Finally, it’s time for Part III of my Spooky Empire Weekend report, which I know you’ve been waiting for with slavering jaws.
Saturday night I went to see a midnight show of Sick Girl (not the Lucky McKee episode of Masters of Horror, which is the only episode of Masters of Horror I’ve seen). This wasn’t part of the Freak Show Film Festival, and was in a room with the most obnoxious door ever. Every time it closed it would make a WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPwhapwhapwhapwhapwhap sound…and it opened and closed with great frequency. I was tired and not really able to tap into the movie’s weirdness, and so when my wife came in about a third of the way through after bailing on one of the bands, we decided to leave. Of course, the next morning I regretted my early departure and wished I’d stuck around for the rest of the movie. Bummer.
The next day I saw Battle of the Bone, an Irish zombie film, done on an almost non-existent budget by a cast and crew with almost zero filmmaking experience. The movie pretty much consists of our heroes being chased by and fighting a) zombies, and b) thugs. So during the course of the film they’ll get chased by and/or fight some zombies, and then some thugs, and then some more zombies, and so on.
There’s really not much else to the movie, and yet it’s a surprisingly exhilarating flick. The energy level is amazing, and it’s very refreshing to see a movie with extended action sequences where you can tell exactly what’s happening, and opposed to the hideous “shaky-cam” trend where modern filmmakers continue to believe that there’s value in an incoherent action scene. (If you’re not making Saving Private Ryan and trying to demonstrate the chaos of World War II, then stop shaking the frickin’ camera!) Plus it looks like everybody did their own stunts, and the director did a charming Q&A afterward.
After that, we watched a couple of short, fun zombie flicks, followed by Zombiemania, an interesting documentary that I assume was made for TV because of the commercial breaks, though I’m not sure where it aired. I’m a big ol’ zombie fan myself, but it’s kind of scary to think that there are people out there who take zombies as seriously as some people take Klingons…
And so ended the Spooky Empire Weekend. Lots-o-fun, and I was very happy to just go as a horror fan and not sit behind a table begging for attention. Seeya there next year.
Gleefully Macabre 