THIRD TIME AROUND - Lovecraft Film Festival - Day One By Derek M. Koch on Oct 10, 2003

It’s finally come. Sort of.

When I first started up this column, it's primary purpose was to track the start, or, more appropriately the RE-start of my movie-making “career.” I’ve veered a little bit here and there, but mostly, I’ve focused (so far) on the movie-making process as it applied to somebody who’s tried to do this not once, but twice before, and how a couple of adaptations were the first projects mounted by myself and my collaborators/partners. I’ve focused most on telling the stories of the pre-, post- and actual production of my Robert E. Howard adaptation Casonetto’s Last Song, and getting it submitted into the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

And now the festival is here.

But my movie doesn’t show until Friday. (I’m writing this Thursday, but I don’t expect this to get posted until sometime on the 10th.)

This is the third year I’ve attended the festival, and at least in my experience, this is the first time the festival is being held longer than the traditional Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend. So Thursday night became opening night, and it was a lot more laid back than I remember the past years’ festivities being . . .

From a viewer’s point of view. Rather, as somebody who skirted on the edge of being involved in the behind-the-scenes end of things (I didn’t REALLY do much other than offer to help out every which way I could, kind of filling in the tiny little blanks that were left after every one else had helped out), and I could see that the festival director and personnel were a bit on the stressed side.

Not that it showed, though. Andrew Migliore did a tremendous job of keeping it together and keeping the atmosphere (as Lovecraftian as it was) as light as possible.

Sure, I was excited to see BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR on the big screen (even if Jeffrey Coombs and Brian Yuzna both bailed on the festival - grrrrr), the best part about the Lovecraft film festival are the amateur and no-budget entries that get played alongside the bigger-budget, more professional fair.

BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR wasn't all that great, to be honest - ugh - but the selected shorts shown tonight were all note-worthy. An Imperfect Solution: A Tale of the Re-Animator by director Christian Matzke was great, and was a nice pre-emptory cleansing of the palette before BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR as they were both based on the 'Herbert West' stories of Lovecraft. And Matzke's film was MUCH better than Yuzna's.

There was also a trailer shown for Ivan Zuccon's THE SHUNNED HOUSE that caught my eye - I'm going to have to try to fit it into my schedule over the rest of the festial.

It's getting late, and tomorrow (Friday) is the big day. Casonetto's Last Song will FINALLY play to an audience outside of those whose first AND last names I know. Wish me luck.