We’re not above a good skewering! UNTIL DAWN got the Honest Trailer treatment, check it out for the (mildly spoiler-y) rundown of what the PS4 game’s all about.

“Where there are no bad decisions, only really bad decisions!”

The Austin Chronicle spoke with Mickey Keating directing GEP’s upcoming psycho-tense thriller DARLING.

Darling Mickey
Prolific director Mickey Keating dials into the Sixties
by Richard Whittaker

Mickey Keating can’t stop. The writer/director stunned SXSW audiences this spring with his X-Files-influenced horror Pod, he’s debuting his latest feature, Darling, at Fantastic Fest, and he’s already in post-production on his next project, Carnage Park. He said, “Honestly, man, I just love making movies, and when I’m not making movies, I’m panicking.”

Shot in black and white, and in 1:1.66 ratio as a deliberate homage to Repulsion and Stanley Kubrick’s early work, Keating describes Darling as “a Sixties-style descent into madness.” It follows the title character (Lauren Ashley Carter, Pod, Jug Face) as she takes the job of caretaker in a Manhattan apartment, only to discover there’s something far more sinister lurking in the Upper East Side than roaches and rats. “I love films about loners,” Keating said, and while Darling may be geographically distant from the rural isolation of Pod, they are still connected. He said, “What we really tried to capture was this isolated, ghostly sensibility in a place where there are millions and millions of people at any corner.”

Carter isn’t the only Pod alumnus here, with co-stars Brian Morvant and Larry Fessenden making the trip to the Big Apple. The reason for their casting was simple: Keating had a great experience working with them the first time. “It seemed like some magical occurrence, so while we’re waiting for sound mix, while we’re waiting for a composer, let’s go make another film.”

Some might find that quick turnaround daunting, but Keating pointed to the inspiration of John Cassavetes, who poured his own savings into Faces, or Sam Fuller, who shot the revolutionary Shock Corridor in 10 days. Confronted by that work ethic, he said, “It’s hard for me in my mind to make up an excuse and not be inspired. … If there’s a way for me to tell a story that makes sense in whatever box I’m currently confined in, I’ll find a way to make it work.”

Add Fessenden to the list of influences. Aside from acting, he’s also a respected writer, director, and producer, and widely seen as the patron saint of indie horror. Keating acknowledges a huge debt, both creatively and careerwise. As a college student, he found the number for Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix production house in a press release, cold-called, and ended up with two summers of internships, “watching and observing and doing whatever they needed for me to do.” Calling his time there “a tremendously valuable learning experience,” he said that for aspiring young filmmakers, “Glass Eye Pix stood as a mecca; you can make art, you can make your independent films, you can tell your offbeat stories.”

The trio of Fessenden, Cassavetes, and Fuller weren’t the only independently minded auteurs that inspired Keating. During the editing of Pod, he immersed himself in the work of experimental filmmakers Hollis Frampton and Stan Brakhage, and their aesthetics seeped into his own approach to storytelling. He describes that as a reaction to too many contemporary indie horrors that feel like “pseudo-studio films on a smaller budget. You don’t see that kind of freedom and enthusiasm with editing and experimentalism that you got in the Sixties and Seventies.”

Darling screens Friday, Sept. 25, 5:20pm, and Thursday, Oct. 1, 1:30pm.

Fantastic Fest 2015 runs Sept. 24 through Oct. 1 at the Alamo South Lamar. Fest badges are sold out, but often during the festival, individual tickets for films will open up, so patient and intrepid Austinites still have a chance to sample the wide array of films on offer. See www.fantasticfest.com for more info.

Vice’s The Creators Project just spoke with Fessenden about the history behind and process of co-writing (with GEP pal Graham Reznick) a 10,000 page script for the PS4 game UNTIL DAWN.

From the interview on The Creators Project:

So, how long is the script for Until Dawn? “There’s an Easter Egg in the game that’s called ‘1000 pages’ and Graham and I were laughing about that, because all in all it ended up being around 10,000 pages that we wrote. That number’s derived from the fact that we wrote the game twice, once for Playstation 3, and once for Playstation 4.”

Read on for the full conversation.

Check out the kind words from a fan of the new I SELL THE DEAD Vinyl Soundtrack, and take a peek at the color of the record itself.

Uploaded by youtube user 1quickGT

Copies still available for sale from Deep Focus Records.

Entertainment Weekly has the first teaser trailer for GEP’s DARLING. The film premieres at Fantastic Fest, is directed by Mickey Keating, starring Lauren Ashley Carter, and, as the trailer states, “This film contains flashing lights and hallucinatory images.”

Dread Central has details on the special features coming with Scream Factory’s release of THE LARRY FESSENDEN COLLECTION, which collects Fessenden’s NO TELLING, HABIT, WENDIGO, and THE LAST WINTER.

Scream Factory, in conjunction with IFC Midnight, will bring together four critically-acclaimed films by this multi-talented filmmaker with the release of the four-disc The Larry Fessenden Collection on Blu-ray on October 20, 2015. Marking the first time these films have been available on Blu-ray, The Larry Fessenden Collection includes No Telling, Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter and features new, director-supervised HD transfers. The first three hundred fans who pre-order their copies from ShoutFactory.com will have their slipcase signed by Larry Fessenden.

Read on for full details.

Dread Central posted news about a slew of events coming up for us here at Glass Eye Pix. Ever the busy-body, Fessenden will be hopping around with screenings and appearances this October to celebrate our 30th Anniversary.

