Mayhem warning
HORROR, sci-fi and cult cinema fans should head to the Broadway Cinema, Nottingham from Thursday, October 10, until Sunday, October 13, for the Mayhem Film Festival.
With the full line-up just announced, Mayhem will open this year’s festival with horror comedy Extra Ordinary. A small-town driving instructor with supernatural abilities tries to get through life without communicating with the dead – but the spirits have other ideas.
Also screening on opening night, Thursday October 10, is the brain-twisting Daniel Isn’t Real, in which a deeply troubled student summons his childhood “imaginary” friend but his grip on reality slips as the malignant alter ego unleashes a vicious, evil side.
From the producers of hallucinatory fever dream Mandy (a sell-out at Mayhem 2018) comes the most sought-after – and similarly psychedelic – genre film of the year, Richard Stanley’s Color Out Of Space, screening at this year’s festival on Friday, October 11. This eerie H.P. Lovecraft adaptation sees a meteor fall to earth and on to the property of a New England family — its increasingly unhinged patriarch played by Nicolas Cage — with insidious and delirious results.
It’s a double-helping of Cage this year as his 1989 cult black comedy Vampire’s Kiss takes the coveted Saturday late-night slot.
Expect three UK Premieres – there are exclusive first screenings of high-octane serial killer thriller The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, Polish historical drama Sword Of God
(The Mute), and outrageous survival horror The Pool.
Taking a look back into the archives, Mayhem has a rare screening of 1967 Russian folk horror Viy, and 1987’s cult sci-fi favourite The Hidden, featuring a standout performance from Twin Peaks’ Kyle MacLachlan as an alien-hunting FBI agent.
Mayhem 2019’s final day will begin with the unclassifiable Bullets Of Justice. Having created human-pig hybrid super soldiers, mankind now finds itself dominated by these “Muzzles” who farm and eat human beings – a truly “what did I just watch?” experience to start off your Sunday morning.
Watch screenings of female-led horror She Never Died and genre-bending monster movie, Something Else, alongside preview screenings of the gleefully explosive revenge rampage Why Don’t You Just Die!, highsuspense thriller Door Lock, and sci-fi nightmare Vivarium, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots.
Vengeful spirits are stirred into gory action in haunted house horror Girl On The Third Floor, and twisted thrill-ride Come To Daddy, starring Elijah Wood, will close the festival on Sunday.
The festival’s ever-popular Short Film Showcase and the fiendish film quiz, The Flinterrogation – hosted by author David Flint – both return to round off this year’s line-up.
■ Full festival passes: £80, Frankenstein Ticket Package £30 (choice of five films over the weekend), individual tickets also available. mayhemfilmfestival.com