The very first Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award represents a tip of the hat to a horror star- and its recipient is Debbie Rochon.  Much like Pitt in the 1970’s with films “Countess Dracula” and “The Vampire Lovers,” the award acknowledges a person that has supported the horror genre and embraced it overcoming many obstacles, breaking barriers and being a leader in its industry.

Pitt starred in over thirty films. She co-starred with Sir Christopher Lee in the cult original “The Wicker Man” (1973) and “The House that Dripped Blood” (1970). She also starred in Hammer’s “Countess Dracula” and, with Horror legend Peter Cushing, in Hammer’s “The Vampire Lovers.”  She passed away too soon in 2011.  The Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award is presented in conjunction with The Estate of Ingrid Pitt, filmmaker / producer Kevin Sean Michaels and event coordinator Stacy Pippi Hammon.

Currently, a long-form documentary film about Ingrid Pitt’s life and career is being produced by Michaels (“Vampira; The Movie,” “The Wild World of Ted V. Mikels”), which will be a combination of live action and animation with contributions from student animators and renowned professional animators all over world. It will be released in installments. The first installment was called, “Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest,” animated by 10-year-old Perry S. Chen, with storyboards by two-time Academy Award nominee Bill Plympton. The short film qualified for an Academy Award nomination last year in its long-list.

Last October, a film festival in the Old Town Quarter of Hastings, England, UK in memory of Pitt was organized by Ingrid’s husband Tony Rudlin, and The Official Ingrid Pitt Fan Club. It was also the official launch of Ingrid’s novel “Dracula Who…?”, published by Avalard. A “Queen of Horror” was announced, Sarah Bones, who will be the ambassador and host for future events, including an event in the spring in New York. The Ingrid Pitt Memorial is in the series of such tributes.

“I spent five years with Ingrid herself discussing her life’s work and legacy. She was an actor’s actor.” said Michaels. “That meant the most to her. She always felt that her work in genre films was not highlighted enough. She wanted to be remembered as an artist. It’s all about taking risks and new ground. This award honors that memory and its spirit.”

“We are presenting to a horror star, as Ingrid was, to celebrate women in the horror movie genre, keep her memory in our hearts, and to aid further projects to come that have that same energy and positivity,” Michaels added.

Rochon is a veteran actress that has appeared in a multitude of films including “Tromeo and Juliet” (1996), “Terror Firmer” (1999), “American Nightmare” (2002), “HP Lovecraft’s Colour from the Dark” (2009), “The Theatre Bizarre” (2011), “Sick Boy” (2012), and “Rudyard Kipling’s Mark of the Beast” (2012).  2013 will see the release of “Exhumed”, “Wrath of the Crows”, “Solid State”, “Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart”.

Rochon also co-hosted the Fangoria Radio Show from 2006 to 2010 with Dee Snider and Tony Timpone, covering horror news in a talk show setting.  Her writing credits include her current column in Fangoria Magazine, “Diary of the Deb”.  She is currently in post production on her feature directorial debut, “Model Hunger” starring Lynn Lowry, Tiffany Shepis and Carmine Capobianco.

“I think there is no doubt whatsoever that an award with such qualifications as the Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award represents should be established by honoring the woman whose name is associated with the very definition of the award’s purpose to a T.  Debbie Rochon is that woman”, said Hammon.

“They both experienced incomprehensible hardships during their childhoods and have a shared passion for their work, both acting in the horror genre and writing”, Hammon added.

“Being honored with such a prestigious accolade is a truly humbling experience. I have long admired and respected the contributions Ingrid Pitt has made to the genre and to be a recipient of an award attached to her name is the highest form of recognition for any woman in this field to achieve”, said Rochon.

The Ingrid Pitt Memorial Award will be presented on Saturday, January 12, 2013 at the Cella Art Gallery, 11135 Weddinton Street, Suite 112, North Hollywood, CA 91601.

The Cella Art Gallery is a contemporary fine art gallery centrally located in the NoHo Arts District that loves to support the independent art and horror communities.

I used to review a lot of horror film festivals, but lately I have been attending festivals as a screenwriter instead of a journalist, and haven’t been reviewing what I see. But, I have kept up the habit of watching as many of the films as I possibly can. What this means is that this year alone, I watched over fifty mostly unreleased horror films at various festivals, which kind of makes me an expert. What follows is my best of the fests for 2012.

