By Travis Johnson
South Australian gorehounds are in for a treat when the Monster Fest Travelling Sideshow rolls into the GU Film House Adelaide from July 21st to 23rd 2017, bringing with it some of the highlights from the Melbourne-based Monster Fest genre film festival.
This year’s Sideshow features films from around the globe, including some Australian and Adelaide premieres, opening with Jonathan Sequeira’s Descent into the Maelstrom, which tells the warts and all story of seminal Aussie punk band Radio Birdman. Also on the bill is Damien Power’s brutal Sundance breakout hit, Killing Ground. Both films will play Monster Fest Travelling Sideshow ahead of their Australian theatrical release.
Saturday is shark day, with a double bill of Cage Dive and 47 Metres Down, two films that leave hapless divers in dire straits when their scuba adventures go horribly wrong in shark-infested waters.
Other highlights this year include retrospective screenings Dario Argento’s 1977 masterpiece Suspiria and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks movie, Fire Walk With Me, both presented in remastered 4K; the meth-mad folly of The Evil Within, surely one of the most unique horror films ever made; zombie film It Stains the Sands Red, and the brilliant Hitchcock documentary, 78/52, an intense look at the shower scene in Psycho, featuring interviews with Guillermo del Toro, Bret Easton Ellis, Elijah Wood, Eli Roth, Peter Bogdanovich, and many more.
Closing the fest is the Australian premiere of The Bad Batch, the new film from Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), a dystopian cannibal story starring Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Jason Momoa and Giovanni Ribisi.
For tickets and info, hit up the GU Film House website.