By Ben Bussey
So here I pick up where Tristan left off – more or less. See, while I did indeed arrive on Friday 9th November for my second year at Abertoir, I didn’t get there until mid-afternoon. Simple truth about Aberystwyth – it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, it always takes a long time to get there. Makes it a great setting for a horror festival, as the journey there invariably feels like the set-up to a horror movie. I’ve never been there by car, but I’m sure it would involve a great many wrong turns and questions of “are you sure we’re going the right way?” And even going by train, you’ll always meet some creepy guy when you change at Shrewsbury, who says “you don’t want to go down to Aberystwyth – it’s got a death curse!”
Well, okay, that’s never actually happened, but I don’t think it’s outside the realms of possibility.
Anyway, had I arrived first thing I’d have been there for The Battery. Happily, I’d already caught it at Celluloid Screams in Sheffield a few weeks back – and yes, I am indeed happy to have seen it, even though I don’t necessarily foresee myself having any great desire to see it again. This unorthodox, microbudget take on the zombie movie seems to have met a bit of a muted reaction from the Abertoir audience, largely down to its uneventful nature and emphasis on often painfully long takes. I suppose its appeal hinges on whether or not you can care for the characters; I certainly could, though I understand many viewers did not feel likewise. As an attempt to do something a bit different in an overcrowded subgenre, I’d say The Battery is certainly a success, but it skirts a fine line between crafting a tense, realistic atmosphere and simply boring its audience. (See Keri’s review from Dead By Dawn.)
The day’s next event which I was too late to catch was a talk by our esteemed sometime contributor Gavin Baddeley. He’s a clever sod who could talk the hind legs off a donkey, so I’ve no doubt it was all very erudite and witty.
But no – my introduction to Abertoir 2013 was The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. Out of the frying pan, into the flames of Hades…
Okay, okay, I can keep this rational. Did you see Amer, the last film from directorial duo Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani? If so, did you enjoy it? If the answer to both questions is yes, you may well be quite happy with Strange Colour. Indeed, it starts out looking like it’s going to be a great deal more accessible than its wilfully obtuse predecessor, though every bit as reliant on lush, arty, Giallo-inspired visuals. But the more it goes on the more lush and arty the visuals get, and the less tangible the story becomes.
Here’s the thing… I fell asleep for I think about ten or fifteen minutes midway. (Don’t judge me too harshly, it’s an unwritten rule of festival attendance that everyone nods off at least once or twice, typically during a film they’re not enjoying.) However, I get the distinct impression that, had I been awake the whole time, it wouldn’t have done much to change my perception of the overall movie. Now, I could give some vague stabs in the dark as to what it was all about (men living in mortal terror of gorgeous women on their period, as far as I can tell), but it very quickly reached the point of being past giving a shit. I don’t object to a bit of weirdness, nor do I demand that all films make perfect sense – I gave Motivational Growth a largely positive write-up, after all – but The Strange Colour of Your Bleeding Vagina just wasn’t my cup of herbal tea at all.
Happily, next up was The Machine, which was much more to my liking; here’s my review if you missed it.
Last of the night for me was Bad Milo. What can I say – cryptic French Giallo homages may not be my bag, but what’s not to love about an all-American comedy about a guy with a little monster up the Gary Glitter? Tristan already gave this a great write-up, and I don’t really have a great deal to add to his assessment; this is a funny, and surprisingly heart-warming piece of work which I strongly suspect will garner a healthy cult following.
With the onset of fatigue (to paraphrase the late great Jim Kelly – it was a big day, I was a little tired), I skipped out on the midnight Mystery Grindhouse, an Abertoir tradition which I’d enjoyed in 2012. Still, I was back relatively rested next morning – well, okay, early afternoon, but I tend to find Abertoir attendees greet one another with “good morning” until about 3 o’clock – in time to catch some of the short films showcase. I can’t pretend any of them made that great an impression. Swiss short Beware of Children was a lighter-hearted variation on Children of the Corn/Who Can Kill A Child which was initially amusing but lacking any real tension, and at 15 minutes a little overlong for a short. Similarly, French production Silence took a set-up worthy of a modern US-style slasher (naughty college kids stay overnight in a library for a dare, only to meet the ghoulish librarians who come out at night), but isn’t able to explore the idea to its full potential. Tricky things, shorts: if they try to tell too big a story, they fall apart somewhat.
