With Dead People) is making them for almost no audience whatsoever! His lat- est genre outing continues his fascina- tion with the weird intersection between sex and gore. It stars gay porn sensation François Sagat as an undead fiend who mangles his human prey, then creates new orifices in their decimated corpses to have his horny way with. Prior to the screening, La Bruce confessed that a Toronto website gave L.A. Zombie zero stars but, as the filmmaker explained, “For a gay porn, trash director, zero stars is four stars!” SFA
BEAVER DAM Canada, USA Jerome Sable
It’s rare for a short to play Midnight Madness, but this twelve-minute splat- ter comedy was a no-brainer crowd- pleaser. In it, a bullied geek on a camping trip battles a one-armed slasher killer to save his fellow scouts. Gore galore, great makeup, hilarious one-liners and musical numbers = in- stant classic. DA
MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED! Australia Mark Hartley
The director of acclaimed Ozploitation doc Not Quite Hollywood aims his lens at the berserk period of ’70s and ’80s Filipino film production which, thanks to the country’s lax labour laws and exotic locales, attracted an avalanche of ex- ploitation auteurs, giving rise to such un- forgettable grindhouse fare as The Big Doll House, TNT Jackson, For Y’ur Height Only and perhaps the ultimate Filipino exploitation film: Apocalypse Now! Boasting extensive interviews with lurid luminaries such as Roger Corman, Joe Dante, Sid Haig and John Landis, Machete Maidens assaults the audience with as many car crashes, fist fights, death-defying stunts, bodily dismem- berments and jiggling females as its predecessor. SFA
RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE
Finland, Norway, France, Sweden Jalmari Helander
Holiday scrooges will especially love this story of a mischievous boy named Pietari whose hunter-gatherer father and his friends find their seasonal take foiled by workers at a nearby drill site – one which just so happens to have exhumed the frozen body of Santa Claus! Rooted in the notion that St. Nick isn’t the jolly, old fellow we’ve come to know and love but rather a hideous, ball-busting prick who spanks naughty kids into oblivion, this cartoonish, highly cinematic caper pits Pietari and the hunters against an army of murderous Santa look-alike
THE LEGEND OF
elves in a fun (though not really for kids) anti-holiday holiday movie. TT
RED NIGHTS Hong Kong, China, France Julien Carbon, Laurent Courtiaud
This stylish fusion of psychosexual thriller with Hong Kong espionage action has a lot going for it: seductive, sinister Carrie Ng (Naked Killer) as Carrie, a rich, crazy Dragon Lady in search of an an- cient seal filled with a paralyzing poi- son/aphrodisiac; a kinky opening sequence that will have latex fetishists gasping for air; extreme torture involving rope bondage, jade claws and flayed flesh, etc. So why was it putting the Mid- night crowds to sleep? Perhaps the first- time French directors were so pre-occupied with orchestrating their stunning set pieces they forgot that plot is also sexy. LL
STAKE LAND USA Jim Mickle
This beautifully lensed western/road movie/coming-of-age drama wrapped in a vampire apocalypse tale was a revelation for most of the Midnight Madness audience, who voted Stake Land The Cadillac People’s Choice Midnight Madness award winner. The second collaboration from Jim Mickle (director, co-writer) and Nick Damici (star, co-writer), who also made Mul- berry Street, Stake Land is a meas- ured, lyrical tale that sees the John Wayne-like Mister (Damici), his young sidekick (Connor Paolo), a nun (Kelly McGillis) and others trying to survive feral vamps, ruthless fundamentalists and the rugged landscape itself. Plenty of action, blood and original tweaks on bloodsucker mythology make it an American indie horror film triumph. (Note: TIFF’s other vampire film, Let Me In, has been released and is reviewed in the CineMacabre sec- tion on p.38.) DA
VANISHING ON 7TH STREET USA Brad Anderson
From the man who brought us The Ma- chinist and Session 9 came Midnight Madness’ most promising premise: darkness falls on the world, and where once were people now lay only creepy piles of clothing. This apocalyptic siege film about deadly shadows starring Hay- den Christensen and John Leguizamo hints at a terrorizing take on the Rapture but delivers only repetitive scenes in which a few survivors try to outwit what looks like the black smoke cloud from Lost by using glow sticks. No one knows why this has happened, or why they don’t just light some oil drum fires. Dis- appointing. LL
TIFF Bits!: (clockwise from top) Various posters from genre movies at the fest, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Vanishing on 7th Street, Red Nights, Stake Land, and The Legend of Beaver Dam.
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