I’m pleased to say that our film screenings at The Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh are moving to a Friday night slot! Hopefully this will mean more bums on seats and more beady eyes to watch the films on offer, and this month it’s a biggy.
For the fourth What Waits Below screening I’m going to show…WHAT WAITS BELOW aka SECRETS OF THE PHANTOM CAVERNS!!
I’ve raved about this film in a previous post here, so I’m not going to go into it all again. I’ve also written a review for the film on Letterboxd, so there’s even less reason for me to do so here (I’m lazy and there’s no denying it).
So all I can do is URGE you to come and watch the film and see for yourself.
What Waits Below screens WHAT WAITS BELOW! Friday 28th March The Banshee Labyrinth
7pm
FREE
What Waits Below #01 was a nerve wracker for me. I’d planned and prepped as much as I could. The venue was locked and loaded and I’d been to check out the screening gadgets and gizmos several weeks before the big day. The facebook and twitter pages were maturing slowly but surely and I was getting reasonable responses from friends and complete strangers on the social media platforms. It was just a question of waiting to see who would actually turn up on the night. The event’s completely free so no tickets, and no sense of expected bums on seats…
I decided to do a final push on facebook by promoting the event on various groups and pages that I thought would be up for listening or punting the message about.
Then something happened that made my blood pressure sky-rocket. I asked the good folk at High Rising Productions if they could share the event on their fb page. Almost as soon as I’d hit ‘post’ I saw High Rising had replied. Excited to see their surely inevitable “HUZZAH” and positive words, my head throbbed when I saw:
Thankfully it was cleared and the event went a-ok, but it raises an interesting question. Do venues and free film screenings in pubs across the land clear every film they show with the UK dvd distributor every time? Surely this doesn’t happen or else the same pub film nights across the land wouldn’t all occur. Venues with a Public Video Screening Licence (PVSL) have a list of studios from whose work they can screen. The studio list is pretty huge and consists of many of the big league names such as Universal, Warner and Sony which is great at that’s a massive pool of content to choose from. Screenings must be from domestic formats (dvd, bluray, vhs) and are usually sourced by the venue owner/event organiser by simply buying them from a shop for the purpose of the event or just drawing from their personal collection.
All well and good, but there is a very antiquated hitch. The PVSL states that you can’t promote the event from anywhere except the venue where the screening is taking place. Now back in the day of old school word-of-mouth and paper poster, that worked just fine and dandy. But what about social media? Should a venue be able to promote their screenings to their followers on facebook or twitter, because at the moment the PVSL doesn’t account for this.
But it happens anyway.
As I’ve said before, I believe that films need to be seen by an audience to be truly appreciated, even if that audience amounts to 2 people in an otherwise empty cinema. The sharing of the experience is what makes it important. Cult film nights (a term I don’t really like, it has to be said) can have a pretty niche attraction so the requirement to get the message out to promote these kind of events is pretty damn important, but only being able to tell people through posters in the venue cuts down the amount of interested punters who might fancy going along to something like that. Promotion through social media is the obvious next option as target markets can be pinpointed and informed directly and for free.
Should the use of social media promotion be allowed and included in the PVSL small print to help aid the growth of free fan film nights and the viewer-ship of lesser seen films? In my opinion it’s something that needs to be seriously considered. I don’t possess the means to push this through, but perhaps by discussing it, a ball might start rolling towards something positive for the future.
Thanks to the generosity of the folks at 88 Films (and with major help from Calum Waddell at High Rising Productions) I’m extremely happy to announce that I’ll be showing the criminally underseen horror gem TOURIST TRAP at the first What Waits Below screening event on November 25th at The Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh!
TOURIST TRAP (1979) is a crazy little film directed by David Schmoeller, whose other work includes CRAWLSPACE and the classic PUPPET MASTER. Starting with the vibe of a regular 80s slasher, it veers into eerie and atmospheric territory with its use of escalating suspense and memorably disturbing imagery all accompanied by a classic score by De Palma regular Pino Donaggio.
