"Why am I alive?!" quipped Bio Cop.
Astron-6 Shorts Showcase and The Editor: How time flies. We remember when Mayhem was but a wee short film festival, but boy has it grown in the last ten years. In 2014, to celebrate their decade, there’s been ten days of events, including Teen Mayhem and Mayhem Certificate X as pre-runners to the main event, but the four days of fun that is the Mayhem weekend started on Thursday night. And what a start.
Kicking it all off were modern cult favourites, Astron-6. A b-movie loving filmmaking group from Canada, they’ve been making films under the Astron-6 label for less time than Mayhem has been around, but they’ve won a lot of hearts. Comprising of five members, they are the cast and crew for the majority of their films, borrowing favours from friends as they go. As creators of the splendid eighties sci-fi spoof Manborg, they like to wear their influences on their sleeves while keeping their tongues wedged firmly in their cheeks.
They started the night with a compendium of their own shorts, from their latest web series Divorced Dad to the fan-favourite mock trailer for Bio-Cop (a film about a mutated cop who can’t die - it’s hilarious, trust us). A lot of them are shot on VHS and meant to look as lo-fi as possible, their knack to pastiche and mimic their chosen genres - Public Access television (Divorced Dad), eighties fantasy films (Goreblade), troma-esque sci-fi (Bio-Cop), buddy movies (Cool Guys) - is uncanny. These all went down really well, but it was their latest feature length film The Editor, a homage to the giallo films of the sixties, seventies and eighties, that everyone was anxious to see
If you’ve never seen a giallo film, you’re missing out. A merging of horror and thriller, they are beautiful creations full of saturated colour, ridiculous plotlines, loads of blood and a lot of women in front of wind machines looking horrified. Mainly hailing from Italy, they were all overdubbed – usually badly - in English for the US and UK market. So, did Astron-6 deliver?
The titular editor of their film, Rey Ciso, is a man on the edge: he’s missing the fingers from one hand, is disrespected by the cast and crew of the latest film he’s working on, and is derided by his wife, an ex-actress, at home. When people on the set start to get slaughtered, everyone is a suspect, but none more so than the Ciso, due to the MO of the murderer being their fingers are mutilated like his. The body count rises, the face slaps clock up, the mystery deepens and the soundtrack is suitably dramatic in its electronica.
The film is pitch-perfect, from the gorgeous shots, the gallons of blood being slung around, the gratuitous full frontal nudity, misogyny and, of course, the out-of-synch dubbing. Despite the, slightly, bigger budget and slicker look to the film, they maintained their small crew number. The two biggest coups, though were the inclusion of giallo veteran actor Udo Kier (Suspiria) and music from giallo composer Claudio Simonetti. They didn’t make the film though - it was the script and its execution, and its deadpan dissection of the ‘faults’ of the original giallos that made it shine.
You’ll definitely get more out of The Editor if you’ve seen a couple of original giallos but, even without that frame of reference, anyone who’s seen a dodgy movie or two in their time and has a sense of humour will get it. Ali Emm.
Pollyanna McIntosh in Let Us Prey
Let Us Prey: After all that Astron-6 fried gold, we were treated to the debut feature film from Brian O’Malley. Bleary eyed, and star struck from having my press pass signed by the Astron-6 guys, Let Us Prey started at 11:30pm...
It is set in a police station, in a remote Scottish town. Following an ominous and excellently executed opening credit sequence, we are introduced to PC Rachel Heggie (Pollyanna McIntosh), about to begin her first day (well, night) – and it turns out to be a pretty intense and mental one, with the help of what seems to be a nonsensically high percentage of evil people for such a small community.
The main driving force is the mysterious stranger, played by the great Liam Cunningham, who they lock in a cell for the night after he appears out of nowhere. It is gradually revealed what he is up to, getting a bit eye for an eye on the character’s asses.
The title is a nice play on words for the film’s religious themes as well as its predator/prey ones. Morality and justice are thrown into the mix, making the copshop setting wonderfully fitting. Although the stranger seems to deride one of the characters for being an Old Testament Christian, he certainly leans towards that himself, making it difficult to know who to route for at times – let us, of course, give three cheers for characters that are not written too black and white.
For such a low budget film, O’Malley has produced a very slick and stylish feature with convincingly disgusting gore effects. Whatever Let Us Prey lacks in originality, it certainly makes up for in how compelling, well made and atmospheric it turns out. Brian O’Malley may well be one to watch in the future. Harry Wilding.
Astron-6 Shorts Showcase, The Editor, and Let Us Prey were all shown as part of Mayhem Film Festival on Thursday 30 October 2014 at Broadway Cinema.
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