Yes, Mrs Probert & I are still here in the land of the classic giallo (even the poster is yellow - isn't that great?) when we're not watching the brand new pictures the festival has to offer. At the moment we are still recovering from Friday night's traditional Abertoir off-site screening. This was the first time we had been able to attend one of these, as the previous two years were cancelled due to rain, more rain, typhoons and gales. This year however, the gods smiled, and the Abertoir audience were treated to:
Dario Argento's OPERA (1987) in an opera house!
Well, actually the Ceredigion Museum, but as you can hopefully see from the picture it was the perfect location in which to enjoy what is arguably Mr Argento's final masterpiece, complete with plastic ravens being thrown at the audience from above during a crucial scene. Twenty minutes in & I was thinking what a fantastic film-maker he really is. Twenty minutes from the end and I wasn't the only one wondering quite how things could all suddenly turn so spectacularly daft.
And that wasn't all.
Upon leaving the venue, we and our festival colleagues were set upon by a steel-masked Michele Soavi lookalike who insisted we accept tickets to a private showing of a Lamberto Bava classic:
Yes we ended up at the 'Metropol' cinema in Aberystwyth for a showing of DEMONS (1985), complete with red-haired usherette, bricked up exits, and a helicopter crashing through the roof (well not quite, but the Abertoir team tried to arrange that last bit & bravo to them for even considering it.) Quite possibly the most entertaining night's double bill I have ever had the pleasure to enjoy, I have to give full marks to the Abertoir team for making this a memorable life experience for everyone who attended.
And now, back to some of the new stuff. Here are some more highlights:
CANARIES (2017)
I liked this a lot when I saw it at Frightfest earlier this year, and if anything I found a second viewing even more enjoyable. A hugely impressive science fiction comedy produced on a budget of £29 000 and filmed mainly in the Welsh village of Lower Cwmtwrch, CANARIES is terrific fun and it deserves to do well.
DIANI & DEVINE MEET THE APOCALYPSE (2016)
An utterly charming post-apocalypse movie starring, written and directed by comedy duo Gabriel Diane and Etta Devine. When something catastrophic happens in Los Angeles, our heroes hit the road along with their dog Watson and cat Mrs Peel. Along the way they encounter estate agents, cannibal cults and there's even a dance routine. In the light-hearted spirit of horror comedies like Kyle Rankin's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEB (2015) this was an unexpected delight and means I now have to seek out their 2011 comedy THE SELLING.
THE ENDLESS (2017)
Two brothers who have escaped a 'UFO Suicide Cult' return after ten years to find that things are even stranger than they realised. This one's from the directors of SPRING (2014) which made one of my year's top ten lists. They also made the weird, complex, reality-bending RESOLUTION (2012), which THE ENDLESS is kind of a sequel to. I'm not going to go into details but if you watch this, make sure you have plenty of time free afterwards to consider what it might have been about. Possibly a Lovecraftian cosmic horror piece, possibly a comment about religion in general, possibly a film about the nature of film itself (and a viewer's interaction with the medium), like RESOLUTION this asks more questions than it answers. Definitely worth a look.
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