Yeah, to quote the great philosopher Roger Murtaugh, we are too old for this shit. It has been 18 years since we started what was then the Phoenix Fear Film Festival, the first event taking place at the late, lamented Paper Heart gallery in downtown Phoenix. At the time, there were few other horror events in Phoenix, and even fewer when the International Horror + Sci-Fi event got absorbed into the Phoenix Film Festival. But where FearCon led, others eventually followed, with events like Mad Monster and the Gathering of the Ghouls starting up. As with our ventures into comedy and pro wrestling, in some small way, we leave horror fandom in a better place than we found it, and that’s all we could ever have wanted.
This was a particularly challenging event. The original plan was for it to be part of the Phoenix Music and Film Experience Festival. But it soon became painfully clear that the people running it could not organize the proverbial piss-up in a brewery. After a concerning period of no communications at all, our venue was changed from downtown to over at ASU, and the university then wanted to vet what we were screening. Fuck that. We parted ways, and were thoroughly unsurprised when the entire festival ended up “postponed” (though nobody has yet told their website!). Rather than let down the film-makers who had submitted, we opted to go indie, and were left scrambling to go from zero to event in about four weeks, a ridiculous and insane idea.
Somehow, Chris pulled it off, with the event happening at the AZ Latino and Cultural Arts Center last Saturday. [Chris is Cuban, so this was not cultural appropriation!] Despite the haste of execution, the event included two programs of shorts, a feature film and – as every event by Chris inevitably has! – other entertainment and vendors. I particularly enjoyed the talk given by Roman Reyes, a local artist who had been part of all three Lord of the Rings films, working in Weta Workshop on the masks and costumes. But it was also great to meet up with old friends, including Damien, Hal and Britt. Damien came sporting a rare, original Trash City shirt, and I got a copy of Hal’s book WTF? in which he reviews a number of movies I’ve never heard of, but now have a burning desire to see.
Will it actually be the final FearCon? Well, we’ll see. First thing first: we’re going to wait for the aches and pains to wear off, which prove we indeed are too old for this shit, and the inevitable post-event “Thank fuck that’s over” feelings to die down. Get back to us after Thanksgiving for that. But the venue was great: Chris said, if she’d known about it before, we’d always have had the event there. So who can say? She has taken to comparing us to professional wrestlers, who have a habit of never truly retiring, and that may or may not prove to be the case with FearCon! But if this was the end, we’re happy to have left the ring on our own two feet, after one last event, not far from where it all began back in 2006. Here’s a review of Argentinian feature, 1978, which was a worthy centerpiece of the film program
1978 (2024)
Rating: B+
Dir: Luciano Onetti, Nicolás Onetti
Star: Agustin Olcese, Paula Silva, Carlos Portaluppi, Mario Alarcón
Ever have the kind of nightmare where you’re trying to run away from something, only your legs feel like you’re stuck in quicksand? This delivers a similar experience: a slow descent into hell, where every corner brings a new horror. Things unfold over the night of the World Cup final in 1978, when everyone in Argentina was watching their team play the Netherlands. That includes the staff at a detention facility run by the military regime, where suspected enemies are brutally tortured and killed. However, information extracted under duress is not necessarily reliable. The resulting raid doesn’t capture Communists; instead, they bring back a group of occult practitioners, who were in the middle of a ritual.
This is where things go severely wrong, because for the Satanists, the change in venue is barely an inconvenience. Soon, all hell is breaking loose, literally, and the torturers now find themselves on the receiving end of some highly unpleasant treatment. The scene is set effectively, before we get to this, however, with a disturbing depiction of how brutality can become mundane and banal. Yet there’s nuance here too, with Miguel (Olcese) having qualms about the methods, which stand in sharp contrast to the callous indifference of his boss, Moro (Alarcón). This empathy could be his downfall though, since he tends to Irene (Silva), the highly pregnant woman who was “rescued” from the cultist altar. My use of quotes may or may not be significant.
It would be a solid piece of genre cinema, simply depicting day-to-day life in the facility. I’ve always tended to the view inhumanity is the worst kind of horror, e.g. Martyrs., and that’s present in spades here. Witness the scene where one of the interrogators forces two inmates to dig a grave, which increasingly looks likely to be their own. That said, there’s a point here where you suddenly realize how far out of their depth the torturers are, and you may find yourself feeling… well, if “sympathy” is a stretch, “pity” might not be out of line. No amount of training or experience, regardless of the brutality, could prepare anyone for what comes crawling out of… Let’s leave it at that, shall we?
