DIRECTED BY: Christopher Speeth
FEATURING: Janine Carazo, Jerome Dempsey, Daniel Dietrich, Lenny Baker, Hervé Villechaize
PLOT: Vena and her family come to work at a strange amusement park marked by an ever-growing number of disappearances, deaths, and unusual goings-on.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: A collection of unsettling scenarios that make their low-budget DIY components into advantages, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood cares not for your fancy storytelling and logical progression of events. A consistent mood of unease and an off-kilter sensibility make this an underappreciated companion to other amateur horrors, both good and bad.
COMMENTS: Biz Markie’s ode to loss and frustration, “Just a Friend,” was one of the biggest hits of 1989. Seemingly recorded with a mic and a Casio preset, Biz howled out his pain over the cheapest, tinniest piano loop. It was awful, but by gum everybody knew the damn song, and you couldn’t help but laugh and join in with the crowds screaming out “OH BABY YOU!!!” mid-chorus as Biz shredded his vocal cords in existential pain. It’s a legendary song despite its amateurishness, and possibly because of it.
Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. We have spoken before about the glories of the 1970s indie horror scene, a genre unto itself populated by low budgets, first-time directors and screenwriters who tend to become only-time directors and screenwriters, and a fervent hope that blood and bodies will do all the work. Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood is a masterful example of the form, with major shortcomings in storytelling that perversely enhance the atmosphere of discomfort and dread, homemade effects that betray their homemade origins yet occasionally become transcendently original, and an incompetence that’s downright charming.
Speeth and screenwriter Werner Liepolt have a couple things working for them that lift Malatesta above the other amateur one-offs. One is its location, a working amusement park, which grounds the action in a tangible, believable milieu. The filmmakers had access to Philadelphia’s beloved old Willow Grove Park, at the time d/b/a “Six Gun Territory” and only a couple years away from being leveled and replaced with a mall. The picture also benefits from some unexpectedly decent acting. The performers are by no means brilliant, but they display a professionalism that is rare in this sort of film, managing to sell scenes that would otherwise be laughable. We only have the vaguest idea why the Norris family joins up with these carnies (revenge seems to be the primary goal), but Betsy Henn and Paul Hostetler are quite charming as the nervous Nellie and her heat-packin’ husband. Villechaize brings his particular brand of oddness, only a year before The Man With the Golden Gun. My favorite of these is Dempsey as the amoral impresario Mr. Blood, who is tasked with most of the exposition and delivers his lines with the sinister gentility of Vincent Price playing a maître d’. He remains confident even as he demonstrates a complete inability to operate a fire extinguisher. In his most delightful scene, he interrupts our heroine and the ratty tunnel-of-love operator by sliding up in a bumper car. Where did he come from? When he departs, where’s he gonna go in a bumper car? No matter how ridiculous things get, this kind of commitment helps sell it.
Sometimes the film hardly bothers with basics of storytelling, dispensing with voice or foley during tense scenes in favor of dramatically mismatched music. It’s actually an effective method; applying an eerie synthesized sting to a chase scene is as unsettling as any number of screams and crashes. Speeth has great confidence in his ability to let the images do the heavy lifting, and every now and then, he’s absolutely right. He attaches his camera to the walls of a rotating tunnel, adding a level of disorientation to an already head-scratching attraction. He places his heroine in the center of a giant tarp that actually takes on a sinister quality as she tries to escape. Perhaps his most effective visual is the room full of ghouls who have assembled to watch Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera, equally as delighted to be at the movies as they are hungry for blood. Speeth must have recognized a good thing when he saw it, because he replicates the shot with an unconscious Vena in the foreground and the leering Mr. Blood sneaking up on her like Chaney on the projection screen. The director is unquestionably an amateur, but every now and then, a unique vision comes through.
I feel like the film’s ending speaks for the filmmakers, as the evil mastermind Malatesta celebrates another successful night of carnage by taking a spin on the park’s chair swing. As he blissfully takes in the ramshackle setting, cavalierly disregarding the likelihood that a haunted amusement park that kills its guests, employees, and investors is a park that’s going to have a hard time luring in more of them, he leans his head back in gentle bliss. A job well done, Malatesta. A job well done, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood. You’ve got what we need.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Parker. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
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DIRECTED BY: Pere Portabella
FEATURING: Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Soledad Miranda
PLOT: B-roll footage from Jesus Franco’s Count Dracula (1970) repurposed into an avant-garde presentation of the story.
