BIFFF 2016: Q&A sessions

In the following two weeks, I'll be hosting several Q&A sessions at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival BIFFF. The Q&As are open to the public, so feel free to stop by if you're in the area.

Here are the films I'll be talking about:

Let's Scare Jessica to Death

I'll be giving an introduction to John D. Hancock's Let's Scare Jessica to Death at the Offscreen Film Festival in Brussels on March 20th.

In this chilling ghost story from 1971, the fragile Jessica longs for a new beginning, having recently been released from a psychiatric hospital. She isolates herself in an old farmhouse with her husband and a friend. But is she safe from the aftermath of her mental illness? Once she hears the local stories about vampires roaming the countryside, Jessica starts having nightmarish visions that will defy everything she has ever experienced before.

Un homme bien - Official movie trailer

Check out the official movie trailer for Un homme bien, the French film adaptation of my story A Good Man. You can read and download the original screenplay from Amazon (ENG) and Smashwords (FR).

Win free tickets for the Offscreen film festival

Today's giveaway is courtesy of the Offscreen film festival who is giving away five duo tickets for the movie of your choice.

To enter to win, all you have to do is leave a comment telling me which movie you'd like to see.

You can gain extra entries by sharing this post on Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Google+ and/or a forum. Or by following this blog through GFC, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and/or Google+. Six possible entries per person.

Contest is open worldwide. Five winners will be chosen on March 7. Good luck!

Here are a few examples of the movies Offscreen will be playing. The complete festival program is available online at http://www.offscreen.be.

Room 237

Have you seen Stephen King's The Shining? Well, this ingenious documentary explores numerous theories about the story and its hidden messages. Discover why many have been trapped in the Overlook for 30 years!

Polyester

Life for housewife Francine (played by Divine) is hell: her son is a glue-sniffing foot fetishist, her daughter a slut, and her husband the owner of a local porn theater who leaves her for his seedy secretary. The film is presented in Odorama, complete with original scratch and sniff cards. It's only one of the many John Waters films that play in retrospective at the festival. John Waters will be at Offscreen himself with his stand-up show This Filthy World, a book signing and a masterclass.

Vampyres

José Ramon Larraz has had an unusual career as a filmmaker, comic book illustrator and photographer. Vampyres is his best-known film. His other works that play in retrospective at the festival are Scream... Or Die, Symptoms and The Coming Of Sin. There are also two exhibitions giving you an overview of his comic book illustrations and photography work.

Berberian Sound Studio

A British sound engineer arrives in Italy to work on a mysterious giallo picture. Daringly original and masterfully constructed, this inspired homage to the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, also recalls the claustrophobia of Brian De Palma's Blow Out. Berberian Sound Studio will be presented in the presence of British writer-director Peter Strickland and Belgian voice-artist Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg.

Branded To Kill

By balancing delicately on the edge of surrealism, this dark and impenetrable masterpiece becomes a resolutely fascinating gangster film. The film was so cutting-edge at the time that it cost director Seijun Suzuki his job at the studio. It has since been recognized as a major classic in Japanese cinema.

Las mariposas de Sadourni

Circus dwarf Sadourni gets sentenced to jail after a crime of passion. Free at last, he finds work at a club where he dubs movies and falls in love with his beautiful colleague. A visually stunning film that couples Murnau's expressionism with the surrealism of Jodorowsky.

Alecia Stone's favorite sci-fi and fantasy movies

The following post is by Alecia Stone. She is the author of Talisman Of El, a novel with a gorgeous hero, thrilling emotions, romance and intrigue.

Being a fan of sci-fi and fantasy movies since childhood, many films have inspired my imagination and as such have inspired Talisman Of El. I’ve watched many movies, so this one was hard to compile, but I think the list below features a range of movies that I can say have been both an inspiration and are also slightly similar, whether in plot or theme, to the elements in my novel.

10. Harry Potter

9. The Fifth Element

8. Pan's Labyrinth

7. Journey To The Center Of The Earth

6. The Wizard Of Oz

5. Lord Of The Rings

4. Alice In Wonderland

3. The Goonies

2. Narnia

1. Peter Pan

Robert Gray's favorite Christmas stories

This is a guest post by Robert Gray, the author of Eve Hallows and The Book Of Shrieks and Eve Hallows and The Book Of Shadows.

I've always been a fan of Christmas stories--from the outright hysterical to the festively gruesome. So, in the spirit of the season, I thought I'd offer up my top ten favorite holiday stories of all time.

10. How The Grinch Stole Christmas

9. Gremlins

8. 'Twas The Night Before Christmas

7. A Christmas Story

6. Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

5. Elf

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas

3. It's A Wonderful Life

2. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

1. A Christmas Carol

What are your favorite Christmas stories?

Movies about intelligent machines

Here's a guest post that originally appeared at Bibliophilia Please and For The Love Of Film And Novels. The post was part of the blog tour for GPS WITH BENEFITS, a short film script in which a womanizer purchases a GPS device with a mind of 'her' own. It got me thinking of other movies about intelligent machines. Here are some of my favorites...

Demon Seed

A scientist creates an organic super computer which becomes obsessed with human beings, and in particular the creator's wife. Demon Seed is one of Dean Koontz' best novels to date. Check out the excellent movie adaptation from 1977 starring Julie Christie.

Chopping Mall

Security androids turn evil and kill the employees from a shopping mall. Lots of eighties movie fun!

Christine

Early Stephen King novel about the relationship between a nerdish boy and his evil car. John Carpenter directed the movie adaptation in 1983.

Ghost From The Machine

Fun horror movie from the 90s in which a serial killer's soul transforms into electrical energy. The killer then uses the electrical grid and computer networks to continue his killing spree.

Rubber

A tire discovers his telepathic powers. He sets his sights on a mysterious woman.

