Review: Mayhem Film Festival, Day Four

County: Australia/Japan

Director: Aaron McCann & Dominic Pearce

Starring: Toshi Okazaki, Mayu Iwasaki & Masa Yamaguchi

Running Time: 87 mins

Ah, Mayhem’s fun Sunday morning movies are always a pleasure and Top Knot Detective was no exception. Shot as a mockumentary, the film details the rise, fall, and subsequent rise again of Top Knot Dectective (or Ronin Suiri Tentai outside of Australia), the best cult show around! Billed as Australia’s Spinal Tap the film is a nostalgic paean to Japanese pop culture of the 90s that also explores rivalry, crime and crushed romance behind the scenes. Expect giant penises, some intense fight scenes and a doomed love affair that will tug at your heartstrings. Penny Reeve

County: Iceland

Director: Erlingur Thoroddsen

Starring: Björn Stefánsson, Sigurður Þór Óskarsson & Guðmundur Ólafsson

Running Time: 111 mins

Icelandic suspense film Rift is an exploration of the emotional trauma that can be left from a relationship. Exploring how love can be a confusing necessity to life and also ultimately cause your demise. There’s a wonderful sense of absence within the film. Iceland makes for some beautiful scenery which blends picturesque landscapes with desolate barrenness absolutely seamlessly, representative of a lot of the relationships in the picture.

The amount of absence present forces the viewer to second guess everything, which is an extremely clever way of making you feel partly what the protagonists are going through. It lures you in without you being aware leaving you completely vulnerable to the scares. You feel cold and alone which ultimately is the scariest thing in life. My only gripe is that it did feel a little long. Every scene was wonderfully shot but even if it’s all great, too much of the same thing can eventually feel a little laboured. That shouldn’t deter you from it though; it’s immensely sad, leaves you hanging above the snow, and is beautifully re-watchable. Matt Smith

Script: Steven Sheil

Director: Steven Sheil & Chris Cooke

Starring: Jonny Phillips, Thomas Farthing, Melvyn Rawlinson, Olivia Newton, Rob Goll, Sylvia Robson

Running Time: 120 mins

After Rift ended, Mayhem goers were ushered out of screen one to set up for the enigmatic experience that was the live reading of Hammer’s lost script, Zeppelin v Pterodactyls. What to expect when we returned was a mystery. The event was the clear jewel in the crown of the festival for Broadway, as the silhouetted cut outs of pterodactyls and a zeppelin adorning the walls of the café bar pronounced. This will come as no surprise to horror fans who know that Hammer was, and to many still is, the last word in British horror – a company that since the 1950s had been producing horror content until its closure that had not only stood the test of time, but has created a legacy of horror. Triumphantly, Hammer was resurrected as a predominantly horror film producing studio in 2010 to the great joy of horror aficionados. To me, Christopher Lee’s portrayal of Dracula will always be the ultimate interpretation of the legendary horror figure. This discovery of a lost concept by David Allen from the 1970’s is a lost treasure. From the detailed outlines David Allen provided in his concept, Mayhem film festival created the script with faithful detail.

What followed was a truly unique experience as the room filled up and the lights went down. The room was set up with a row of song sheet stands on the stage, where the actors and narrator would stand to read their lines, the screen, and a laptop and soundboard in the corner. After the visual stampede of the festival’s cinematic output, an experience like this could be far less stimulating – and while this medium will never become the entertainment quick fix of choice for the masses, its purpose was to be a labour of love, not for the majority, but for dedicated fans of Hammer, who knew how to visualise in its style. It was, too, a labour of love to push your own imagination to its limits, but the mind was adequately fuelled by the occasional on screen visual to establish a new location in the story, an original music score by Gavin Morrow and Gerallt Ruggiero and sound effects, as well as the presence of the voice actors on stage, who would mime certain actions, proving useful when visual inspiration was required. As it continued, I found myself fully able to envelop and transport myself in to the story, much like reading a book, not distracted by the knowledge that I was sat in a room full of people. It was very much a personal experience, as of course everybody’s vision was unique, and these are often the experiences that end up being the most treasured retrospectively. Each actor’s voice was distinct, adding various colours and shades to the blank canvas of my imagination. A particular talent among the actors was Melvyn Rawlinson who voiced Dr. Edmund Fulmer, his refined English accent extremely evocative of the Hammer productions from the seventies that I knew, that were frequented by Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, both with similar commanding and joyously English voices. The story itself went beyond the titular expectation of a Zeppelin being attacked by Pterodactyls - the creatures, who attached the airship we learn came from an inhabited island of prehistoric mysteries upon which the crew landed. This island contained giant docile sloths, as well as hostile lizard aliens that had learned only the worst traits from humankind, and who sought to destroy the other tribe on the island, and make them into lizards too. I used a favourite Hammer classic of mine from 1966, The Reptile, as inspiration for my imagination, which ensured I had a particularly menacing vision of the lizard’s appearance in my head…

This labour of love was a joy to experience, and one that can be relived, if you only close your eyes and imagine. A dreamlike experience, I enjoyed the fact that it allowed you to utilise your own creativity as you imagined the story as it was told. It almost becomes a joint production, in which everybody in the room deserves a credit for their internal realisation. Gemma E. Finch

County: USA

Director: Joe Lynch

Starring: Steven Yeun, Samara Weaving & Steven Brand

Running Time: 86 mins

Doubtlessly one of my highlights of the festival. The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun gives an electric performance in a relentless rage against the lack of accountability in corporate America. Recently fired Derek (Yeun) is stuck in the basement of the corporate office he used to work for with wronged client Melanie (Samara Weaving). When the building becomes quarantined after a virus that causes its victims to lose all inhibitions, the pair decide to seek their revenge against the company, working their way up the floors like a particularly gruesome video game, battling delightfully cartoonish bosses on their way to its summit. Part Wall Street, part High Rise and part The Raid; Mayhem is endlessly entertaining in all its claustrophobic, hyper-violent glory. Ashley Carter

County: Canada

Director: Peter Ricq

Starring: Lizzie Boys, Cameron Andres & Hannah Rochelle Burr

Running Time: 85 mins

Mayhem 2017 drew to a close in an explosion of zombies, gore and comedy with Peter Ricq's Dead Shack. Joining a slightly dysfunctional family on a half-baked cabin getaway, Jason (Matthew Nelson-Mahood) has his sights on escaping his even more dysfunctional family, and potentially getting close to Summer (the wonderfully named Lizzie Boys).  What he doesn't expect, however, is to find himself battling a zombie hoarder (Lauren Holly) who has been keeping her undead husband and children alive with human sacrifices.  The majority of the laughs come from Donavon Stinson, Summer's drunken but loveable father, as the plot winds up to the inevitable showdown.  Dead Shack was doubtlessly amongst the funniest films of the entire festival, providing a fresh take on the ubiquitous zombie genre and bringing a curtain down on another fantastic showcase of films from the Mayhem team.  Ashley Carter