Beyond the Black Rainbow is one of Tom’s most-anticipated films of the festival.
Seeing as Milwaukee is already the proud owner of the longest running repertory screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the U.S. and has begun to schedule frequent screenings of gonzo schlocksterpiece The Room, it would be easy to keep away from the raucous midnight screening series taking place at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival – worried that you’ll be pelted with an errant spoon or brought onstage by a scantily clad Tim Curry lookalike. However, that would be a mistake – with the Cinema Hooligante program, it’s not the crowds that are raucous, rather it’s the movies.
A whole host of acclaimed genre features dot the festival’s schedule this year, not the least of which is the Friday midnight screening of the indie horror anthology V/H/S. The perfect usage of the overworked “found footage” trope, the film isn’t shackled to a feature-length narrative and instead is allowed to embrace the haunted house atmosphere that found footage provides and focus almost wholly on the scares. Plus, anything that could generate this visceral a response must be worth checking out, right?
Also on tap for this festival is Beyond the Black Rainbow (perhaps my most anticipated of the entire festival), a psychadelic horror fantasy that has been wowing festival crowds the world over, as well as the Wisconsin-set apocalyptic road trip Dead Weight. Perhaps the toughest genre to thrive in, the horror comedy, is also represented at the festival by Eddie – The Sleepwalking Cannibal, which follows an art teacher whose love of viscera and the macabre finds its perfect match in his school’s mute benefactor whose nighttime activities ignite a creative maelstrom (shades of Corman’s Bucket of Blood?).
I’ll be talking more at length about the variety of shorts programs the festival has to offer on the blog soon, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Shorts: The Best Damn F*#@ing Midnight Program Ever. Sh*t (full title), possibly the wildest and most ridiculous set of short films you could ever hope to see housed all under one roof.
The acclaimed Danish comedy Klown (already being prepped for an American remake) is also on the docket, with its special brand of shockingly inappropriate humor that somehow coalesces into something genuine and sentimental. Citadel, an Irish horror offering, looks to be one of the most intense experiences of the festival, with filmmaker Ciaran Foy using the tools of his trade to make the audience feel the protagonist’s acute agoraphobia as he tries to track down his newborn daughter, kidnapped by hoodie-donning demonic youths.
Last but not least is the special presentation of The Giant Spider Invasion. Curated by local cinephile Mark Borchardt, this Wisconsin-made cult oddity is a movie designed to be experienced by a big audience with its collection of bizarre dialogue and characters, and director Bill Rebane will be live and in person to let us know just how he managed to make this chunk of Midwestern fried gold come to live.
If the descriptions weren’t enough to either persuade/dissuade you from attending Cinema Hooligante this year let me be clear: If you’re uninterested in films that push your buttons and test your limits with sex, laughs and guts than this definitely isn’t the program for you. However, for the adventurous cinema goer, these late night screenings throughout the festival will be a welcome chaser to the more vanilla (but no less quality) programming offered during the daylight hours.