Saturday’s first feature was The Borderlands, which – as I’ve already said in my review – is the first horror movie for some time to really, genuinely creep me the fuck out. And I heartily applaud it for that.
Next up came Forgotten (Du hast es versprochen), a German chiller which twists and turns like a twisty-turny thing. The story follows young, well-to-do wife and mother Hanna (the really, really unbelievably good looking Mina Tander) as, following a spat with her husband, she is unexpectedly reunited with a long-lost childhood friend (the really, really unbelievably good looking Laura de Boer), with whom she promptly absconds with daughter in tow to a quiet little island where she and her friend used to take their holidays. However, as they reach the island, Hanna slowly starts remembering what happened there in their younger days, and it ain’t all good… nor is it all that straightforward. The convoluted plot may boast a few too many big surprise revelations for its own good, but at least it’s never predictable – and, as I might have mentioned, it certainly doesn’t hurt that the female leads are really, really unbelievably good looking. (No lesbian scenes, though, dagnammit.) But despair not, man-fanciers: we also have a very pretty boy in the mix in the form of a bearded Max Riemelt, who previously appeared clean-shaven in We Are The Night.
And then came the classic horror double bill which I can safely say was the absolute highlight of the whole festival for me, and I suspect many other Abertoir attendees would say the same…
First up – Zombie Flesh Eaters (or, as some of you bloody foreigners know it, Zombie/Zombi 2). This movie was my first Lucio Fulci experience way back when (in the ol’ days when the BBFC approved version cut away before the splinter pierces the eyeball), and I must confess that at the time I couldn’t really see what all the fuss was about. Fulci in general just washed over me a bit in my younger days: silly, derivative stories filled with bad acting and worse dubbing, punctuated with extended sequences of ridiculous splatter in unflinching close-ups. But the thing was, my first experiences of these films were typically home alone. To hell with that. Fulci is an Abertoir staple; this is the second of his movies I’ve seen at the festival (after The Beyond last year, with Catriona Maccoll in attendance), and these viewings have really hammered home that they really do work best as a communal experience. When we’re all laughing aloud at the bad dubbing, murmurring “uh-oh” when the gory bits draw near and saying “ew” when they finally hit, or – in this instance – sniggering like schoolkids every time anyone says “Matool,” it really does bring the strange magic of these movies to the surface.
It also doesn’t hurt when two of the key players of the movie are there to discuss it afterwards. One of the really heartwarming things about this event was that Richard Johnson and Fabio Frizzi were both booked seperately as Abertoir guests, and were originally intended to appear on different evenings, until a fairly last-minute rescheduling meant they were both there on the same evening – making it the very first meeting of the Zombie Flesh Eaters composer and the actor who played Dr Menard. Not that you’d think it to see the two men sat together, both looking thoroughly pleased to be in one another’s company. It was wonderful to hear both men recount their careers, obviously with particular emphasis on their time with Fulci. Johnson absolutely brought the house down with an anecdote on the difficulties Fulci had trying to get a decent performance out of the naked scuba diver Auretta Gay (Johnson’s clearly not from the Peter Cushing school of only saying nice things about your co-stars); recounting Fulci’s intense frustration, the 86-year old actor leapt to his feet and impersonated the director falling to his knees in a rage and eating the grass. Nor was that the only massive round of applause Johnson earned that evening, as he later proclaimed how immensely proud he was when Zombie Flesh Eaters was banned in the UK.
And then, the second Richard Johnson movie of the evening – The Haunting. This is one of those movies which, on first viewing many years back, was a real watershed moment for me. I first saw it in student halls, on a poxy little 14 inch black and white portable TV running off a twiddly set-top aerial – but even on so small and crappy a screen, the sheer visual power of Robert Wise’s film was just overwhelming. And, as you can imagine, it plays even better on the big screen. I was a little surprised to see how it didn’t seem to go down all that well with the whole Abertoir audience – I gather quite a few people found Julie Harris’ performance as the troubled Eleanor to be annoying. Still, to me this remains one of the very best films ever made in the genre, and the cornerstone by which all great ghost movies are measured.
The night came to a close outside of the cinema with a live set from White Blacula, a new (and rather loud) band featuring members of Zombina and the Skeletones, and a Fabio Frizzi-heavy DJ set from Bronnt Industries Kapital. I’ll be honest though – by this point I was too preoccupied getting reaquainted with rarely seen friends (not to mention my old chum, cider) to give an especially measured critical response. Though there was the matter of a large, remote-controlled inflatable shark floating around the bar, inviting any would-be zombies to come and have a go…
Sunday morning, then, found me perhaps a little worse for wear, to the extent that I missed almost all the second half of the short films showcase, and those I did see I was in danger of dozing through. Happily, I was more with it for the day’s first feature, Motivational Growth, which prompted much thoughtful beard stroking – and, of course, this review.