COMMENTS: Pere Portabella’s oeuvre refuses to be easily intelligible. It embraces the fragmentary nature of surrealism, suggesting the idea of a narrative without delivering a cohesive story. Portabella is especially known for his clandestine period: a series of films made illegally during the Franco regime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, employing guerrilla tactics in the vein of the Third Cinema.
Cuadecuc Vampir is perhaps his most famous work from that period, an abstracted take on the vampiric myth camouflaged as a making-of documentary for the European co-production Count Dracula by Jesús Franco, directed a year before. Franco’s movie was a typically mediocre B-movie affair following the tradition of Hammer Films, even using Christopher Lee as Dracula.
Portabella worked like a documentary filmmaker for this project. During Franco’s movie, his own crew filmed the improvisations and behind-the-scenes footage without directing anything himself. Due to purposeful continuity errors and grainy black-and-white high-contrast photography, he made something whose effect closely resembles the unearthing and manipulation of long-lost media: that is, a found-footage movie.
As in a found-footage movie, Portabella uses editing to set the mood he has in mind. An oppressive and claustrophobic atmosphere emerges through segments depicting the spread of vampirism from an old patriarch. The results hints at possible political undertones, but those are not always clear.
What remains undeniable, though, is the anachronistic aesthetic—a result of the stylistic choices mentioned above—that engages in a dialogue with the cinematic tradition of gothic horror and the vampire myth, and explicitly refers to productions the silent era. Nearly all diegetic sounds are muted, replaced by an experimental soundscape composed by concert pianist Carles Santos, including thunderstorms, tapping sounds, and glitchy effects alongside the melodies, deconstructing any sense of cinematic illusion. From the beginning, the creative process unmasks itself: practical effects are shown during their construction, actors take off their makeup, cinematic crews appear onscreen or in mirrors.
Cuadecuc could be interesting as a glimpse into the backstage production for fans of Franco’s original movie, but only if they are open to an experimental format without voiceover and with no informative intent. But the film stands alone as a puzzling and challenging cinematic experience.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
Discussed in this episode:
The Vampires of New Orleans: Atun-Shei Films’ documentary/narrative hybrid delivers a story of vampires in modern New Orleans wrapped around interviews exploring the city’s horrific folklore.
- El Rob Hubbard’s review.
- Atun-Shei Films Website.
- Atun-Shei YouTube page.
- Atun-Shei Instagram page.
- The Vampires of New Orleans score on YouTube.
A Chinese Ghost Story (1987): Read Giles Edwards’ festival capsule. A tax collector encounters ghosts (and a rapping swordsman) in ancient China in this wild Hong Kong New Wave classic. Buy A Chinese Ghost Story.
“The Complete Kubrick”: Everything Stanley Kubrick directed—including Canonically Weird entries 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange—in one glorious 4K UHD/Blu-ray box set from the Criterion collection. It goes without saying this ain’t cheap, but well worth it if you can swing it. Buy “The Complete Kubrick.”
“Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema”: A box set of obscure fantastique French films spanning the 1930s to the 90s: Dans la nuit, La nuit fantastique, Le Diable souffle, The Golem, The Woman with Red Boots, and Three Lives and Only One Death. While the movies themselves may be unknown, familiar names like Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastroianni, Marcel L’Herbier, Raoul Ruiz, and Luis Buñuel‘s son Jean Luis pop up throughout. (This is a pre-order for a November 10 release). Buy “Fantastique: The Dreams and Nightmares of French Cinema.”
I Want Your Sex (2026): A sociopathic artist seduces her naive young assistant into an dangerously inappropriate sexual relationship. This unconventional (but not quite weird) B&D rom-com from Gregg Araki appears on 4K UHD + Blu-ray with no extras. Buy I Want Your Sex.
