The Glasgow Film Festival has always opened its doors to genre, but traditionally for its final Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday it invites the FrightFest crew to take over the Glasgow Film Theatre’s biggest screen, which is then flooded with wall-to-wall blood, mayhem and depravity. This year, for obvious reasons, things will be different. Travel is restricted, socialising is distanced, and we are all being required to sit alone in the dark. Which is not to say that festivals are dead – rather they have just taken on new forms. As the whole of the Glasgow Film Festival migrates online, and the first word of its name now references the provenance of its organisers rather than the location of its screenings, the FrightFest chapter too is moving onto our domestic screens, and mutating into a more bijou line-up of six titles.
FrightFest regular Cody Calahan (Antisocial; Let Her Out; The Oak Room) has a horror critic trying to avoid a skewering from a support group of serial killers in Vicious Fun. Another FrightFest veteran, Kyle Rankin (Infestation; Night of the Living Deb), presents his controversy-courting school shooter Run Hide Fight. Stunt performer and fight choreographer Kirk Caouette brings the action with his ‘hit’ feature American Badger (aka The Badger). Alexis Buchon debuts with his wonderfully titled retro-styled noir The Woman With Leopard Shoes (La femme auz chaussures leopard). Also from France, Marc Fouchard’s Out of This World (Hors du monde) promises an Uber-thrilling ride through two strangers’ music-deprived psychologies. And Christopher Alender, who produced Southbound, The Wind, Body at Brighton Rock and The Mortuary Collection, presents his feature debut as director, the cross-border occult picture The Old Ways.
The six films, which will be geo-locked to the UK and limited to 500 tickets, will be available on-demand between the 5th & 7th of March, so can be viewed over those three days
Tickets will go on sale on Monday 18 January, priced £9.99. Please note that passes are not available. More information here.
Full programme details here.
© Anton Bitel