Progress Report One for the
11th Festival of Fantastic Films
Sept 8th to 10th 2000.
Publishing Date: February 2000
NEW VENUE
We have at last managed to find a venue for the 11th Festival of
Fantastic Films. The new venue is The Renaissance Hotel,
Manchester, a 4 star hotel set in the heart of the city with
superb con facilities. All of the function rooms are set on one
floor, with adequate space between to block out extraneous noise.
There is a large lounge area, with its own bar, for our members
to get together and socialise.
The accomodation is of a very high standard, as are the service
and staff. In all this is the best venue and layout we have ever
had, it should be a great festival, so book early.
REGISTRATION INFO
The registration fee for the 11th Festival of Fantastic Films is
£60 for the full weekend and entitles you to all Progress
Reports, Programme Booklet, Badge and Attendance to any of the
events and films of your choice over the whole three days of the
convention.
Supporting membership is available at £30 and entitles you to
Progress Reports, Programme Booklet, Day Badge, and Attendance to
any of the events and films on any single day of the convention,
please specify which day you wish to attend, or you can upgrade
to full membership by paying the outstanding balance at any time
up to the end of August 2000.
Children: Full attending membership is £20 up to the age of 12
years and £30 up to the age of 16 years.
Register now by using the form on this WebSite. Don't leave it too late.
For your convenience, major credit cards can be accepted by
telephone, call Tony Edwards on (+44) - (0)161 707 3747.
ACCOMODATION
The charges we have negotiated at the Renaissance for Bed and
Breakfast are £55 per night for Single, or £70 per night for
Double/Twin.
When you register for the Festival you will be sent a Hotel
Booking form along with your Festival ticket. You must specify if
you require a Smoking or No-Smoking room.
The Hotel Booking form should be returned For The Attention of
Mrs. Gillian Wragg, c/o The Renaissance Manchester Hotel,
Blackfriars Street, Deansgate, Manchester. M3 2EQ, or fax it on
0161 833 0731.
Other accomodation is available in Manchester of course and you
do not have to stay at The Renaissance to be a Member of the
Festival.
CAR PARKING
The Renaissance has its own car park, free to residents of the
hotel, but subject to availability, on a first come - first
served basis. For day members there is a public multi-storey car
park just at the side of the Renaissance, on Blackfriars Street.
This is charged by the hour, or by the day, payable on exit.
DEALER INFO
As usual, the Sunday of the Festival will see our Dealers Room
open and a good number of memorabilia dealers will be in
attendance. Philip Nevitski is taking bookings and tables cost
£30 each. Space is limited so please book early: Ring Philip on
0161 228 2947.
THE AUCTION
The infamous Ramsey Campbell Auction will take place on the
Saturday of the Festival, and as always is in need of material.
So please take a look around and see what items in your genre
movie collection can go into the catalogue this year.
Force yourself to let go of something you haven't even looked at
since last millennium.
The Auction is an important part of the Festival funding and we
could not put on the programme we do without revenue from this
source.
You can help in one of two ways. Either donate something
outright, in which case ALL the money raised goes directly into
the Festival fund, or enter an item for auction from which the
Festival will take 50% and you will receive the balance of
anything sold, but you must let us know whether your items are
donations or 50/50 shares.
If you advise Gil Lane-Young prior to the end of August, your
item or items will be listed in the Auction catalogue and will be
among the first items to go on sale.
All items brought along to the Festival without advising us will
only be auctioned after the catalogue pieces have been under
Ramsey's hammer.
Ring Gil on 0161 929 1243 or drop him a line, telling him what
you will be bringing, and whether you are donating it or want a
50/50 split, at 33, Barrington Road, Altrncham, Cheshire. WA14
1HZ.
THE 1999 FESTIVAL VIDEO
The 1999 Festival Video, containing a collection of guest
interviews, events and other interesting happenings, from last
years Festival, is now available for only £9.99p plus £1.00p
for postage and packing. From Tony Edwards, 95, Meadowgate Road,
Salford. M6 8EN.
PROGRAMME NOTES
When it comes to preparing the ground rules for our programme of
movies we have always tried to accommodate the new alongside the
old. Our basic premise for the Festival of Fantastic Films back
in 1990 was to stage an event that was expressly aimed at fans of
the FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND hall of fame... The movies from
the past that have prepared us for the future. Therefore our
backbone of movies has and always will be the amazing output of
the earlier years of fantastic cinema - but we counterbalance
these with rare treats in the form of brand new and previously
unseen Independently produced shorts and feature films which we
cull from all over the world. For the past four years, our
Independent Movie Contest has attracted an ever growing entry and
each year we see a marvellous mixture of movies that attendees of
the Festival would not get the opportunity to see elsewhere.
