Stormhouse: FrightFest & The Festival Schedule

Hello you,

As new additions are made to the Stormhouse screening schedule, I wanted to post a round-up of places where you can see the film in coming days, weeks and months.  Here goes:

AUGUST 26
Film4 FrightFest, London Leicester Square Empire Cinema, Discovery Screen, 11.30pm
This is a source of tremendously giddy excitement for me.  It's a dream scenario for this event to be the very first to screen Stormhouse post-Edinburgh.  As I've said before, FrightFest has been a yearly pilgrimage for me since 2002, so having a film showing at this most prestigious of genre festivals is a great way to mark my tenth visit.  I've written a 1500 word piece on the experience of making a horror film in the UK and how that's a far from impossible achievement, for the latest issue of the event's free e-magazine. Keep an eye on the Film4 FrightFest's home page for the new August 2011 edition, which should be posted soon.

AUGUST 27
Birmingham Comic Con, 7pm
A new addition to the schedule, this well-regarded event will be screening the film for attendees, who will hopefully enjoy being frightened after a busy day of buying comics, meeting creators and attending panels!  You can see Stormhouse's placement on the Events page here.

AUGUST 30
Chichester International Film Festival, 9.15pm
I'm delighted that Stormhouse is showing here as a Best Of FrightFest package, comprising five films.  What an honour!

OCTOBER 14-23
Los Angeles Screamfest, screening day and time tbc
This is the US film festival which broke Paranormal Activity, and one which I've attended on two occasions.  A really tremendous event, passionate about horror films.  Again, such an honour to be among the line-up here.  Screamfest's Advisory Board reads like a Who's Who of horror, including John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Clive Barker, Sean Cunningham, Eli Roth and John Landis!

Exciting times, then.  Honours a-go-go!  Hope you get to see Stormhouse at one of these events.   As a very special bonus at no extra charge, please know that after you've viewed the film, Stormhouse's entity will follow you home and destroy your life.  Enjoy!

Stormhouse on Twitter

Stormhouse on Facebook

Stormhouse teaser on YouTube

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My ebook How To Interview Doctor Who, Ozzy Osbourne And Everyone Else, is out now on Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon.de.  You can also get the PDF Edition direct from me.  Full details here, you splendid individual.

Hot Festival Action

Big Mistake, a short film which I script-edited, has been selected for the eleventh annual Provincetown International Film Festival, which runs from June 17-21. Congrats to writer/director Dan Turner, cast and crew. For more on Big Mistake, see my report on the cast and crew screening here.

Today, I'm In Washington DC

Or at least my name will be, on a big screen, alongside Dan Turner's. Look At Me, the short film we birthed together in 2008, will play the Washington DC Independent Film Festival on this very day. It's being screened in a package of shorts which kicks off at 9.15pm, EST. Happily, I know we're in good company, because I've seen one of the other films, Richard Gale's The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon, which is funny as a barrel of fucks. Exciting!

If you've seen Look At Me, then you can help us by rating it on the festival site here. If you haven't seen Look At Me, you can stream it on Lord Daniel's site here. So there's really no excuse.

Still twiddling thumbs after that? Here are two other free ways to help people (okay, so one of them is still benefiting me, but altruism's overrated):

Cock & Balls, the not-safe-for-work song which I told you about a while back, has been viewed well over 7000 times in the last couple of weeks on the site Funny Or Die. If you haven't already, take a look at Richard Glover (also the star of Look At Me, fact-fans) crooning about his crown jewels. Added incentive: 50 per cent of viewers have so far voted 'Funny', while the others have voted 'Die'. So you can tip the scales! Make a difference! Influence the world by tapping on plastic keys! Incredible, isn't it? Go!

Tim Clague's neat film God Versus The Advertising Standards Authority has been grabbed by the Babelgum Festival, which is splendid. If you go here, you can watch the film, and I'll let Tim explain the rest: "In full screen mode, select the green 'Vote' button (on the top of the screen, next to the film title) to vote for my entry – or simply wait for the 'Vote Now' window to appear at the bottom of the screen. You can only vote when the video is playing in full screen and only once per day." Thanks, Tim! And thanks in advance to all who help. Jesus Christ, every man-jack of you delights me.

San Sebastian: The Aftermath

It´s been a great six days at the San Sebastian Horror & Fantasy Film Festival. I´m feeling somewhat tattered and torn, which is only to be expected, but I already can´t wait for next year. There´s a hell of a lot to enjoy in San Sebastian. Without even taking the festival into account, it´s a truly beautiful city.