The second half does descend somewhat into “slowly creeping around poorly-lit corridors”. If I was there, I like to think I’d be leaving skid marks and achieving orbital escape velocity. However, near-paralyzed by fear would seem a credible alternative. Outside of Miguel, there isn’t much depth to the characters, with the makers’ energy apparently having gone more toward brainstorming sick and twisted imagery. That aspect is highly successful, no doubt about it. Especially once the cult get their sacrificial act together, and recommence the ritual in the depths of the facility. I do have some questions about a couple of odd scenes which may be a flashback for Miguel, and more clarity would have been welcome there. In the main though, it’s the kind of film which might return to you in the middle of the night, accompanied by a cold sweat.
1978 was screened as part of Phoenix FearCon 2024.
With this just being a one day event, there was only room for a single feature film in the program. But we had well over thirty other submissions, some of which were not selected only due to the constraints of time. Others were not selected only due to them being utter shite. We shall not speak of the latter again, unless they ever get released [or escape, more likely…] Below, are reviews of the ones we enjoyed most, which would likely have received a spot, had we more available. Keep an eye out for these at other festivals, or hopefully when they receive widespread distribution down the line.
First Voice (2024)
Rating: B
Dir: Mike J. Marin
Star: Mike J. Marin, Lisa McKay, Gia Fisher, isaac David Trimble
According to the director, he “wanted to take a different, kinda risky approach to telling a story through an audio narrative that makes the viewer have to use their imagination to formulate the visuals of the story being told.” What? Use my imagination? Seems like an awful lot of work to me. If I wanted to do that kind of thing, I’d read a book or something. It’s certainly not why I watch movies. Those are me to consume passively the results of other people using their imaginations. Ok, in case you couldn’t tell, there’s a certain amount of sarcasm there – yet also a germ of truth, because cinema is a visual medium, first and foremost: “Show, don’t tell”.
That said, there’s always going to be room for Marin’s approach, simply because it is different. During the great bulk of this, what you are being shown in simply one man, sitting in front of his computer. Put another way: my day job. The difference being that the man in question here is an emergency services dispatcher in Los Angeles, Emmett ‘Bad’ Marcus (Marin). He’s not any normal dispatcher either: a formal paranormal investigator, his particular area of specialty is to handle the weird calls. This begins in the form of an interview over Zoom, with reporter Stephanie Guzman (McKay) quizzing Marcus about his job, how he got the position and what it entails. Then she asks about his strangest experience…
And this is when the film shifts largely to Emmett in front of his computer, remaining there for the next hour (the film only runs seventy minutes, probably wisely). After a few ‘normal’ calls, we get to the meat of the matter: a very panicked call from a house, where a trio of young people attempted to carry out a ritual, only for things to go wrong. Neither the police dispatched to the scene, nor the EMTs, are prepared for what they find, and a citywide comms breakdown means no backup is coming. Emmett, with his knowledge of the paranormal, is the only person who might be able to help, juggling between the first responders and the inhabitants of the house.
The fairly relaxed opening does a good job of luring you in, and setting things up. As a result, when the screaming, banging and sounds I can’t even describe properly kick off, your brain is receptive to them. It is true that the viewer needs to put in the work, assembling the fragmentary audio, along with Emmett’s explanations to the first responders, into a coherent plot. Yet most of this works, although occasionally you can tell the conversations have been edited together, with the rhythm slightly ‘off’. This probably shouldn’t succeed as well as it does. If less polished than The Guilty, it does a similarly good job of taking its limited resources and turning the restrictions into strengths, putting you right in there with Emmett as handles the calls and escalating carnage.
The Invisible Raptor (2023)
Rating: B-
Dir: Mike Hermosa
Star: Mike Capes, David Shackelford, Caitlin McHugh, Sandy Martin
Right from the title, you can tell this is not a film to be taken entirely seriously. And you would be right, because this is largely a tongue-in-cheek homage to genre film. Mostly the work of Steven Spielberg – the entire thing takes place in “Spielburgh County”. Jurassic Park is obviously the big influence, but also E.T. The Extra Terrestrial , as well as other genre entries, such as Predator. The Tyler Corporation have a secret project which has resulted in the creation of the titular beast, until it escapes from the facility and begins killing local residents. Meanwhile, at a nearby diinosaur-themed park, paleontologist Dr. Grant Walker (Capes) has been reduced to doing dino-rap for the kiddie visitors.
