Hey folks, Harry here at Fantastic Fest in Theater 1 getting ready to watch the Chilean Superhero Martial Arts movie... MIRAGEMAN. Meanwhile, other Fantastic Fest fans are sending in their thoughts - like this from Augustus Gloop who is going at it hardcore at the fest! Though we seem to be seeing totally different films thus far. Here ya go...

Hi Everybody! Great to see all my wonderful geek brethren in the halls of Mecca on South Lamar for the Unholy Revival that is Fantastic Fest III. For those of you who could not make the pilgrimage, I am back with my complete coverage of the selections that I have been doomed to enjoy.

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Anesthesia (2 stars)
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As I arrived to worship at the base of Mount Cinema, my first feature was preceded by a mind-numbing little short called "Anesthesia". Normally, I might not spend much time on a short, but this particular piece hits close to home; Two weeks ago, my dad underwent coronary bypass surgery, so I have a unique frame of reference for a piece that takes us along with a girl through the very same procedure. We watch as she's wheeled into the operating room, injected with the drugs, prepped for surgery, and operated on. Throughout, we hear a running dialog in her head as she begins to realize that she's paralyzed by the drugs but has not been rendered unconscious. As the surgeons prepare to slice and saw, she's making a valiant effort just to move anything, even a pinky, to get their attention and let them know she's conscious, though she's unable even to blink. As they begin to cut, she manages to move just one pinky, and a nurse notices and alerts the surgeons who dismiss the movement as reflex. Finally, screaming inside as they separate her chest with the bonesaw and retract her ribs, she flatlines, and they are unable to revive her. Roll credits. I'm mixed on this one. Great way to start the festival with something so personal to me, but I felt it was lacking in realism, from the young healthy girl subject to the procedure
itself (my mother is also a surgical tech who has assisted with these procedures and loves to describe them in vivid detail). For a six minute film, there was little plot, though it was not lacking in style. The film noir look created an unsettling mood that combined with the victim's dialog along with the use of shots from her perspective to give a feeling of really
being in her head. I just felt this film was missing something, with a need for more viewer involvement, but nowhere to go after the doctors fail to revive her.

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Hell's Fever (2 stars)
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Anesthesia failed to put me to sleep, so I was ready for the heat of Hell's Fever. This 90 minute feature came with the warning that it was the only entry in the festival that was not pre-screened. The description we are given would lead you to think it's a monster movie: "Christmas time. A group of students steal a considerable amount of money from the local campus. They flee through the snowy woods, in what the locals refer to as the "heartland of the Beast". They seek shelter in an abandoned mine, and eventually end up feeding the Beast's gruesome needs." This one was a stinker, largely because of false advertising. There are too many different things going on at once. As Hell's Fever begins, we have a man with car trouble in the woods, being attacked by something in shots that make it look like the fir trees are trying to take him out. Then we have a little scene with the heroine of the story studying hard in the library at the very last minute before vacation. She
has a moment of dialog with the librarian, a dapper, latex glove-wearing older gentleman who is creepy, but who you won't see again until the end of the film. She returns to her dorm, and the rest of the characters are introduced, and then we see the man from the first scene, who's still alive and screaming for help in the woods. A large scary trapper with several German Shepherds (no, the other kind of German Sheperd) comes along and drags him away, never to be seen again (seriously, why?) Now we see the group of kids driving along together after having robbed the school or bank or whatever it was, who have arranged to meet the trapper at his cabin so he can repaint their getaway vehicle so they won't be recognized. They're going to go wait in an abandoned mine for a few days until the police action calms down. In the meantime, we have another scene with a maid in a hotel room getting snoopy with the occupant's drawings of bloody scenes. He interrupts her and looks real scary, but nothing comes of it. Back to the kids who are in the mine, where a small lift bucket can take only a single person to the hideout below. After some bickering about the money and who's going to go first, one makes the trip, and the bucket returns containing the suitcase that had the money along with the hand that was cuffed to it. One by one, they go
down to confront whatever is below, each meeting a different grisly fate. When only the two girls are left (and one is dying of hypoglycemic shock) the first 'victim' returns with a tale of betrayal and murder. The heroine goes below to recover medicine for her friend, and everything is as described. She returns to find her friend has just died, so she and her ex-
boyfriend leave, the only survivors of the mine. As they return to the trapper's cabin, they see the police have arrived, and the man steps in a bear trap, which leads to the heroine's discovery that he is the true murderer. He describes in detail how he tricked and murdered each of the others, and the film wouldn't have been a very bad sort of murder-mystery if it had stopped at this point. The mine sequence and the retread of the murders was original and interesting. Unfortunately, there were still the other storylines to wrap up, about the monster and the creepy librarian and the hotel guy with the bloody drawings. So, the heroine escapes and returns to campus, where she is attacked by the librarian who is in
reality the infamous killer known as 'The Barber' who likes to lick the fresh blood from his victims. The creep from the hotel is actually the barber's son, and has been hunting him to try to stop his killing spree. He arrives moments too late to find the corpse of our heroine. The End. Oh, and the 'monster' was just a rabid dog.

