Yorkshire’s premiere horror festival, Celluloid Screams, returns for its seventh year to take over Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema 23rd through to the 25th October to featuring some of the hottest genre features from around the world and some incredible films from today’s new emerging talent.
Karan Kusama’s expertly-crafted thriller THE INVITATION will open the festival and invite audiences to experience a dinner party like no other. The Invitation stars Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones), Logan Marshall-Green (Prometheus), John Caroll Lynch (Shutter Island) and promises to be an unrelenting experience. Closing the festival in style, with a 40th Anniversary screening of Dario Argento’s DEEP RED, is this years’ guests of honour Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin who will rescore the film in an extra special live performances followed by a selection of tracks from Goblin and Claudio Simonetti’s extensive back catalogue.
Once again this year, Celluloid Screams is offering festival goers a whole host of solid genre choices including work from new emerging talent. Severin Flala and Veronika Franz will be sending icy chills down spines with their breakout genre film GOODNIGHT MOMMY. Then it will be time to go east to witness the worlds of Japanese gangsters and bloodsucking vampires collide in Takashi Miike’s manic action horror YAKUZA APOCALYPSE.
Audiences should prepare themselves for THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE, the magnificent debut feature from director Perry Blackshear. Emotionally-charged and intricately-crafted, Blackshear’s apocalyptic thriller is a thoughtful exploration of love, loyalty and living nightmares. Rock legend Henry Rollins delivers a career defining performance in Jason Krawczyk’s dramatic thriller HE NEVER DIED and Patrick Kennelly’s EXCESS FLESH casts a scathing look at the LA Fashion scene.
The festival lineup also includes productions such as THESE FINAL HOURS, a devastating yet intimate depiction of the end of the world from director Zak Hilditch; Robert Eggars takes audiences back to New England to embrace an icy cold thriller about witchcraft and black magic with THE WITCH; EMELIE, a story where three children are left in the care of a babysitter whose behaviour becomes increasingly strange as the night goes on; and THE CORPSE OF ANNA FRITZ, a shocking tale that delves into our relentless obsession with celebrity.
Rounding up this years features is Jason Lei Howden’s DEATHGASM, a thrilling gore-soaked joyride into the depths of hell. Forging horror and heavy metal, Deathgasm combines the old-school practical gore fx of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson with a deafening heavy metal soundtrack that demands audiences to throwing up their devil horns or risk bodily dismemberment.
The SHORT FILM RETROSPECTIVE returns this year with a twist as Celluloid Screams, after delving deep into the archives of the UK government’s Central Office, have curated a collection of films to celebrate the public information films that terrified a generation during the 1970s and 1980s. Also returning for it’s third year is the annual Celluloid Screams ALLNIGHTER which this year will see special presentations of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, PHANTASM, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 and RE-ANIMATOR.
Lastly, team Celluloid Screams have kept one spot on the line up free for their annual SECRET FILM which will not be revealed until the very moment it is about to begin. Last year it was ASMODEXIA and the year before that was ALMOST HUMAN from director Joe Begos. This generates a real buzz amongst festival goers and never fails to strike a chord with the audience.
Celluloid Screams will also be showing an amazing collection of shorts that will feature during the festival. The shorts include Andy Stewart’s latest offering REMNANT; The Woman’s Pollyanna McIntosh stars in Melanie Light’s shocking tale THE HERD; HEIR, by Richard Powell; the goretastic CROW HAND!!!; EL GIGANTE, a short about a cannibalistic luchador who brutalizes his victims in the ring then slaughters them for meat; Fredrick S. Hana returns to Celluloid Screams with SISTER HELL, his hotly anticipated follow up to last year’s Autumn Harvest.
With seventeen features, twenty-four shorts a bunch of guests and one hell of a closing ceremony, team Celluloid Screams have put on a belter of a year for festival goers. For further details about the festival visit the official Celluloid Screams website here.
In the meantime we’ll leave you with the official trailer for the festival:
https://youtu.be/Neap1Vw9VZs
