Event Report: UK’s Celluloid Screams 2013

Steve Barton   |  

Nov 6, 2013

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On Friday, October 25th, we took a trip to Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to enjoy three days of premier horror programming at the Celluloid Screams film festival. Take a look in here for some of the fear-filled sights and sounds to come from the Sheffield Showroom Workstation this year.

Nestled next to Sheffield Hallam University, the Showroom Workstation cinema offers a haven for local film buffs, students and artists, and also sports one of the most impressively relaxed café bars of any film screening establishment we’ve been to thus far. Real ale on tap – kudos! Upon walking through the doors and approaching the box office, your attention was immediately drawn to the selection of severed body parts and cobwebs hanging at head height. This also extended to the bar and concessions stand, lending a nice kooky, spooky feeling to the weekend’s events.

Pass holders for the festival also received a complimentary goodie bag on arrival, featuring the usual festival selection of flyers and promotional material, but also harbouring the very pleasant surprise that was a copy of Optimum Releasing’s Blu-ray/DVD combo release of the fantastic classic Quatermass and the Pit!

Opening this year’s festival was debut director Don Thacker’s wildly entertaining Motivational Growth (review here), with the man himself giving an equally entertaining Q&A session afterwards.

We also had the opportunity later in the weekend to sit down with Don for an (extended) chat, and you can read our full interview with him by clicking here. Get yourself nicely settled – it’s a long one!

Legendary genre filmmaker Frank Henenlotter showed up next to introduce a double-bill of his Basket Case and Basket Case 2 – the latter of which was shown from a specially imported print, albeit slightly let down by some projection framing issues – and also engage in an audience Q&A afterwards.

Day two saw the festival kick into high gear with a full day of programming, including screenings of Painless (review here), the utterly fantastic zombie opus The Battery (review here), and Chad Crawford Kinkle’s offbeat and highly original Jug Face (review here) with director and star in attendance. Director Olivier Beguin also appeared at the festival to introduce and discuss his latest vampire romp, Chimères (review here), after which the night drew to a close with a screening of directing duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s disappointingly perplexing and needlessly obtuse follow-up to the sensual Amer, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. Claymation genius Lee Hardcastle appeared before the audience to introduce a self-made show reel of some of his favourite work and to also display his latest work, Ghost Burger, which is a direct sequel to his T is for Toilet entry from The ABCs of Death – and you can watch it right here now!

A Q&A session followed, during which Hardcastle was joined by Before Dawn‘s Dominic Brunt, who loaned his voice to Ghost Burger and also attended the festival to introduce his latest directorial effort, the short film Shell Shocked.

While we weren’t around for the festival’s yearly all-nighter (I’m not one to do well without my sleep!), the Celluloid Screams team continued throughout the night with a big-screen run of undead-themed classics in the form of Frankenhooker, Return of the Living Dead, The Beyond and the fan favourite that is Lamberto Bava’s Demons.

Kicking off Sunday morning was a screening of 1982’s little-known psycho thriller Der Fan (aka Trance) by German director Eckhart Schmidt, which remains an interesting curio – if mainly for its quite regular musical interludes featuring the amusingly robotic styling of its ill-fated Kraftwerk-esque pop star character ‘R’. This year’s runaway festival success was up next for the Sheffield crowd in the form of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s stunningly magnificent Big Bad Wolves (review here) – a film that appears to be met with the same rapturous reception wherever it is screened, and on this occasion also walking away with the Audience Award for Best New Feature.

Another Celluloid Screams tradition is the annual Secret Film, whereby attendees of the festival have no idea what is going to be shown until mere moments before the lights go down. This year, Joe Begos’ underwhelming (if nevertheless ambitious) Almost Human (review here) fit the bill with its The Thing meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers 80s throwback style. Director Brian Netto was up next with his fresh take on Rosemary’s Baby territory with Delivery (review here), while Renaud Gauthier waited in the wings to present the closing film in the form of his entertaining, yet cripplingly disjointed, slasher throwback Discopath (review here) .

Of course, here at Celluloid Screams the feature films on screen aren’t the only attraction with this year also offering a number of smart extras such as an art project entitled “Destination Terror”. Here, a selection of local artists were asked to create a piece of work in the style of promotional material for classic horror locations, which were then displayed around the lobby areas and available for purchase in various forms. Check a few of them out, below!

Similarly amusing was a new addition to the festival – the “Shit Film Amnesty”. Punters were tasked with bringing along the single worst horror film from their DVD collection, along with a brief statement describing how they came into possession of the offending material, and what made it so bad. The judges would then decide, behind the scenes, on which entry was indeed the worst cinematic offering, and the winner would walk away with every awful movie entered into the competition alongside some extra, more pleasing, goodies. Unfortunately, we have yet to discover which exact monumental piece of shit actually won the competition, but our ears are on the ground about it!

Backing up the feature showings this year was a wide selection of short films showcasing worldwide talent with crowd-pleasing flair via entries such as Timothy Rutherford and Cody Kennedy’s delirious The Last Video Store (featuring some special effects by Astron-6’s Steve Kostanski), and the utterly bonkers Fist of Jesus by Adrián Cardona and David Muñoz. The jury award for best short film went to Fredrik S. Hana’s grimy Euro-styled Angst, Piss & Drid. We’ve found a couple of the entries online for you to enjoy right now – including the sheer insanity that is Jesus massacring hordes of zombies with fish! For an idea of the kind of style you can find in The Last Video Store, also check out Rutherford and Kennedy’s current The ABCs of Death 2 entry, M is for Magnetic Tape.

Alongside the selection of full shorts, the Celluloid Screams organisers also ran a competition that tasked filmmakers with creating 30-second ‘bumpers’ to be screened before the main films. This led to 13 selected finalists that would appear throughout the festival, with a winner decided by the Twisted Twins, Jen and Sylvia Soska. That winner, Tim Platton and Polly Allen’s Cold Feet, can be viewed below in all of its perfectly timed comedic glory. Similarly impressive, though, was the entry Twisted Meryl, which demonstrated an equally adept sense of timing – albeit with a different purpose, and one that almost sent half of the screening’s audience through the roof. It, too, is presented below for your viewing pleasure!

So, all in all, this appeared to be a very successful year for Celluloid Screams, making for a highly enjoyable, welcoming, and spirited weekend in Sheffield. We’ll certainly be back when opportunity affords, and many thanks to festival director Robert Nevitt and his team for inviting us along!

Keep an eye on the Celluloid Screams website for more, and of course follow them at sheffhorrorfest on Twitter and celluloidscreamshorrorfestival on Facebook for up-to-the-minute info.

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