Visitor Q (2001): Read the Canonically Weird review! Surprisingly (or maybe not, considering its straight-to-DVD origins) Takashi Miike‘s transgressive assault on the traditional family has never appeared on Blu-ray until now; Radiance to the rescue! Buy Visitor Q.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
No guest is scheduled on next week’s Halloween edition of Pod 366, but Greg, Giles and Pete will be there to discuss the week’s weird news and new releases. In written content, Michael Diamades gets weird for Halloween with the tale of Pere Portabella’s alternate cut of Jess Franco‘s Count Dracula, Cuadecuc Vampire (1971); Enar Clarke investigates the new documentary John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office; Shane Wilson finishes up his Halloween-themed reader-suggestion‘s by attending Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood (1973), and Gregory J. Smalley looks at Ben Rivers’ experimental all-kid art film Mare’s Nest. Onward and weirdward!
]]>DIRECTED BY: Chiu Lee
FEATURING: Billy Chong, Lo Lieh, Chin-Lai Sung
PLOT: When martial artist Chung Sing learns that his father was murdered by the sinister Kam Tai Fu, the young man seeks revenge, but he’ll need a book of magic and the help of ghost warriors to defeat his enemy.
COMMENTS: Part of the glory of late 70s/early 80s low-budget martial arts cinema is its joyful lack of seriousness. Sure, there may be people fighting each other in a brutal death match, but the whole thing just feels so darn lighthearted. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, not to worry about life and death. So why should we expect anything less when the subject turns to horror? The narrator of Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave informs us that, once a year, the dead return to roam the Earth. And how does this manifest itself? A bunch of silly whooping and fruit invisibly pilfered from dinner tables. Put away your heart pills; this is not serious stuff.
The absence of gravity is mostly an advantage for a film like Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave, which only wants to have some fun, like a haunted house that also has a judo match set up on the front lawn. When Chung’s father’s ghost (who sounds in the English dub almost exactly like Krusty the Clown) shows up to demand that his son avenge him, you might pick up some Hamlet vibes, but the allusion is undercut slightly when Chung is so surprised that he kicks his ghostly father’s apparition in the face. Screenwriter Fung Lu seems allergic to anything that would approach genuine horror. Warriors returning from the dead bicker about whether to accept their summons, and then float through fight scenes like shirts on the carousel at a dry cleaner. Bodies that rise from their graves and are more annoyed than vengeful. If it weren’t for Lo’s resourceful evil sorcerer, you might start to wonder if anyone in this film knew they were in a movie about the supernatural.
This unsteady mix of martial arts tropes and disdain for scares leads to some of director Lee’s most off-balance impulses. The evil Kam Tai Fu is desperate to achieve invincibility, but his Achilles heel turns out to be his breasts, which resist the shield treatment. The formula for said impenetrability is some obscure dark magic, specifically requiring a pair of hearts stolen from victims at the moment of orgasm, a requirement of such specificity that it feels reverse-engineered to justify the associated sex scene. In the most 
unexpected and delightfully strange moment, the beleaguered sorcerer escapes Chung and his battalion of ghosts by throwing a wad of cash into their air and yelling, “Count Dracula! Come to my aid!” Sure enough, a pasty European with fangs suddenly appears and flits about, flummoxing his opponents but also not really coming to anyone’s aid. It’s a genuinely bonkers moment, and knowing they had this one up their sleeve, the filmmakers could have used more of them.
Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave is serviceable martial arts action, slightly ridiculous horror, and surface-level weirdness. It lacks the will to be no-holds-barred nutty, but it does make for a nice twist on familiar genre fare. If nothing else, this will always be remembered as the film that taught us how to summon Dracula to our aid. Use that knowledge wisely.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by daustin. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
DIRECTED BY: Steve Oram
FEATURING: Steve Oram, Tom Meeten, Julian Rhind-Tutt
PLOT: In an alternative society where people behave like primates, an exiled alpha male, along with his beta companion, attempts to return home and reestablish his dominance.
COMMENTS: Is the entirety of human civilization nothing but a facade, camouflage for our authentically animalistic behavior? That’s what Steve Oram’s low-budget DIY feature debut seems to suggest. Aaaaaaah strips humans of their cultural wrappings.
Our story starts in an archaic and archetypal manner, recalling Odysseus ‘s return to Ithaca. An alpha male, exiled in a forest along with his companion/follower, attempts to find his way back home and regain his former position as the dominant male of the pack. This is a narrative of power plays in their most basic and primal form. Dialogue is absent and behavior is totally unfiltered. Wild instincts govern everyone’s actions. You can expect crude violence, with B-movie special effects, and a few disgusting segments immersed in bodily fluids and secretions. It stays focused on the main plot, for the most part, though introducing some twists later on and employing a few flashbacks in the process. Once it strays from our protagonists, following the younger of the pack’s females in a short escapade to showcase similarly barbaric social dynamics in other aspects of this society.
