Butchers open shop at Sundance

Glen Helfand: To be from the Bay Area and be called The Butcher Brothers might mean you get mixed up with purveyors of grass fed meats for foodies, but the team of Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores, aka The Butcher Brothers, taps into an equally deep Northern Californian tradition in indie filmmaking. Their new feature The Violent Kind, is a nightmare-with-bikers-in-the-woods fantasy that was shot in Petaluma, Cotati and surrounding areas (as was their vampiric first feature, The Hamiltons), and definitely fits their collaborative moniker.

[Editor’s note: Get more of each ongoing Sundance Film Festival blog entry by clicking through on the headline.]

topics: bay area, horror, sundance film festival

Platform

Robert Mailer Anderson on the Mendo madness of "Pig Hunt"

After ripping it up at various genre fests (most recently winning Best Feature at the Royal Flush Festival in New York), Bay Area indie horror Pig Hunt settles in for a theatrical run at the Red Vic Movie House Friday, October 30.

Ideal Halloween fare, it’s a giddy, unpredictable mashup of elements that finds a carload of San Francisco yuppie types getting in way over their heads on a hunting expedition up north. Among the gory perils their rapidly dwindling number face are angry hillbillies, defensive pot growers, a menacing rural guru with a whole lot of ‘wives’—oh, and one 3,000-pound "hogzilla" known as The Ripper.

SF360 spoke with Pig Hunt’s co-scenarist (with Zack Anderson) Robert Mailer Anderson, a San Francisco resident who’s worn many hats, from gallery owner to novelist. This new hat is certainly his bloodiest.

topics: authors, bay area, critics, cult cinema, horror, independent film

In Production

The horror, the horror: ‘Tweaker With an Axe’

Flynn Witmeyer’s debut feature sports a title you’d expect to see on a one-sheet mockup at the market in Cannes or a grindhouse marquee on Market St. back in the day. Tweaker With an Axe is the epitome of high concept, but its cast of gay and lesbian characters sets it apart from the pack of comedic suspense thrillers. Or does it? “The characters’ sexuality isn’t part of the story,” Witmeyer says. “They just happen to be gay and lesbian. That’s one of our interests in doing this film. Our interest is to make genre films—horror or sci-fi or fantasy—that incorporate gay and lesbian characters. We want to see more representation of gay and lesbian characters in cinema.”

topics: actors, bay area, diy, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror

Experience

Frameline33: something old, something new....

The success of anti-gay-marriage Prop. 8 shocked many people who’d assumed their fellow Californians were ahead of the national curve in terms of sophistication and tolerance. (And they were probably right, in that it took considerable out-of-state money expended on misleading, inflammatory ad campaigns to scare a narrow Left Coast majority into believing traditional marriage needed “defending.”)

topics: bay area, critics, diy, documentary, drama, exhibition, experimental film, festivals, film history, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, hollywood, horror, independent film, international film, world cinema, youth

In Production

‘All About Evil’ doer Joshua Grannell plots in post

Just two-and-a-half months after wrapping production on his blood-soaked, darkly comic debut, All About Evil, writer-director Joshua Grannell and editor Rick LeCompte have already locked picture. Even with time allotted to focus-group screenings, the movie is on an express-train schedule rare for an independent feature. Its backers identified Toronto as the optimal festival for the premiere, submitted a cut and are proceeding apace to have the film finished if and when they get the call. “You shoot for the stars, and you stay on course,” says Grannell, the longtime manager of the Bridge Theatre whose alter ego, Peaches Christ, has a juicy role in the movie. “I like the pressure. I like the sense of urgency that everyone has.”

topics: bay area, diy, gay lesbian cinema, genre films, horror, rep houses, toronto international film festival, world cinema

Experience

Another Hole in the Head looks to re-wound your psyche

Confronted by flesh-eating zombies, werewolves, or a maniac with a very sharp object, your first instinct probably would not be to laugh—unless it were that hysterical, this-can’t-be-happening type of laughter often heard greeting tax and election results. But at this year’s 6th annual Another Hole in the Head dedicated to sci-fi, horror and fantasy, catastrophic carnage meets comedy more often than not.

As moviegoers (and genre fans), have we become so desensitized to violence that it plays best as a joke? Or in the dark real-world climate of this decade, are filmmakers just helping us let off some steam by making fear seem a laughing matter? Oh, who cares—this festival is all about fun, not analyzing content. How much analysis do you expect something called Frat House Massacre or Run! Bitch Run! (sic) to withstand, anyway?

topics: bay area, genre films, hollywood, horror, independent film, reviews, roxie

Take Two

Gory days: Raimi rides the horror genre again--with predictable success

Like Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi is a fanboy turned shockingly successful filmmaker whose career will probably always be divided into Before and After. The milestone in the middle being, in Jackson’s case, Lord of the Rings; in Raimi’s, another trilogy (at least so far), the Spider-Man movies.

Where do you go when you’ve done something that huge, yet still somehow hung onto your original goofy-fanboy cred? Go back to what inspired you in the first place, maybe.

topics: critics, diy, genre films, hollywood, horror, reviews