Fantastic Fest 2007–The Ferryman/The Entrance/End Of The Line/A Colt Is My Passport

It was sort of a short day at Fantastic Fest today. They only had four slots for movies, but there was a special freak-out in the midnight slot. But we’ll get to that.

THE FERRYMAN (2007)

Directed by: Chris Graham
Written by: Nick Ward/Matthew Metcalfe

Two young couples go on a tiny cruise off the coast of Australia expecting to find a little rest and relaxation. Instead, they pick up a distress signal and head into a dense fog bank to find out who’s hurt.

It ends up being an old Greek man (John Rhys-Davies) who has been kept adrift for a long time. Unfortunately for them, he’s also trying to cheat Death. And, somehow, he actually holds the key.

The couples and the owners of the boat (Tamer Hassan and Kerry Fox) end up falling victim to a lot of blood, body-switching and knife-wielding.

It’s kind of a creature of the week type of movie, but it wasn’t bad. There’s a lot of trying to keep track of who is in what body, which keeps things exciting. And there’s an under-current of anti-Americanism. The young American couple (Craig Hall and Sally Stockwell) are pretty obnoxious…especially Sally. But Craig does look a bit like a young Shrub.

Not a bad movie. Kind of creepy at times and keeps you on edge. The creature at the end is maybe a bit much, but I dug it.

THE FIFTH

Directed by: Ryan A. Levin
Written by: Ryan A. Levin

So far, the best non-animated short of the Festival. Four guys are trying to find a fifth for their weekly poker game. It’s a little hard because one of the four (Sam Lloyd from “Scrubs”) has a rather…violent profession.

Hilarious stuff. Director/writer Ryan A. Levin could have a great future. He kept saying “The crew on the show I work on…” Of course, as soon as I saw Sam, I knew exactly what show that was. And you can totally see the humor of it seeping into his work.

Can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

THE ENTRANCE

Directed by: Damon Vignale
Written by: Damon Vignale

Unfortunately, the feature didn’t hold up to the short. When I read the synopsis online, they had me at “possessed nun.” But there was a definite shortage of said nun in the film. They mention her in the opening crawl, but she never shows up. Of course, that’s probably because they didn’t have the budget for circa 1600s nun habits. All we get of that period is someone writing with an old quill.

The story really centers around a cop (Sarah-Jane Redmond who plays Aunt Nell on “Smallville”) who is contacted by a drug dealer (Ethan Hawke lookalike Michael Eklund who also had a couple of roles in “Smallville”) to help save a couple of people from a strange serial killer. The guy makes them play games, the loser of which sees a film of his biggest sin. Then he is killed by an invisible demon. I guess it’s the one who possessed the nun back in the day. I dunno.

This movie had some potential to be alright, but it ended up just being silly. When Redmond goes missing, her co-workers are all over the place trying to figure out where she is. The chief calls back to the station to ask about a lead they got from the drug dealer concerning the name of a janitor at the parking garage who seemed to be in on the murders. The guy who answers, though, has gone off on a seemingly irrelevant tangent about Satan worshipers and demons…with absolutely no way of making that particular leap. There was nothing pointing to demons except the fact that the janitor had a round tattoo on his hand.

!!!

I will give writer/director Damon Vignale this much: he made a better film than Saw. But that’s REALLY not saying much. Too many silly leaps of faith and FAR too many shots of Redmond walking down a hall. It’s one thing to build suspense. It’s something wholly other to squander that suspense for length. By the time I had finished seeing her walk down that hall, she was still walking. And I was asleep.

A must skip.

LES PETITS HOMMES VIEUX (2005)

Directed by: Yann Chayia
Written by: Yann Chayia

This short takes place in a world where old folks outnumber young folks by a quite large margin. So large, in fact, that they seem to be everywhere. And they’re taking over. They appear in the lead character’s apartment, straightening paintings and putting up pictures of kittens.

Then things get really weird.

Kind of like Night Of The Nearly Dead, this short really shows that someone is afraid of getting old. It’s kind of funny and worth checking out if you get a chance. But I think it’s a little long at 13 minutes. I guess it had to build its world for that long.

