Congrats to Alex Hurt and creature designers Brian Spears and Peter Gerner!

From the fest: This performance was worthy of celebrating.
Congrats to the whole Blackout team for this wild werewolf film.
Full list of winners from the evening at vbaff.ca

BY DREW TINNIN OCT. 20, 2023 11:45 PM EST
The following post contains spoilers about “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The horrors inflicted upon the Osage people during a string of ghastly murders throughout the 1920s are among the worst atrocities ever committed against Indigenous Americans. Anyone familiar with U.S. history during the Old West will know that’s saying a lot. Based upon the 2017 book by David Grann, director Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” uncovers the systematic infiltration of nefarious white men into the lives and affairs of the Indigenous Osage Nation after vast deposits of oil were found on their land. The enormous wealth the Osage possessed led to a string of mysterious deaths that were always deemed accidental or never investigated in the first place. 

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To help tell such a complex web of lies and deceit, Scorsese enlisted the help of a wide array of performers that resulted in some spectacular cameos from musicians like Sturgill Simpson and Pete Yorn. One appearance in particular during the finale of Scorsese’s epic Western should delight genre fans and those that follow the indie horror scene, especially. To wrap up the story and reveal what happened to the major players, Scorsese uses an old-time detective radio show in the final moments of “Killers of the Flower Moon” that features horror legend Larry Fessenden (“Habit,” “The Last Winter”) as one of the bit players on stage. The choice to include Fessenden in this particular context makes perfect sense if you’re familiar with Fessenden’s award-winning horror podcast inspired by the vintage radio shows of yesteryear.

After bursting onto the New York film scene with his indie vampire tale “Habit” in the mid-90s, Larry Fessenden has become a well-respected mainstay within the horror community. When he’s not directing his own interpretations of the Universal Monsters in films like “Depraved” and his latest werewolf movie “Blackout,” Fessenden can be seen on the other side of the camera acting in Jim Jarmusch’s “The Dead Don’t Die,” Travis Stevens’ “Jakob’s Wife” and Ted Geoghegan’s WWII spook fest “Brooklyn 45.” 

Fessenden also founded the independent NYC-based production outfit Glass Eye Pix that has gone on to help produce a bundle of new horror classics including “The House of the Devil” from Ti West, the documentary “Birth of the Living Dead” about the making of George A. Romero’s classic, and Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s “Late Phases.” 

Along with Irish filmmaker Glenn McQuaid, Fessenden created the scary audio drama series “Tales From Beyond the Pale” that lovingly recreates the macabre radio plays of the past for a modern audience. Over multiple seasons, “Tales From Beyond the Pale” has featured a slew of special guest voice talent including notable names in horror such as Barbara Crampton, Joshua Leonard, A.J. Bowen, and also Pat Healy, who pops up towards the end of “Killers of the Flower Moon” as a G-Man looking into the Osage murders. 

Some episodes of “Beyond the Pale” were recorded in front of a live audience, accompanied by live sound effects and audio cues just like the FBI radio play seen at the end of Scorsese’s sprawling new film. Not surprisingly, Fessenden looks right at home up on stage recreating the newsreel radio dramas of the era that reached their height in popularity during the 1940s and ’50s.

At the tail end of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Fessenden plays the voice of Hale in the radio play, DeNiro’s despicable character that’s finally brought to justice after being tied to the murder of his longtime friend Henry Roan (William Belleau). Featuring a cameo from Scorsese himself, the audio drama provides an ingenious way to inform the audience about what became of Hale and DiCaprio’s character Ernest Burkhart without feeling like exposition. The fate of both gentlemen is told to us as a live performance that’s simultaneously being sent out over the airwaves. It’s revealed that Hale was sentenced to life in prison in 1929, but only served 18 years before being paroled in 1947. Burkhart was eventually pardoned by Oklahoma Governor Henry Bellmon in 1965, and lived with his brother Byron in a broken-down trailer park on the outskirts of Fairfax, Oklahoma. 

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The choice by Scorsese to feature Fessenden in this particular context not only highlights the horror director’s own series “Tales From Beyond the Pale,” it’s also a nod to the heart of independent filmmaking in New York City. Out of all the cameos in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Fessenden’s appearance on stage with Scorsese represents two legendary New York artists. One just happens to have a few more Oscars than the other. 

Read entire article at SLASH FILM

Visit Tales From Beyond The Pale for all your Shocktober chills

This marks the second trophy for Chris Skotchdopole’s debut feature CRUMB CATCHER:
Having already won for Best Ensemble,
the Glass Eye Pix / Gigantic Pictures production takes home the Gold Audience Award.
Congrats to all! And thanks for your votes!

Larry Fessenden Trusts You

by Phil Nobile Jr.