Oram gives special emphasis to the types of media these monkey-people consume. The media landscape portrayed in Idiocracy is sophisticated in comparison. The film mirrors our own world in a distorted way, revealing how entertainment services our lizard brains: in other words, the animals within us.
The soundtrack is comprised of accordingly simple melodic tunes, and a few more nostalgic, sensual or playful ones, creating a dissonance with the depraved segments usually accompanying them.
All in all, despite its extravagance and over-the-top moments, this movie doesn’t revel in shock value, but honestly strives to underline the way archaic instincts hide behind even the most civilized social dynamics.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
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FEATURING: Courtnee Carter, Linnea Gregg, Andrew Rakich, Benton Guinness, Monica R. Harris, Mekhai Lee, Josh Popa, Carl Sailor, Matthew Van Gessell, Kendra Unique
PLOT: When Brigitte Jackson’s sister is found dead under mysterious circumstances on the streets of New Orleans, she begins an investigation which leads her to a trinity of vampires; interspersed with this story is documentary footage exploring the city’s vampire heritage.
COMMENTS: “Y’all believe in vampires?”
It begins with the clap of a slate and an interview with “Sanguinarian Vampire” couple “Louis De Pointe Du Lac” and “Lestat De Lioncourt,” who found each other and moved to New Orleans’ French Quarter, in their words, “to live authentically regardless of society.” Then comes a series of interviews with various experts on “lifestyle vampires,” people self-identifying as vampires. This phenomenon appears to have started in the 1970s –80s in the NYC occult scene and grown in the1990s, with the Internet allowing more people to connect and converge on New Orleans to “live the Life.”
America has a love affair with vampires. They’re almost inescapable, everywhere you look.
Atun-Shei Film’s The Vampires Of New Orleans, a follow-up to their independent debut feature The Sudbury Devil, brings that same energy and cheek to a survey of tortured Americana that promises to be “the final word on the New Orleans Vampire as a pop culture figure.” It’s a big swing for an experimental docudrama. An epic one, in fact, clocking in at 159 minutes (including an Overture and Entr’acte, like a Hollywood roadshow picture). It will be interesting to see how audiences receive it.
The main narrative which hits the expected tropes of a vampire tale. Shania Jackson (Unique) is abducted by Nate Debney (Guiness), the human familiar for Jean-Louis D’Hemecourt (Rakich). D’Hemecourt has two sires: Josephine Macarti (Gregg) a Southern Belle turned vampire after her husband’s death in the Civil War, and the Axeman of New Orleans (Sailor), a (real) serial killer who preyed on Italian immigrants in 1918–19. This trio has been hunting and feeding in New Orleans for some time, with D’Hemecourt stressing that he “does not kill humans”—“humans” defined as “Whites.” Shania’s sister, Brigitte (Carter) crosses the path of the vamps while looking into the death, and with the assistance of her aunt Saffron (Harris) and street hustler/Voudon priest Dr. Tom (Lee) attempts to avenge her sister. It doesn’t play out as easily as they may hope.
It’s a straightforward narrative, but it’s all interspersed with those “expert” interviews—historians, tour guides, vampires (Sanguinarian and psychic)—who provide context and commentary on vampire folklore, specifically that which involves New Orleans: the LaLaurie Mansion, the Casquette (casket) Girls, Jacques St. Germain, and the Axeman. They also provide a critique. While there proves to be rich and horrific historical lore in New Orleans, most, if not all, pertaining to vampires stems from a single source: Anne Rice’s “Interview With The Vampire,” published in the early to mid 70s, which fed the fantasies of self-identifying vamps and their acolytes and created a cottage industry of ghost tourism goosing up dry historical facts with the hook of the lurid supernatural. As one interviewee states, they’re “very grateful to Anne Rice for the tourism she brought.” “Interview” also helped sanitize the image of the vampire from the bloated, pestilent corpse depicted in European lore into a dark romantic figure, the aristocrat of Southern Gothic tales.