I hate spoilers, really, but the only way I could find to describe this horror is to recite the film. It's just really really really bad, MST3K bad. People walked out of the theater saying they never wanted to see another movie, because it was so bad. But I will give it credit
for having the potential to be good if they dropped the whole bit with the barber and his son as well as the 'monster' premise. The dialogue was dubbed, and in places very convincingly, but out-of-place scenes with the police made the audience laugh at the strange dialogue that attempted and failed to hide the dubbing. The cast was attractive, though they looked 5 to 10 years older than the average college students, and the sound did a lot to help the parts of this that didn't suck.

Hey Tim, how about you guys replace the second screening of this with Wolfhound, so those who are attending the secret screenings will get a chance to see it?

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The Run (3 stars)
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This 2 minute short is a chase movie with a surprise ending. Very enjoyable, nice camera work, and funny.

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Finishing the Game (5 stars)
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What if they made Waiting for Guffman with an Asian cast? Finishing the Game joins the ranks of mocumentary greatness as it spoofs the casting call for Bruce Lee lookalikes to finish 'The Game of Death'. We meet several of the candidates and follow them through three rounds of auditions. Each has experienced a different facet of racism against Asians in Hollywood, and the film slyly addresses each, from Breeze Loo, the front-runner who has filmed 14 low-budget Kung Fu films in the last 2 years, to Troy Poon, the star of a short-lived tv cop show along the lines of 'Chico and the Man' who has only been able to find dozens of roles as a delivery boy, to Tarrick Tyler, a half-chinese white guy who has to deal with reverse descrimination. Each character is fun and unique, but Meredith Scott Lynn really shines as casting director Eloise Gazdag. She steals the show with her method for choosing the one who's right for the part. Finishing the Game was funny from
beginning to end, and I think everyone will enjoy it.

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Les Petits Hommes Vieux (3 stars)
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This 13 minute short is something of a zombie film where the zombies have been replaced by old people. It was charming and clever, with a decidedly French feel. The actors made an impact without ever saying a word.

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End of the Line (3 stars)
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Already the recipient of an Audience Award at the Dead by Dawn Film Festival in Edinburgh, I expect this one will continue to take home awards. Extremely controversial subject matter, extremely violent, but also an extremely fresh take on horror and zombies in particular. I would have given this one 4 stars, but I felt director Maurice Deveraux missed one opportunity for a nice payoff on an earlier scene. The Q&A after the show brought out some things I hadn't noticed, because frankly, the hour was much too late for me to concentrate on details and try to think about symbolism to decide whether it was supposed to 'really' be happening or just a drug-induced hallucination. That said, it was a very good show that managed to make me jump a few times and squirm in my seat a few times, and most movies can't say that. I plan to see this one again to appreciate the things I missed. I think for anyone with a Catholic upbringing the imagery in here would be incredibly disturbing. Not recommended for the squeamish, unless you really want to squirm.

See you tomorrow!
Augustus Gloop