END OF THE LINE (2007)

Directed by: Maurice Devereaux
Written by: Maurice Devereaux

Probably the best horror movie I’ve seen at the Festival so far, this one is kind of Night Of The Living Pious. (See why it’s paired with the last short?)

A young nurse, Karen (Ilona Elkin), gets on a subway. It stops for an “emergency” and she and the guy she was flirting with earlier, Mike (Nicolas Wright), band together for comfort. When an older lady joins their little group things get very strange…and dangerous. The woman gets a page on her beeper (?!), gets a look of rapture on her face, pulls out a cross and starts the “saving” with the knife embedded in it.

There are hundreds of these cult members who follow a Jerry Falwell-like leader who prophesied about Armageddon. Apparently, it’s time. And all sinners must be saved.

Karen and Mike get a small band of survivors going to try to get away from these freak-os…and the action and fright never lets up.

This is a creepy damn movie. Not only are the antagonists creepy as hell, but occasionally there’s a hallucination involving people with their mouths nearly sewn shut by flesh colored thread…or something like that. Pretty disgusting, but awesome.

I loved this movie. It made me jump at least once. I think my viewing partners jumped a couple more times. Not sure. I was too busy watching pretty people get stabbed by Christians. (And, yes, they were pretty much all pretty. Ilona and Nicolas were both on “Undressed” back in the day.)

See this when it finally comes out. It’s totally worth it.

A COLT IS MY PASSPORT (1967)

Directed by: Takashi Nomura
Written by: Shuichi Nagahara/Nobuo Yamada
Based on book by: Shinji Fujiwara

Now, I don’t know a whole lot about old Japanese gangster movies. In fact, until tonight, I had never seen one. (Yeah. I’m a little bit ashamed.)

But now I have, and I’m hooked.

Jo Shishido was a pretty big star at the time of this movie’s release, but he was mainly known as a comedian. This was one of his first tough-guy roles, along with the same year’s much more well-known Branded To Kill.

Here, Jo stars as a hitman on the run after his latest kill. He and his brother run for pretty much the entire short length of the movie. Jo meets a girl who falls for him almost instantly. But that’s almost a side-bar to the fact that Jo and his brother would do just about anything for each other. The girl even says, “I envy you, the love between two male friends.”

These guys are pretty much the epitome of cool, especially Shishido. His brother is a little worried all the time, but Jo is awesome. He hears that something is going wrong and just does what has to be done, almost no facial expression involved.

This movie, which is part of the Nikkatsu Action Cinema Retrospective at the Festival, isn’t the action packed flick that it probably would be today. Instead, it focuses on the characters and the story. But there is plenty of action and a bit more blood than you would think for a black and white movie. (But still not as much as some Kurasawa films of the same period.)

I loved this movie. It was a lot of fun and totally worth checking out. Good luck, though, as it has yet to be released on DVD. A lot of Nikkatsu’s movies haven’t been released yet. The studio put out a lot of films, but no one seems to want to release any of them but Branded To Kill. Write your local Criterion agent! These films deserve a release!!

I liked this movie so much that I bought the book that inspired the Retrospective: No Borders, No Limits by Mark Schilling. Hopefully it opens up a whole new world of film to me.

After the movie, the organizers of the Festival decided to do Fantastic Feud, hosted by the lovely and talented Scott Weinberg from Cinematical, FEARnet.com and eFilmCritic, among other sites and projects. It consisted of two teams of “experts” answering questions about horror films.

Ok, it actually ended up being a drunken Q&A brawl that was more fun than about half of the films in the Festival. I had no idea that there was anyone who knew all of the directors of every Freddy, Jason and Michael Myers movie. Now THAT’S insane.

I had put my name on the list to join them…but I’m kind of glad that they threw the list away. There was no way that I could compete with those guys. I know that I wouldn’t be going against them, just joining a team…but still. It would have been a really daunting task to even join those guys onstage.

There was no organization, but I think that was part of the fun. Next year it will probably be more organized…and less fun. But I guess we’ll see…if they even do it again. Ya never know.