Oct. 22, 2008 - Issue #679: Good Enough After All
Deadmonton Horror Film Festival
Horror fest reclaims the name for its own nefarious purposes
“It all came about because his e-mail account changed, and we couldn’t get ahold of him,” says Clayton casually. “At that point, we decided we were going to have to rename it. So we decided to go with Deadmonton because we thought it might be nice to take the name back from the naysayers, and what better way to do that than with a horror festival? Shortly after that, Chris [the former owner] actually did finally get ahold of us, and he said, ‘You know, you could have used the name,’ but we figured it was a good time to rebrand it anyway.”
And a fairly good rebrand, to boot. Clayton and fellow curator/organizer Matt Acosta managed to be at the forefront of a wave of Edmontonians who were looking to turn the city’s most notorious nickname into a mark of pride. Though it normally alludes to city streets so sparse that a zombie infestation would count as a major improvement in terms of foot traffic, it just happens to be an ideal moniker for a festival that leans towards the scary, gory and macabre.
“It’s a slur against the city, but when you’re doing a horror film festival, it’s really the perfect name,” points out Clayton, who adds that he’s got the international consensus to back him up on that fact. “It’s actually garnered us international attention: I’ve seen postings on websites all over the world about the movies and the name of the festival.
“And that’s the best way to turn the insult around, to take it back: we’re garnering international attention for being a centre of something,” he continues. “We’ve had a lot of people saying things like, ‘Wow, look at the lineup those Deadmonton guys have got.’ We’d really like it if we could put Edmonton on the map for the genre, and for horror culture in general.”
If that is indeed their goal, they’ve gotten off to a fabulous start: the festival itself, which runs over the weekend, has pulled in a number of prestiguous premieres and revivals that are well worth buzzing about. The biggest is certainly My Name is Bruce, a film written by and starring the Evil Dead legend as a washed-up version of himself who gets called on to fight a real life monster in Oregon, and which Deadmonton will be showing in its Canadian premiere (and there’s obviously a market: Saturday night’s showings are already sold out on the strength of its anchor slot). They scored another big Canadian premiere with Midnight Movie, a slasher-flick-come-to-life film that has been garnering rave reviews wherever its shown.
On the revival side of things, they’ve managed to track down a 35 mm print of Phantasm, which will show on the big screen in Edmonton for the first time since its release in 1979, and Night of the Creeps, a film Clayton is particularly excited about, as it doesn’t even yet have a DVD release, making its Friday screening one of the few ways horror fans can see it.
Of course, the quality of films means nothing without an audience, but Clayton feels confident that Edmonton is ripe for horror, from our burgeoning metal and psychobilly scenes to our weel-established character.
“It’s not a pretentious city, and a lot of the more pretentious elements tend to eschew the horror film,” Clayton says. “We were at another screening—I won’t say what festival it was—but every horror film, they called a ‘psychological thriller.’ And we called that they were going to do that, because ‘horror’ is almost a dirty word. But we’re not a pretentious city: we know what horror is and we like horror movies.” V
Fri, Oct 24 - Sun, Oct 26
Deadmonton
Horror Film Festival
Featuring My Name is Bruce, Midnight Movie, Tokyo Gore Police, Night of the Creeps, Phantasm, and more
Metro Cinema
for more details visit metrocinema.org or deadmonton.net
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