All Horror Hounds know the only place you need to be this coming Bank Holiday Weekend is FrightFest in London’s Leicester Square. Many hardcore veterans already have their tickets, some of you are wavering and some are total newbies wondering whether to take the blood soaked plunge and share 5 days of total mayhem with total strangers. Well waver no longer my fiends. I’ll make it dead simple for you with a shockingly fantastic competition courtesy of Horror Channel.
Here’s the good stuff; A lucky pair of winners will have Weekend passes (now sold out!!!) for the Horror Channel Main Screen and stay at the 5-Star Radisson Blu Edwardian Hampshire hotel in Leicester Sq. This is an amazing hotel opposite the cinema so you’ll never be late for a screening and can roll in and out of bed and practically straight into the cinema, think I’m staying there too! You’ll also get 2 exclusive goody bags and get yourself on the right side of the red rope with an opportunity to be photographed at the official media wall by FrightFest’s house photographer. “Dude, this is amazing how can I win?” I hear you say. Simple – all you have to do is ‘Like’ our facebook or twitter page and finish this sentence making it short enough to fit on a tweet.
“You know you’re a Horror fan when ….” So try and keep it relatively clean, we’ll choose the most inventive answer or the one that made us smile the most and I will see the lucky winners there! Tweet us your answers to @horror_channel or you can post to Facebook
You must be 18 or over to enter and the comp closes on August 17th.
The festival is the place to watch premieres way before anyone else with some films screening there before they hit cinemas Nationwide, but as the fest does not start till Thursday 27th August I’ve got 5 premieres lined up on Horror Channel for you!
Director Anthony DiBlasi (Dread) is making news again with his latest movie Most Likely to Die receiving its World Premiere at FrightFest this year while Horror Channel has the Network premiere of his twisted nightmare Cassadaga Saturday 1st August!
Lily, a young deaf girl devastated by the death of her younger sister seeks solace in Florida’s “Psychic Capital of the World” Cassadaga, but during a séance instead of contacting her sister, becomes the attachment for the tormented soul of a woman murdered by one twisted psycho. Can Lily follow the clues to expose the killer? And will she ever be safe again even if she does? What she discovers is a damaged man with a penchant for ‘human dolls.’ Part Southern Gothic horror, part giallo this is a grotesque thriller where the killer is quite literally pulling the strings.
CASSADAGA Network Premiere Saturday 1st August 22.55
Next up kind of like Fight Club for girls (except these women are not volunteering their thirst for violence!) comes the UK TV Premiere of Raze. 50 women are kidnapped and forced to partake in brutal one on one bare knuckle fights to the death for the entertainment of the rich and twisted. Spurring them on they are shown live feeds of their loved ones also being held prisoner who only get to live another day if they win. Harsh! Tarantino’s favourite stunt girl Zoe Bell stars as the hard as nails lead so do not expect pigtails and pillow fights here, but insanely brutal neck snapping violence. I especially love the deranged husband and wife double act who run the ‘show’ led by a suitably demented Sherilyn Fenn.
RAZE UK TV Premiere Saturday 8th August 22.55
All new parents will no doubt relate to and have empathy for the subject matter of Dark Circles, a very aptly titled chiller referring to both the effects of no sleep and the relentless nature of parenting a newborn I think! When two parents of a beautiful baby boy leave the city for a life in the country, their sanity begins to unravel when it appears a malevolent spirit has its grasp on their baby. But with endless sleep deprivation is she just a paranoid hallucination or something far more sinister? It being a Horror movie I’m guessing the latter, I’ve not seen this one yet! With an interesting subtext that explores the fragility of a helpless new life and the lengths a parent goes to, to protect it.
DARK CIRCLES UK TV Premiere Saturday 15th August 21.00
It seems to be a bit of a common theme in Horror for the Final Girl to not only have biological determination to contend with (let’s face it, we just aren’t as physically strong as all the madmen / psychos out there – not usually at least!) but often as not, the writers of these movies add another element of ‘struggle’ to these heroines and make them deaf or blind too! C’mon – give us Scream Queens a break! No seriously I understand that layering the elements of ‘challenge’ obviously adds to the struggle, the characters ‘arc’ and of course your empathy for her. Take Horror’s recent Savaged (a deaf girl gets her own back on a gang of rapists) Mischief Night (blind girl must outwit intruder) and now Devil May Call which gets its UK TV premiere on Horror this month. Hmmmm, would it be terribly un-pc to do a season on this?!!
A girl who was blinded in an accident and was at her absolute lowest has rebuilt her life by volunteering as a phone counsellor at a suicide hotline, however when she becomes the only ‘lifeline’ for an obsessive caller, he takes it very badly when she informs him she’s leaving her job. Her obsessive depressive caller just happens to moonlight as a murdering psycho and wants to punish her… So begins a frantic fight for survival and with the odds weighed heavily in his favour, she must use every sense and every wit she has left.
DEVIL MAY CALL UK TV Premiere Saturday 22nd August 21.00
Lastly this month comes a British London–set Horror apparently inspired by ‘true events’ regarding the apparent possession of a chap named David O’Reilly. Here a troubled man (quite refreshing I must add to see the male of the species possessed / haunted / losing his mind etc – it’s usually us!) stays the night with his friends after he suspects his girlfriends been cheating. But it seems David is haunted by more than just bad luck, as passing shadows in the room, spooky spectres in the corner of his eye manifest into something altogether more demonic. Atmospheric character based chiller with great performances all round.
THE TORMENT UK TV Premiere Friday 28th August 22.50
So that’s August on Horror Channel ‘wrapped in plastic’ (I hear Pete from “Twin Peaks” when I write that – hope you do too) but of course I’ll be seeing many of you in person down at FrightFest, so make sure you do the competition and come say hi when you win!
