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Film Fest of the Dead
Like swallows to Capistrano, the zombies return to the Catalonian seaside resort of Sitges every October-at least they have since 1967-and their number keeps growing. The 42nd edition of the Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic was a breeding pool for all things undead or otherwise beyond mortal kin or consciousness. Yet, Hollywood entertainments like Zombieland or increasingly blah cult auteur franchises, like George A. Romero"s Survival of the Dead, were merely early Halloween window-dressing for this kaleidoscopic Cannes of cinematic extremism.
The festival, which ran from Oct. 1-12 this year, celebrated the 30th anniversary of Alien and gave a career achievement award to Malcolm McDowell, likewise honoring Walter Hill, Ivan Reitman and the alarmingly vital octogenarian splatter king Herschell Gordon Lewis. (These may not always be so coveted. Last year, Abel Ferrara handed his trophy, a scale model of the Time Machine, to a hotel bartender to settle a tab). Everyone from Park Chan-wook to Viggo Mortensen to that spooky little girl from Orphan made appearances. [editor"s viewing tip: click for Steve Dollar"s reaction to an Orphan mask.] And if you turned around in the theater to see who was kicking the back of your seat, it was that Argentine provocateur Gaspar Noe, likely getting payback for sneaking ahead of him in line for breakfast buffet French fries.