Already, the entries are coming in for this year and if they are
of the same high standard as the 1999 films which included the
excellent Australian short SUCCUBUS (directed by Harry Weinman)
and from the USA, THE GRAIL (directed by Joei Gharrity) and the
feature length zombie-fest from Germany PROMETHEUS THE FALLEN
ANGEL (directed by Olaff Ittenbach), we can't wait to screen
them! As usual, information on these films and any premiere
features that we can get our hands on will be in our final PR
which you will receive (as long as you have registered of
course!!) around August.
For our first PR of the 11th Festival of Fantastic Films, while
we still have a fair amount of time to sift and select the
contenders for this years movie programme, we asked a few good
folk to send us suggestions for their ideal movie-fest. Our
thanks to the many fans who helped with this survey, and
especially Roy Spence, Steven Nadler, Warren Varnom, Wayne Kinsey
and Brian Morrell.
The Concatenation team of Jonathan Cowie and Tony Chester have
also given us a terrific amount of help and encouragement on
this, and are of course pushing like mad for a good number of
science fiction pictures to grace our Festival screens this year.
Many of the titles they suggested have not been sourced as we
write this at the end of January - but we'll include them into
our short list and try and locate prints ready for the final
decision making sessions.
The titles listed below are intended to encourage you to join in
the exercise and let us know what you consider your most
"re-watchable" movies of all time. The films listed
here are all in our melting pot but this is NOT the absolute
final listing, so you DO have time to send in some feedback
before our film programme is assembled. We'd like to have as many
films as possible made up of your own choices on this year's
programme.
The layout of our function suites at The Renaissance Hotel gives
us two excellent sized rooms for 16mm films and the video
programme. The latter includes all the Independent movies that do
not come to us on film. The main hall, The Grand Ballroom, will
house the stage for Guest of Honour interviews, the Auction and
the rest of our 16mm film programme. We also have a large area
for the dealers which will allow more room than ever before.
So here's our first listing of possible movies for the programme.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1920) dir: J.S. Robertson
Metropolis (1925) dir: Fritz Lang
The Mysterious Island (1929) directors:
Hubbard/Tourneur/Christensen
Just Imagine (1930) dir: David Butler
King Kong (1933) dir: Schoedsack & Cooper
The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) dir:WilliamWitne y/John
English
The Devil Commands (1941) dir: E. Dmytryk
Destination Moon (1950) dir: Irving Pichel
The Angry Red Planet (1959) dir: Ib Melchoir
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) dir: Robert Wise
The Thing From Another World (1951) dir: Christian Nyby
Donovan's Brain (1953) dir: Felix Feist
Gog (1954) dir: Herbert Strock
When Worlds Collide (1951 ) dir:Rudolph Mate
The War of the Worlds (1953 ) dir: Byron Haskin
This Island Earth (1955) dir: Joseph M. Newman
The Creature Walks Amongst Us (1956) dir: John Sherwood
Quatermass Xperiment (1956 ) dir: Val Guest
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956) dir: Roger Corman
Day the World Ended (1956) dir: Roger Corman
Forbidden Planet (1956) dir: Fred McLeod Wilcox
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) dir: Don Siegel
Blood is my Heritage (1957) dir: Herbert L. Strock
Daughter of Dr Jekyll (1957) dir: Edgar G. Ulmer
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) dir: Terence Fisher
Dracula (1957) dir: Terence Fisher
The Fiend Without a Face (1957) dir: Arthur Crabtree
Kronos (1957) dir: Kurt Neumann
The Monster That Challenged the World (1957) dir: Arthur Laven
Quatermass 2 (1957 ) dir: Val Guest
The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1958) dir: Irvin Berwick
The Trollenberg Terror (1958) dir: Quentin Lawrence
Terror From the Year 5000 (1958) dir: Robert Gurney
The Four Skulls of Johnathan Drake (1959) dir: Edward L. Cahn
The Killer Shrews (1959) dir: Ray Kellogg
The Mummy (1959) dir: Terence Fisher
The Brides of Dracula (1960) dir: Terence Fisher
The Time Machine (1960) dir: George Pal
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) dir: Terence Fisher
The Damned (1961) dir: Joseph Losey
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1962) dir: Val Guest
Unearthly Stranger (1963) dir: John Krish
The Time Travellers (1964 dir: Ib Melchior
Quatermass and the Pit (1968) dir: Roy Ward Baker
Charly (1968) dir: Ralph Nelson
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969) dir: Joseph Sargent
The Illustrated Man (1969) dir: Jack Smight
Scream and Scream Again (1969) dir: Gordon Hessler
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972) dir: Dario Argento
Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) dir: Jim Sharman
Alien (1977) dir: Ridley Scott
Blue Sunshine (1977) dir: Jeff Leiberman
Star Wars (1977) dir: George Lucas
American Werewolf in London (1981 ) dir: John Landis
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (1982) dir: Nicholas Meyer
The Thing (1982) dir: John Carpenter
Blade Runner (1982 ) dir: Ridley Scott
Iceman (1984) dir: Fred Schepisi
Fright Night (1983) dir: Tom Holland
The Terminator (1982) dir: James Cameron
Suggestions for more recent 90's movies have included:- Tetsuo -
The Iron Man, Evil Ed, Dark City, Ed Wood, Groundhog Day, Pi, and
The Cube
We'd also like to put together some groups of films by genre
directors .... especially people like Edward Cahn, Herbert
Strock, Terence Fisher, Bert I Gordon and Jack Arnold.