The real history became superseded by fictional legend: “a form of cultural amnesia, because Americans don’t like to face their real history; fictional stories drag us away from facing reality,” as one interviewee states. Vampires uses the fiction of D’Hemecourt to tell the actual stories it wants to impart about the metaphorical vampires of New Orleans: corporate tourism replacing the soul of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; incarcerated labor as modern slavery, multi-generational poor communities turned into modern plantations. It may throw audiences expecting a more conventional vampire tale, but it’s rewarding for those willing to set expectations aside and go with the flow. The performances are good (most of the cast are veterans of Sudbury Devil). The length might be an issue for some, but the film doesn’t drag, helped immensely by Dillon Derosa’s score, which is as epic as the scope of the film.
The Vampires Of New Orleans is available to rent or buy via Atun-Shei Films’ website, and will drop on YouTube on 10/31: Halloween.
Sitges itself is a quaint coastal town with peaceful white streets that, in line with the film festival, were decorated with skeletons or monsters. Main streets were crowded with both locals and foreigners, and posters along the street announced the festival. This year, the main focus was the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Carrie, alongside the recent rise of religious horror. A festive atmosphere hung over these streets, and T-shirts reflected a love of horror and fantasy cinema.
My friend and I stayed in a hotel close to the three main venues premiering movies: Auditori Melià, Casino Prado Suburense, and L’Escorxador. Melià is the largest venue, L’Escorxador the smallest—it’s a former slaughterhouse, which feels appropriate for the festival. These venues are only a 10-minute walk away from each other, and you can enjoy nice views of the beach and sea on your way to Auditori Melià, and stop at stands selling merchandise, meeting points for fans, or just have a drink. There’s a street food area on a hill where food trucks sell expensive—albeit somewhat healthy—fast food, both salty and sweet.
Having familiarized ourselves with the area, we went to our first movie at Auditori Melià at 11pm: Joshua Giuliano’s River, starring Jany Levy and Jessica Rothe. Naturally, such iconic names and an intriguing premise—three siblings grieving over their dad’s death are stalked by a faceless killer on a river—had us hyped up in advance. Unfortunately, this first film was the greatest disappointment of our festival experience, but at least it made us hopeful that the next four movies would be an improvement! The problem lies not in the acting, which is great, as one would expect from the cast, but in the many plot holes and unexplored links. Scenes honoring previous classics can be easily detected, but River struggles to get its own story right in this mix of references, leaving viewers with many questions as to what the movie was about. It felt like it was trying to communicate something about trauma and the passing down of harmful ideas in families, but it was all diluted with predictable twists and illogical decisions. Its opening scene, however, is suggestively creepy and, for a slasher movie, innovative in its use of sound and voice. Sadly, the movie falls apart as it develops, leaving that excellent initial scene as an unconnected anecdotal moment.
After such an utter disappointment, we had our hopes up for our next movie: the Finnish horror comedy Punaista Lunta (translated as Red Snow), written and directed by Ilja Rautsi (who also has a writing credit in Hanna Bergholm’s latest, Nightborn). We believed a vampiric Santa Claus would cheer us up after the River letdown, and we were right: Red Snow was a romp. An teenage emo girl fantasizes about meeting Twilight heartthrob Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and being turned into a vampire to gain a sense of freedom—including freedom from her family’s boring annual Christmas Eve dinner. This year, however, dinner turns out to be more exciting, thanks to the intrusion of a middle-aged vampire-Santa and an armed man looking for revenge. All the funny, gory craziness one would expect from such scenario ensues, but the movie goes beyond that by playing with viewers’ cultural expectations and questioning patriarchal structures through witty dialogue, without losing any of its power. As the director himself said before the movie—and I’m paraphrasing here— if you like Christmas, you will love this movie. But if you hate Christmas, you will really love this movie.
We had a lot of free time until our next movie at 9pm, so we decided to go to the “zombie walk.” We had seen many people on impressive zombie makeup and costumes down the streets all day long, but time to parade around the town came at 7:30pm. Sir Peter Jackson himself inaugurated the event, although we never saw him because the streets were too narrow and crowded. The parade was a bit of a mess, with zombies mixing with ordinary people who were trying to move around the streets, so that you never knew where the parade started and who was part of it. Give how disorganized it all felt—and some attendees audibly complained—we decided to leave for dinner.
