An Austin film festival rises on tides of blood, mists of magic and gusts of fanboy passion

Fantastic Fest marks three exploding years with 60 genre films, 50 celebrity guests and gobs of gore

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 20, 2007

Austin's eight-day forecast: gloomy skies, apocalyptic winds, blood, guts, maniacs, aliens and a gang of blue meanies wearing diapers.

It's going to be a killer week.

In its third year, Fantastic Fest erupts at the Alamo South today through Sept. 27. The biggest genre-film festival in the United States offers some 60 movies, 50 filmmaker guests and enough googly-eyed fanboy (and fangirl) enthusiasm to light up drive-in and grindhouse screens the world over.

Right, the world. The little festival that would, could and did has earned world renown in certain film circles and festivals, and even snatched air time on Al-Jazeera in Qatar, "because Mel Gibson said some slightly anti-war comments," Fantastic Fest co-founder Harry Knowles recalls with relish.

That was during last year's festival, when Gibson stunned fans with a surprise appearance and a sneak screening of "Apocalypto." (Expect four surprise films and three surprise guest appearances at this year's edition. For now, they're a classified secret. Word is they are "big.")

What's a genre festival? Think a celebration of horror, crime, animé, gangster, fantasy, supernatural and science fiction movies. It's a festival forged by diehard fans catering to diehard fans. You won't see a family drama here, unless it contains vicious, almost unbearable physical and sexual abuse. You won't see a comedy, unless it's dunked in blood and wears a wicked grin. You won't see an airplane thriller, unless that airplane is infested with passengers who eat other passengers, alive.

It's the stuff of our collective id, our most transgressive dreams and kookiest nightmares.

These are the movies our parents wouldn't let us see, the movies we sneaked into at the cineplex after buying a ticket for "Pretty in Pink." Most adults and many critics sneer at these movies, dismissing them as degenerate exploitation, pulp, grindhouse trash.

But fans of genre flicks — guys like Knowles, Quentin Tarantino and old-time "Creature Features" host Bob Wilkins — really, really love this stuff. Adore it. Live for it. They'd probably die for it.

Genre films, from "Night of the Living Dead" to "The Lord of the Rings," tend to be profoundly transporting experiences, flinging viewers into spectacularly heightened alternate universes, be it a land of ambulatory rotting corpses or a mythical realm of elves and dragons.

"If you talk to most filmmakers and hardcore film geeks, the movies that made them love movies were the genre films they saw as a kid," Knowles says. "So this is an opportunity to see what a freaky, weird ghost story from Thailand looks like. We have a Pakistani horror film this year. Like, what the hell's that going to be? That's the excitement of it."

Austinites might be forgiven for taking these movies for granted. For a good 10 years, Knowles with his Butt-Numb-a-Thon genre programs and Alamo Drafthouse founders Tim and Karrie League — not to mention Tarantino and his semi-annual QT exploitation festivals — have been screening the best, worst, naughtiest, nastiest, bloodiest, bawdiest, most disgusting, most offensive genre movies they could yank from the vaults and scrape off the sidewalk. We are spoiled.

Which is why it simultaneously didn't dawn on us to throw a genre festival and why Austin is the most obvious place in which to throw a genre festival.

"Karrie and I have spent a decade developing a certain audience at the Alamo," Tim League says. "And as a programmer and audience member, I knew this is what we wanted. We want to see the latest and greatest, and just cool, crazy movies."

"I like the ones that are foreign to the palate," he says. "These are not movies we get access to on a regular basis. These are tasty treats from another land."

It was several years ago at the Festival de Cine de Sitges, the grandad of international genre festivals held in Sitges, Spain, where Knowles and Tim League broached the idea of a similar fest in Austin. They realized that the States wanted for a strong genre festival.

"That's mind-blowing, because I see America as the genre king, where all the movie genres came from!" Knowles, founder and head of Ain't It Cool News, says. "We wondered why we didn't have a festival on par with Sitges."

Back home, Knowles, the Leagues, producer-filmmaker Paul Alvarado-Dykstra, filmmaker Tim McCanlies ("Secondhand Lions"), South by Southwest director Matt Dentler and former Alamo co-programmer Kier-la Janisse colluded to pull it off.