Producers who have specialised in our genres would include William Castle, Richard Gordon, Charles Schneer and George Pal.
TALKS, PANELS AND OTHER LIVE
EVENTS
Those of you who attended any of the discussions, talks or panel
items at the 1999 Fest will know how well they were enjoyed. This
year will see more of these very popular live programme items.
ADRIAN JAMES will continue to entertain and educate us with his
knowledge of the Movie Serials and this year he'll be discussing
the serial and "B" picture output of REPUBLIC STUDIOS.
Adrian is currently looking for some exciting clips to illustrate
his programme item.
Producer RICHARD GORDON will be travelling over from New York
once again and will be among a celebrity panel entitled THE BLAIR
WITCH EFFECT to discuss the strong influence the success of the
movie will have on genre filming for the next few years.
WAYNE KINSEY will chair another Hammer Films celebrity panel and
discuss the many aspects of putting together one of the studio's
classic horror films. Script, Art Direction, Camera and Editing
are only a few of the "behind the scenes" subjects the
panel will cover. More details next time.
We are hopeful that we'll have master classes on stop-motion
animation and writing for the screen.
STEPHEN LAWS and STEPHEN GALLAGHER will introduce a recently
rediscovered "lost" short film from the 1950's and give
it the first public screening in over 40 years.
It is our intention this year to have a short live introduction
to as many of the films as possible. An insight into the
director's work - some notes on special scenes to look out for -
add to our enjoyment of a movie and help promote discussion
afterwards. We have had a number of volunteers so far, but please
do drop us a line if you would be interested in introducing any
of the above films if they appear in the final programme listing.
Each introduction should last for a maximum of five minutes.
The next PR will update you with our final short-listed titles
for the retrospective film programme and we'll have more complete
details of the live items. Register NOW to ensure you receive PR
2.
SHORT LIST OF POSSIBLE GUESTS
The following is a short list of genre personalities Gil
Lane-Young has invited to appear as guests at the Festival. As
yet he has received no confirmation from any of them.
FORREST J. ACKERMAN. American genre fan and creator of the
influential Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. He saw his
first Fantastic Film The Lost World in 1925, followed two years
later by Metropolis. He compiled the first list of Fantastic
Films in 1932, attended the first World Science Fiction
convention in 1939, appeared on television for the first time in
1947, created the Ackerman Science Fiction Agency in 1948,
received the world's first Hugo Award in 1953, and coined the
ubiquitous term 'sci-fi' in 1954. The author and editor of
numerous books and magazines, he has appeared in more than fifty
motion pictures. He lives in an eighteen room Hollywood mansion (
the former home of actor Jon Hall) filled with over 300,000
pieces of memorabilia.
DARIO ARGENTO. We first invited Dario a couple of years ago, but
due to work commitments he was unable to attend. Dario is
recognised as one of the masters of the Italian style of horror,
known over there as Gallio, and is of course well known to most
of you for such films as Inferno, Tenebrae, Suspiria and the
recent version of Phantom of the Opera starring his daughter
Asia, who incidentally is included on her father's invite.
MARTINE BESWICK. Before leaving the UK to appear in a number of
American horror films Martine starred in many Hammer movies
including When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and Dr. Jekyll and
Sister Hyde with the late great Ralph Bates.
MICHAEL RIPPER. If anybody needs to be told who Michael is then
they haven't seen many Hammer movies.
