Mayhem Film Festival announces THE DEEP HOUSE and ALIEN ON STAGE and confirms plans for 2021 edition

With the 17th edition already fast approaching, Mayhem Film Festival is proud to announce the first two titles for the2021 programme, and reveal our updated plans for this year’s edition in light of ongoing restrictions. 

Following last year’s scaled-down Skeleton Edition of the festival, Mayhem is set to return to Broadway Cinema from 14-17 October, and are currently working towards hosting a full-flesh, four-day edition for 2021.

First up for this year’s festival is underwater ghost story THE DEEP HOUSE. Reminiscent of that legendary moment from Dario Argento’s Inferno, the directors of the extreme cinema, envelope-pushing Inside plunge us into the depths of a submerged haunted house to create a literally immersive horror experience.

Mayhem’s second film confirmed for this year’s edition is documentary Alien On Stage, following a group of DIY, Dorset-based bus drivers as they remake Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic ALIEN ON STAGE - all on a shoestring budget - and triumphantly take it to the West End stage. This behind-the-scenes documentary catalogues the journey from early rehearsals to opening night and will leave you grinning from ear to ear and cheering the underdogs on to victory.

 

Mayhem’s always-popular perennial - the Short Film Showcase - will return for 2021 too.

Seating for this year’s festival will be allocated to allow for social distancing, and so specific seats will need to be selected when purchasing festival passes. An initial limited release of full festival passes will go on sale week commencing Monday 16 August, with more passes made available at a later date. We’ll remain responsive to the ever-evolving pandemic situation and will make any required adjustments to our plans as necessary, and keep all passholders updated.

Guidance will be continually reviewed in the run-up to this year’s festival, and all screenings and events will be delivered in line with advised Government Covid-19 measures in place at the time.  

Mayhem Film Festival takes place on Thursday 14 - Sunday 17 October 2021 at Broadway, Nottingham.

For more information, please visit www.mayhemfilmfestival.com

Also checkout their Facebook and Twitter pages.

 

Shudder acquires occult horror HELLBENDER

Shudder, AMC Networks’ premium streaming service for horror, thriller and the supernatural, has acquired the occult horror feature HELLBENDER ahead of its world premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival. Shudder will release the film, which is written and directed by Toby Poser, John Adams and Zelda Adams, in North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in early 2022.

The acquisition deal was negotiated by Emily Gotto and Samuel Zimmerman on behalf of Shudder and Hugues Barbier, Justin Timms, and Joe Yanick of Yellow Veil Pictures on behalf of the filmmakers.

In HELLBENDER, 16-year-old Izzy (Zelda Adams) suffers from a rare illness that has kept her isolated on a mountaintop with her mother (Toby Poser) her whole life.  As Izzy begins to question her sickness, she pushes back against her confinement and secretly befriends Amber (Lulu Adams), another girl living on the mountain, but her newfound happiness is derailed after she eats a live worm as part of a juvenile game and finds an insatiable and violent hunger awakened within her. To understand the hunger, Izzy must learn the dark secrets of her family's past and the ancient power in her bloodline.

HELLBENDER is the sixth feature from Wonder Wheel Productions, the family-run production company founded by Poser and Adams and their children, Zelda and Lulu. The family also produced the music for the feature with tracks from their experimental punk band H6LLB6ND6R. In 2019 the Adams family first screened at Fantasia with their award-winning The Deeper You Dig.

The film will world premiere virtually August 14 as part of the 25th Fantasia International Film Festival, which kicks off August 5 as a hybrid event, with in-person screenings in Montreal, Quebec and the virtual slate geo-locked to Canada. The film is part of the festival’s esteemed Cheval Noir competition. 

AMC Networks’ Shudder is a premium streaming video service, super-serving members with the best selection in genre entertainment, covering horror, thrillers and the supernatural. Shudder’s expanding library of film, TV series, and originals is available on most streaming devices in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Australia and New Zealand. For a 7-day, risk-free trial, visit ​www.shudder.com

 

FrightFest & Fab Press launch THE FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO GRINDHOUSE MOVIES

FrightFest and FAB Press once again join forces to launch THE FRIGHTFEST GUIDE TO GRINDHOUSE MOVIES, which goes exclusively on sale during Arrow Video FrightFest 2021, Aug 26 – Aug 30, The author, Alan Jones, will be present during the festival to sign copies.

