Oh dear. The bar for this year's BIFF has been set very high following my first day of movies - how can the rest of the week top Friday, day 1?
If you have ever been a comic book fan or sci-fi TV show geek, I strongly suggest you check out the documentary "Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope" either at the next screening (Sunday 13 November 12pm) or if it ever comes out here at the cinema or on DVD. The latest doco by Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) is a brilliant encapsulation of the different "tribes" who attend the annual geekfest in San Diego. It was wonderful to see the "talking heads" including such luminaries from my teenage comic reading years as Frank Miller, Todd McFarlane, Stan Lee and movie geeks like Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon and Eli Roth. This was intercut with footage following five different individuals over the 3 day festival - 2 amateur comic book artists trying to get their portfolios reviewed by their heroes and maybe a job, a girl who designs costumes based on video games who wants to appear in the annual masquerade parade, a comic book salesman lamenting the slow death of physical book reading, and a young geek couple where the guy wants to propose to his girlfriend at the Kevin Smith panel. Plus footage from the floor and snippets with other attendees. This movie was really really funny and sweet and it has definitely made me want to go out and buy more comic books!
We then followed up the geekiness with some utter craziness in the form of midnight movie Helldriver. The film's director, Yoshihiro Nishimura, was in attendance to introduce his movie, which he described as we were going to be on a rollercoaster. I wouldn't quite describe it that way as there wasn't much in the way of a storyline, it was more just all out crazy fight scenes with a few slow bits in between to let you catch your breath. The film is about a young girl whose mother and uncle are completely mad and torture and kill her father. After which time the mother is hit with a meteorite which tears a hole through her chest, which doesn't stop her as she rips the heart out of her daughter to place inside her chest, after which she is devoured by some kind of alien presence which shoots out an ash cloud that infects the citizens of Japan and turns them into zombies. A wall goes up to contain the infected and the battle betwee humans and zombies begins, with the daughter alive and looking for vengeance with her heart replaced by some kind of chainsaw engine with a wicked chainsaw sword. A massively bloody, all out wacky and funny adventure then explodes across the screen.
Nishimura is a writer, director and special effects makeup artist extraordinaire. He directed the totally crazy likes of Tokyo Gore Police (a favourite of ours from the festival a few years back) and was involved with the effects or co-directing for Machine Girl, Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl, Mutant Girls Squad. All of his movies feature strong, warrior like women, and buckets of blood and gore. There was a Q&A session with the director after the movie which we stayed for, and he was a very funny guy. My question was "The actors in your movies get sprayed with blood including in their mouths, is the blood made from something really delicious?". He seemed to like my question but the answer was it is just water and food colouring, as he likes maximum spray he doesn't like it too thick like in other movies that use a syrupy mixture. He said they went through 4 tonnes of blood on this movie (in a 2 week shooting schedule!) and we could definitely see how. He also said the actresses faces became stained by the mixture and that the whites of their eyeballs became redder as the movie shoot progressed from the food colouring. Crazy stuff! He also revealed that his next movie is going to be a kids movie - don't think I'll be taking my nephew to see that somehow.
This one doesn't have another screening at the festival, but is likely to be released on DVD and Bluray in Australia in the near future as there seems to be a bit of a market for these movies - all of the ones I've mentioned above are available in Australia I think. So keep an eye out for this if you like totally OTT nutty blood soaked Japanese horror.
Today I will have 3 movies - Chow Yun Fat doing his best martial arts/comedy thing in Let the Bullets Fly (which has a special offer today to buy tickets for $12.50 if you quote the promotional code "BIFF11" when buying your ticket online), Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, and Manborg. I'm on my own for these three, so if you have nothing better to do tonight - get along to these for a dose of craziness.
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