Its Old Town quarter is a playground for boozy, smoky indulgence, where you can play the exquisite bingo-pinball machines...


And enjoy some great ´pintxos´, which are basically posh Basque tapas...


My favourite film of the fest was Martyrs (pictured below), a phenomenal killer-blow from French director Pascal Laugier, which has been caused tidal waves in the horrorsphere. I finally caught up with it at a 10am press screening, and despite having been warned it was a rough watch, I didn´t quite expect it to be that brutal, bleak and disturbing. Despite all the grim horror, though, it turned out to hinge on some really interesting ideas. I loved it. Well, ´love´ isn´t quite the right word, but it was great. Strongly recommended to hardcore horror fans. How can you not want to watch a film which made one viewer pass out during the Sitges Film Festival?


One of the great things about being a journalist (or at least one, these days, when it suits me), is being able to watch a film like Martyrs, then discuss it with the director, mere hours later. Pascal (pictured below) turned out to be a perfectly lovely and not at all psychopathic gentleman, who admitted that he hadn´t considered my interpretation of the film´s conclusion. Shame, really, as my interpretation was my one sliver of hope...


In a few hours, I´m flying back to London, eager to eat some healthy food, shun booze and kick the cigar habit I´ve reacquired during my stay...


All these toxins do very strange things to the mind. Yesterday, I launched into a booze-and-nicotine-fuelled frenzy and did this to the nearest child:

Regretted it afterwards, obviously. But the kid´s parents were very understanding and decided not to press charges.

National TV Awards & San Sebastian

Last night, I attended The National TV Awards at the Royal Albert Hall, dressed up to the nines with a bow-tie and cufflinks (and of course clothes). It was all tremendously exciting, both in terms of celeb-spotting and witnessing how a big live event is run. We had excellent seats, almost directly to the right of the stage - all the better for peering across at the rows of famous folk sitting in the middle of the floor. There was a whole row of Doctor Who royalty: Russell T Davies, Catherine Tate, Julie Gardner, Phil Collinson, Steven Moffat, Jane Tranter, Noel Clarke, Camile Coduri, Elisabeth Sladen. Who won Most Popular Drama (the picture above hazily shows Russell and Catherine accepting the award), while David Tennant picked up Most Popular Drama Performance - and astonishingly, during a live link-up video, broke the news that 2009's four specials will be his last performances as the Doctor. Sob, wail, etc. It initially seemed like a bizarre announcement to make, with another year to go, but I guess the reality is that producers and casting directors need to know that David's available for work in 2010...


The world of talent shows was well-represented too, with the entire panel of X Factor judges sitting together in the middle of one row. Hollyoaks people were present in force, as were EastEnders folk - as was made clear when they all got up en masse to collect Most Popular Serial Drama. There were some impressive Hollywood types present to hand over gongs, including Paris Hilton and Desperate Housewives' Nicollette Sheridan - even if both appeared to be stop-motion animated, resembling sinewy stick figures.

Tomorrow, I'm off to San Sebastian, as is now traditional, for the 19th Horror & Fantasy Film Festival. On Halloween! Cool. I'm just as excited about it as I was last year (I just re-read that post from almost exactly a year ago, and was amused to see that I considered writing "102 pages in 26 days!" to be impressive). I'm not there for quite as long as usual - a 'mere' six nights - but I shall make the most of it. Here are some pictures from the last four years, featuring my good friend Jay Slater. As you can see, we've never missed a vital opportunity to soak up the local culture...


























Buffoonish boozing aside, the Festival is superb - totally professional and prestigious, but not so big that it sacrifices intimacy. It also features the loudest audiences I've seen anywhere in the world! Talk about the lion's den: if a film bores this crowd, they make their displeasure known very quickly. I'll never forget the screening of H6: Diary Of A Serial Killer, during which the director and the crowd had a big argument, trading insults in Spanish!

San Sebastian is also a beautiful city. Its Old Town quarter is one of my favourite places in the world, chock-full of cool little bars, restaurants and shops. This year, for the first time in three years, my hotel is right in the middle of it, so I'm going to be in seventh heaven. Until the mornings after, of course. Those will be seventh hells. I may post during my stay, but can't and indeed won't guarantee this. Let's wait and see, eh? It'll make it all the more edgy and exciting.

Love you. Bye, then.