Then came our next film, Gregg Bishop’s The Heretiks. The venue was Casino Prado Suburense this time, which was nice; we had center seats for a change, at last. Bishop himself talked a bit about the movie and introduced some of its participants, including actress Kimberly Epstein—“not related,” joked Bishop. The movie itself was fun and straightforward, dealing with two adolescent sisters, Mabel (Ava Mae Seidensticker) and Ada (Josie Juliette Wert) and their inevitable disagreements on a Halloween night, paralleled with a quarrel between the “sisters” of a coven. One of them (Neve, palyed by Tess Williams) worships the goddess Null and wants to speed up her prophesied apocalypse, while the other one (Cai, interpreted by the abovementioned Kimberly Epstein) refuses to fulfill the prophecy and longs to embrace life. Cool magical fights follow, since the coven needs to sacrifice the young Mabel as an offering to Null in order to begin apocalypse, and Ada and Cai oppose this plan. Fantastic special effects, a fast-paced plot, and some bold narrative choices—which I will omit so viewers may be surprised themselves—made this film quite enjoyable, if maybe a bit conventional and predictable in general (you know, the old good vs. evil trope).
After dinner, our next film, practically the only one on October 11 at the ungodly hour of 12:45am, was the surreal Taiwanese animation Huanyíng lái dào duo lì zhi jia (translated as Welcome to Dolly’s House), directed by Rady Fu, Tree Muta, and Seven Ych. One of the first animated features from Taiwan, the movie deals with a YouTuber named Maria struggling to regain fame after a failed stunt, whose boyfriend is secretly cheating on her. To get public attention, she starts looking into a girl’s disappearance, and approaches famed dollmaker Dolly in search for clues. Maria and her boyfriend end up working for Dolly, and exploring her psychedelic mansion leads to surprising discoveries. Combining 2D animation with rotoscoping, the movie was visually rich, although the character’s movements may feel clunky for viewers unused to the technique. The first hour felt somewhat slow—it may have been exacerbated by the film premiering so late at night—building up tension while revealing the characters’ mental states. The preoccupation with the psychological effects of fame is reminiscent of Satoshi Kon’s classic Perfect Blue; this movie, however, is also concerned with the ideas of companionship and loneliness, and its third act clarifies everything about the characters and their relationships to one another, accelerating the pace significantly thanks to the inclusion of some surprising action scenes. Overall, Welcome to Dolly’s House was a beautifully strange movie that has hopefully paved the way for new ways of animation in Taiwan. Some of the team behind the movie was there, genuinely happy to present their work and handing out promotional lenticular cards at the end.
The rest of that Sunday was relaxed. In the afternoon, I visited the Miramar Building, which hosted interesting exhibition on the figure of the evil child throughout the history of horror film. This theme was chosen because 2026 also marks the 50th anniversary of the Spanish film ¿Quién Puede Matar a Un Niño? (Who Can Kill a Child?), directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, whose work has always intrigued me but I have yet to explore. ¿Quién Puede Matar a Un Niño? predates the publication of Stephen King’s classic story “Children of the Corn” (1977) and has a strikingly similar plot: a couple of English tourists on their postponed honeymoon travel to a coastal Spanish town only to find that its only inhabitants are children, who follow a dark, mysterious force and rebel against adults. I can’t say how similar exactly this story is to King’s work, but the parallels are compelling.
Having reviewed the history of evil infants in film and had lunch, my friend and I decided to give the Brigadoon section of the festival—a free selection of documentaries, movies, and shorts— a shot. With a capacity of 80 viewers (10 of the seats were reserved for accredited viewers, however), this section usually takes place in Sala Llevant, a conference room inside the Melià Hotel. My friend and I caught the second screening of a series of independent shorts running for a Paul Naschy award: The Orange Circle by Mike Robinson, Feed the Dar by Rob Himebaugh, The Last Snow by Rodolphe Bouquet-Populus, and Breathwork by Erik Westerström. They were enjoyable, although The Orange Circle felt a bit repetitive. As a yoga practitioner, I was partial to Breathwork, which shows a yoga class gone wrong due to dark energies flowing in the air. The remaining two stories were set in snowy mountains: Feed the Dark deals with dangerous zombie transformations on a snow shelter and The Last Snow, the longest of the lot, had a plot that initially reminded me of Adam Green’s 2010 horror film Frozen, since it involved two skiers stranded on a chairlift. Thankfully it took a different, more supernatural direction.