1) The House with 100 Eyes
(Shriekfest)

This subversive, unrestrained, skewed vision of reality peels away some of the most trite found footage genre trappings to give us a hilarious, creepy, over the top explosion of brutal violence.

Ed and Susan are a husband and wife team who produce snuff films from their home for commercial distribution. Ed wants to produce the biggest snuff film in history, featuring a triple kill, and all the bonus features and commentary you would expect from a standard issue DVD.

But, the triple kill is logistically bigger than what he and his wife have the resources to pull off, and things quickly start to go wrong in the most darkly comical ways imaginable. What follows are gory, comedic, anarchic set pieces and characters that develop in directions you will not foresee as Ed desperately tries to put his magnum opus back on track.

“The House With 100 Eyes” brilliantly holds a funhouse mirror up to the found footage genre, giving audiences something truly warped and twisted.

2) Children of Sorrow
(Shockfest)

This psychological horror film, directed by Jourdan McClure, features a stunning performance by Bill Oberst Jr. as Simon Leach, a brilliant sociopath and cult leader who lures a group of wayward young people to his compound and brainwashes them with religion. 

Oberst’s performance, at times subtle and nuanced, and at others frighteningly over the top, will leave you thinking long after the movie is done about how certain kinds of people are able to manipulate and control other kinds of people.

“Children of Sorrow” is an engrossing character study and a great star vehicle for Bill Oberst Jr. But it is also a great movie in it’s own right. This is the kind of film that pulls you in and makes your heart rate rise. Thought provoking, intense, and bone chilling, this is for anyone who likes dark, psychological horror.

3) President Wolfman
(New Orleans Horror Film Festival)

Out of all of the films here, this is the one that most divides audiences into loved it and hated it camps. I personally love this movie. “President Wolfman”, directed by Mike Davis, is a horror-comedy composed entirely of stock footage from over 120 old films, with voice over acting done in the style of What’s Up Tiger Lilly?

Creating a film this way is a daring experiment, but what makes “President Wolfman” work so well is the quality of writing and story telling. After a wolf bites The President of The United States, whose name already happens to be John Wolfman, he becomes a werewolf and kills off his political opponents in Congress, who want to pass a bill that would sell The United States to China, and rename our country Chimerica. But when President Wolfman turns human again, he feels guilty about killing his opponents, and searches for a cure to his lycanthropy.

The dialogue in “President Wolfman” sounds like it comes out of an old Zucker Brother’s comedy, and is full of puns and innuendos, and sometimes verges on the nonsensical. The stock footage is put together so that it flows naturally, and after awhile you forget that you are watching stock footage, and it just seems like you are watching a movie.

4) Nervo Craniano Zero
(New Orleans Horror Film Festival)

This Brazilian film, directed by Paulo Biscaia Filho, with influences ranging from 20th century European literature, to American horror, to the telenovela, is the strangest movie on this list.

A successful writer hires her ex boyfriend to invent a brain chip that will induce creativity. Naturally, instead of testing it out on her, they use a naïve farm girl who moved to the big city to be a singer as their test subject. The chip turns the farm girl into a creative genius, with only one side effect: she’s dead.

The thing that makes “Nervo Craniano Zero” stand out is its bold stylistic approach. Some quick examples: The film is shot with garish colors set against dark backgrounds, giving many of the scenes a neon-like quality. The acting is completely on the nose, like in a soap opera, even though the dialogue as written is subtle. Bubble gum pop music is played over a gory surgical operation.

But that just scratches the surface. “Nervo Craniano Zero” is full of stylistic adventures. It is also a fun, funny, intelligent movie.

5) Bunyan
(Shockfest)

Everything else on this list is totally highbrow, but “Bunyan”, directed by Gary Jones and written and produced by Jeff Miller, is just a fun little genre flick that knows what it’s trying to do.

A group of juvenile delinquents must go camping in the woods with a sadistic corrections officer as part of a last chance program. But after one of the delinquents angers Paul Bunyan by taking an item, he comes after the teens seeking vengeance.