Next up was a short films showcase of a somewhat different kind: four macabre silent shorts from the earliest days of cinema, with live piano accompaniment and specially composed music from Paul Shallcross, for whom Abertoir is an annual gig (last year he provided similar musical accompaniment to the Lon Chaney movie The Unknown). As well as tinkling the ivories, Shallcross also gives us some very informative and entertaining introductions, pointing out little mistakes for us to look out for – e.g. that the ‘chariot’ which takes the characters to hell in Segundo de Chomon’s short La Legende du Fantome is in quite clearly a car with an awkwardly placed bedsheet over the top. (Nor was that the only thing to get a laugh, as there was much sniggering – from the BaH writers in attendance, at least – at the captions referring to Hell as ‘the lower regions.’)
Also screened were another Segundo de Chomon short Le Spectre Rouge, which felt more like a diabolic spin on a stage magic show; an early British shocker entitled The Jest, which has the feel of a proto-EC Comics yarn with its darkly comic twist ending; and, perhaps most intriguingly, the very first screen adaptation of Frankenstein from J. Searle Dawley, a narratively-truncated but visually interesting take on the tale that’s a million miles away from what James Whale would do with it just over 20 years later. It also boasts a really striking scene of the monster’s creation that’s unlike anything seen in any subsequent Frankenstein movie – but hugely reminscent of Frank’s regeneration scene in Hellraiser.
Next up was Chimères, which I skipped as I’d already seen it at Celluloid Screams, where it didn’t exactly win me over (see my review). One pepperoni pizza and a couple of Cokes later, I rejoined the Abertoir audience as we were temporarily relocated from the cinema screen to the Aberystwyth Arts Centre theatre for a one-man stage show, The Ghost Hunter, from the Theatre of the Damned company. It’s an interesting extended monologue, recounting the experiences of a seasoned ghost tour operator, providing a witty, sympathetic and often fairly sad look into the lives of those in that rarefied profession, and how the lines between reality and fiction can easily become muddied. Actor Tom Richards did fine work commanding the stage, though most discussion afterwards tended to focus on the impressiveness of his moustache.
The day, and the festival, came to a close with Soulmate, the debut feature from writer-director Axelle Carolyn – which proved a rather bittersweet note to go out on. I wanted to enjoy it, I really did. I’ve long had a lot of respect for Axelle Carolyn, given how well she has been able to move between different roles within the horror industry, and I had high hopes this would really launch her – but honestly, Soulmate made it clear that she still has a long way to go. It’s in a fairly similar vein to her 2011 short The Last Post, a sombre tale about loss and regret with a ghostly element. When I interviewed her at the time, Carolyn mentioned her desire to “fight that preconceived notion that horror’s sole purpose was to scare an audience… you can use the genre to express all kinds of emotions.” I completely agree, and I can see that’s very much what she was aiming for with Soulmate, as it centres on a recently bereaved widow who, following a suicide attempt, moves into a remote country cottage in search of solitude, but instead finds herself in the company of a ghost. The premise isn’t necessarily anything that new, but Carolyn’s approach is, as rather than a stereotypical tale of terror, this is a story of two lost souls bonding – only one of them happens to be dead.
Yes, it’s a nice idea, and it’s very nicely realised on an aesthetic level, the very good cinematography making use of some very attractive Welsh scenery, as well as the far-from unattractive actors Anna Walton and Tom Wisdom as the widow and ghost. Sadly, on pretty much every other level Soulmate falls flat. Carolyn’s script just isn’t up to scratch, with thin characterisations, feeble dialogue, and plot developments that often feel contrived in the extreme, particularly once we reach the more conventional horror movie finale. There’s also no denying a certain goofiness in the scenes when Wisdom’s ghost finally sits down for a chat with Walton; this probably wouldn’t have been a problem if a smidgen more humour had been put into the mix. Alas, Soulmate takes itself way too seriously, and winds up looking a wee bit silly for it.
Still, whilst the closing film may have been a slight disappointment, it was by no means a disappointing weekend. I doff my cap to the Abertoir team, and look forward to joining them again in 2014, same time, same place.