Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival

Monday, October 30----When your film festival falls over Halloween, I guess it is expected that you need to throw in a little "scare" into the proceedings. This year, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival does not disappoint, presenting two creepy classics tomorrow evening at the Cinema Paradiso.

The first part of the evening, starting at sundown, is for the kiddies, with short films, live music, costume and scream contests, balloons and hayrides. This is family friendly fun without any real scares or things that go bump or thump in the night. The scene changes though at 10pm, when the kiddies are safely tucked into their beds, when the 21-plus crowd settles in for two classic horror flicks for the Festival's annual Halloween Fright Night.

The first gore-geous cinema scare is the Wes Craven fright phenom LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT from 1972. This little ditty follows the story of two teenage girls, Marie and Phyllis, who go to the "big city" to celebrate Marie's 17 birthday at a rock concert. Before the concert, they go on a careless hunt for some pot, only to end up getting raped, humiliated, and eventually killed by four psychopaths. When the killers seek refuge at one of the girls' houses by mistake, the parents go on a bloody revenge spree.

The film pre-dates the current SAW series, that also takes delight in the slow, slow, slow torture of its victims in gory detail. Craven's disturbing film, which looked into the heart of darkness of a typical American family, was a milestone of its kind that remains one scary ride almost 25 years after its initial release.

If your creep quotient isn't filled, then stay for the midnight madness screening of the cult classic NEKROMANTIK (1987), written and directed by Jörg Buttgereit. In this graphic, low-budget gore-shocker, a couple of necrophiliacs (for the uninitiated, those are people who like to have sex with dead corpses) apparently don't mind if their dead sexual partners are not so fresh.

Rob's job of cleaning up after grisly accidents affords him the opportunity to bring home fresh corpses and body parts, to the delight of his seriously twisted girlfriend. When he loses his job, he also loses his girl (who was into it for the decaying flesh, natch). Unable to cope, Rob travels a twisted road of sickness and self-abuse before finding salvation and happiness through a very sharp knife. Not for the squeamish, NEKROMANTIK is presented uncut and unrated.

FLIFF brings out the horror for Halloween......

Sandy Mandelberger
Online Festival Dailies Editor