12th Annual Philadelphia Film Festival
300+ movies in 2 weeks. All kinds of movies: Mainstream, slipstream, foreign, alien, Hollywood, Bollywood, independant film and foreign film. Cartoons. Feature length films and shorts. Silent film with live accompaniment. Porn flicks from the 1920's. Comedies, tragedies, soliloquies, silent films -- have I died and gone to movie heaven? No, I just happen to live the greater Philadelphia area and the 12th Annual Philadelphia Film Festival is in the house! Tonights wacky feature: a midnight showing of Alex de la Iglesia's Day of the Beast (AKA El Dia de la Bestia, 1995). The plot in a nutshell:
In de la Iglesia’s hilarious horror film, only three men—a sinning priest, a TV psychic, and a heavy metal fan--stand between humanity and the arrival of Satan on Earth on Christmas Eve. God help us…
Billed as “a comedy of satanic action” in Spain, Day of the Beast announces its black-humored intentions right from the start, as a church discussion about the devil’s impending appearance is capped by a brutal and hilarious punchline. We then follow theologian Angel Berriartua (Alex Angulo) as he commits brazenly nasty acts--from pushing mimes down stairs to stealing from accident victims--all in the name of literally going to the devil and fending off his ascension to our plane. From this perversely inspired start, de la Iglesia spins a tale of sacrilege and the supernatural that comes to involve a heavy metal freak (Santiago Segura) and a fraudulent TV psychic (Armando De Razza). As their attempts to defeat Satan take on increasingly apocalyptic proportions, de la Iglesia retains the aggressive style he first deployed in Mutant Action while applying it to a more consistent and thematically complex storyline. Veering from the satirical to the genuinely chilling (Satan’s first appearance is truly memorable), the writer-director demonstrates that he’s not after easy provocation or shock value. Rather, Day of the Beast, which swept Spain’s Goya awards, reveals him as a pop artist capable of staging human (and inhuman) comedy on a spectacular scale. --Michael Gingold
Ingmar Bergman it ain't but boy I am psyched! My last few forays into the wasteland of what passes for cinema in the US have left me craving... something stronger. This may just be the ticket. Two more films tomorrow. I'll post a brief review. If you live in the Philly area check out the website, lots of good stuff here! If you like weird movies like me, check out the Danger After Dark series: Chilean vampire epics, Kung Fu action, Japanese ghost movies, giant cockraches, a new Re-Animator flick, and much much more. Yowsa! The festival runs through April 16th.
10:19:45 PM 
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