THROWBACK THURSDAY—The SF360 Fivepick for Another Hole In the Head (2007)

With early confirmation of the filmic slate being offered at the 19th edition of S.F. IndieFest’s genre sidebar Another Hole In the Head, I look back at my SF360 write-up for the festival’s fourth edition in 2007. 

* * * 

How do you like your horror? Do you prefer hideous aliens attempting to take over our planet let alone our human bodies? Do you prefer Japanese ghosts begrudgingly residing in the wallboards? Are you titillated by torture porn? Do you take your scares seriously or blended with lots of tongue-in-cheek comic relief? The SF Independent Film Festival's 4th Annual (Yet Another) Hole in the Head Film Festival ("Holehead") runs June 1-14, 2007 at the Roxie Film Center and is offering up a 10-day program catering to just about every preference. Along with the gore, ghouls, ghosts and gags San Franciscan audiences have grown accustomed to, this year's added attraction is an animation showcase: SF Indiefest Gets Animated! Owning up to my own idiosyncratic tastes, here are five I would recommend from this year's line-up:

Blood Car (2007)—For anyone who has ever chanted "Blood For Oil" at an anti-war rally, Alex Orr's Blood Car will confirm the equation once and for all. Though San Franciscans won't have the actual Blood Car out in front of the theater promoting the screening (as they did in Atlanta), we'll still have a clever send-up on gasoline prices, car sex and vegans placed in compromising situations. Mike Brune nails his nerdy but endearing characterization of Archie Andrews, a would-be inventor in a near future where gas prices have soared to $40 a gallon. Archie—as you've no doubt already guessed—accidentally stumbles upon a new fuel: human blood! Filling up the tank acquires new murderous connotations in this camp horror piece that deftly leverages gore with a classical music score. [2022 Update: Blood Car is available for rental through Amazon Prime. Gas prices may have gone up in Blood Car’s dystopian future, but the rental is only a buck.]

   

El Muerto (2006)—Javier Hernandez was impaled by a radioactive pencil belonging to a comic book artist when he was a young boy and comic zinedom has never been the same since. His character El Muerto debuted in the Bay Area in 1998 and has been adapted by Brian Cox into a film that creatively tweaks muertos iconography and puts the Chicano back into chicanery. Death has never been more deceived than by Diego who—on his way to a Day of the Dead party—crashes into a tree, dies, but nonetheless sticks around. Wilmer Valderrama (known by many as Fez from That 70's Show but who recently did a fine turn in Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation) plays Diego/El Muerto who traverses the death horizon to help the living.

 

Simon Says (2006)—Crispin Glover gleefully goes over the top in his dual role as maniacal brothers Simon and Stanley who enjoy playing deadly games out in the booby-trapped back country woods with unsuspecting sexy college kids. William Dear's film fondles the genre with loving wryness. Ever since Deliverance, hillbilly horror has been a staple for urbanites who fear running out of gas in some remote neck of the woods and who then have to save their own necks from dastardly sharp-edged contraptions. What Glover does with a yappy little poodle in this yarn must be seen to be believed.  

In The Living and The Dead (2006)—Simon Rumley's truly disturbing descent into madness eschews any kind of comic or ironic accents to thrust you into events so grueling and intense, you will frequently have to look away. As one of my [former] Twitch teammates has written, The Living and the Dead's achievement is its "volatile treatise on the emotional and physical burdens we place on loved ones throughout life." Part horror, part psychological decay, part tragedy, this genre hybrid unflinchingly examines the dark horror in the human heart. Leo Bill's performance as the troubled James Brocklebank is indelibly horrific.  

Murder Party (2007)—Winner of the Audience Award at Slamdance 2007, Murder Party arrives at Holehead bolstered by critical fanfare. Director Jeremy Saulnier describes his Halloween party gone awry as "The Breakfast Club—with chainsaws and hard drugs." A cautionary tale about accepting party invitations from hosts you don't know, Murder Party invites you into murderous pretenses to art. The deaths are creative and hilarious.  

And from the animation line-up: Bad Bugs Bunny—If you missed film archivist Dennis Nyback's recent Oddball Film presentations, here's your chance to catch up. Nyback developed the Bad Bugs Bunny program in 1993 for Seattle's Pike Street Cinema where it promptly sold out. He then traveled with the program throughout more than 20 cities in Europe. These Warner Brother cartoons have been pulled from distribution because they clearly evidence presiding racist, sexist and violent sentiments from America's not-too-distant past. Owned by Ted Turner's company who initially threatened to take action against Nyback for screening these "bad" cartoons, Bad Bugs Bunny is at this point skirting litigation and flirting with audiences. [2022 Update: Sadly, the film community lost Nyback about a month ago when he passed away on October 2, 2022.]