Live shows and writing

A lot of my time recently has been taken up with live shows and writing screenplays, which are a million miles apart in terms of action and reaction.

See, one of the things I used to love about doing stand-up (the gravestone of my stand-up "career" reads 1998-2002) was that the reaction was instantaneous. If I said something, I knew straight away whether people liked it or not. They laughed or didn't, applauded or didn't.. There was no real waiting involved. This principle carries across to doing live shows about filmmaking, to a degree; I know how a show is going from the reaction of the audience and the feedback/questions I get throughout. It's nice. No waiting.

Writing a screenplay, on the other hand, is nothing but waiting. I wrote a great gag for the Strippers vs Werewolves screenplay today. How long am I going to have to find out to hear an audience reaction to that gag? Best part of two years, in all likelhood, by which point I will be so sick to death of the gag that I won't actually find anything funny about it myself anymore. The delay between action and reaction is so interminable that I'll be a different person by the time I get to the payoff.

So maybe that's why I enjoyed the live shows so much. I'd be up for doing some more, so if any educational establishments/film festivals/film clubs or whatever fancy booking a 90 minute show about making low-budget horror movies and getting them distributed around the world, feel free to get in touch.

If I can keep the instant gratification itch scratched, that might hopefully prevent me from going back to the fickle arms of stand-up again. I suspect that my millennium bug routines are now somewhat dated..

Fake Blood on the Lens - LIVE!

Click here for more info!

Scene X

There's a video on YouTube that I don't want you to watch. You probably haven't seen it. It's one of the truly great moments in horror cinema, and I don't want you to go and check it out under any circumstances. In fact, I'll be genuinely pissed if any of you do go and check it out as a result of reading this blog. Don't do it, kids.

In fact, sod it, I'm going to call it 'Scene X' and won't even tell you which movie it's from. Because if you watch it on YouTube, you won't actually see it in any meaningful sense.

Scene X has got a whole load of heartbreakingly crass and badly written comments underneath it. "This is supposed to be scary? ROFL", "its not even scary", "I thought ti was hilarious" and so on, the dull echo chamber of fuckwittery reverberating through the bowels of the internet. The sound of the barely literate congratulating themselves on their lack of engagement with a thirty-year old clip removed from any sense of context.

The reason that Scene X is one of the greatest scenes in horror history isn't the scene itself, it's because of all the rest of the movie around it that isn't Scene X. An ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a Terminator movie might not even be noticed, whereas an ear-splitting gunshot in the middle of a film of a child playing would have a very different effect indeed. It's all context, and if you rob a powerful scene of that you reduce it to meaningless pixels on a screen and then wonder why it doesn't engage you.

So, no, I'm not going to tell you what Scene X is. Irritatingly, even knowing that there's a brilliant scare-shot on the way will massively dilute your experience of the movie. The movie which is almost impossible to get hold of regardless.

So now you'll probably never see it at all. Because I've painted myself into a corner, where telling you the title would be a meta-spoiler.

My name's Pat Higgins, and my conscience is clear.

Indie Movies Online at Cannes

I'm kind of gutted that I won't be at Cannes this year. I love it and I want to get back there.. Hopefully next year. In the meantime, our good friends over at IMO have set up a special Cannes Film Festival site to help me keep up to date with what's going on and miss it even more. And whilst you're over in the IMO neck of the woods, don't forget that if you're based in the UK you can still check out our award-winning flick The Devil's Music by clicking below..



And if you've already seen TDM, why not check out one of the other movies on the site?

When I haven't been getting all nostalgic about long-closed cinemas or doing Q&A sessions, I've been working on the House on the Witchpit screenplay again. Don't know if it's my mood in general, but the pendulum is swinging back to slightly lighter tonally once more. Maybe I just can't handle writing dark stuff for months..

The Classic, Westcliff on Sea

This is what I remember, although you can't call it a memory.

Poster frames outside. Six frames, left to right. The two central ones are advertising 'Now Showing'. When I try and focus on the one second from the left I can't get a firm image in my head. It might be advertising local businesses. It's certainly not as interesting as the others, which are advertising all sorts of coming attractions. The one furthest to the right is advertising late night shows on Fridays and Saturdays. The posters for the late shows are pretty lurid, and either scare me silly or tempt me with the forbidden depending how old I am at that particular moment. Scanners, Videodrome, Play Misty for Me, Come Play with Me, Lemon Popsicle, Confessions Of.. through to The Witches of Eastwick, Ruthless People and beyond. Movies I'm not allowed to see. By the time I'm old enough to do so, many of them will be quaint relics of another age.. So the power lies in the posters, and for me at least it always will. In the tease, not the strip. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Inside, the lobby smells of cigarette smoke, candy and popcorn. An assistant looks out from behind glass, dispensing little numbered tickets depending on what screen I was heading to. The assistant, who much have changed a dozen times over the years but is present in my mind as either a cheerful balding guy or a faintly disapproving middle-aged woman. They ask my age once only (Lethal Weapon 2, 1989) and the rest of the time just check smoking or non-smoking.

Screen One is downstairs. A whole bunch of memories trip over one another as I try and picture the screen. I'm sitting looking at the pillars and the cladding on the walls whilst waiting nervously to watch The Black Hole, the advertising for which both scares and intrigued me. I glance at my Scooby Doo watch and wonder how many minutes until the film starts. Scooby's arms are the hands of the watch, and I'm getting pretty good at working out the time. Then suddenly, I'm sitting with my Mum eating Revels and watching Breakdance, whilst some kids smoke dope a couple of rows behind us. Then I'm watching Howard The Duck with my buddy Dan Rice, and we're the only people in the screen until about a minute before the film starts.

