p e n g u i n d e v i l

Aww yes. Part two of the Lovecraft Film Festival! Though I enjoyed myself alright on Friday night, I conducted this evening in a more organized fashion.

First thing, I saw the ‘Thickets table in the Bazaar area and bought the “Thing on the Stage” tour shirt that I’d been wanting, which was nice to get out of the way. Then I stepped into a theater to watch a new documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown. Pretty much a straight ahead biography of HPL, it was quite good. There was nice archival footage, some nice scenes of Providence (I’ve always been hankering to see Providence) and a lot of great interviews: Primarily Neil Gaiman, Guillermo Del Toro and John Carpenter, but also S T Joshi, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub and our own Andrew Migliore! It was quite good and something that I’ll need to be getting when it makes its DVD appearance.

After that it was down to the main theater to see Mike Mignola and Brian Lumley receive their Howie awards and then watch a block of shorts. As one might imagine, some of the shorts were rather unnotable (one seemed to just be a preview), but there were some winners! The highlights were: Eel Girl, the story of a scientist who is rather strangely attracted to his research subject. It’s an uckky “toothy-Siren in the lab” story from New Zealand that has scary teeth and a tub filled unwholesome-looking goo. There was the great AM 1200, which seemed to be a totally professionally done film, though only 40 minutes long. Nice script, cinematography, acting, CG, story-line… Everything. It was a really great short film about a “thing” that lives in a secluded radio station and uses broadcasting to attract people for its own nefarious purposes. It was really great and creepy, with a lot of it taking place out-of-doors in the dark. The third high point, though I don’t generally like comics or animated things, was the wonderful and terribly funny The Amazing Screw-on Head. Based on a Mignola comic, it’s the heroic tale of a, well, screw-on head (who is an agent of Abraham Lincoln) as he goes up against Emperor Zombie (with his two horrible old women and the monkey) and the evil demigod, it was quite great! Seemingly done as a potential TV series that never really took off.

Then to the highpoint of the evening…

Off to Tony Starlight’s to see The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets! How this is my first time seeing them live, I just don’t know. But it was great! The place was packed, the band was in great form (sounding not much different than their recorded material) and they played some great favorites (Shoggoth’s Away, Slave Ship, Ogdru Jahad, the Innsmouth Look), plus some fun songs that I hadn’t heard before.

Though they were cramped ont a tiny stage, they really put on a good show with great energy, humor and just a heck of a lot of fun! And, of course, some great eldritch rock ‘n’ roll. Toren told me that they would be playing in Vancouver BC in December, so I’m going to ponder pretending that I could actually get up there for that show…