There is a concept in screenwriting called delivering on the promise of the premise. What this means is if your movie sets something up, then the movie has to follow through and deliver. For example, what if you went to watch a movie called Jason Takes Manhattan, and then Jason spends almost the entire movie on a cruise ship? You’d be pretty pissed, right? I know I was. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was pissed because Jason Takes Manhattan fails to deliver on the promise of its premise.

I mention this concept because what makes “Bunyan” work is that it delivers on the promise of its premise completely. “Bunyan” gives you everything you could possibly want from a movie where Paul Bunyan is real, but is actually a maniac killer. “Bunyan” is a real fun ride. You rarely see this kind of genre film made today with so much care.

By Jonathan Weichsel

For years now the Viscera Film Festival has been showcasing cutting edge short horror films directed by women. Viscera has grown into a worldwide organization, and on December 21st, the last day of Earth according to the Mayan calendar, The Viscera Organization gave a taste of their newest project, The Etheria Film Festival, which showcases science fiction and fantasy shorts directed by women.

My favorite short, and just about everybody else’s as well, was Slashed, a science fiction themed comedy directed by Rebecca Thomson. Slashed deals with one of the most telling aspects of geek culture, slash fiction, but it is also a film about how the internet connects us all together. This hilarious little short had people rolling in the aisles.

Kaboomtown, directed by Jakqui Schuler, is an emotional and meditative film about aliens who put explosives in the hearts of every single person on earth. Every day, the people of earth must all fill out applications for another day of life. But the application takes six hours to fill out, which is half a waking day. Kaboomtown is a film about what it means to be alive in a world that takes everything from you.

Imminent Danger, directed by Alana McNair, is a totally weird romp about a woman whose job it is to watch the threat level buttons, who accidentally presses a button that raises the threat level to Imminent Danger, which is bad because Earth’s preparation will lead to the destruction of earth, and nobody will get to see her on the cover of some career magazine. Imminent Danger is lots of fun, and strange in the best possible way.

The Etheria film festival is taking submissions now through May 30th, 2013. The Viscera organization provides more support for filmmakers than any other festival I know of, and gives filmmakers the opportunity to have their work screened in Hollywood and all over the world. If you are a woman and have directed a science fiction or fantasy short, or you know a woman who has, go to www.etheriafilmfestival.comand submit today. Submissions are free.

For more information and to purchase tickets, click here

I met Ron about 15 years ago when I was at Next Wave Films and he was finishing his feature directorial debut, The Hi-Line.  Next Wave ultimately repped the film when it premiered in Dramatic Competition at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.  Made for around $500k, this beautiful film went on to play many festivals and helped launch the career of then-unknown Rachael Leigh Cook.  (Incidentally, it was shot by none other than Wally Pfister, whom we introduced to Chris Nolan in Park City when we were repping Chris’ film Following, which was playing at Slamdance that same year).  Though The Hi-Line was Ron’s first feature as a director, it was by no means his first time on a film set.  Ron is a two-time Academy Award winning production sound mixer and a four-time nominee.  He has worked with filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Gus Van Sant, Alan Rudolf, Stephen Frears, Barry Levinson, and most notably Steven Spielberg.  In fact, he has been with Spielberg on just about every one of his films over the last 20 years, including the upcoming Lincoln. 

Ron is an incredibly knowledgeable guy and the insights he shares below about the making of his new film Neighbors  ring very true to me.  His experience represents an excellent example of Embracing Your Limitations, the first rule I teach in my class.  I hope you enjoy this piece; I look forward to bringing you more guest pieces soon.

- Mark Stolaroff, No Budget Film School

NEIGHBORS WORKING TOGETHER

by Ron Judkins

I’ve worked in the “industry” for a good long while, mostly as a production sound mixer on movies that you may have heard of.  I’ve even won some awards.  But I’ve also enjoyed lurking on the fringes of the independent scene as well.  I directed a movie called The Hi-Line that went to Sundance in 1999.  Mark Stolaroff and I were business partners when he was formulating the ideas for his No Budget Film School, so I’m pretty familiar with what he’s up to.