Be warned, if you have a phobia of mannequins you might want to bring a cushion to hide behind.
I hope this is going to be the first of many What Waits Below screening events, and I can’t wait to see how this one goes. Watching films should be an audience experience, so I’m hoping that I have one on the night. Fingers crossed!
It’s a completely free event, doors open at 7pm and it’s first come, first served regarding seats so get there early to guarantee yourself a good spot.
Here’s the info again for the first event:
What Waits Below Screening #01: TOURIST TRAP The Banshee Labyrinth Monday 25th November 7pm FREE ENTRY
My first post for a while due to tiredness, lots of day-job work, high levels of DIY at home, and general laziness.
So I thought I should tear myself from the pots of paint and get something up about Steven Spielberg’s lesser-known TV movie of 1972, Something Evil!
For those who haven’t seen it (and I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t as it’s not been seen on TV for YEARS) Something Evil came directly after Duel in the Spielberg canon. Written by Robert Clouse (director of Enter the Dragon!) it stars Darren McGavin (Kolchak The Nightstalker) and Sandy Dennis (976-EVIL) as a young-ish couple who move to a rural Pennsylvanian farmhouse to start a new life with their family. Unfortunately, as is the way of these things, the farmhouse already has a resident of the ghostly kind with demonic possession on its to-do list.
Like Salem’s Lot, this film scared the living gahoolies out of me when I saw it on TV as a callow youth, when I really should have been tucked up in bed dreaming about which Transformer I was going to get for Christmas. The various camera tricks that Spielberg employs to convey the presence of the evil spirit really packed a punch for me, and I can still see one terrifying image clearly in my minds eye to this day. Not going to tell you what it is though 😉
Something Evil definitely can be classed as a “lost” movie. There’s no sign of a release on the horizon and Spielberg doesn’t seem to talk about it much at all, but at the time it must have been a labour of love for him. Shot before the cinema release of The Exorcist, it obviously had a pretty low budget, but Big Ste really makes the most of the tightened purse strings, coaxing great performances out of his cast and creating a palpable sense of dread over the proceedings with the aforementioned forboding camera tricks and angles, and the brilliant eerie and atmospheric sound design.
I really hope this gets an official release some day as it deserves a much wider audience and can only add to the Spielberg “myth”. Until then (and until I screen it at a future WWB event at Banshee Labyrinth) you can see the full film on Youtube!
I was racking my brains for a while about what to call this blog/film event. Cheesy names, long names, obvious names, BORING names. They all ran through my head, but I couldn’t settle on any one.
Then I asked a friend of mine, Sir Kyle Titterton, Laird O’Inverkeithing and the Principality of Dulwich, what he thought about it all.
Me: “I can’t think of a decent name for the event apart from Ed’s Shit Film Night, and that really doesn’t have the desired ring to it. All I can come up with right now is What Waits Below. It’s the aka name of one of my all-time favourite B Movies.”
Kyle: “I think you might already have your name there.”
And he didn’t mean Ed’s Shit Film Night. Although that may be another venture for another time…
So yep. What Waits Below is the alternative title for one of my all-time most enjoyed, underdog B-movies in the world ever. It stars Robert Powell, who, in my opinion, instantly adds quality to any film he’s in. If the film is a dodgy 6 without him, once Powell rocks up, it’s hitting a good 9 without flinching (I prefer his version of the 39 Steps MUCH more than Robert Donat’s – my Mum’s going to kill me). Dark Forces (aka Harlequin), an Ozzie sci-fi/thriller/horror hybrid starring Powell AND David Hemmings (another instant shot of neat vodka into any average film) is a classic case in point.
And here’s an awesome picture of Hemmings the Hellraiser for good measure.
But What Waits Below is a different beast entirely. I saw it as an impressionable youngster on TV one afternoon (it must have been cut to be shown at that time. It’s not that it’s massively violent, but there is one surprisingly gruesome shot that pops up out of nowhere which must have been chopped by the good folks at the BBC. You’ll know it when you see it).