But this film isn't in Screen One. It's in the smaller screen upstairs, which means walking past another 'Coming Soon' poster midway up the staircase. It's for Damien: Omen II and now I'm too scared to go past it because I'm only a toddler. But somehow I manage it, and I end up in the upstairs lobby looking at a big cardboard stand for Battle Beyond The Stars which looks brilliant, and suddenly I'm a couple of years older and I'm at Saturday Morning Cinema. Screen Two is full of a hundred or so kids all about my age, and a long suffering member of staff called Uncle something is entertaining us and handing out prizes prior to the films. The films are a collection of shorts and cartoons. The main feature is called Electric Eskimo and is about 50 minutes long. There's a serial called Chimp Mates which we see a different episode of every week, except we don't because it's now 5 years later and Uncle something doesn't do the Saturday Morning Cinema anymore, and they show proper, actual films and don't give out prizes. The only criteria is that they have to be PG, so the films aren't always tailored to a crowd of 7-13 year olds. Thus we watch Police Academy 2. And then I'm once again too old to be going to Saturday morning cinema.

And then I'm making plans to go off to University, and I'm too busy thinking about sex and music and pubs and girls and videos to particularly worry about that little cinema down the road because I've, quite frankly, got a lot of other stuff on my mind. And I don't even bother to go to the final show there in 1991.

And then I'm 36, I'm married and I'm probably as grown up as I'm ever going to get.

I'm looking at a Halfords in Westcliff that happens to be standing where some cheap little second-run cinema used to stand. I've stopped by because I need some antifreeze for the car engine but, for some unknown reason, I'm fighting the urge to cry.

Tickets for special festival screening of The Devil's Music

A rare chance to see The Devil's Music on the big screen with a Director's Q&A. I've never done a Q&A for this particular movie before, largely because it's more fun to lie about it. But, on Saturday, for one day only, I'm planning to tell the truth. So, if you're anywhere near Southend (which is only 45 minutes outside London) on Saturday 1st May, you can book your tickets here..

Click here to purchase tickets

The Octopus that wasn't in The Goonies

I think it’s fair to say that it all started with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.

My Mum took me to see a cinematic re-release of the 1954 Richard Fleischer version back in the Seventies. Common sense tells me it must have been around 1978, when I was four, but the official date for the re-release was apparently 1976, which would place me at the tender age of two. Either way, I’d seen the ads on the TV and had badgered my already long-suffering mother into taking me. My poor old Mum still had untold delights of genre cinema awaiting her over the next few years, until I reached such an age as I could be safely abandoned in the cinema on my own. The arrival of this date may have ultimately been somewhat hastened by her sense of parental responsibility failing to outweigh her desire not to sit through Krull for a fourth time.

My four/two year-old self had been looking forward to 20,000 Leagues for one reason alone, and that reason had tentacles and a snapping yellow beak. The TV ads for the re-release had focused on the squid fight scene to such an extent that I genuinely think I expected Giant Squid: The Movie rather than the well-meaning Jules Verse adaptation that unrolled before me. Result: I fidgeted. A lot. I suspect that I may have engaged in thoughtful discussion regarding the narrative with my mum; discussion along the lines of ‘Will the squid be on soon?’ every couple of minutes throughout the lion’s share of the running time.

But when those tentacles finally crept onto the screen, I fell silent. How could I not? I was absolutely and utterly transfixed. The bastard was glorious. I left feeling that I’d seen the single greatest sequence ever filmed, and the tiny seeds of cheerful, fanboy obsession were scattered onto the fertile soil of my pre-school mind. Without seeing that squid attack, who knows? Maybe today I’d be the kind of guy who feels more comfortable with a rugby ball in his hand than a box of popcorn. Maybe I’d have never fallen in love with film. Of course, this being in the days before VHS, it was years before I got to see the sequence again. So, in the meantime, I hunted for memorabilia and photos. But, more than that, I hunted for more movies with enormous rubber cephalopods.

Pickings were pretty slim. A few years later, I fell instantly in love with Warlords of Atlantis and was more than willing to overlook its flaws on the basis of the wonderful stop-motion octopus. I tried, but failed, to find somewhere showing Tentacoli after hearing it luridly described by my uncle, but was delighted when that same uncle (genre writer Tim Stout, who had a novel and a couple of anthologies of short stories published in the seventies and early eighties) pointed me in the direction of It Came From Beneath The Sea on ITV one Sunday lunchtime.

The years passed, and the arrival of VHS meant that I was suddenly able to compile my favourite mollusc moments on one dog-eared tape. I’d sit with play and record set to pause, waiting for the brief arrival of an octopus or squid in countless movies, such as Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, where I felt that such an appearance would be inevitable. My interests broadened and my tastes became more varied, but the root of why I grew to love cinema in the first place always remained.

I was eleven years old when pre-publicity started turning up for the big Spielberg-produced Christmas movie that year, The Goonies. By this point, I was devouring any information about film that I could lay my hands on. I used to obsessively collect bubblegum cards just to catch glimpses of scenes that hadn’t yet seen the light of a projector bulb. I used to read novelisations that were released before the movie’s launch.

And that was where I found it.

First page of the novelisation of The Goonies. On the inside leaf; a teaser bit of text from later in the novel, designed to whet your appetite. A description of an octopus attacking the kids, in a flooded cavern with a pirate ship floating sedately in the background.

