Guillotine Guys

James Ricardo sent me a link to his new short Guillotine Guys on YouTube. It's a fun little film, well-produced. Personally I would have preferred it to end after the putting-stuff-in-pocket bit, in other words the dialogue-free first half. But it's still a neat little movie worth seven minutes of your time. Plus it's got Russ Kingston from Mega-Shark vs Giant Octopus in it!

New review: Masterpiece

I have added a review of Masterpiece, a dark, intense psychodrama about an obsessive wannabe writer. Director Andrew C Tanner previously made Psychosomatic.

Ken Barker is on giants' shoulders

Kenneth Barker is back! The director of Kingdom and Catalina: A New Kind of Superhero is working on a retro-style sci-fi adventure called On the Shoulders of Giants.

It stars Sarah Wood, Warwick St.John (who was in Catalina), Carl Isherwood (who is in a new Dracula film called Christian), Wayne Ewart (who was in Stuart St.Paul's Freight) and Alex Skerratt (who writes The Sooty Show!). Cinematography by Alex Veitch (Vampires of Bloody Island).

You can watch a teaser trailer on YouTube and find out more at  Ken's site, Water on the Rock.

Sam Voutas introduces his Chinese comedy in London

Sam Voutas, who wrote, produced and starred in Aussie horror-thriller Watch Me, is in London this weekend for the European premiere of Red Light Revolution as part of the Terracotta Far East Festival.

Sam, who lives in China, directed this Mandarin comedy about a family man who decides to open a sex shop in Beijing. The festival takes place in the Prince Charles Cinema and Red Light Revolution screens at 12.15pm on Sunday 8th May with Sam in attendance for a Q&A. He is also presenting a masterclass at 11.00am on Saturday, which is free to attend if you have a ticket for a Terracotta screening or wear a Terracotta T-shirt.

Waiting for Gorgo US premiere - 30 May

Waiting for Gorgo finally has a confirmed date for its North American premiere. If you're anywhere near Seattle at the end of this month you can catch WFG on the big screen at the Seattle Film Festival.

It's part of a package of six shorts from the UK, USA and France collected under the title 'Twists and Turns', screening at the SIFF Cinema (321 Mercer Street) at 1.30pm on Monday 30th May.

Ivan Zuccon's next film: Wrath of the Crows

Ivan Zuccon is working on his next film, Wrath of the Crows, which will bring together two of the best actresses in US horror cinema, both of whom have worked with Ivan before: Tiffany Shepis (Nympha) and Debbie Rochon (Colour from the Dark).


The cast also includes Michael Segal (Nympha, Colour from the Dark), Matteo Tosi (Unknown Beyond, Bad Brains), Emanuele Cerman (The Darkness Beyond, The Shunned House), Emmett Scanlan (Colour from the Dark) and Gerry Shanahan (Colour from the Dark). Plus US actress Tara Carnial (Fable: Teeth of Beasts, Beverly Hills Chihuahua). Screenplay by Ivan and author Gerardo Di Filippo. Effects by CreaFX (Nympha).


Synopsis:

In a filthy, cramped jail, prisoners Larry, Deborah, Hugo, Hernest and Liza are obliged to suffer injustices from the guards and their chief, The Officer. Controlling them all is The Judge, a man no one has ever seen. Yet he is the one who sets the rules and is feared by inmates and guards alike.

The prisoners know how to behave and what rules are to be respected, but none of them remember life outside the walls of the fortress where they now reside. Their only memory, which slowly emerges during the story, is of a great evil that led them to the fortress and the seemingly endless length of time they have been imprisoned there.


Suddenly, a new prisoner appears out of nowhere; The Princess. She is beautiful, dressed in a coat of crow feathers, shining, sweet-smelling, sensual. Her appearance creates curiosity in the other inmates, but also envy, suspicion and a deep sexual agitation.

The Princess quickly reveals her dark, supernatural nature, as she can move objects with her mind and is extremely powerful.

The prisoner's dream of escape, even though they have no idea what awaits them outside the fortress walls, nor are they interested; the only thing that matters is to escape from the doomed prison. But you can't escape from yourself or your past.


In the end, the prisoners realize that the entire prison, inside and out, is a terrifying mirror game, where reality and illusion collide, and nightmares become real, throwing them into an endless vortex of terror and madness.

WFG reviewed by Dark Side

Allan Bryce, editor of the recently revived Dark Side magazine, came along to a preview screening of Waiting for Gorgo last year and has written a very complimentary piece about it on his blog.


Allan calls WFG "a fantastic little short movie which happily belongs to a bygone age when good scripting and acting took precedence over gore and headache-inducing editing."