Just when you thought it was safe to stop repeating “It’s only a movie… only a movie… only a movie!” it’s time to take a stroll down the dark and deviant back alleys of the Exploitation film industry. Your host, acclaimed film critic and broadcaster Alan Jones, returns with another mind-boggling trawl through the glittering gutters of cinema to uncover yet more obscure Grindhouse gold.

For this astounding sequel to his acclaimed FrightFest Guide to Exploitation Movies, Jones has chosen the most underrated, alluring or flat-out disastrous sick flicks from the eye-opening epoch that created an obsessed generation of slavering besotted fans. From red light district fleapits to neon-drenched 42nd Street dives and late night Drive-Ins, Jones forensically catalogued everything for posterity, pre-determining cult status even though he didn’t realise it at the time.

With a foreword by Jane Giles, the award-winning author of Scala Cinema 1978-1993, along with a highly personal, informative introduction by Jones, you can now take a walk on the wild side of chronic B-movie adoration, guided by the one person who knows the astonishing, once maligned, now lauded genre better than anyone else.   

Jones reflected: “For sixteen years, from 1965 to 1981, I kept a yearly film diary of every Horror, Science Fiction, Sexploitation and Fantasy title I saw, where I saw it, in which cinema, on what date and exactly what I thought. It just so happened that this period coincided with the richest and grubbiest era in the Golden Age of Exploitation, with cheap thrills, seminal gore, full frontal nudity and taboo subject matters displayed across beyond belief marquees”.

Following the success of the previous four editions: The FrightFest Guide to Exploitation Movies, Monster Movies, Ghost Movies and Werewolf Movies, this is the latest in a series of wide appeal books for both the curious spectator and the cult connoisseur.

The exclusive launch of the book is at Arrow Video FrightFest 2021, with official signings taking placat Cineworld, Leicester Square on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 August. The FrightFest exclusive hardcover will be on sale for just £20 and people not attending in person won’t miss out as they have the option to pre-order the book from www.fabpress.com. Pre-ordered books will ship the first week of September.

 

 

NO MAN OF GOD - Premiering at FrightFest, ahead of it's Disc and Digital release.

Delve into the dark and twisted mind of one of America’s most notorious serial killers – Ted Bundy – in NO MAN OF GOD,  a darkly disturbing new feature that’s set for its UK Premiere at FrightFest 2021, followed by its Digital release on 13 September and on DVD and Special Edition Blu-ray on 25 October 2021.

The film follows a rarely seen moment in criminal history, after Bundy was sentenced to death and waited to meet his maker, the FBI sent in one of their top analysts to interrogate the murderer to try and find out the full extent of his crimes, his motives and to find answers for his heinous crimes to help the victims’ families.

Directed by Amber Sealey (How to Cheat) and penned by C. Robert Cargill (Doctor Strange) based on actual interview transcripts, the critically acclaimed film features outstanding performances from a stellar cast that sees Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings trilogy, Maniac) as FBI analyst Bill Hagmaier, the man tasked by FBI boss (Robert Patrick - Terminator 2, Honest Thief) to get inside the mind of the infamous killer, Ted Bundy played in an unnervingly convincing turn by Luke Kirby (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Halloween: Resurrection).

Bundy’s reign of terror – that saw him kidnap, rape and murder many young women and girls, across numerous states and many years – ended with multiple death sentences, with the full extent of his crimes still to be realised. Bill Hagmaier was tasked with understanding how truly dangerous Bundy was and to give solace to victims’ families. Taken from real-life transcripts and revolving around a singular interrogation room, the mind of Bundy is explored in a lesser known period of his life on death row, from 1984 to the day of his execution in 1989.

With time running out before the serial killer is given the chair, will Hagmaier be able to get closure for the families searching for answers?

See the real face of evil in NO MAN OF GOD, a truly terrifying real-crime horror. 

View the trailer on YouTube.

For more infor on this and other films at FrightFest, visit the Official Website.

 

 

 

Canadian Horror HALL - Coming to Digital Sept

Lightbulb Film Distribution are delighted to announce the forthcoming release of the new claustrophobic horror feature, HALL.

Following its world premiere at FrightFest last year, the film later played at Blood In The Snow film festival.
 

Set within the confines of a dark hotel corridor, HALL stars Carolina Bartczak (X-Men: Apocalypse), Julian Richings (X-Men : Last Stand, TV's Supernatural), Vlasta Vrana (Red 2) and Bailey Thain (Pet Sematary).

 
When a debilitating sickness spreads across a long hotel hallway, a few scattered victims fight for survival, and try to escape from the dark narrow stretch of isolated carnage. 

View the trailer below...