For those couple of weeks, pocket money went exclusively on Goonies bubblegum cards. Early on in my quest, I picked up an index card. I noticed that cards 43 and 44 were listed Tentacles of Death! and The Rockin’ Octopus! respectively. Those were my Grail. I tore packets and chewed neon pink bubblegum until my teeth were falling like rain. Eventually, I got both cards. Tentacles of Death! was actually a split image, meaning there were two pictures on one card. Two smaller pictures, in other words. I squinted and squinted. I even used a magnifying glass. My appetite was most definitely whetted. The Rockin’ Octopus! showed the beast in all its glory, and took my breath away when I opened the packet. I bought the soundtrack album and grooved to the absolutely dreadful sounds of Eight Arms to Hold You by the Goon Squad, the song that I knew would ultimately score the scene.

I can still remember how I felt, queuing to see the movie a couple of weeks later. When it finally hit the screen, I knew virtually every line in advance from all my background reading. My impatience to get to the octopus stopped me from enjoying it fully. Twenty minutes from the end, the kids splashed down into the cavern with the pirate ship. I knew that, at any moment, Stef would start accusing Mouth of groping her underwater, not realising that it was a tentacle brushing past her leg.

Except she didn’t. The kids got on board the pirate ship without incident.

I did a double-take. I simply didn’t understand. I watched the rest of the film in a sort of daze, wondering where my octopus had gone. In the final scene on the beach, when a policeman asked the kids about their adventure, Data piped up;

“The giant octopus was pretty bad. Very scary”

It was everything I could do to stop myself crying.

I went to see the film again the following week at a different cinema, hoping that somehow there’d been a mix-up at the initial screening and that a reel had been missed. When it finally became apparent that all prints were mollusc-free, I wrote to Warner Brothers demanding the scene be reinstated. Or for them to send me a copy, whichever was easier. They didn’t reply. I collected any magazines that might be able to explain the situation, even spending the majority of a week’s pocket money on an imported issue of Cinefex which featured a couple of photos from the scene and, at last, a vague explanation of why it was removed. The word ‘unrealistic’ was cruelly bandied around.

It was another thirteen long years before I finally got to see the octopus scene in any form. During that time I considered various way-out plans to get to see the footage, including applying for a job at Burman Studios (who made the octopus) and asking for a copy of their showreel. I dreamt about the scene more times than I care to think about.

Then, one day in the late nineties, a grainy video clip turned up on a Goonies fan site. It had been video-captured from a US screening on The Disney Channel which reincorporated the scene. I sat and watch it a couple of dozen times, not really able to process the experience or even tell whether I was enjoying it or not. It was a further two years before I got to see it on a decent size screen, (on the final, nowadays inevitable, special edition DVD release), and probably another three for me to come to terms with the truth.

The truth about the octopus scene is very simple and straightforward. It’s crap. It doesn’t work. It’s badly executed, has no logical place in the movie and no pay-off. The flick works better without it.

But that’s a 36-year old screenwriter writing those words, and every time I even think about the subject the 11-year old that I used to be starts crying. And I can’t live with that.

So, the campaign for a director’s cut starts here.

And you can stick the rubber Suicide Squid back into Red Dwarf whilst you’re at it.

Fake Blood on the Lens

Got some live stuff coming up.

I'll be presenting a short workshop about the low-budget horror industry. This is part of the Southend Film Festival (http://www.southendfilmfestival.com/)and should be good fun. 12pm at Southend Central Library on 1st May. Free to get in, first come first served. It's gonna be like a cut down version of the full Fake Blood on the Lens show, which can next be caught at.. Oh, more of that later.

The workshop is followed by a special one-off screening of The Devil's Music over at The Dixon Studio (next door to the Palace Theatre) in Westcliff, Essex. The show's at 2.45 and I'll be around for Q&A, tickets are only £2 from the Palace Theatre box office (or via http://www.thecliffspavilion.co.uk/ as soon as they update the film list.. We're a replacement for 'Grave Tales' on the original listings)

Then, there's the full Fake Blood on the Lens show taking place at 7pm, 17th June as part of the Southend Festival (different to the Southend Film Festival.. I know it gets confusing). Not sure of prices or tickets yet, I'll let you know closer to the time.

BDT - The First Review

And the first review of Bordello Death Tales, courtesy of the esteemed MJ Simpson, hits the web:

BORDELLO DEATH TALES REVIEW

Bordello Death Tales screening

Saturday rolled around, and we had the first screening of Bordello Death Tales. We held it in a seriously unconventional venue, (Gallery 491 in Leytonstone), which had a giant paper-mache squid suspended from the ceiling in the screening room.

Myself, Jim and Al were interviewed by a film crew from Gorezone (for inclusion on a future covermounted DVD), including a section where I was interviewed by a rotting puppet cat. The cat also had a little puppet cock poking out from underneath its Megan Fox t-shirt; a detail that's bound to occur to me when I'm sitting in an old folks' home one day, and prompt the staff to think that I've finally gone off the deep end.

The screening was pretty terrific, and crowded enough that I actually ended up having to stand through it (seeing as I missed the scramble for seats as I was onstage with the other two introducing the movie!). I'm sure that a review or two will crop up soon enough. I know I've sung the praises of the flick before, but it really is pretty damn funky, with something for every type of horror fan.

