Get Your Midnight Madness Fix Early with Phanstasm II at Lightbox!

Can't wait till September 5th to get your Midnight Madness Mojo working? Or are you worried that your Q&A skills might need so polishing up? Then why don't you come out to the Rue Morgue/TIFF co-presentation of Phantasm II on Saturday, August 24 at 9:30 p.m. at TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King St. West.) Colin Geddes will be there to present the film and host a Q&A with Midnight Madness Alum Don Coscarelli. Tickets are $15 and can be scored here.

Pictures from the JOHN DIES AT THE END Premiere!

This year's closing night film was John Dies At The End, an adaption of David Wong's novel, filled with the awesome of interdimensional critters, a drug called, "soy sauce,"  a character named after an author's pseudonym and a Meat Monster!  Here are pictures taken on the red carpet and the Ryerson stage by intrepid MM photographer, Ian Goring, a man who fears neither interdimensional critters nor isopods!

Actor Chase Williamson who plays, David Wong.

Rob Mays, who plays the titular John. (And, dude,

right now, he can see your soul).

MM blogger Rob Mitchell interviews Chase Williamson

with videographer Sarah Dillard rocking the pink and zebra-striped headset.

Director Don Coscarelli, a man who knows a good book when he reads one.

The dapper Tai Bennett, who plays, Jacob Marley.

Cesare Gagliardoni, who played the Meat Monster. Suit actors, represent!

MM Programmer Colin Geddes and Don Coscarelli are quite decorous 

as befits a premiere screening. 

Holy cats, they're outta control!

On state at the Ryerson. Probably trash talking isopods in comparison to

other-dimensional creatures made visible only by ingesting soy sauce.

Coscarelli and Gagliardoni discuss acting choices in playing, The Meat Monster.

Thanks, everybody!

JOHN DIES AT THE END: Interview with Don Coscarelli, Chase Williamson & Rob Mayes

JOHN DIES AT THE END closed out the 2012 edition of Midnight Madness. I had the opportunity to speak with director Don Coscarelli and actors Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes and Tai Bennett.

Robert A. Mitchell may or may not have been under the influence of Soy Sauce while conducting the following interviews....

JOHN DIES AT THE END Intro/Q&A Video With Don Coscarelli

The final film of 2012 edition of Midnight Madness was JOHN DIES AT THE END directed by Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep, Phantasm). Here is Robert A. Mitchell's video of the introduction -- featuring a shout out to the Midnight Madness crew -- as well as the post-screening Q&A.

JOHN DIES AT THE END Premieres Tonight!

Director Don Coscarelli returns to Midnight Madness tonight with John Dies At The End!


JOHN DIES AT THE END
Sat., Sept. 15, 11:59pm:  RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16, 5pm:   CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 2

Day One with Kari's Scaries

Yesterday was my first full day at TIFF and my first Midnight Madness screening (thanks to the Kari's Scaries bursary program), and all I can say is this: If you love genre cinema, this is something you must experience at least once in your life.

We headed out of Possum Holler, Tennessee at insane o'clock on Thursday morning, rolling into Toronto fourteen hours later. In case you're curious, much of Canada looks like this:

Incidentally, this is a visual aesthetic that is shared my most of Kentucky, Ohio and Michigan, so the drive was grueling but somewhat less than stimulating. Happily, most of Toronto looks like this:

...and our hotel looks like this:

...and even this:

...so things certainly got way more interesting and lots fancier.

We kicked off our day with a screening of Ben Wheatley's Sightseers, which was terrific and absolutely supports my theory that romantic comedies set in the bucolic British countryside are much better when lots of people get their heads cracked open. After that was a press screening of Midnight Madness selection John Dies at the End, (directeed by the great Don Coscarelli), which was completely batshit and a lot of fun. Next up was Pusher at the newly renovated Bloor Hot Docs Cinema, followed by the high point of the entire day: the Midnight Madness screening of Seven Psychopaths.The experience was spectacular; I wish I could see every movie with a theater full of 1,200 cheering genre nerds and Christopher Walken.

We're off to a screening of Dredd 3D (we missed its Midnight Madness premiere, sadly), followed by whatever we can squeeze in between it and tonight's MM screening of No One Lives.