And while all of the No Budget theories make perfect sense, in reality it’s often hard to make a movie and completely keep to the guidelines.  Mark would probably be the first person to admit that.  On every project it seems that there’s something that you want to do that causes you to break the rules.  You either want a different look, a higher profile cast, more interesting locations, or something.  And often that something either prevents the filmmaker from making the film, or otherwise creates a huge fly in the ointment during the process.

In the years since I made The Hi-Line, I’ve been in “development” on a variety of projects.  I took a lot of meetings, weekly phone calls, and strategy sessions.  But no films got made.  So finally I decided to gather what resources I had to just go out and make a film.  I asked my across-the-street neighbor Judy Korin, and my wife Jennifer Young (very close neighbor) to produce…Neighbors

Neighbors is a comedic drama about a middle-aged guy (Michael O’Keefe) who, with the help of his neighbors, faces down a mid-life crises to re-connect with both his creativity, and his marriage.

When I originally visualized the film, I wanted to set it in an upscale urban Los Angeles neighborhood.  I was thinking Silverlake, or the Hollywood Hills.  But the film had specific requirements in terms of locations.  As it was written, we needed three houses in a row on the same side of the street that had sight lines and easy access to each other. That is a huge task to find when you have a very limited budget. 

I wanted to make a classic “L.A.” movie with lots of light, windows, palm trees, and maybe a vista of the distant Pacific. We looked long and hard—canvassing the people that we knew, and the people that they knew.  And lo and behold—we found it!  One of Jennifer’s long time friends had a house in the Hollywood Hills that was perfect.  He loved the script and agreed to let us film there.  And across the ravine from him was another artistic couple that might be sympathetic to our cause.  An introduction was made, and incredibly, the second couple was very open to having us shoot in their house as well.  It really amazes me what opportunities can open up for you—if you only ask.  Often we just don’t ask.  But I was so excited!  These locations were a dream come true. 

But then we turned our attention to the logistics.  While beautiful, the house had very limited parking.  We would have to set up a shuttle.  We weren’t sure how the other adjacent neighbors would react to us filming in the ravine.  One was rumored to be “not sympathetic.”  And then we couldn’t find a parking lot that was affordable—or even a side street with good parking.  And because we were committed to working only twelve-hour days, we had to think about the time lost to parking and shuttling.  With all of that, we would be lucky to be able to actually be shooting for ten hours a day.  It seemed really difficult. 

Judy and Jennifer kept gently suggesting, “Why don’t we just shoot it in our own houses?”

I was so resistant to that.  I didn’t think it would work—well, I knew that it wouldn’t work in the way I had imagined.  A big concern of mine was that I didn’t want the scope of the film to be reduced.  Houses in our neighborhood are small, and I was concerned that the locations would feel confining and claustrophobic. 

But we inched ever closer to our start date and everything started to cost more money than we had budgeted.  So it really came down to the fact that there was no way we could pull it off if we tried to shoot up on the hill.  And Judy and Jennifer brought up a good point (do you see a pattern here?!), that it was more than just a question of where to shoot the movie.  That maybe there was an opportunity to involve our neighborhood in a very organic way as a kind of a partner in the making of the movie.  And once I got off my position of the way I imagined the film, I began to understand what that could be.  Wouldn’t it make sense to shoot a movie called Neighbors in our own neighborhood?  We had so many resources there, but it wasn’t just about resources, it was about embracing a philosophy where so many other people in the neighborhood were able to come on board and collaborate on something that became very meaningful to them—for many different reasons. 

We ended up shooting the bulk of the movie in Judy’s house.  We were able to shoot in the house next door to hers, which had a guesthouse behind.  It was such a fortuitous choice.  When we needed to shoot a real-time Skype conversation in two locations simultaneously—our neighbors down the block let us shoot at their place. When we needed high-speed Internet in the guesthouse next to Judy’s, we just ran long Ethernet lines across the backyard.  Our own house, across the street, became an additional location as well as the production office, the hair and makeup department, wardrobe, and actor’s greenroom.  This was not without its awkward moments.  Judy had to move out of her house for the duration of the shoot.  When Jennifer and I had to vacate our bedroom so that it could be repainted, we had to sleep in the living room among the wardrobe racks. When hair and make up arrived an hour and a half early to start work, they were knocking on our front door.  We were SO sleep deprived!  Judy’s back yard was perfect for craft service and for catering.  She kept the interior of her house set up the way we had it in the film, so that months later when we came back for pickups, the house was ready to go.