A great British character actor who has worked with many of the
great directors and actors of our time. Michael is now in his
87th year, and has in the past had to pull out of attending the
Festival due to ill health, but we hope he can make it this time.
PAUL NASCHY. Paul is famous for his Spanish series of movies
within which he has appeared as almost all the genre monsters,
with a special affinity to the Werewolf role. The undisputed king
of Spanish horror, he has also written and directed many
Fantastic Films.
JOHNNY DEPP. Gil has written to Johnny with an invite, we can
only hope, who knows? Johnny has appeared in many genre movies,
and always given a great performance. His credits include Edward
Scissorhands, Ed Wood and the wonderful new Legend of Sleepy
Hollow.
LETTERS AND OTHER BITS
Gentlemen of the Committee
Writing to thank you for another enjoyable Festival and the usual
mixture of guests, films, events and memories. Although
disappointed at the non-appearance on Brian Clements, Robert
Fuest and Francis Matthews, the guests who appeared were full
value for money.
The venue was different, after years of Sacha's, that was a bit
of a wrench. You must remember I come from the South Coast and
the idea of a Film Festival not for the arty's is frowned on !
But the hotel was grand and my room was so far down the corridor
I thought I was in the next street. (the corridors were so long I
kept expecting a little kid on a tricycle to zoom into view !)
.....
On Sunday I thought I might as well wander outside for some fresh
air before breakfast, well as fresh as the air you can get in the
centre of Manchester, on the streets were gangs of 14 - 15 year
old girls .. "You a roadie for 911 ? ... Can you get me into
Spike's room ?" I was asked, by now I was quite light headed
and convinced I was on another planet. It was nice to get back
inside to the sanity of Baron Frankenstein and his entourage.
Please pass on my best wishes to Norman J. Warren, my thanks to
all the guests and my appreciation for the hard work of all
involved in the Festival, I am looking forward to next year
already, but the last weekend will be a tough act to follow.
Regards
Steve Longhurst.
---------------------------------------
We had many letters from people that attended the 10th Festival
of Fantastic Films, among them, letters from Vanessa Bergman,
Mike Lockwood, Richard Gordon Ian Foster and Roy Spence. Most of
them mentioned the gremlins which seemed to bedevil the 1999
event, but they also said they still enjoyed it. They also gave
us many ideas and pointers for improving the Festiival, some of
which we will take on board. The general consensus about moving
the Festival out of Manchester, was one of mild disapproval,
however they nearly all said that wherever the Festival was held,
they would attend.
Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and
keep your letters coming. It is YOUR Festival, let us know what
you want.
Tony Edwards - PR Editor.
FESTIVAL T-SHIRTS
We have a number of Festival T-Shirts from previous years for
sale at special rates. Here is our complete stock list - when
they've gone ..... they've GONE!
10th Festival 1999
Classic Icons White on Black
2 only XL Sweat Shirts. £13.50p each.
9th Festival 1998
Festival Logo Silver on Black T-Shirts
1 Med. 1 Large. 2 XL £6 each 2 Medium Sweatshirts. £12 each
8th Festival 1997
Multicoloured Gothic Castle on Black
T-Shirts 8 Med. 8 Large. £5 each. Sweat Shirts 2 Med. 7 Large. 5
XL £10 each.
7th Festival 1996
Rocket Logo on Blue
Sweat Shirts 4 Med. 1 XL. £10 each.
6th Festival 1995
Bride of Frankenstein on Grey
T-Shirts 8 Small. 16 Med. 1 Large. £5 each. Sweat Shirts 1 Med.
1 Large. £10 each.
5th Festival 1994
Harryhausen's Medusa Multicoloured on Black.
T-Shirts 23 Med. 13 Large. £4 each.
4th Festival 1993
King Kong White & Green on Black.
Sweat Shirt 1 only £12.
3rd Festival 1992
Man from Planet X White on Black.
T-Shirts 4 Small £5 each. Sweat Shirts 2 XL £10
2nd Festival 1991
Fantasy Icons Multicoloured on White.
T-Shirts 4 Small. 6 Med. 4 Large. 3 XL. £4 each.
1st Festival 1990
Night of the Demon Festival Logo Black & Yellow on White.
Sorry Sold out.
Available from Tony Edwards,
95, Meadowgate Rd. Salford.
M6 8EN. England.
Please make cheques payable to The Society of Fantastic Films and
include £1 towards post and packing.
Send Festival e-mail to Harry Nadler: mailto [email protected],uk