Many thanks to the family and friends of Kari Ramjattan, in whose honor Kari's Scaries was established, and to Colin Geddes and the rest of the TIFF crew. Our reception has been amazing, and they're taking great care of us. Off to Day Two!


Screening Times:

SEVEN PSYCHOPATHS :
 Sat., Sept. 8th, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

NO ONE LIVES:
Sat., Sept 8th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Mon., Sept 10th, 9:45 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 7
Fri., Sept 14th, 4:45 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 6 

PUSHER:
Sun., Sept. 9th, CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 10 12:00PM

SIGHTSEERS:
Tue., Sept. 11th, 9:00 PM RYERSON
Thurs., Sept. 13th, 12:00 PM RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16th, 7:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

JOHN DIES AT THE END:
Sat., Sept. 15, 11:59pm:  RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16, 5pm:   CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 2

JOHN DIES AT THE END: Interview with Director Don Coscarelli

One of my most cherished memories is seeing Bubba Ho-Tep premiere at Midnight Madness back when the screenings took place at the sadly departed Uptown Theatre on Yonge St.  Director Don Coscarelli and Bruce "Elvis" Campbell were both present at the screening and it as amazing to see on the Uptown's titanic screen.  But I was just as excited that the film was based on a Joe R. Lansdale story.

Coscarelli is returning to Midnight Madness just over a decade later with another movie based on another novel, David Wong's John Dies At The End.  I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to ask Coscarelli a few questions.

What draws you to a short story or novel and what about makes you think it would be interesting as a film?

When I read a short story and I'm pissed it's short, and I'm hungry for more, that's usually when I start wondering if it's filmable. That's exactly what happened with BUBBA HO-TEP. What's interesting was the source novel for my most recent film, JOHN DIES AT THE END, was a long 350 pages...and I was pissed when it was over. I immediately started thinking about filming it. Both stories share some common traits which drew me to them, including elements you don't usually find in horror, such as a focus on friendship, and an outrageous and unexpected sense of humor.

What are some of the challenges in working with someone else's story and prose or adapting their prose to a visual medium?

Length is always a big issue. BUBBA HO-TEP was very short, so I had to add material to get it to feature length. With JOHN DIES AT THE END it was the opposite. It was a sprawling, epic novel with so much great material that I was always struggling with tightening it. There is no question in my mind though that to adapt a work such as one of these, that one needs to fully buy into the original author's work. If you're not going to treat the source material as your "Bible", why make the movie?

Your stories often take place at an intersection between the mundane and the dreamlike, surreal or absurd. What are some of the challenges of maintaining the right balance and what do you find appealing about the juxtaposition?

I like to laugh. I think humor is one of the most underrated aspects of human existence. What's life without it? That's why I'm always looking for it when I'm creating my movies. As to the dreamlike and surreal, I'm just naturally drawn to looking at things from different perspectives.

I recently watched your Trailers From Hell commentary on Godzilla, King of the Monsters. I was wondering if you see any influence from Godzilla, Ishiro Honda or Akira Ifukube on your own filmmaking or writing? If so, what might they be?

Despite just loving Godzilla as a monster and his massive size, what haunted me most when I saw it as a child was a sentimental power it had, especially when Serizawa sacrificed himself for his fellow citizens as he set off the oxygen bomb under Tokyo bay. Certainly BUBBA HO-TEP has some similar themes when President Kennedy and Elvis sacrifice themselves for the sake of their fellow rest home residents!

Every now and then there's a news story about Bubba Nosferatu that keeps hope alive for a sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep. Are there any developments you'd be willing to share?

There's no question that fans want more adventures of Elvis battling the supernatural. I do too! Bubba Nosferatu was a great script and I'm sorry the project crashed and burned as it were. However, much like Elvis, I share a positive, can-do attitude and am thinking that the time might be right again to just get get off my ass and take care of business. Time to TCB, baby!

Thanks to Don Coscarelli for taking the time to answer my questions.


JOHN DIES AT THE END
Sat., Sept. 15, 11:59pm:  RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16, 5pm:   CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 2

Festival Programmer Steven Landry's Top 3 Midnight Madness Picks

Today's Top 3 Midnight Madness Picks are from Toronto After Dark Film Fest programmer, Steven Landry. TAD just announced their first 10 titles, so go check out their site after reading Steven's picks!

