- Sat Jun 16, 2018 9:42 pm
#106049
I had a very enjoyable night out at the local horror film fest. Barbara Crampton was a lovely guest, and it was great to hear her stories about working with Charles Band and Full Moon Features back in the 80's/90's. She seems to have a genuine appreciation for horror fans. She specifically mentioned the experience of working on
You're Next after a long hiatus from horror, which also included touring the indie/horror film festival circuit. She said the experience got her up to speed with the current horror scene, and she is now actively participating and producing other films. She also mentioned S. Craig Zahler quite a lot for his recent work. He was actually planning on directing Puppet Master:
TLR, but decided to hand it off so he could get working on
Dragged Across Concrete.
The new Puppet Master film is an over-the-top splatstick gorefest, but with the leads, including Crampton, playing it totally straight-faced with some biting and well-written dry humor. I was getting
Dead Alive vibes throughout, especially on some of the more ridiculous kills, which is high praise from me. It seemed to feature a lot of real puppetry and practical effects, which was awesome to see, and it was not some CGI schlockfest. Barbara intro'd the film saying that, "this will likely offend everybody in some way". Yeah, Nazi puppets executing minority groups in the US could pass for social commentary. ;) Also included a classic Puppet Master sex scene kill, featuring an actress with a pair of tits that will strike you blind. There were a couple kills that I will say even managed to turn my stomach... yuck!
Also! Frizzi composed a wonderful main theme that is a tribute to Richard Band's original Puppet Master theme, which was appropriately credited. I enjoyed Frizzi's score for the film, which covered a lot of ground between his newer more subtly-textured dark compositions, some frolicking and lighthearted tunes in the PM style, and even managed sneak in some classic Frizzi mellotron horror in some of the scarier sections. Good times, and I recommend checking this out if it gets a theatrical run in your town (if you can stomach outlandish b-film gore!). The crowd was laughing their asses off and having a good time.
I also watched a dozen short films over the night, and one in particular blew me away:
COMPULSION was incredible! The music instantly had me riveted, and as we heard from the director after the screening, the dark and heavy synth sounds were the original inspiration to build a film around -- Canadian giallo?! This was just stunningly well-made, with minimal dialogue and a heavy focus on the sound design and pulsating electronics. The soundtrack is collaboration with the director who is in the band Waingro, and the drummer from Baptists (if you are familiar, caught them a few years back and they rip). Highly-recommended if you have a chance to see it in the wild. Supposedly, there are 50 sold-out copies of VHS tapes floating around the world as well.
Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/220529095OST:
https://sigerecords.bandcamp.com/album/compulsion-osthttps://sigerecords.merchtable.com/musi ... t-cassetteCheck this out!
