Frightfest 2017 Day Two

Fashionista

          April (Amanda Fuller) discovers her husband Eric (Ethan Embry) is having an affair. She takes solace in clothes and fashion, allows herself to be led into an unsavoury relationship with Randall (Eric Balfour), and generally ends up in quite a dark place. FASHIONISTA feels like a short film that's been teased out to feature length but there are certainly some good performances, grim 'n' grainy photography and some decent messing with your mind stuff in here.
 
Radius

          A man wakes up besides his overturned truck to find that everyone he comes within 50 feet of dies. Yes there is a science-fiction explanation. No that isn't even half of what this film is about but it was all I knew going in and it is all you need to know too. RADIUS is excellent, with a plot that twists and turns but never gets in the way of the interplay between the lead characters. A Frightfest highlight and likely to be one of the best of the festival.


King Cohen

          A fine tribute to a unique talent, KING COHEN is an excellent 110 minute appreciation of the man who gave us THE INVADERS, IT'S ALIVE, PHONE BOOTH and hundreds of other top quality exploitation television and film projects. An utter delight, featuring plenty of interviews with people who had worked with him (Yaphet Kotto, Eric Roberts), appreciative colleagues (Martin Scorsese, JJ Abrams and John Landis) and of course, plenty of talk from the man himself. A great documentary.

Leatherface

          Here's yet another one from the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE prequel / sequel / remake /reboot stable, a movie franchise that has proved far more annoyingly persistent than the subject of the movies himself. Everyone knows that the best way to defuse the mystique and scariness of a movie monster is to tell the audience everything about him - everyone but film-makers, it seems. Luckily we do have LIVIDE and L'INTERIEUR directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo to give us an entertaining spin on old Leatherface's cannibal-hillbilly-by-way-of-the-lunatic-asylum origins. And if you're still not happy with this, just be thankful Rob Zombie didn't get to direct it.

Dead Shack

          We're at the end of the first full day of Frightfest and surprisingly there's still no sign of a zombie comedy. Oh hang on, what's this - a Canadian knockabout romp in the woods where a holiday goes horribly wrong when our teenaged heroes discover something very strange going on in a nearby house. DEAD SHACK starts off funny but becomes progressively less so, and in a crowded subgenre that somehow still seems to be on the increase, this one's really for completists only. 

To Day 3