I asked the producers then and there if they would consider Film4 FrightFest as their first test outing. After getting approvals from all concerned, and realising their print delivery date was two days before our preferred Friday evening time slot, they agreed. Result. Steven Sheils’ MUM & DAD followed a similar pattern.

Connection to filmmakers and directors over the years also comes into play I met Adam Gierasch on the Turin set of Dario Argento’s MOTHER OF TEARS, which he co-wrote with partner Jace Anderson. He’d heard great things about Film4 FrightFest from his Hollywood pals Adam (HATCHET) Green and Joe (WRONG TURN 2) Lynch, now perennials on our guest list. Would I consider showing his debut feature as director? While it’s hard to tell friends their beloved projects suck that wasn’t the case with AUTOPSY. I thought it was brilliantly done, beautifully imaginative and guaranteed to make the audience jump throughout. It was in the programme the moment I saw it. 

Paul McEvoy is my partner in title acquisition and intrepid fellow trawler of the Cannes market place. He co-owns The Cinema Store in London’s Upper St Martin’s Lane and his grass roots knowledge of the fan boy psyche is second to none. He has the amazing gift of seeing the value and merit in the no-budget enterprises we get sent as submissions every week. We have often clashed over titles he’s sure will connect in trash zeitgeist ways to the fans. I’m far more unforgiving. But I have to admit he mainly gets it right and the ones he’s championed are usually talking points. Last year’s ZOMBIE DIARIES a good example, it was one of our biggest sellers. This year his forensic aptitude put Johnny Kevorkian’s THE DISAPPERED and Kerry Anne Mullaney’s THE DEAD OUTSIDE on our radar.

Ian Rattray is Film 4 FrightFest’s accountant, day-to-day organiser and tech man. He works as booker of independent cinemas up and down the country, including The Coronet in Notting Hill Gate, meaning he knows everything about the commercial side of the film business, from dealing with the money men to getting the film prints delivered in time. Basically all the boring stuff! He thinks we don’t appreciate him enough, but we do even though we hate actually praising him for making it all happen so smoothly.

Greg Day is our invaluable fourth wheel. His PR knowledge (promoting Columbia Pictures, Channel 4, Five) is second to none and we owe much of our multi-media coverage to him. With Ian he handles sponsorship and branding issues and his suave calmness throughout many diva crises has kept us all grounded. But then his newly formed public relations company Clout does represent the likes of Derren Brown and Joan Rivers so he’s used to it!

It’s precisely this collective professional experience from all four corners of the industry that forms the festival bedrock. Despite our endless hissy fits, the constant moaning, the seismic rows between us (don’t get me started on the screaming match we had earlier in Cannes), the different personality dynamic clearly works. In many ways we’re hard on ourselves, and each other, because we can’t bear the thought of letting anyone down when we finally take the Odeon stage to inaugurate the Film4 FrightFest each year. The thrilled expectancy on the sea of faces, their willingness to succumb to a full five-day stint in total darkness for taboo images, gore galore and nerve-jangling scares is a huge responsibility. One we cannot ever take lightly. The audience trusts us to highlight the movies they must see to get a snapshot of the genre as it currently stands. That’s all that matters in the scheme of things. And why at Film4 FrightFest central we’re now putting the finishing touches to all the many surprises we know will electrify our unique ambience further.

Alan Jones