Looking at the film now, it’s not that light and airy send up of Los Angeles that I had first imagined.  But there is an authenticity to the locations and to the look of the film that is pretty unique.  It really is another side of Los Angeles. 

So the no-budget filmmaking rule of “use what you have” really did work for us—and in ways which were exponentially more important and meaningful than just the savings in dollars.  Because the fact is, when making films in this manner you HAVE to engage with and inspire some kind of community or larger group of people to aggregate the kinds of energy and resources to pull it off.  For whatever reasons, people have to want to be involved with your film.  Your currency becomes your goodwill and your integrity and how these both can manifest and take root in that community.  It can be a community of three or four, or three hundred, but it is the combined energies of the individuals in that group that will allow you to make your project.  In our case, when our filmmaking community was largely populated by our actual neighbors, the project really sprouted wings.

I don’t know what kind of film we would have if we had been able to shoot up on the hill.  But I do know that by fostering win-win relationships close to where we live, we created an experience that was extraordinary.  Very few times did I feel that our limited budget seriously affected the way we made the film.  The only exception was our schedule.  I really would’ve liked to be able to shoot a more relaxed schedule.  And I have some ideas about that.

So the other day I told Jennifer, “Next time I want to make a movie with even less money.”  I have some hunches about how to pull that off in an amazing way.  Of course it has to be the right film, and the right people.

She rolled her eyes and told me to shut up!

—Ron Judkins

To learn more about Neighbors and to watch some great videos about the making of the film, check out the current Kickstarter page at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1614136198/neighbors-not-your-daddys-mid-life-crisis-movie

All Skully-winning films will be shown Sunday at the LA Live Regal theater.

Below is a complete list of winners:

2012 Screamfest Film Awards

BEST PICTURE: American Mary

BEST DIRECTOR: Jen & Sylvia Soska - American Mary

BEST ACTRESS: Katharine Isabelle - American Mary

BEST ACTOR: Pierre-Francois Legendre - Fear of Water

BEST HORROR – COMEDY: Killer Kart

BEST MUSICAL SCORE: Jamie Blanks - Crawlspace

BEST STUDENT SHORT: Eaglewalk

BEST ANIMATED SHORT: Post Human

BEST SHORT: Incident on Highway 73

BEST MAKEUP: MastersFX – American Mary

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Brian Pearson– American Mary

BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS: Justin Dix - Crawlspace

BEST SCREENPLAY: The Gaslamp Horror/ Jeremy D. Christensen

BEST EDITING: Marc Steinicke - On Air

Screamfest®, the preeminent horror festival in the country, and what the LA Weekly calls “the best place to get a jump on tomorrow’s cult hits” presents the festival in Los Angeles every October. Screamfest is sponsored by FearNet, Screenplay.com, Moviola, Baseline, IndieDCP.

2012 marks my fourth year in a row reviewing Shriekfest for Film Radar and before that Valley Scene Magazine. As usual, I watched all of the features and most of the shorts. This year was a little different than years past, because there was one film which towered high above the rest. Part of this is because the festival lineup was remarkably weak, but The House with 100 Eyes is a film that I am genuinely in love with, and writer-director-star Jim Roof is a filmmaker who I am genuinely excited about.

I want to watch horror that is smart. I love horror that presents a skewed vision of reality, that is macabre, subversive, and fun, that peals away the top layer of humdrum everyday life to show us the violence right beneath the surface, that is anarchic, unrestrained, and fearless, and that breaks the rules. And I know I am not alone. Nobody wants to watch horror that is safe.

Yet all too often I am presented with horror that is bland, superficial, innocuous, lazy, boring, and most hazardously, that has nothing to say. 

