It’s October, so Halloween looms in the shadows at the end of the month and the horror-hungry bunch of souls behind Frightfest are crawling forward, Satan bless ’em, with their pursuit of making sure the lead-up to the 31st doesn’t fall into the grips of a legion of Haribo Spooky Ghosts.
The all-night film screening, now in its 14th year, has just been announced – tickets are available here – and it promises to be the best yet. Not only that, but it’s going on the road: it starts on Saturday 26 October at the Vue in London’s Leicester Square, before moving on to Glasgow, Basildon, Newcastle, Poole, Sunderland and Bristol in November – see below.
We asked Mat Colegate, Quietus film editor and horror enthusiast, what he thought of the billing and, deep from within the bowels of the abandoned old asylum they had to shut down because of that thing that happened that no-one speaks of these days, down beyond the backwaters, out where the roads don’t go no more, otherwise known as Mat’s house, he sent us this message:
"I am a grumpy sod and will moan for hours about how things are no longer as golden as they were in the days of my sainted youth, when I romped in the spinneys and Wagon Wheels were bigger (They were! You weren’t able to dunk them back then!) However nothing gets my goat more than the hideous mess that people insist on making out of Halloween these days. Every year you leave the house on the most petrifying of all nights only to be confronted by an army of ineptly tailored superheroes, lazily blood-splattered ‘celebrities’ and (shudder) ‘sexy’ zombies. It’s enough to send decent folk on a sickening spree of intestine shredding carnage. However, fear not! (or otherwise) because the good folks at Frightfest have put on a truly monstrous line-up for their annual Halloween all-nighter, that will keep you happily locked in a darkened room with hundreds of other bellowing gore-hounds until the tacky parade has passed. Just pass your eyes over this little lot and then be thankful, because finally someone has made a horror film called Discopath.
"That’s DISCOPATH. What has humanity done to deserve such wonders?"
This year’s line-up features a host of UK premieres,Soulmate, The Station, Nothing Left To Fear (the first film to come out of Slash’s Slasher Films company, no less), Patrick, Mark Hartley’s remake of the 1978 original and the aforementioned Discopath: "It’s 1976, Donna Summer tops the charts and everyone believes in mirror balls. Except Manhattan burger cook Duane Lewis who goes psycho when he hears the pulsating rhythm of Disco." All these are centred around a screening of the restored Mark Of The Devil, originally banned in the UK on its release in 1970 (and featuring a turn from a young David Bowie).
Have a look at the screening dates below and go to Frightfest’s website for more details:
OCTOBER
Sat 26 – Vue West End, London
NOVEMBER
Sat 2 – GFT, Glasgow; Empire Cinema, Basildon; Empire Cinema, Newcastle; Empire Cinema, Poole; Empire Cinema, Sunderland
Sat 16 – Watershead, Bristol