Of course, Hellbride hit DVD in the UK this week too. Good to see it on shelves across the country. I've been keeping an eye out for print coverage but I'll probably miss some; any of you folks out there spot some coverage in a mag I might have missed drop me a line via Twitter and point me in the right direction.

House on the Witchpit writing still going well. Cannot wait to shoot the damn thing, but it still might be a while.

Big week approaching..

On Saturday, Bordello Death Tales gets played before an audience for the first time. It's a movie that's been hovering in post-production for far longer than we ever intended; we'd intended to do it pretty quick and dirty, and anticipated locking some time towards the end of 2008. Buuuut, things get polished, then tweaked, then changed, and the whole process took an awful lot longer than we'd intended.

As I've previously mentioned on this blog, screening a movie for the first time is always a strange experience. As a filmmaker, you'll have seen the movie a million times before, but you've never truly seen it until you've seen it with an audience. Every tiny flaw that you thought you could get away with suddenly looks absolutely massive. Every scene that you felt you'd cut down to the bone could suddenly use another 40 seconds cut from it to really make it zing. Oh, the wisdom of the filmmaker watching his movie with a crowd for the first time. If only he could go back and tell his previous self the things he's learned. At least this time I've got two fellow filmmakers enjoying the same experience; because BDT is, of course, the child of three fathers we all get to worry equally. I've never had anyone to share the experience with before.

In other news, Hellbride finally hits UK DVD on Monday. You can go and pre-order a copy off Play for a meagre £2.99 by clicking on the lovely cover below. Go do it now, it's okay, I'll wait.

There, back now? Good. Hope you enjoy it. It's been interesting to see the reactions we've been getting from the UK reviewers as opposed to how the flick went down in the US. There are new reviews springing up daily.

Elsewhere in my ridiculous life, I've been asked to make a couple of festival appearances over the next few months. The first will be at the Southend Film Festival, where I'll be talking about low budget horror on Saturday May 1st. Not quite sure what people are going to want to hear; if you've got any ideas or requests feel free to hit the contact buttons.

I'll keep you posted as to how the screening goes.

Rock on,
Pat

What makes a band a band?

I love the band Pop Will Eat Itself. Always have, always will. Their 1989 album 'This is the day.. This is the hour.. This is This' was the first album I ever bought with an 'explicit content' warning sticker on it; I can remember walking up to the counter and not actually knowing whether or not the shop would sell it to me as I was under 18. It felt like contraband, and, God, I loved that album. Within a week of owning it I knew every word.

The years went by, and I went to see PWEI a whole bunch of times. By the time I saw them in 1996, it was clear that something wasn't quite right anymore. Founder member Graham Crabb had quit, and one night in Hammersmith I saw the remaining members play the shortest set I'd ever seen them play, heavy on new material which sounded like it was lacking inspiration. For the first time, they didn't look like were enjoying themselves, and I wasn't very surprised when the band called it a day not long after.

In 2005, the band played a series of reunion gigs with all members, including Graham. The gig I saw in Shepherd's Bush was possibly the best I'd ever seen them; they sounded fantastic. It was one of those gigs where you can buy a CD as soon as the set is over, and I still play that CD pretty regularly. It's a pretty perfect memory. There were various suggestions afterwards that the band were working on a new album. Little taster snippets were put online and sounded good, but it soon became apparent that the project wasn't really going to fly after all due to scheduling commitments.

All of this led to the creation of a band called VileEvils, from the ashes of the PWEI reunion. They were pretty damn good too, and I ended up doing a video for their single NoFear (leaning fairly heavily on unused material from the shoots for TrashHouse and KillerKiller). Here it is:



VileEvils were due to release their first album at towards the end of this month, but.. Suddenly, a press release. One that starts like this..

dPulse Recordings has announced today the opening of a new chapter in the storied legacy of Pop Will Eat Itself - one of the most influential names in the history of electronic rock music – as Graham Crabb, the band’s principal songwriter and co-lead vocalist, ramps up with a new era for the PWEI legacy.

With a string of Top 40 UK and US hits, Pop Will Eat Itself rose to prominence fueled by Crabb-penned tunes such as ‘There Is No Love Between Us Anymore’, ‘Bulletproof’, ‘RSVP’, ‘Get The Girl, Kill The Baddies’ and many, many others.

With the new Pop Will Eat Itself single ‘Axe of Men (2010)’ currently making its rounds on DJ and radio promo worldwide, Crabb and PWEI will release a new album in summer 2010. That album will include tracks originally planned for the now-cancelled Vile Evils album Vive Le Vile Evil, which was scheduled for release by dPulse Recordings 23 March.

With news of this announcement, Graham Crabb and long-time collaborator and PWEI member Adam Mole have mutually and amicably disbanded their project Vile Evils, effective immediately.

There's more at http://pwei.info if you're curious.

So, this summer I'm going to get to go and see PWEI, except that there won't be a single person on the stage who was also on the stage at that Hammermith gig in 1996. Soooo.. What makes a band a band?

Another of my favourite 90s bands, Carter USM, also amicably disbanded in the late 90s. Many years later, they played a series of gigs under the banner "Who's The Daddy Now?", the encores of which consisted of both founder members of Carter USM (Jim Bob and Fruitbat) onstage, playing Carter USM songs. They billed themselves as the only covers band to contain all the original members. So was that Carter USM? Or not Carter USM?

(Incidentally, I also directed a video for one of Jim Bob's solo singles, which is below if you haven't already seen it..)