Maximum Overdrive

Every machine in the world comes alive and becomes homicidal. Written by Stephen King.

The Mangler

In Stephen King's short story The Mangler, a demon possesses a laundry folding machine. Tobe Hooper directed the movie adaptation in 1995. Two sequels followed.

The Car

The seventies movie The Car tells the story of a sleek and stylish car that goes on a rampage due to it being possessed!

What are your favorite movies about intelligent machines?

***

GPS WITH BENEFITS can be downloaded from:

* Amazon.com
* Amazon.co.uk

Doppelgängers, evil kids and monstrous animals

Earlier this month, I guest posted on Paranormal Wastelands and Immortality Revolution about the monsters that scare me the most. Here's the post in case you missed it.

Doppelgängers

A doppelgänger is a person's physical double. Seeing one's own doppelgänger often heralds death or serious illness. Paranormal investigators believe that the doppelgänger is an individual's past or future self. In some traditions, the double has no shadow or reflection.

Here are two seriously creepy horror movies about doppelgängers...

The Broken (2009)

Dream Lover (1986)

Evil kids

There's something undeniably scary about children gone evil wether it's through vampirism (Salem's Lot), radioactivity (The Children Of Ravensback), aliens (Village Of The Damned) or just plain insanity (Devil Times Five, We Need To Talk About Kevin, The Good Son).

The following are my favorite evil kids movies...

The Children Of Ravensback (1980)

Bloody Birthday (1981)

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)

Monstrous animals

Animals will always be cute and cuddly, even if they take on monstrous proportions. So they might not be the scariest, but they're definitely the most fun. Zombie dogs, demonic cats, killer morays, giant turtles, hungry bears, angry rabbits, ... It would be difficult to pick a favorite. Anyway, here's a small selection...

Belve Feroci (1984)

The Bermuda Depths (1978)

Night Of The Lepus (1972)

What are your favorite monsters?



Razor Reel 2012

I'll be spending the rest of the month in Bruges to give an introduction to several horror movies at the Razor Reel Fantastic Film Festival RRFFF. Come and stop by if you're around. Here are the trailers of the films I will be talking about...

Citadel

An agoraphobic father teams up with a renegade priest to save his daughter from the clutches of a gang of hooded feral children. Citadel director and screenwriter Ciaran Foy will be present for the screening and introduction of the movie on October 27.

Villa Captive

A young actress seeking a life away from adult movies moves to Florida in search of a new identity. Her newfound piece is shattered when local thugs recognize her. A tribute to hard-edged rape revenge movies like I Spit On Your Grave. The main actress of Villa Captive, Liza Del Sierra (who is also a porn actress), will join me for the introduction of the movie on October 28.

A Little Bit Zombie

"Steve's not dead. He's just a little bit zombie." Infected by a virus, Steve attempts to fulfill his desire for brains while trying to keep it together so as not the incur the wrath of his demanding fiancée. Director Casey Walker will answer questions about A Little Bit Zombie on November 2nd.

ABCs Of Death

A 26-chapter anthology that showcases death in all its vicious wonder and brutal beauty. I will give an introduction to ABCs Of Death on November 3 and will be joined by directors Simon Rumley and Jake West and actress Lucy Clements.

Also check out my Razor Reel posts from the previous years: Razor Reel 2011 and Razor Reel 2010.

Win Tickets For The Razor Reel Fantastic Film Festival

I will be giving an introduction to several movies this month at the Razor Reel Fantastic Film Festival in Bruges. 5 readers have the chance to win 2 tickets to this film festival. Best part? You get to choose which film you want to see.

To enter, visit the Razor Reel Film Festival website and choose which film you would like to see, then leave a comment below. You can gain extra entries by sharing this post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and/or StumbleUpon. Each action counts as a separate entry, so leave an extra comment for each action you took.

Entries will be accepted until October 26. The winners will be chosen at random and contacted by e-mail. Good luck!

Here are a few movie trailers of the films that I will be introducing at the festival. The complete festival program is available online.

The Divide

After a nuclear attack on Manhattan, apartment building residents seek refuge in the basement house of the janitor. The days drag on and it becomes a horrific psychological debacle between the mixed group of people trying to survive in these claustrophobic remains. When a rescue team tries to enter the building, hope rises, to be quickly crushed as they open fire. The survivors fight to stay alive, but that's not even their biggest problem... they have to survive each other. With known actors like Michael Biehn, Milo Ventimiglia, and Rosanna Arquette.

Bereavement

In 1989, six-year-old Martin Bristoll was kidnapped from his backyard swing. For five years, Martin's whereabouts have remained a mystery, until 17-year-old Allison comes to live with her uncle. While exploring her new surroundings, Allison discovers things aren't quite right at the farmhouse. Her curiosity disturbs a hornet's nest of evil and despair that once torn open, can never be closed.

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus is the new monster disaster film from The Asylum in which a giant prehistoric crocodile and a mega shark do battle against the Navy.

The Wicker Tree

Almost forty years after The Wicker Man (1973), director Robin Hardy returns with a film exploring similar themes such as neopaganism and fanatic belief. Based on Robin Hardy's own novel Cowboys For Christ.

Kill List

Jay and his wife are experiencing serious financial problems, causing constant stress and bickering. One night, when they invite their best friend Gal and his new girlfriend Fiona, everything escalates into a huge fight. When they talk it over, Gal offers a solution to all their misery. A job, like they often used to do in the past. A contract, a few kills, some easy money. What begins as a routine job, soon turns into a descent into hell. Who put out the hit? Why are the victims happy to see them? And what role does Fiona play exactly in all this?

The Howling Reborn

This all-new original chapter from combines romance, action, and thrills and will appeal to Twilight fans as well as horror addicts.