From the Dread Central Post:

Production company Glass Eye Pix, founded by indie maven Larry Fessenden, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year; and numerous events are planned, including personal appearances by Fessenden, special screenings of GEP films, and lots more.

If you’re a fan of their particular breed of horror mayhem (and if you’re a regular reader of this site, you no doubt are), then read on for all the details!

From the Press Release:
On the delirious, dangerous streets of old New York, as young upstarts with names like Buscemi and Jarmusch rose to prominence, art-horror auteur Larry Fessenden birthed one of Gotham’s darkest icons of sovereign cinema. Called “one of the indie scene’s most productive and longest-running companies” by Filmmaker Magazine, Glass Eye Pix has been operated by Fessenden (THE LAST WINTER, WENDIGO, HABIT, NBC’s “Fear Itself”) since 1985, with the mission of supporting individual voices in the arts.

In addition to countless shorts, three seasons of radio dramas, and one of 2015’s most acclaimed, best selling video games, Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix has been involved with over fifty critically acclaimed films in and out of the horror genre, including WENDY AND LUCY (Kelly Reichardt), STAKE LAND (Jim Mickle), THE COMEDY (Rick Alverson), THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL (Ti West), BIRTH OF THE LIVING DEAD (Rob Kuhns), LATE PHASES (Adrián García Bogliano), SATAN HATES YOU (James Felix McKenney), LIBERTY KID (Ilya Chaiken), and the forthcoming DARLING (Mickey Keating).

Founder Fessenden, who still oversees operations at Glass Eye, began his career acting and shooting super 8mm shorts, eventually moving on to long format videos, such as his 144-minute caper flick EXPERIENCED MOVERS (1985), the first film to bear the Glass Eye Pix moniker.

1991 Saw the production of Fessenden’s first original feature, NO TELLING, and in 1994 Glass Eye birthed what many consider the seminal NYC vampire film, HABIT. Fessenden’s subsequent award-winning films WENDIGO and THE LAST WINTER inspired The New York Times to opine, “Fessenden approaches the themes and thrills of the classic American horror movies 
through a determinedly modern approach, as if John Cassavetes had been working for Universal in the early 30’s.”

Since the inception of Glass Eye Pix, Fessenden and co. have run a trans-media operation on a budget, producing movies, documentaries, performance art, comic books, audio dramas, soundtracks, trading cards, action figures, and a dedicated web presence since 1993. The recent success of the Sony PS4 video game UNTIL DAWN, written by Fessenden and longtime Glass Eye collaborator Graham Reznick, indicates that Glass Eye’s aesthetic of authenticity mixed with genre can inspire new generations of fright fans across all mediums.

To mark thirty years of fierce independence, Glass Eye Pix is celebrating with a series of special screenings and events this autumn. On October 4th Larry will appear at SpectreFest in Los Angeles for a special screening of HABIT, followed by a conversation, and from October 8-11 Fessenden will appear at New York Comic Con alongside numerous Glass Eye directors, collaborators, and friends. October 20th sees Shout! Factory’s heavily-touted Blu-ray release of “The Larry Fessenden Collection,” containing four of the director’s most acclaimed works remastered in high-definition. Titles include No Telling (1991), Habit (1995), Wendigo (2001), and The Last Winter (2006).

Additional events will be announced in October, including a retrospective at New York’s IFC Center, screenings in New York and Los Angeles, and a special showing of EXPERIENCED MOVERS in the same East Village bar where it was shot 30 years ago.

For the first time on vinyl, the soundtrack composed by Jeff Grace (House of The Devil, In a Valley of Violence).

Limited edition of 500 copies on blood red and purple swirl vinyl. Housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with exclusive liner notes from the one and only Angus Scrimm!

Copies available for purchase from Deep Focus Records.

This Saturday, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL will screen at midnight at School of Visual Arts as part of their alumni program. Director Ti West and Producer Peter Phok will be on hand for a Q&A following the screening.

From the event page:

As part of After School Special: The 2015 School of Visual Arts Alumni Film & Animation Festival, we are pleased to present a special midnight screening of the cult horror hit The House of The Devil (2009), shown on 35mm film, accompanied by a Q&A with director Ti West (BFA 2003 Film and Video) and producer Peter Phok (BFA 2003 Film and Video).  The Q&A will be moderated by current SVA student Amanda DiMartino (BFA 2017 Film).

Synopsis: College student Samantha Hughes takes a strange babysitting job that coincides with a full lunar eclipse.  She slowly realizes her clients harbor a terrifying secret.  Starring Jocelin Donahue, Greta Gerwig, and Tom Noonan.

The film will be preceded by the world cinematic premiere of The Hate My Day Jobs’ music video Double Vision (2015), by creative director Daniel Giachetti (BFA 2002 Advertising) and alumni from the BFA Illustration and BFA Photography departments.

The House of The Devil is rated R.  Parents are strongly cautioned – some material may be inappropriate for children under 17, and children under the age of 12 will not be admitted.

To RSVP please click here or on the ticket icon above.

Fangoria’s got a brand new poster for Mickey Keating’s DARLING, which Fangoria describes as:

Written and directed by Mickey Keating, whose POD just saw release (see story here), DARLING stars JUG FACE’s Lauren Ashley Carter as a young woman who takes a job as a caretaker in a mysterious Manhattan mansion, where the last person to have the job committed suicide and her own sanity begins to crumble. The cast also includes Brian Morvant, Sean Young, Larry Fessenden, John Speredakos and Helen Rogers, and the film was produced by Fessenden, Jenn Wexler, Sean Fowler, Keating and Carter.

 

For the full post and an exclusive image, head to Fangoria.