Is a band a statement of intent? A specific collection of human beings? Presumably like the 2010 version of PWEI, the versions of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins currently touring both only have one member in common with their previous incarnations. The current line-up of The Wonder Stuff also caused quite a bit of controversy when first unveiled, but that's a whole other story.

I love music an awful lot, and I'll support the new version of PWEI just as I supported the old one. In fact, I'm rather excited at going to see them. I've just never quite been able to shift this question as to what makes a band from my mind.. Maybe the Sugababes will provide us all with an answer, as they argue it out in court.

Hellbride UK

It looks like Hellbride is coming out in the UK.. Well, it went through the BBFC this week, anyway.


BBFC rates Hellbride 15 uncut

I had no idea that it was coming out, so I haven't got any details just yet!

Barely Legal

I saw a late-teenager (probably around 17 or 18, I reckon) get asked for proof of age when buying a 12 rated DVD last week. The kid was indignant and angry, but ultimately caved and showed some ID.

Whilst travelling the States in 2002, I saw a 55 year-old woman get refused alcohol in a San Francisco comedy club because she didn't have ID with her.

On a similar tack, I got asked for ID buying a bottle of wine a couple of years ago. 33 years old I was at the time (as I indignantly told the woman behind the counter; "I'm the same age as JESUS!") and it was the first time I'd been asked my age buying alcohol since I was 17.

All of these examples are utterly fucking stupid, and I worry that they're indicative of a growing culture where using your judgement is seen as a dangerous and unneccessary risk. If you seriously aren't comfortable enough with your judgement that a grey-haired, not-particularly-well-preserved woman can be served alcohol, I'm really not comfortable with you doing ANY job whatsoever. It comes down to the old argument that by operating like a machine and insisting on ID for everyone, you are potentially stopping a single 17 year old getting served. And that's got to be a good thing, right?

Bollocks. Here's my two pennies; cash 'em in for the currency of your choice. Drumroll..

An age restriction system works better when it leaks. When it is flawed. When 17 year-olds occasionally get served beer in pubs and get into 18 movies. Because if you're a 17 year old in an environment that you're not meant to be in, there's at least a chance that you'll shut up and keep a low profile. That you'll hang back and see how things are done. If you know that if a particular bartender notices you you'll get thrown out, you'll avoid drawing too much attention to yourself. You'll blend. You might even take it relatively easy on the booze intake. Your introduction to the adult world is gradual and subdued, since you know you don't really belong there yet.

If, on the other hand, every age restriction works 100%, by the time a kid hits his 18th birthday he's got a massive sense of entitlement backed up by absolutely no experience whatsoever of the environment that he's entering. He walks in, flashes his newly minted ID, never learns any sort of bar etiquette, gets shitfaced and falls over or starts a fight. He knows that he won't be ejected until he's done something actively bad, and never learns the ropes because he doesn't need to.

Movies work the same way. I fondly remember my first underage 15 at the cinema (Good Morning Vietnam) and my first underage 18 at the cinema (Misery). I sat in the darkness, terrified that the usher would suddenly click and think 'Hey, that kid looked a bit young', hunt me down in the darkness and throw me out. So I sat through the movies in silence, and.. Guess what? The habit stuck. I went from being a kid who yabbered in movies to being an adult who knew to shut the fuck up as soon as the certificate hit the screen. If I'd been robbed of that experience, if the first time I'd sat in an age-restricted movie I'd have been brimming with a sense of my entitlement to be there, maybe that process of growth would never have happened or been severely delayed.

Every time a supermarket increases the age at which you 'might' be ID'd, for the good of us all, it breaks my heart a bit. The woman who ID'd me for the wine was essentially arguing that maybe, just maybe, I might possibly be 25 and just have aged horribly badly. Her sign told her that if customers looked under 25 they must show ID to prove they were 18. Therefore a 33 year old has to prove that they're not 17. Or a 55 year old has to spend her comedy night without a glass of wine. Madness. Not only that, but by boosting the ages of 'forbidden fruit' to 21 (as most States in the US have) they are introducing another element into the mix in the shape of cars. In the States, a kid might have been driving for 5 years by the time they get served in a bar. By that time they're reliant on cars and unfamiliar with their alcohol limits; another recipe for disaster, especially in a country like the US where it's hard enough to be a pedestrian in the first place.

I vote for a return to people using their judgement, and if the odd kid gets through a few months underage it might actually end up improving things in the long run.

Basically I just want teenagers to shut up in cinemas, and I'm willing to try anything.

My name's Pat Higgins and my conscience is clear.

Post-Christmas Avatar Blues

Well, it was a nice Christmas and New Year. Highlights included Rage Against The Machine getting to the Christmas Number One (which was mainly fun because it demonstrated the very public breaking of a pre-determined narrative, and proved that we actually still have a say in popular culture) and the 3D overload that was Avatar.. I walked out of it feeling like I'd just seen something incredible, but the next day couldn't quite shake the feeling that if I'd seen it in 2D on a small screen I'd have been mocking it quite a lot. If you haven't seen it yet, *please* check it out on the big screen in 3D, if only so when you inevitably see it in a smaller, flatter, rather more flaccid form in the years to come you can feel a little bit embarrassed about just how much you liked it.

The Devil's Music also finally came out on DVD, of course, which was great. From the feedback I've received so far, folks seem to be really digging the disc.