So, when I discover a horror movie that has just two or three elements that I love about horror, I get very excited. The House with 100 Eyes is the kind of horror movie that is only produced a couple of times a decade, if that. As I sat in the half empty theater, everything I have always loved about horror unspooled itself right before my eyes. The dialogue was dripping with sarcasm, and the situations the characters were placed in were overripe irony. From start to finish, there was a weird kind of humor that enhanced the creepiness of the film rather than detracting from it. The violence was over the top and truly shocking. I was where every film critic wants to be: in the presence of undiscovered greatness.

The first thing you will notice about The House with 100 eyes is that the acting is terrific. This is a film that features big, bold performances from the entire cast. Star Jim Roof commands each scene he is in while playing a character who is so unhinged that it is impossible to guess what he will do or say next, and Shannon Malone, playing his tragically naïve but equally insane wife, serves as the perfect foil, but even the performances from the actors playing bit parts, such as the three skid row junkies, are memorable and uncomfortably familiar.

The writing is equally sharp. The dark humor, witty dialogue, and truly sick jokes had me laughing so hard that by the end of the film my ribs hurt. The characters are complex and feel familiar even though they are as alien as they could possibly be. Each set piece is more over the top and outrageous than the next. The story works within the confines of its own skewed logic.

Now that you get the idea, it is time for me to admit something that I didn’t want to say upfront. The House with 100 Eyes is a found footage horror film. Please don’t stop reading. I hated found footage horror films before it was cool to hate them. Found footage, by definition, strives to show you only what’s on the surface, while horror needs to go deeper. The House with 100 Eyes is the Grand Guignol of found footage horror. The film brilliantly holds up a funhouse mirror to found footage horror, showing us a distorted, deformed, dark carnival version of something that has become way too familiar.

Ed and Susan are a husband and wife team who produce snuff films from their home for commercial distribution. Ed wants to produce the biggest snuff film in history, featuring a triple kill, and all the bonus features and commentary you would expect from a standard issue DVD.

But, the triple kill is logistically bigger than what he and his wife have the resources to pull off, and things quickly start to go wrong in the most darkly comical ways imaginable. What follows are gory, comedic, anarchic set pieces and characters that develop in directions you will not foresee as Ed desperately tries to put his magnum opus back on track.

Beyond that, I don’t want to give too much away about the plot. A film like this requires an element of surprise to work, and I don’t want to spoil a thing. The House with 100 Eyes is not for everybody. About ten people walked out in the first half an hour because the film was too gory for them. Those losers missed out on the premier of one of the greatest horror films of the century.

You can check out my review of last year’s Shriekfest right here: http://www.filmradar.com/horror_blog/item/shriekfest_favorites/

The Hollyshorts Sci Fi and VFX program was an amazing block of films, featuring state of the art visual effects and truly heartfelt storytelling.  Every single one of the nine films in the program was a winner.  What follows are my top four favorites, in no particular order.

8.31:

8.31, direct by Noah Harald, is a heartfelt exploration of life and love at the end of the world. The title refers to the amount of time it takes light from the sun to reach earth, 8.31 minutes. The film takes place during the last day before the sun goes out, and is about a woman who goes into labor, and her husband’s quest to get her to a hospital so she can give birth before the world ends.

8.31 features amazing visual effects depicting future technology and gadgets, as well as a world on the brink of destruction, but what makes the film work is its emotionally grounded story and its serious exploration of the value of life.  It is very rare for a short film to make you choke up, but you’d need a heart of stone to not be effected by this one. 8.31 hits you with an emotional punch. 

All I Think of is You:

All I Think of is You, directed by Shad Clark, is about a man who dies in a car crash and has a copy of his consciousness uploaded into the body of a deceased African American man who had donated his body to science.  The man returns to his wife and is able to convince her that he is who he says he is, but she rejects him anyway because he is just a copy, not the real thing.

All I Think of is You is a serious exploration of what defines who we are. Philosophical and human at the same time, it’s a film that makes you think and feel.

Liberator:

Most of the films in the Sci Fi program were serious, meditative and dark. Standing out in a good way was Liberator, directed by Aaron Pope, a camp superhero film doubling as a TV pilot.  Liberator features an amazing cast, headlined by Lou Ferrigno, Peta Wilson, Michael Dorn, Don “the dragon” Wilson, Ed Asner, and Tara Cardinal.