(Mild spoilers for the as-yet-unreleased Blackout follow.)
This week at Brooklyn Horror Fest I watched Blackout, the new film from indie genre legend Larry Fessenden (Habit, Depraved). I loved it; it’s a haunting, haunted, old-school werewolf tragedy with equal parts horror, hair, and heart. It continues Fessenden’s career-long conversation about addiction issues while delving into timely sociopolitical topics and the unsolvable tangle of father-son relationships. It’s also hilarious and frequently gory, with great practical FX from Brian Spears and Peter Gerner. It’s a singular, handmade work from one of our great American storytellers. I can’t wait for Fango readers to see it.

This is not a review of the film. But in watching it, I was very taken with one particular aspect of it, and I’ve been chewing on it for days. (Here’s where the mild spoilers come.) The film has no opening credits, so actors are not called out by name until the end of the movie. Charley, the lead character, is played wonderfully by an actor of great depth and an unmistakable air of familiarity. Before I could put my finger on it, the film is discussing Charley’s late father, and Fessenden cuts to pictures of… William Hurt.

That’s because Charley is played by the late actor’s son Alex Hurt, and in retrospect the family resemblance is obvious. But without explicitly knowing ahead of time that this actor is the son of William Hurt, I was yanked out of the movie for a moment as my brain put the pieces together.

And the amazing thing is: Fessenden is fine with this, because he trusts his audience.

And this is exciting, because for the most part we haven’t seen filmmakers trusting their audience like this in a minute. Sometime between Christopher Nolan explaining in 2005 exactly where in Asia Bruce Wayne ordered his Batman cowls and the advent of social media platforms that accelerated media illiteracy, filmmakers and audiences have all shifted toward this priority of making things line up perfectly; bulletproofing plot points and creative choices so that an increasingly unsophisticated audience will continue to suspend its increasingly stubborn disbelief. Movies — especially and tragically, genre movies — now have to be grounded and believable, and asking your audience to stfu and take the ride has become a heavier lift on both sides of the transaction.

And here is Larry Fessenden, who’s been making movies for 45 years, reminding us that movies are dreams, and that we can all choose to be grownups about it and go on a journey whose layers transcend the current cultural need to be completely, thuddingly literal.

So, sure, pics of the late William Hurt might have your mind wandering for a second as you ponder the deeply meta layers of Alex Hurt’s casting — Fessenden says he saw in Alex the wounded weight of legacy that Lon Chaney Jr. brought to 1941’s The Wolf Man — but that’s okay. Fessenden trusts you to come back to the plot after you’ve processed this info, and he’s not worried that he’s lost you with this bold, honestly great choice.

Similarly, Fessenden’s werewolf story is more concerned with lycanthropy as a character exploration device than as some showcase for animatronics or cgi, so when you see the aesthetic route that particular aspect of the film takes, Fessenden trusts you to be on board. If you are, you’re gonna open yourself up to a very special film indeed.

Again, this is not a review, but every aspect of Blackout — its pacing, its beautiful character work, its very specific structure — seems to gleefully abandon expectation and convention, and trusts that audiences will take this sad/funny trip crafted by a wholly original cinematic voice. Certainly this is not the only film doing just that right now, but it feels increasingly important to call it out and celebrate it when it happens.

So many films spend precious time in the weeds trying to sell you their reality, making their verisimilitude airtight and critic-proof, and in 20 years all it’s really done for film is made audiences lazier and dumber while penning in storytellers. Blackout and its director have different priorities, and the film is all the better for it. Ultimately the film presents something that’s more authentic than realistic, and that’s an important and exciting distinction to learn — or, maybe, to re-learn.

Read at FANGORIA Terror Teletype

GEP Pal Ilya Chaiken (LIBERTY KID) helms doc
about NYC punk band The Lunachicks,
World Premiering at DocNYC. SOLD OUT!

WORLD PREMIERE The Lunachicks, an all-female punk band renowned for their unabashed humor and unwavering pro-women ethos, made their mark on NYC’s underground music scene in the ‘90s. A rollercoaster of drugs, romances, and creative conflicts ultimately led to their 2000 breakup, but can love of the music reunite them for one last show? Buoyed by energetic storytelling, gritty ’80s-’90s nightclub footage, insightful interviews, and high-voltage performances, this is a must-watch for music history enthusiasts. – Karen McMullen 

The first screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers and Lunachicks.

Saturday Oct 21
Larry Fessenden Intros his Film,
Habit at 10 pm (Runtime 1 hr 52 min) Q and A to Follow

Greenpoint Film Noir Cinema, 122 Meserole Ave, Brooklyn, NY

“Larry Fessenden’s BLACKOUT is a haunted, haunting,
old-school werewolf tragedy, with equal parts
humor, heart, horror and hair.
Fessenden is one of our great storytellers.”
—Phil Nobile, FANGORIA