It was shown under its alternative title “Secrets of the Phantom Caverns“. Now how cool a title is THAT! Imagine being a teen at home alone and hearing the plummy voiced announcer saying that that film was coming on next. “Secrets of the Phantom what?! COUNT ME IN!”.
A few years later I happened upon a VHS copy in my trusty local 2nd-hand video shop and the distant memories of the film all came shooting to the surface to the point that I looked like the geezer on the front of the video cover.
NEEAAAAAARRRG.
The film has a definite Nigel Kneale / Quatermass vibe to it. Powell plays Rupert “Wolf” Wolfson, a caving expert and mercenary who must track down a vaguely described, yet highly important bit of Army kit that has mysteriously gone missing, along with several soldiers, within a huge, uncharted South American cave system. Accompanied by a crack team including Richard Johnson (Zombie Flesh Eaters / The Haunting), Lisa “love interest” Blount (Prince of Darkness) and Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show) Powell needs to keep his wits about him as it soon becomes obvious that…THEY ARE NOT ALONE DOWN THERE…
I don’t like writing spoilers, so I’ll let this identity challenged trailer do that for me. Oh and I’m DEFINITELY screening this at a future event.
Most people have a memorable starting point when it comes to becoming a fan of something. An earth-shattering moment that remakes and remodels your very being into something that may look and sound like you as far as your blissfully unaware friends and family can tell, but you know that things will never be the same again. For some it might be the first time you try your favourite food in the world ever. For others a book or an author that cracks opens your mind to exciting new thoughts, possibilities and emotions.
For me it was when I became a die hard fan of scary movies. Or to be historically accurate, scary TV programmes.
When I was about 8 or 9 back in Lancashire I remember my Mum, brother and sister sitting around the living room talking about TV shows they used to enjoy watching “back in the day”. Things like Dad’s Army, The Two Ronnies and The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club (too tricky to explain here – watch this and you’ll get the gist.), The Professionals, Jason King, Colditz and, of course, Top of the Pops. But then they started talking about one particular programme that seemed to have affected them in a very different way compared to all the others. They spoke of it in hushed tones and with stony innkeeper faces. It was something that they’d only watched once, it had never had a repeat on TV (re-run for those who aren’t up on Lanky lingo) and yet memories of it seemed to be burnt into their brains.
Adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same name, starring David Soul at the height of his TV heart-throb status, and directed by none other than the massacre man himself Tobe Hooper, Salem’s Lot had scared the stuffing out of my family. I’m not going to go into detail about which bits terrified them the most as that’d spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but believe me, their descriptions of watching the 1979 two part mini-series from behind hands, cushions and sofas gave me my first taste of the power of being horrified by something that you watch voluntarily as entertainment.
But the annoying thing was that I couldn’t watch it! This was before the days of the web and all that. I just had to be content with hearing snippets of info from my brother about scenes from the show, or getting my Mum and my sister (I think my Dad must have been in the pub as he doesn’t figure in any of my Salem’s Lot family reminiscences) to recount the stories about those two fateful evenings in the early 80s where their whooping, hollering, screaming and cushion grabbing escalated as the minutes went by. But the lean years made me eager for more. I’d seek out anything related to the programme, and while doing that, I started learning more and more about horror films and TV terror until I became a fully fledged gore geek AND PROUD OF IT.
As the years went by Salem’s Lot was released on video, first as “Salem’s Lot – The Movie”, an edited-down, gored-up version of the series for the European theatrical crowd with alternative takes used to add more spice.
Finally, in 1996 the full mini-series was given free reign to rise from the grave and enter our homes again on VHS. I saw “The Movie” first, not realising that it was stripped down, but I remember thinking it seemed disjointed (some characters appear once and then disappear completely), but when I bagged a copy of the full 3 hour version It. Was. Amazing. And I still love it to this day.
ps. Reggie Nalder deserves a post all to himself, so keep your eyes peeled for that sometime in the future. (Who’s Reggie Nalder? Watch Salem’s Lot to find out!)
What Waits Below... 