Last but not least: on October 12, my friend and I went to the Spanish premiere of Anna Biller’s The Face of Horror. Having thoroughly enjoyed the director’s The Love Witch (2016), I was particularly stoked about this one. Biller herself went on stage and briefly explained some aspects of her new movie: it is a tribute to the Technicolor movies of the 1950s; it is based on a famous kabuki play called Yotsuya Kaidan (1825), but set in medieval England instead of Japan; it shows that misogyny and patriarchy have been around for ages (and, I would add, class and religion also play a big part in the film). The two hours that followed were possibly the most fun I had at Sitges.
The story concerns two beautiful peasant sisters (Eleanor and Beatrice, interpreted by Kristine Froseth and Ellie Bamber) and their fateful marriage to two handsome yet roguish knights (Edward and Richard, portrayed by Jonah Hauer-King and Leo Suter), who killed their father and who regard women as little more than objects. Greed, betrayal, and secrets eventually result in ghostly revenge. In line with Biller’s previous work, the movie is visually luscious and colorful, performances are theatrical and often over-the-top (triggering laughter among viewers), and the narrative incorporates intelligent dialogue and songs that engage in referential humor. While the movie is indeed set in medieval England, Biller uniquely treats current themes and concerns that resonate with modern audiences (perhaps most notably the power of beauty) without feeling unnatural given the historical setting. She adds another vibrant hit to her filmography.
Thus concluded my Sitges adventure, although at the time of writing the festival is ongoing. It was a fun jaunt and I look forward to experiencing more of it in the future, hopefully participating in other events. Likewise, I look forward to watching the movies that I missed and that were on my must-watch list, many of which looked incredibly bizarre. Hopefully they’ll soon be available on streaming services or cinemas. The festival program can be found here.
]]>Discussed in this episode:
Buddy (2026): Read Giles Edwards’ Apocrypha Candidate review. Casper Kelly‘s feature debut about an orange unicorn who traps children in a 90’s kiddie-show nightmare comes to VOD (but beware of the price!) Buy or rent Buddy on-demand (premium pricing).
The Devils (1971): Read the Canonically Weird entry! The long wait for Ken Russell‘s uncut version of his religious hysteria fever dream is finally over. One week only, so book soon! The Devils official site for participating theaters.
Frankenhooker (1990): Read Shane Wilson’s Apocrypha Candidate review. If you want an outrageous 4K horror-comedy for Halloween, this upgraded 4K UHD (no Blu-ray included) is a great pick. Buy Frankenhooker.
Marquis (1989): Read the Canonically Weird entry! Speaking of long waits, this puppet show fantasy biopic of the Marquis de Sade and his talking penis finally debuts on Blu-ray, thanks to the fine but probably very sick folks at Mondo Macabro. Buy Marquis.
Morbo (1972): Atmospheric Eurohorror about honeymooners in the woods. In the reader-suggestion queue, with a review expected soon. Buy Morbo.
The Shout (1978): Read Pete Trbovich’s review. A Criterion Collection edition of the strange art-horror about a killer shout from the Australian outback. Buy The Shout.
Spirited Away (2001) re-release: Read the Canonically Weird entry! Oct. 17-21 in your choice of dubbed or subbed versions. With The Devils also being re-released, intrepid viewers could actually see two Canonically Weird movies in theaters this week. Spirited Away at Fathom for showtimes.
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
Next week’s guests on Pod 366 will be director Andrew Rakich and producer Veronika Payton, whose new historical horror Vampires of New Orleans is out on-demand right now (but—beware!—will be released for free on YouTube on Halloween Day). In written content, El Rob Hubbard previews the aforementioned Vampires of New Orleans to prep you for that conversation, Germán Biener gives a partial report on the 2026 slate from Sitges film festival (including a surreal Taiwanese animation and a preview of Anna Biller‘s The Face of Horror), Michael Diamades puts the animalistic, non-verbal Aaaaaaaah (2015) into words, and Shane Wilson enjoys Kung Fu from Beyond the Grave (1982). Onward and weirdward!
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