The Shockproof Film Festival 2012
The films of 2012
BAD BIOLOGY
Zvrhlá biologie
Frank Henenlotter, USA 2008
84 min. / HD / English
Tuesday 14th February from 18:00 / 100 Kč
Frank Henenlotter’s Bad Biology makes an ideal Valentine film experience. The uncurable romantics can wrap themselves safely in a story of two lonely souls that have found love, others will appreciate what connoisseurs hail as the longest orgasm in film history. The legendary director of trash classics like Basket Case and Brain Damage is back. It may have taken him sixteen years to direct a new film, but he certainly hasn't lost his sense of tastelessness yet. Jennifer has a seven clitoris vagina and her insatiable appetite for sex is fueled by a bizarre hormone abnormality that causes her to give birth to mutant babies two hours after coitus. Batz has a gigantic, drug-addicted penis with a mind of its own. And then they meet… Happy twisted Valentine, dear friends.
Trailer (YouTube)
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FATHER’S DAY
Den otců
Astron-6, Canada, USA 2011
99 min. / HD / English
Tuesday 14th February from 20:30 / 100 Kč
Father’s Day is usually associated with paternal love and the giving of cheesy greeting cards and goofy ties. However, this movie will give you a whole new perspective on the celebration. An off-the-wall tale about a one-eyed vigilante on the hunt for a cannibalistic, daddy-raping psychopath, Father’s Day is the brainchild of the Winnipeg filmmaking collective Astron-6, known for their impressive output of horror and comedy shorts. After making a trailer for a fake exploitation flick, Troma offered the group $10,000 to produce a full-length feature of the concept. The result starts off as a fairly standard and insanely gory grindhouse throwback, but evolves into something much more. Sons, lock up your fathers, vengeance arrives on Father's Day!
Trailer (YouTube)
The original hard-core trailer (DailyMotion)
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THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA
Ztracený kostlivec z Jeskyně rozkladu
Larry Blamire, USA 2001
90 min. / DVD / English
Wednesday 15th February from 18:00 / 100 Kč
Those 1950’s B-Movies were diabolical, with their crappy acting, appalling sets, senseless scripts and hilarious monsters. And Lost Skeleton is a loving tribute to exactly this kind of production. Told with poker-faced glee, the movie is an "it came from another world" saga featuring a rubber suit mutant, a skeleton intent on conquering Earth, a cat-woman and a pair of aliens, who have crash landed on Earth. Writer-Director Larry Blamire has a genuine taste for this material, right down to his Ed Wood performance as the dedicated scientist, who rolls up his shirt sleeves and aided by his clueless wife sets out to save the world. Brilliant and terrible at the same time, the film is an amazingly accurate recreation of the period’s cinematic ineptitude, presented with loving care in fabulous Skeletorama.
Trailer (YouTube)
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RABIES
Kalevet / Vzteklina
Aharon Keshales a Navot Papushado, Israel 2010
90 min. / DVD / Hebrew with English subtitles
Wednesday 15th February from 20:30 / 100 Kč
This year’s excursion to the more exotic regions of genre cinema takes us to Israel with Rabies - the debut feature from writer-directors Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado. It starts off as your typical slasher flick with a group of teens on a trip taking a shortcut through the woods, but this is where the familiar territory ends. The film manages to be consistently violent and shocking, whilst simultaneously ripping the horror movie playbook to shreds. It laughs in the face of audience expectations and has the viewers gleefully creasing up thanks to its devilish sense of humor and meticulously crafted script. In short, the very first Israeli slasher distinguishes itself as one of the most original and genre bending entries in recent memory.
Trailer (YouTube)
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KILLER WORKOUT aka AEROBICIDE
Vražedný aerobic
David A. Prior, USA 1987
82 min. / DVD / English
Thursday 16th February from 18:00 / 100 Kč
This year we celebrate the body and grade-D genre director David Prior’s 1986 schlock-fest Killer Workout a.k.a. Aerobicide is a tale of a serial killer who preys on victims in a gym. Arguably the cheesiest of all slasher movies, it incorporates both inventive murders and good looking sweaty bodies grooving to an intense 80‘s sound track. The director does his best to keep a bit of cleavage in every shot and other delights include tons of the compulsory spandex outfits supplemented with neon wrist warmers and ridiculous hairdos. The film also contains probably the worst Psycho shower scene rip-off ever filmed. And then for those, who survive the slaughter, comes the final revelation that every place has a killer it deserves.
