Saturday, December 13, 2014

Jason goes to Holehead--Day 4

Into the 2-movies-a-night weeklong grind part of the festival. Here's last Monday.

First up was BLOOD RIDERS: THE DEVIL RIDES WITH US. A bunch of kids steal a car. Which is already not very smart, but when they find a dead body in the trunk, the night is going to go to hell quickly. This is a low-budget flick out of Canada, self-financed with a budget of about $14,000 (Canadian, so what, $5 American?) And for the first part it looks every bit like a low-budget (i.e., low-talent) horror flick. Then they get to the part where they have to steal Hitler's mustache from the world's most polite neo-Nazi, and I was hooked. The comedy was great, and I loved how I really never knew what was going to happen next. Director Finnish-Canadian director Lari Teräs has some pretty crazy ideas, and has been hanging around for the rest of the festival. He said in the Q&A that he wants his next budget to be bigger and so he wants someone else to finance. Please, someone else do it (I can't.) I want to see what this crazy fucker does next.

And then there was ANOTHER. A horror flick trying desperately to be high art, about a family tradition of Satanic possession. It had the style and story of a good 25 minute short. Unfortunately it was 74 minutes long. And not just through padding scenes, but from playing the whole damn thing in slow-motion. If the idea was to create an effect that would lull people to sleep, congratulations, it worked!

Total Running Time: 145 minutes
My Total Minutes: 376,148

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