When I think about that lovely synaptic buzz we call anticipation, it's not that I'm remembering my favourite meal, or looking forward to entering a pre-established world of characters I've grown to love over the course of a sequel or two. The greatest form of anticipation for me comes from the unknown. Think about that first time as a child you ventured out past the boundary of your neighbourhood, or that first date with someone you've been crushing on for awhile. You never forget your first time, they say, and that's because there's a level of excitement when something is brand new that doesn't compare to the return to a well worn experience. Show me something new!  

#1 - Hellbenders

It's the three-peat at Midnight Madness this year for writer/director JT Petty with Hellbenders, a raunchy exorcism horror comedy, shot in 3D, and staring The Kurgan himself, Clancy Brown. As far as anticipation goes, you had me at JT Petty, a filmmaker who's work is as varied as anyone working in genre today. Midnight Madness audiences first met JT with S&MAN, a "documentary" about extreme horror that delved into the reasons why we would want to watch such terrible things. Next up was the epic western / creature feature The Burrowers, a film that played with the conventions of the western, and showed its usual heroes to be the true monsters. Now with Hellbenders he switches gears again, and I can't wait to see his take on the horror / comedy. A consistently skilled filmmaker tackling different types of stories, Hellbenders may be my most anticipated film of this year's crop.

#2 - John Dies at the End

Based on the book I've passed along to a number of friends, it's hard for me not to be excited for Don Coscarelli's take on John Dies at the End. Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs collaborated on the script for Ghostbusters, and naturally thought ghosts were pretty passe, so they added Shadow People, inter-dimensional drugs, Lovecraftian bug demons, and a creature made of various cuts of meat. Oh... and a floating dog. For a story that is completely out there, it's the droll sense of humour that won me over, and how despite the fact that you may be battling the minions of an ancient god in your spare time, you still have to make your shift at a shitty day job to pay your bills. Add Clancy Brown (yet again) and Paul Giamatti to the mix, and I can't wait to finally see this whacked out story of the big screen. 

#3 - Come Out and Play

Seemingly out of nowhere we get a remake of the Spanish film Who Can Kill a Child?, by a director who is literally unknown, as he uses a pseudonym and wears a mask on set. Now that's something to look forward to right there! The original 1976 film is quite notorious for obvious reasons, a young couple end up trapped on an island off the coast of Spain and have to fight for their lives, as all the children have gone mad and murdered all of the island's adult residents. Let's face it, everyone knows kids are creepy. Have you seen The Brood? I rest my case. I think though that the real horror comes from the question that's right there in the title... could you bring yourself to do the unspeakable in order to survive? I think the anticipation in this film comes from the audience wondering just how far it will go, given the premise, and how often we'll feel the need to squint our eyes and turn away from the screen. This is Midnight Madness after all, so the chances are good that this film will indeed go farther than we'll be comfortable with, and I think that's a good thing.



Steven Landry is tall, bald, and never had wisdom teeth. When he's not assisting programmers or trafficking film prints at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, he's programming films for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, where he works from his kitchen as the entire Programming Administration and Print Traffic departments.

His mother says Gypsies left him as an infant on her doorstep. He regrets nothing. Not even his love of Akiva Schaffer's 2007 amateur stunt man opus, Hot Rod.




Screening times:

Hellbenders
Sun., Sept. 9th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Tue., Sept. 11th, 7:00 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 7
Sat., Sept. 15th, 9:15 PM SCOTIABANK 2

John Dies at the End
Sat., Sept. 15th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16th, 6:00 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 7

Come Out and Play
Thurs., Sept. 13th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Fri., Sept. 14th, 3:15 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 10
Sat., Sept. 15th, 6:45 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Critics Have Much Love for JOHN DIES AT THE END

John Dies at the End played a few festivals earlier this year in unfinished form. Director Don Coscarelli is bringing his finished cut to Toronto as the closing film of Midnight Madness. Here is a sampling of the praise the film has already received:

"And I mean a cult film in the truest sense of the term. John Dies At The End will be a movie that you use to gauge new friends. Do they like JDATE (the romantic sounding acronym of the title)? If not, they may not be your kind of person. It's a movie that will inspire catchphrases and references. It's a movie that will inspire, in the select few, a real devotion." --Devin Faraci at Badass Digest (full review)

"Directed by Don Coscarelli, who you may know as the director as Bubba Ho-Tep and the Phantasm series, John Dies at the End is somewhere between a schlocky, B Movie full of camp (in the best way possible!) and a buddy cop movie. This is all through the lens of some sort of Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo style reporting. It's over the top in every way. Big jokes, big gags, big set pieces, big monsters and bigger than life characters cram their way into every crevice of the 90 minute screen time as if the world was about to end and this was their last chance." --Alex Koehne at Twitch (full review)

"[The opening] involves axe handles, zombies, mutant leeches, axe heads, hardware store trips and answering a dead man as to whether or not the axe in question is the same that killed him. Confused? If you are, then you don't want to stick around. If you're too overjoyed that the spiritual successor to Sam Raimi has appeared, you're in luck." --John Lichman at Indiewire (full review)

"Luckily, he's an inventive filmmaker who has made a career of stretching his budgets as far as he can, and the film is filled with crazy, wild imagery that will delight genre fans.  It's fun and it's gross and it's silly and it's playful… and it does indeed get that feeling, that out of control liquid reality feeling of hallucinogens, just right." --Drew McWeeny at Hitfix (full review)

JOHN DIES AT THE END
Sat., Sept. 15th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16th, 6:00 PM CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 7

Midnight Madness at Trailers From Hell: Don Coscarelli's Return!

Director Don Coscarelli talks about his love for Godzilla, King of the Monsters on Trailers From Hell, even noting that it was the first monster movie he ever saw and that it remains one of his favorite movies. That's right, the 1956 American version. You better believe it, baby.



See if you can catch the Honda Ishiro and Ifukube Akira's influences on Coscarelli's new movie, John Dies At The End at this year's Midnight Madness.

JOHN DIES AT THE END
Sat., Sept. 15, 11:59pm:  RYERSON
Sun., Sept. 16, 5pm:   CINEPLEX YONGE & DUNDAS 2

JOHN DIES AT THE END Teaser Trailer!

Check out the teaser for Don Coscarelli's John Dies At the End.

JOHN DIES AT THE END screening times:

Sat., Sept. 15, 11:59PM:  RYERSON  

Sun., Sept. 16, 5PM:  CINEPLEX YONGE AND DUNDAS

JOHN DIES AT THE END: Poster Gallery!

 On its journey from digital horror novel to film adaptation, from SXSW and Sundance to reaching its perfect audience in closing out Midnight Madness, Don Coscarelli's John Dies At The End has accumulated a whack of poster art, including some weapons--The Bible Belter above and the Paintball and Propane Flamethrower below.

 (This individual kindly demonstrates the importance of wearing safety equipment)

The poster promoting the South By Southwest screening.

And here are two covers for David Wong's original novel. 

(via Creative Book Design)

(via City on Fire)

JOHN DIES AT THE END screening times:

Sat., Sept. 15, 11:59PM:  RYERSON  

Sun., Sept. 16, 5PM:  CINEPLEX YONGE AND DUNDAS

Midnight Madness at Trailers from Hell: Don Coscarelli

Previously on Midnight Madness at Trailers from Hell, we looked at MM alumni Stuart Gordon's contributions to Trailers From Hell, a site dedicated to the proposition that any movie can be great in 2 1/2 minutes. Now it's Don Coscarelli's turn.

Midnight Madness alumni Coscarelli is responsible for one of my most cherished memories:  seeing Bubba Ho-Tep on the legendary Uptown Theatre's big screen, with Coscarelli, Bruce Campbell and a Madness crowd in attendance in 2002.

At Trailers from Hell, Coscarelli comments on four trailers. The first is Elvis' finest movie, King Creole, directed by Micheal Curtiz (Casablanca) featuring Walter Matthau as a rotten to the core club owner.




Coscarelli also discusses Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor starring Robert Redford, Ishiro Honda's Godzilla and the evil hand classic, The Beast With Five Fingers, starring Peter Lorre. You can see them all at the Trailers from Hell website.