We've also been looking around for a decent screening venue for the cast and crew screening of Bordello Death Tales, prior to letting critics look at the sucker. I always feel that cast and crew should see a movie first.. The idea of a critic seeing a flick before one of the cast does just feels wrong somehow, but this screening has been a long time coming. Hopefully not much longer. The problem seems to be that all the venues are either too big or too small; there are a lot of screening rooms with 35-odd seats, there are a lot of cinemas with 300-odd, but there aren't all that many with around 80.

And, of course, the writing continues. In an ideal world, we'd do another back-to-back shoot in the summer of 2011 the same way that we did in the summer of 2006, but I sadly can't see the money coming together so I'll have to flip a coin..

2009 - What I've seen this year

OK, so I'm going to see Avatar 3D tonight, so I'll be editing this post to add that onto the end. Largely because the idea of finishing my list of movies seen this year with 'The Christmas Clause' really doesn't bear thinking about.

Here it is: The complete and unedited list of stuff I've seen this year, together with a reductive and pointless mark out of five. I've avoiding listing my own stuff, since that's a pretty pointless exercise and I've probably seen each 'going concern' movie countless times in various states of editing. I've also refrained from marking movies where I know people concerned reasonably well, because conflict of interest and yada yada yada.

But basically, here it is. It's going to be long.

Have a brilliant New Year.

January 10th
Friday the 13th Part III - **/5
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane - ***/5
Bring It On: In It to Win It - **/5

January 11th
Alien Abduction: The McPherson Tape - ***/5
Lake Placid 2 - **/5

January 17th
Slumdog Millionaire - ****/5
Shrooms - */5

January 18th
Pumpkinhead 4: Blood Feud - ***/5

January 19th
Breakfast at Tiffany's - ****/5

January 21st
My Bloody Valentine (3D version, 2009) - ***/5

January 23rd
Twelve Monkeys (3rd viewing) - *****/5

January 24th
Milk - ****/5
Frost/Nixon - ****/5

January 27th
The Reader - ***/5

January 29th
Blade Runner (The Final Cut) - *****/5

February 1st
The Wrestler - *****/5
Wanted - ***/5

February 3rd
Creatures from the Abyss - **/5

February 6th
The Girls Rebel Force of Competitive Swimmers - **/5

February 11th
Revolutionary Road - **/5

February 13th
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (3rd-ish viewing) - *****/5
Tokyo Gore Police - ****/5

February 14th
Tropic Thunder - ***/5

February 15th
Happy-Go-Lucky - ****/5

February 16th
Rachel Getting Married - ***/5

February 18th
Doubt - ***/5
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - ****/5

February 19th
Zombie Strippers! - **/5
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (4th-ish viewing) - ***/5

February 20th
Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise (2nd viewing) - ***/5

February 21st
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (2nd viewing) - ***/5
Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning - **/5

February 22nd
Iron Man - ****/5

March 2nd
Eyes Wide Shut - ****/5

March 7th
Watchmen (Imax) - *****/5

March 14th
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster - ***/5
Diary of the Dead - **/5

March 15th
My Date with Drew - ***/5

March 18th
The Magnificent Seven (4th? viewing) - *****/5

March 19th
The Onion Movie - ***/5

March 22nd
Be Kind Rewind - ***/5

March 23rd
Grease 2 - **/5

March 25th
Little Shop of Horrors (1986, 8th-ish viewing) - *****/5

March 28th
Fast Food Nation - ***/5
Elvira's Haunted Hills - **/5
St Trinians - **/5

April 1st
Stand By Me (5th-ish viewing) - *****/5

April 14th
My Name is Bruce - ***/5

April 18th
Let The Right One In - ****/5

April 20th
Pineapple Express - **/5

April 25th
9 to 5 - ***/5
Sydney White - **/5

May 2nd
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain - ***/5

May 6th
The Orphanage (2nd viewing) - *****/5

May 10th
Zombies Zombies Zombies - **/5
Superhero Movie - **/5

May 11th
Star Trek (2009) - ****/5

May 12th
Midnight Cowboy - ***/5

May 15th
The Gingerdead Man - **/5

May 23rd
The Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust - ***/5
Son of Rambow - ****/5

May 24th
Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation - ***/5

May 27th
Drag Me to Hell - ****/5

May 30th
Five Across the Eyes - **/5
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - ***/5

May 31st
Small Town Folk - ***/5

June 4th
Twilight - ***/5 (Mini review at http://tinyurl.com/p5wqs8 )

June 6th
Candy Stripers - **/5 (Mini review at http://tinyurl.com/nbdp7d )

June 7th
Onechanbara: The Movie - ***/5 (Mini review at http://tinyurl.com/o2refa )
The Doll Master - ***/5 (Mini review at http://tinyurl.com/mupct6 )

June 8th
Alien Apocalypse - ***/5

June 10th
Ghostbusters (??th viewing) - *****/5

June 13th
Psycho Beach Party - ***/5

June 14th
The Hangover - ****/5

June 16th
Burn After Reading - ****/5

June 17th
Sleepy Hollow (2nd viewing) - ****/5

June 19th
Hairspray (2007) - ****/5

June 20th
Ghoulies (2nd viewing) - **/5
Ghoulies II (2nd viewing) - **/5

June 21st
Ghoulies go to College - **/5
Troll - **/5

June 25th
Shaun of the Dead - (3rd viewing) *****/5

June 28th
The Incredible Hulk - ***/5

July 3rd
Made of Honor - **/5

July 4th
Mamma Mia! - */5

July 5th
Casablanca (??th viewing) - *****/5

July 10th
Star Wars (??th viewing) - *****/5

July 14th
Megaladon - */5

July 21st
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - ****/5

July 25th
Prom Night (2008) - */5

July 31st
Quadrophenia - ****/5

August 1st
Over Her Dead Body - **/5

August 3rd
Doomsday - ***/5

August 8th
Anvil: The Story of Anvil - ****/5
American Teen - ***/5

August 9th
JCVD - ***/5

August 13th
Shark Attack 3: Megaladon - ***/5 (For entertainment value)