What with Knowles' Hollywood contacts, the Leagues, Janisse and Dentler's programming savvy — all of them spend weeks each year trawling festivals worldwide for prime movie picks — McCanlies' startup money and all of their combined passion for and knowledge of genre films, it was a no-brainer.

The festival's conception to execution in 2005 was a speedy two or three months, recalls Knowles, who doesn't balk at calling it a miracle.

"We were kind of stunned we pulled it off," he says.

The first year went well. The second year went better.

"Last year is when it felt like an honest-to-goodness film festival," Knowles says.

The festival was upped from the first edition's four days to eight last year, and attendance has accordingly increased. League says that about 5,000 seats were sold last year, and he expects 7,000 to 8,000 will be sold this year. Fantastic Fest lost some money in its first two years, he adds, but he anticipates it will make a little this year.

Organizers know their little festival is growing up by its name recognition at festivals, even giant mainstream ones like the Toronto International Film Festival, around the globe. But the true coup came this year when Fantastic Fest won accreditation from the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation, which also goes by the Méliés Federation, named after immortal silent French fantasy director Georges Méliés. The federation includes genre festivals in Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Canada and beyond.

"It's amazing we got in so soon, because that organization has been around for a really long time," Knowles says. "For them to look across the ocean at this little town in Texas — which isn't the most beloved state in the world right now — was incredible."

Being a member of the federation carries benefits. It makes it easier for Fantastic Fest to draw top titles from fellow member festivals and net A-list talent as guests. Not that that's a problem. The past two pre-membership fests boasted such names as Gibson, Jon Favreau and Darren Aronofsky, as well as a slew of hot up-and-comers. Horror maestro George Romero is tonight's opening guest.

Further approbation comes from genre filmmakers, who eagerly return to the festival. Phil Mucci's short film "The Listening Dead" won Best Short Film at last year's fest, and he's here for the whole length of the festival to screen his new short "Far Out" and just hang out.

"I've been to other (genre fests) and they were awful," Mucci says. "They were mixtures of horror and comic book conventions with some films thrown in, and a bunch of D-movie actors with head shots sitting around, smoking cigarettes and selling autographs. It was gross."

Mucci raves about the communal spirit of like-minded fans and filmmakers at the Austin festival, the air of generosity and high-five-slapping goodwill. And he's hardly alone in his delight in the Alamo's vaunted eat-and-drink setting.

"It's a great place to see a movie. I mean, at three o'clock you go see a Sasquatch picture with a bunch of beer," Mucci laughs.

This doesn't sound like a film festival. It sounds like a party. And to the multitudes of fans who will swarm the Alamo beginning tonight, that's exactly what Fantastic Fest is: one huge monster mash.

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649

What makes a genre festival? Genres, of course.

Promiscuously overlapping genres and subgenres at Fantastic Fest:

Action: Car chases, fireballs, kicks to the gourd and groin.

Animation: Anything sketched, drawn and colored; aka 'cartoons.'

Asian: A subgenre hailing from fecund genre hives Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan; note: the films are quite often OUT OF THEIR MINDS.

Comedy: Chuckles, knee-slaps, beer shooting out of your nose.

Crime: Gangsters, guns and cops; shady deals and shootouts; eye patches not uncommon.

Documentary: Real-life stuff; a rare commodity here.

Fantasy: Dragons, sorcerers, wizards, mischievous little people.

Horror: Blood, guts, monsters, killers, arias of relentless screaming (a subgenre is J-horror: horror from Japan, which seems fixated on young female ghosts and electronic devices as vectors for supernatural bedlam).

Post-apocalyptic: Earth after the End Days: dirty, desolate, spottily populated, scarce food, the occasional biker punk: sort of like Pittsburgh.

Sci-fi: Aliens, space travel, robots, mutant lab mistakes; beware of metaphors and cautionary tales.

Sex: Ask your parents.

Superhero: People with superpowers who fly, twirl, rescue, defend and, with any luck, shoot lasers from their eyes.

Supernatural: Ghosts, creepy psychics, plate-throwing poltergeists, slurpy ectoplasm.

Western: This is Texas. We are the Western.

Zombie: The lurching, flesh-eating dead; maggot wounds, groans, chronic halitosis.