If Liberator becomes a TV show, and it should, it would bring a level of bubblegum pop fun to TV that hasn’t been seen since the days of ummm, not to be too obvious, but well, La Femme Nikita and The Incredible Hulk.

Liberator is a standard Super Hero on the run story, but it has a terrific cast that is obviously having a lot of fun with the material, and that kind of fun is infectious.  As far as the cast goes, my one wish is to see more of Tara Cardinal. She is one of the most exciting up and coming actresses working right now, she was the reason I checked out this program of films, and, damn it, I wanted more of her!

Liberator is a throwback to the 80’s and 90’s, and is like nothing else being made today for the big screen or the small, and that is a good thing. If Liberator becomes a TV show, it will be a hit because there is a real hunger right now for this kind of pop fun. 

THE END - Trailer from Ted Marcus on Vimeo.

The End:

The End, directed by Ted Marcus, is about a London teenager whose parents won’t let him out on a school night to see a girl. He drugs his parents and sneaks out, only to find himself in the middle of an apocalyptic giant monster attack.  The girl dies, and he must make his way back to his drugged parents. The End has a twist that makes you question the reality of what is going on, but at its core it is a film about rebellion and the guilt it causes. The monster effects are amazing, but The End also features heartfelt, authentic writing and the best performance of the sci fi program from the teenager who sneaks out of his home.  The End manages to be funny and poignant at the same time. 

The Hollyshorts Sci Fi and VFX program was a real winner. Hollyshorts features short films from Hollywood’s future leaders, and if this is the future of Hollywood Sci fi, then it is one I look forward to.

MAD MONSTER and Chinese 6 Theatres presents “A Nightmare on Elm St. 3: Dream Warriors” 25th Anniversary Screening at: the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, Monday August 13th, at 9:30 pm! Featuring Special Guests and prize giveaways from your fiends at London 1888, Retro Outlaw Studios, Days of the Dead LA, Monsterpalooza, Evil Puppets, WerePups, www.dogheadstudios.com, Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine and MORE! There will also be a costume contest. The theme? Dream Warriors, of course! The first 200 people to buy tickets will win a limited edition Christopher Ott event poster (pictured above), so don’t wait!

Purchase tickets here…

http://buy-cinematix.at/raymac?CTY=37&DURL=https://www.movietickets.com//purchase/perf_id/685573091/movieid/12388

See the birth of a new superhero, this Saturday, August 11th at 6:30pm during the Sci-Fi/FX program at the 8th Annual HollyShorts Film Festival. FilmRadar readers can purchase tickets for only $8.00 when they enter “Radar12” (case-sensitive) during check-out.

Synopsis:
Ed Migliocetti (Lou Ferrigno, The Incredible Hulk) has served his country. When the endless war began, he put aside his football career to sign up for the military. And when the powers-that-be drafted him into the Enhanced Abilities Initiative, he became known as The Liberator.  Teamed with a group of “supers” – Sidewinder (Don the Dragon), Gaia (Tara Cardinal) and Volt – Liberator represented the best of America.  Or so he thought.  He soon found himself doing the government’s dirty work – assassinations, regime change, infrastructure sabotage.  Through it all, Ed followed orders.  He was a good soldier.

But when a black op went horribly wrong, Ed was thrown under the bus – the fall guy.  In the blink of an eye, the Liberator literally went from hero to zero.  After serving a decade in federal prison, he emerged a pariah. In the eyes of the public, he was a traitor.  That, quite, frankly, he could take.  What he couldn’t take was his own daughter Sonya (Jessica Jade Andres) hating him.

Determined to set the record straight and win her back, Ed pens a tell-all book that draws the ire of his former chief, General Augustus Pollard (Michael Dorn, Star Trek: The Next Generation).  Pollard dispenses CIA spook Marla Criswell (Peta Wilson, La Femme Nikita) to investigate.  When they realize that Ed plans to blow the whistle after all these years, they have no choice but to take him out.  After Ed battles his way out of a US military contractor’s compound, President Whitlock (Ed Asner, Up) declares the Liberator Public Enemy Number One – and sends Ed’s old teammates (Don “The Dragon” Wilson and Tara Cardinal) to bring him down by any means necessary.  But this time, the Liberator is not going down without a fight.