August 15th
Inglourious Basterds - *****/5

August 16th
Skinwalkers - **/5
Creature from Black Lake - **/5
Shark Attack - **/5

August 17th
Tomorrow Never Dies (2nd viewing) - ***/5

August 18th
Teeth - ****/5

August 19th
Crocodile 2: Death Roll - **/5

August 23rd
(500) Days of Summer - ****/5
The X-Files: I Want to Believe - **/5
Friday the 13th (2009) - **/5

August 27th
Donkey Punch - ***/5

August 29th
In The Loop - ****/5
Role Models - ***/5
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus - **/5

August 30th
Crank: High Voltage - ***/5

August 31st
Zombie Women of Satan - (Not rated as I know people involved)
The Final Destination (3D version) - **/5
The Descent: Part 2 - ***/5

September 1st
Adventureland - ***/5

September 5th
I Love You, Man - ***/5

September 7th
Demon Slayer - */5

September 8th
District 9 - ****/5

September 13th
True Romance (3rd viewing) - *****/5

September 16th
Gone Baby Gone - ****/5

September 19th
Sleepaway Camp - ***/5

September 24th
Religilous - ***/5

September 25th
Sex Drive - ****/5
Dead Snow - ****/5

September 26th
Bring It On: Fight to the Finish - */5
What Just Happened - ***/5
He's Just Not That Into You - **/5

September 27th
Gran Torino - ***/5
The Boat That Rocked - **/5

September 28th
Ghost Town - ***/5

September 29th
The Bachelor - **/5
Rope - ****/5

September 30th
Psycho (1960, 4th-ish viewing) - *****/5

October 3rd
Colin (2nd viewing) - Not rated as I know people involved

October 5th
The Wave - ***/5

October 6th
Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (?th viewing) - *****/5

October 10th
Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers - **/5

October 11th
Eraserhead - (3rd? viewing) - ****/5

October 12th
The Foot Fist Way - ****/5

October 13th
The Blair Witch Project - (4th viewing) - *****/5

October 15th
Coraline - ****/5

October 17th
Doghouse - (Not rated as I know people involved)

October 18th
Up - *****/5

October 20th
Cloverfield (2nd viewing) - ****/5
Zombieland - ****/5

October 25th
Eden Lake - ***/5
The House Bunny - **/5

October 26th
Trick 'R Treat - ****/5

November 3rd
Quantum of Solace (2nd viewing) - ****/5
Road House (2nd viewing) - ***/5

November 7th
Saw V - **/5
Bad Biology - ***/5

November 10th
The Shawshank Redemption - (?th viewing) *****/5
Jennifer's Body - ***/5

November 18th
Before Sunrise (3rd viewing) - *****/5

November 23rd
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - **/5

November 26th
Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope - (?th viewing) *****/5

November 29th
The Notorious Bettie Page - ***/5

November 30th
Paranormal Activity - ****/5

December 1st
The Princess Bride (?th viewing) - *****/5

December 4th
American Pie (4th-ish viewing) - ****/5

December 8th
The Breakfast Club - (?th viewing) - *****/5

December 12th
American Pie presents The Book of Love - **/5

December 14th
American Pie presents Band Camp (2nd viewing) - ***/5

December 15th
Edward Scissorhands (?th viewing) - *****/5
Where the Wild Things Are - ****/5

December 21st
A Christmas Wedding - */5

December 22nd
The Christmas Clause - */5

December 30th
Avatar (3D version) - ****/5 (*****/5 for spectacle)

December 31st
Shark Attack 3 (2nd viewing) - ***/5 (for entertainment)

Back to the writing board

So, House on the Witchpit.

I've been messing around with the screenplay since about 2002, and it has changed a lot. The first draft was a fairly cheerful horror comedy; heavy on the sexy witches angle and up to the eyeballs in debt to Warlock in terms of structure. That first draft is pretty close to TrashHouse in terms of tone, and if I'd have shot it when I intended to (around 2005) it would probably have fit reasonably nicely into my output.

Times change, things move on. House on the Witchpit is no longer a frothy horror comedy; the only function of the screenplay is to scare the living shit out of the viewer, and it skews pretty goddamn dark. Then again, I like to think I've come a fair way since TrashHouse too. I hope my movies are getting more interesting and less easy to categorise, and the new-look HotWP fits into my later stuff pretty well.

Writing about bleak situations is a strange sensation for me. I'm a generally pretty upbeat kind of guy, and I feel somewhat detached from the jet-black sentiments that I seem to be capable of pouring onto paper (and then transferring onto the screen from there). I can't work out if I feel better or worse to 'let them out' or whether they end up tainting my day; hanging around after me like an evil cloud. Either way, the words seem to want to hit the paper, so I let them. But how dark do I seriously want to let this go? People who ultimately plonk their arses down in front of House on the Witchpit will be expecting a horror movie. They're watching it to be disturbed or creeped out, at least to some extent. But how serious are they about that?

In other words, just how dark do horror movie viewers want their horrors to get?