He’s the first to realize a velociraptor is the perpetrator, though naturally, the local authorities are dismissive of this explanation. With the help of downtrodden security guard Denny Denielson (Shackelford) and old flame Amber (McHugh), Dr. Walker sets out to capture the creature, despite the problem of not being able to see it. Meanwhile, it’s ripping the heads off everyone it meets, to quote Crawford Tillenghast, like they were gingerbread men: the effects are by renowned artist Steve Johnson, and are firmly on point. Along the way, you’ll find yourself going, “Isn’t that…?” a number of times, as you spot faces in supporting roles who are recognizable from Office Space.(Richard Riehl), The Lord of the Rings (Sean Astin) and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
The last deserves further description, with Martin playing local egg entrepreneur Henrietta McCluckskey. That’s pivotal because – as we all know – chickens are a velociraptor’s nearest living relative. We establish early on that the invisible raptor is horny, when it tries to screw the McCluckskey’s mascot, a giant chicken, leading to Grant’s big plan to catch it. This probably needs to be seen to be believed, and demonstrates the lunatic spirit of no-holds barred invention, which is the makers’ strongest suit. However, at one hundred and thirteen minutes, it is simply too long. Excising the entire saga of Denny’s past traumas would be a good start, because it’s basically little more than small penis jokes. The film is better than that.
Albeit for a loose definition of “better,” considering other elements of humour involve velociraptor semen, plus both dogs and kids becoming dino-poo. Yeah, this is definitely at the low-brow end of the comedy spectrum, with subtlety about as dead as the dinosaurs here. Which I’m perfectly fine with: this feels like a throwback to the Naked Gun era of comedy, a genre largely missing these days (I’m dreading next year’s Naked Gun reboot). The film references are a bit of a mixed bag: probably the glorious high is a remake of the scene from ET where this movie’s Elliott discovers the invisible creature (top), luring it into his house with candy. Doesn’t end quite as well for him. It’s largely breezy, referential and splattery fun: horror-comedy is tricky to get right, and this is as good an attempt as I’ve seen this year.
Saint Catherine (2024)
Rating: B
Dir: Michael Escobedo, Juan de Dios Garduño, Hana Kazim, Gonzalo Mellid, Raffael Oliveri
Star: Valentina Mas, Adriana Torrebejano, Mansoor Alfeeli, Maria Olsen
As you can probably tell from the lengthy list of directors above, this is a horror anthology, linked by the general theme of demonic possession. The strand connecting them is about Ellie (Mas), a girl who is rescued by a cop from the grasp of a serial killer priest (subtly named Ted Gacy!). She is put in the care of Saint Catherine’s Institute, which takes care of young girls “who have suffered unusual episodes”, training them in the art of spiritual warfare. The mother superior was excommunicated for “unorthodox practices forbidden by the Vatican.” In particular, it’s a warehouse for cursed objects from Satanic rituals, now used in that training. The rest of the film are stories of some of these totems, and the incidents which led them to come into the Institute’s possession, as well as the nature of Ellie’s own troubles.
Its structure is initially a little loose. Things unfold in a manner that, especially initially, seems fairly disjointed in nature, and you’re largely left to put the pieces together yourself. I don’t think we fully realized it was an anthology of separate stories until close to the half-way point: when we did, things made considerably more sense the rest of the way, and we were able to appreciate things all the better. This is certainly a dark picture, to the point of deliberately gloomy. For instance, it appears St. Catherine’s are trying to save on their electric bill, so when Ellie is told “Don’t be afraid to step into the light,” my reaction was more or less,”If you could turn them on, that’d help…”
But it’s entirely fitting for the topic, and although the episodes are helmed by different people, do possess a commonality of tone. That isn’t always the case for anthologies like this, and it helps ensure a consistent experience for the viewer. I think my favourite was probably Makr, from Hana Kazim, which takes place in the United Arab Emirates. Traditionally, possession movies have tended to take a Catholic approach (probably with a big C and a small one!), but this is a good illustration that non-Christian religions can have similar phenomena. Admittedly, this should not be a shock if you’re a regular here, and have read our reviews of Turkish horror franchises Dabbe and Siccin.
What’s interesting here though, is that the holy man concerned is a fraud, who uses concealed electrical apparatus to trigger spasms in the afflicted. However, when he finds himself face-to-face with a genuine case of possession, he quickly finds himself out of his depth. Putting aside the religious specifics, it offered a fresh take on the topic. But there are really no bad stories here: they all have something to offer. That’s something of a rarity in anthologies, and even someone entirely secular such as myself, found themselves holding their breath, and waiting to see what would emerge from the darkness next.