Trailer (YouTube)
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GYMKATA
Robert Clouse, USA 1985
90min. / DVD / English
Thursday 16th February from 20:30 / 100 Kč
More like GEMkata! Here’s an excellent example of something that only could have happened in the 80’s – the mullet wearing champion gymnast Kurt Thomas's epic saga of one man's fight to liberate the fictional Eastern European country of Parmistan from the clutches of a bearded arch-villain by using flares, straddles, tucks, splits, twists and saltos. And all that so the U.S. government can put a satellite thingy for the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative in Parmistan and thus hold back the communist expansion. One of the key titles in this year’s shockproof celebration of the body in all its shapes and forms, Gymkata is a classic. There’s no excuse for not seeing Gymkata.
Trailer (YouTube)
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THE UNKNOWN
Alonzo, muž bez rukou
Tod Browning, USA 1927
49 min. / DVD / silent film with live music (English intertitles)
Friday 17th February from 18:30 / 100 Kč
The Unknown is one of the final masterpieces of the silent film era. Suspend disbelief and step into the carnival of the absurd. Lon Chaney, the man of thousand faces, plays a criminal who hides his identity by wrapping up his arms such that he can appear as an armless man in a traveling circus. He falls in love with his beautiful assistant, but unfortunately for him she has a pathalogical fear of being touched by men. It is an entirely idiosyncratic work of art, which has never been remotely mimicked, nor could it be. Only Tod Browning, who would later make Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932), could have directed this lurid, deliriously surreal end effectively perverse drama with strangely camp undertones.
The silent film will be accompanied live by the vinyl sound alchemists Birds Build Nests Underground (www.bbnu.eu).
Trailer (YouTube)
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THE WOMAN
Žena
Lucky McKee, USA 2011
101 min. / HD / English
Friday 17th February from 20:30 / 100 Kč
Director Lucky McKee's latest macabre fairytale is just as concerned with female psychology as his stunning debut May was, but this time he focuses on familial dysfunction and gender politics to put his audience through the emotional wringer. In short, The Woman tells a story about an all-American family man who comes across and entraps a feral woman living in the woods and decides to civilise her. What follows is a no-holds-barred assault on the viewer’s sensibilities. The film is horrific, dark, demanding and deeply unsettling, but at the same beautifully layered and lingering. The Woman will resonate in your head for days. A work that boldly defies any attempts to slot it into any sort of easy niche, it gives the audience what it needs, rather than what it wants. A film that should be seen. A subversive masterpiece that will stun you into submission.
Trailer (YouTube)
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THE IMPOSSIBLE KID
Nemožňák
Eddie Nicart, Filipíny 1982
93 min. / DVD / English
Friday 17th February from 22:30 / 100 Kč
Rejoice! After last year’s For Y’ur Height Only the Filipino midget action star Weng Weng is back as the fearless Agent 00, irresistible to women and hard as nails! This time round he works for the Manila branch of Interpol. Extortionist terrorists are kidnapping wealthy businessmen, holding them for ransom. Naturally this has got to stop and Weng Weng gets to work his magic. A sequel to a 1981 Filipino movie filmed on a zero budget and dubbed into stoner English? Can it be worth watching? Absolutely.
Trailer (YouTube)
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50°10'53.468"N, 16°33'12.266"E
Radovan Klučka a Zdeněk Pecha, Česká republika 2012
79 min. / DVD / Czech (no English subtitles)
Saturday 18th February from 15:00 / 100 Kč
Czech cinema gets its own take on the subgenre of found footage horror movies. The film made on zero budget by a group of actors from the up-and-coming generation of acting school graduates spins the genre by focusing on the very concept at its core. This time the camera is not just a passive witness of the horrors uncovered by two friends who are looking for the sister of one of them who went missing. The camera takes up the personality of the one who is wielding it as it gradually changes hands.
Trailer (YouTube)
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RE-ANIMATOR
Stuart Gordon, USA 1985
86 min. / 35 mm / English
Saturday 18th February from 16:45 / 100 Kč
In 1985 Re-Animator, a loose adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's short story, breathed new life into the trash movie genre. A low budget collision of black comedy and gruesome horror marked this debut feature of director Stuart Gordon and it's well balanced mix of old fashioned horror atmospherics and boundary pushing gore secured it a firm place in film history. A demented medical student Herbert West, played with quirky intensity by Jeffrey Combs, develops a serum that can bring human corpses back to life, but the re-animated carcasses turn spastically violent. Determined to succeed, West continues in his experiments. Re-Animator is a brilliant tour-de-farce of gut-busting laughs and plain old gut-busting. An unquestionable classic!
Trailer (YouTube)
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THE TINGLER
Třaslavec
William Castle, USA 1959
81 min. / HD / English
Saturday 18th February from 19:00 / 100 Kč
Pathologist Dr. Warren Chapin discovers that when in a state of extreme fear, an organism grows along a person's spine. The only thing that will stop the growth is the sound of screaming. The Tingler marks the second teaming of horror's greatest actor - Vincent Price, and horror's greatest showman - William Castle. Enjoy the brilliant campy fun with a low budget, a silly script, an outrageous monster, the very first LSD trip in a motion picture and on top of it all the infamous gimmick Percepto, which will let you feel the power of the tingler right there in your seats. Will you dare to join us in the cinema? You’ve been warned. When the screen screams you’ll scream too… if you value your life!