— Chris Garcia

10 TO DIE FOR

Fantastic Fest co-founders Harry Knowles and Tim League pick the five films they're most excited about at this year's bash:

Harry Knowles' Fantastic five

• 'Aachi and Ssipak': An animated, gleefully scatological futuristic comedy-action kick featuring a dangerous diaper gang from Korea. 'It looks so incredibly silly and awesome. I'm dying to see it,' Knowles says.

• 'Five Across the Eyes': Shot in nine days on a micro-budget, this intense psycho-thriller shows the horrors that happen to a van of teenaged girls after a fender-bender.

• 'Flight of the Living Dead': Remember 'Snakes on a Plane'? This is 'Zombies on a Plane.' (In fact, its subtitle is 'Outbreak on a Plane.') 'I love my zombie films!' Knowles gushes.

• 'Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door': A hard-to-watch true crime story about horribly abused girls in the 1950s, based on Ketchum's book.

• 'Wolfhound': Warriors, castles and a princess convene in this teeming Russian fantasy epic. 'It's never going to get American distribution, unless strong word comes out of this festival,' Knowles says. Meaning: See it now.

Tim League's Fantastic five

'Never Belongs to Me': The festival Web site says this freakish Korean fantasy is about a 'woman getting raped by a tiger (and a dog for good measure), a murderous, sex-crazed feral half man/half tiger who spouts philosophical nonsense' and more that we can't print here.

'Uncle's Paradise': A Japanese pinku, or softcore, flick featuring giant squids and a giant spider and giant strangeness. 'It's like a 65-minute, action-packed sex movie,' League laughs.

'Maiko Haaaan!!!': League calls this Japanese nonesuch a 'manic, unhinged saga with enough plot twists and turns to fill three or four Hollywood films.' It's about a guy 'whose entire goal is to play strip baseball with a geisha' and the extremes he'll go to in order to accomplish that.

'End of the Line': Apocalyptic horror in a Canadian subway, with a religious cult and reels of gore.

'Devil's Helper: The Folk Art Films of Phil Chambliss': A retrospective of the singular homemade 16 mm shorts by esoteric Arkansas filmmaker Chambliss, who will present the films.

Night of the Living Guests

A select list of artists coming with their movies. (Get the full list at www.fantasticfest.com.)

Zombie czar George Romero presents his back-to-basics horror flick 'Diary of the Dead' at 6:45 tonight.

Adam Green, whose 'Hatchet' won Best Picture at last year's Fantastic Fest, shows his new psychodrama 'Spiral' with star Joel David Moore at 8:50 p.m. Friday.

Joe Lynch screens his first feature film, the bloody 'Wrong Turn 2,' at 11:45 p.m. Friday.

Notorious German auteur Uwe Boll ('BloodRayne') and star Zack Ward present the ultra-violent, video game-based 'Postal' at 11:50 p.m. Saturday.

Maurice Devereaux plays his apocalyptic horror movie 'End of the Line' at 11:55 tonight.

Director Hasko Baumann and editor Martin Eberle show 'Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures,' their award-winning documentary about comics legendJean Giraud,at 6:45 p.m. Friday and 4:15 p.m. Tuesday

Writer-producer-director Scott Thomas and cinematographer Mark Eberle screen the airborne zombie flick 'Flight of the Living Dead' at 11:40 p.m. Friday and 1:15 p.m. Wednesday.

Co-directors Ryan Thiessen and Greg Swinson and actress Sandra Paduch show the female road nightmare 'Five Across the Eyes' at 9 p.m. Friday.

Comedian-actor Patton Oswalt ('Ratatouille') screens the sexy thriller in which he co-stars, 'Sex and Death 101,' at 9 p.m. Saturday.

Those sneaky (and so totally excellent) secret screenings

Thanks to Ain't It Cool News' all-powerful Harry Knowles, Fantastic Fest boasts secret screenings of big-deal movies that almost no one has seen yet. Last year brought surprise advance showings of 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'Apocalypto,' the latter with director Mel Gibson in attendance. This year's four secret screenings promise hot titles and three surprise guests who won't be revealed until moments before showtime. If you don't possess a VIP badge or festival badge, good luck getting into these coveted shows. Here's when they are: 6 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday; 6:15 p.m. Wednesday; and the closing night movie at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 27.