 

HALL will be released on UK digital download and On Demand from 13th September.

 

LARVA MENTAL and MALEFICIA coming to Home Video via TetroVideo - August

TetroVideo is proud to present the horror extreme film LARVA MENTAL (Spain - 2020) by Mikel Balerdi and the French ultragore film MALEFICIA (France - 1998) by Antoine Pellissier.

 

LARVA MENTAL by Mikel Balerdi 

 

Considered one of the most brutal and disturbing movies of all time, Larva Mental (2020) is an extreme horror film written, directed and performed by Mikel Balerdi (Vore Gore, segment "Mouth"), here in his directorial debut.

With an artistic touch, the tattooist, painter, extreme body art performer and director Mikel Balerdi explores the perverse human impulses, the extreme, the profane and the taboo. Larva Mental is a combination of real and practical effects and deals with a lot of strong subject matters including suicide, self-harm, depression, necrophilia and drug abuse.

The plot centers around a girl (Dairi Gaona) who commits suicide after finding depraved videos of his father. After discovering the body, suffering pushes him to the point of madness.

Mikel Balerdi and Dairi Gaona star.

The practical effects are by Mikel Balerdi and Dairi Gaona.

MALEFICIA by Antoine Pellissier

Produced, written and directed by the "master of trash" Antoine Pellissier, Maleficia (1998) is a masterpiece in the ultragore genre, an extreme gore film in which over 200 actors and extras were cast. It was filmed in over 2 years and the production used over 200 gallons of real blood and 1000 lb of real bones

Full of atrocities (dismemberment, beheadings, stabbings, eye gouging, tongue-ripping...), Maleficia begins with gruesome rituals and ends with an gory bloodbath.

SYNOPSIS: a family of nobles travel in a forest in which, in the same moment, a satanic cult completes human sacrifices made up of young girls. The group begins to torture and mutilate the chained sacrificial victims until death to summon the dead which arise to terrorize people and wreak more havoc.

Nelly Astaud, Brigitte Garrigue, Guy Cicorelli, Claude Gatumel and Nicolas Pellissier star.

LARVA MENTAL is coming to Blu-ray in a Standard Edition, in a Limited Numbered Golden Edition (Mediabook + Blu-ray + Slipcase + Booklet) and in an Ultralimited Numbered Golden Edition (Mediabook + Blu-ray + Slipcase + Booklet + Metal Panel 15x20cm with a Mikel Balerdi artwork).

MALEFICIA is available in a Standard Edition (vintage looking Slipcase + amaray + DVD) and in a Silver Limited Plus Numbered Edition with a special Cordenons Stardream Silver paper slipcase with transparent box and a card inside.

Both titles are available for pre-order starting August 3rd 

Visit... www.tetrovideo.com

 

 

 

Psycho-Thriller MOSQUITO STATE - Coming to Shudder

From director Filip Jan Rymsza and co-written by Rymsza and Mario Zermeno, the masterful allegorical psycho-thriller MOSQUITO STATE is available exclusively on Shudder from 26th August 2021. An official selection of the Venice Film Festival in 2020, Mosquito State was awarded the Bisato d’Oro for Best Cinematography as well as Best Special Effects at the Sitges Film Festival 2020.

On the eve of the 2007 financial crisis, in an austere penthouse overlooking Central Park, isolated and obsessive Wall Street data analyst Richard Boca (Beau Knapp - Death Wish [2018]) sees ominous patterns: His computer models are behaving erratically, as are the swarms of mosquitos breeding in his apartment, an infestation that attends his psychological meltdown.

On Wall Street, they’re called “quants”—the intense data analysts whose mathematical prowess can make the difference between a fortune and a flop. Consumed with his work, Richard doesn’t often stray from his office or apartment. But when Richard decides to go to a company party, hosted by his ruthless boss (Olivier Martinez - Unfaithful, Before Night Falls), he makes two acquaintances: the mysterious Lena (Charlotte Vega - Wrong Turn, American Assassin) and one pesky mosquito, both of which take root in his mind, altering his existence in profound ways.

Finding common ground between Franz Kafka, David Cronenberg and Mary Harron’s American Psycho, director-screenwriter Filip Jan Rymsza emerges with a new kind of body horror, set during a single week of an exquisitely rendered pre-crash 2007 replete with signs of socio-political and economic rot. A hypnotic plunge into the fragile mentality of an individual who can see patterns long before the rest of us.

View the trailer on YouTube.

MOSQUITO STATE arrives on Shudder on 26 August 2021

https://www.shudder.com