Trailer (YouTube)
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THE BUNNY GAME
Hra na zajíčka
Adam Rehmeier, USA 2010
76 min. / HD / English
Saturday 18th February from 21:30 / 100 Kč
Experimental cinema meets torture porn. After last year’s frontal assault of A Serbian Film we bring a new title for the bravest fans of extreme film. Bunny is a drug addict and a prostitute caught in an ugly cycle of abuse and self-destruction when a truck driving john enters her life and introduces her to an existence far worse. Adam Rehmeier’s provocative debut feature The Bunny Game is a psychologically terrifying film designed to take you on a journey into the darkest parts of your mind. A challenging piece of disturbing performance art, utterly brutal and unrelenting in every way. Everything you see happening is real. Get ready for an encounter with a real monster of negative energy.
And as a fitting appetizer the screening will be preceded by a shockproof performance masterminded by audiovisual artist Mark Ther, this year’s holder of the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award and the author of the festival trailer.
Trailer (YouTube)
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THE DIRTIEST GAME IN THE WORLD
Nejšpinavější hra na světě
James Bryan, USA 1970
60 min. / DVD / English
Saturday 18th February from 23:30 / 100 Kč
A grimy relic of a bygone time, Dirtiest Game is a viciously satirical sexploitation roughie which comes within a tongue's length of hardcore. A politician tries to infiltrate the hippie and marijuana milieu to gain votes, he scorns his wife and gets involved with free-sex and sex orgies. All goes fairly well until the wife goes berserk, leading to a bloody, violent ending with razor blades and a gun. Director James Bryan desribes his film as „a three days wonder born out of this crazed era, inspired by Un Chien andalou. My goal was to have the audience either go directly into orgy mode in the theater or crawl out to the street and throw up in the gutter.“ Which of these options will be favored by the shockproof audience remains to be seen.
As post-coital relaxation the shockproof audience will get a rare treat. Enjoy a reminder of the golden age of pornography in Czechoslovakia with the authentic screening of unearthed 70’s Made-in-Scandinavia 8 mm one-reel treasures.
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SANTO VS. THE TELEVISION KILLER
Santo contra el asesino de la T.V. / El Santo proti vrahovi z televize
Rafael Pérez Grovas, Mexiko 1981
84 min. / DVD / Spanish (no English subtitles, Czech translation)
Sunday 19th February from 16:00 / 100 Kč
The world is a very uncertain place, but there is one thing you can be always sure of - whatever happens, the festival wouldn’t be complete without the firm father figure of Santo presiding over the shockproof proceedings. In this year’s double bill we’ll first introduce El Hijo del Santo, the son of the legendary luchador, fighting the notorious Mexican bureaucracy in a delicious little short and then in the main feature Santo himself gets to fight some masked creep named Magnus, who hijacks the airwaves to announce and then broadcast his crimes. In this outing the masked hero gets some help from Gerardo Reyes, then popular ranchera singer who plays a popular ranchera singer who is also a newspaper reporter who is also a government agent - whew!
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A BLIND DATE WITH THE SHOCPROOF AERO
Aero naslepo pro otrlé
88 min. / DVD / German with English subtitles
Sunday 19th February from 18:30 / free entry
A blind date with The Shockproof Film Festival and cinema Aero. Till the very last minute you’ll have no clue what film we are going to screen tonight. On the other hand, we don’t ask you to buy any tickets - you simply pay what you want after the screening. And if we screen a film that you already know, we’ll compensate your loss of time with one beer completely free of charge! A small hint though: the film will be in German language with English subtitles, lots of frolicking and it won’t belong to the lederhosen skin flick variety.
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ORGY OF THE DEAD
Orgie mrtvých
Stephen C. Apostolof, USA 1965
91 min. / DVD / English
Sunday 19th February from 20:30 / 100 Kč
Ed Wood is rising from the grave to bring the testimony of what awaits the souls of lecherous women after they die – eternal reckless topless dancing for the amusement of the Emperor of the Dead (played by his royal dementedness Criswell himself) and his companions the Black Ghoul, the Wolfman and the Mummy. And although this time Ed is responsible only for the script, Bulgarian refugee S. C. Apostolof directs the flick with an affectionate nod to the master. Sure, this movie is slow, tedious, repetitious and ultimately pointless. But it grows on you. Like fungus.
Filmed in gorgeous Astravision and shocking Sexicolor Orgy Of The Dead is a film unlike any before or since and the agony it inflicts on its viewers shouldn’t go unrecognized. Therefore invigorating refreshments will be served during the screening.
Trailer (YouTube)