I'm intrigued to check out von Trier's AntiChrist, which seems to have taken the idea of how far to push and really run with it. I've heard all sorts of mixed opinions, from those who consider it the most effective horror of the last decade through to those who find it utterly laughable. Now matter how far I take HotWP, I can't see myself going to the visual extremes that von Trier has gone. But emotionally? How far is too far?

And, ultimately, am I willing to let go of the part of me that ultimately just wants my viewers to have fun? Because if you're going to deny them fun, you'd better have a damn good reason for it.

Decisions, decisions. I'm extremely proud of the script, though, and hope I make the right choices.

TDM DVD, Christmas approaches..

First things first, my advance copy of Lono Entertainment's US release of The Devil's Music turned up this week. It's out in the US on December 22nd. Chucking my copy at my Xbox 360 seems to suggest that the disc hasn't actually been region locked, which is rather great news for those in the UK who have checked out the movie via IndieMoviesOnline..

(cue blatant plug..)


Watch The Devil’s Music online free



..and are eager for a special edition DVD. For those in the US, the DVD will be your first chance to check the movie out, and I really really hope that you dig it. Lono have done a fantastic job; the special features are great, (including two terrific Easter Eggs for those who enjoy hunting things down!) and give a whole different perspective on the flick. So here's the link.. (Aw, come on, you KNEW another plug was coming..)

THE SPECIAL EDITION DVD!! ORDER FROM AMAZON NOW!!

Right, that should have sorted out all of your Devil's Music needs for the festive season. What else do I have to tell you wonderful cats about?

(This is possibly a diversionary tactic, as Pip is currently out buying a Christmas tree, and I really should be getting all the other decorations down from the loft. But I don't fancy doing that just yet, so I thought I'd chat to you lot instead)

Bordello Death Tales inches ever closer to being actually seen by people. It really won't be long now, I promise. And it's well worth the wait.

Went to see New Moon during the week, and probably shouldn't discuss my feelings about it for fear of alienating a whole bunch of Twilight fans. I also really hate pouring scorn on things that make people happy But then again I don't really think that Twilight fans are my particular demographic anyway, so hell with it.

New Moon is a terrible film. Terrible in a way that few films manage, and certainly one that makes the first movie in the series look like a masterpiece. From the CGI pantomime bears who pass for werewolves through to the frankly jaw-dropping Council of Vampire Stereotypes, this is a rotten flick. But the thing that makes it stand out from the pack, the thing that truly raises it (or sinks it) to a new level of terrible is its total lack of any sort of humour. There is, if memory serves, a grand total of one line which is meant to be funny in some way, and even that is a sort of quasi-funny line (it's a 'put the dog out' riff in reference to the werewolf). The audience at the screening I was at fell upon that line as if it were some kind of life raft; they hooted, laughed and howled, because the rest of the flick hadn't given them any chance at all to do so. At least not deliberately. You can laugh at the movie, but you can't laugh with it because it contains no sense of humour whatsoever.

Having said that, I emerged from the screening in a great mood. Films as entertainingly bad as New Moon don't come along very often, and I didn't feel shortchanged of my cash.

Elsewhere in sequelville, I checked out American Pie presents The Book of Love, which is number seven for those of us counting. It's much what you'd expect, but it also contains a sequence which cheerfully wanders out of 'gross out' territory and into 'massively disturbing'. It plays like something from a Takashi Miike movie, and the happy music over the top makes it worse. Pip had fallen asleep by this point in the movie, and I briefly wondered whether I had, too, and was actually dreaming. You'll know it when you see it.

Oh, and for anyone who's not yet following me on Twitter, you can do so over here

Right, better go get that stuff out of the loft.

Rock on,
Pat

If you're in the UK..

Go and watch The Devil's Music!

Now!

And spread the word by any means necessary! Twitter, Facebook, IMDB, whatever.. Our movie is in your hands.

http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/news/the-devils-music-premiere-301009

(If you're in the US, don't worry.. The rather awesome DVD will be along on December 22nd!)

Paranormal Activity: You Do The Math

So, is it a good thing or a bad thing for those of us on the tiny-budget side of the Hollywood wall that Paranormal Activity just took the number one box office slot in the US, beating the likes of Saw VI? Given that PA allegedly cost $15,000, mightn't this reignite interest in micro-budget movies that have more to offer in the way of plot, scares and so on than their big-budget counterparts?

Haven't got a clue. My gut tells me that various executives will be scrabbling around looking for other movies to pick up that are exactly like PA. My gut feeling expands on this notion to suggest that, once there are no more micro-budget flicks to pick up that are exactly like PA, they'll pick up a bunch of other stuff and simply market it to look exactly like PA. Then they'll note that the numbers are dropping, conclude that people aren't interested in micro-budget chillers any more, shrug their shoulders and go off and make Saw VII.

The great, grand point of course is that the public didn't flock to PA because it was cheap. They went despite the fact it was cheap. Because it appeared to offer something a bit new. Something a bit different. Something that hadn't been focus-grouped.

I haven't actually seen Paranormal Activity at this point, I hasten to add. I hate making sweeping statements in a blog and then later finding out that I hate the movie in question. I'm assuming I'll like this one. It looks stripped down, lean, scary.. Everything that I very much doubt that Saw VI will be (wouldn't know.. I gave up at IV, which I think showed remarkable staying power all things considered).

Oh, and before I forget, everyone in the UK should point their browsers towards http://www.indiemoviesonline.com next Friday. Hopefully, you all know why.

Rock on,
Pat