Montreal’s Fantasia film festival wrapped up over a week ago, but we still can’t stop thinking of all the fun we had, which you can read about in Ariel Esteban Cayer’s awesome (and still running!) Fantasia Blog. After the jump, check out some exclusive pics by festival programmer/photographer King-Wei Chu from the fest’s amazing 15th-anniversary edition, which took in over 100,000 admissions, screened over 130 feature films and played host to 150 directors from all over the world.

Opening weekend at Fantasia began with a bang, thanks to the world premiere of THE THEATRE BIZARRE (see review here). The bloody anthology’s seven (!) directors descended on the city from the four corners of the globe (left to right: Tom Savini, Doug Buck, Karim Hussain, Richard Stanley, David Gregory, Jeremy Kasten and Buddy Giovinazzo), in addition to cast members Udo Kier (“I did seven films this year,” Kier bragged), handsome newcomer James Gill and Lynn Lowry, plus Savini-segment scripter John Esposito (to name a few). Watch for tons of ongoing THEATRE BIZARRE coverage on this site and in the mag in the near future. The screening marked a special homecoming for director/DP Hussain, who once toiled as a programmer in Fantasia’s early days. And as the fest’s current international co-programmer Mitch Davis noted, the THEATRE BIZARRE filmmakers themselves hatched their joint omnibus while sharing brews at Fantasia over the years.

Enthusiasm for THE WICKER TREE ran high, as Fantasia fans would be the first in the universe to set their eyes on the decades-gestating WICKER MAN sort-of sequel. Though the film disappointed some (at least it’s better than the remake!), everyone loved meeting the WICKER films’ director, the charming 82-year-old Robin Hardy. Look for the Anchor Bay release of THE WICKER TREE next year, and see our review here. 

The audience flipped for the musical slasher send-up short THE LEGEND OF BEAVER DAM (picture HATCHET meets GLEE), which preceded the terrific crowd-pleaser ATTACK THE BLOCK (see it!). The antics of BEAVER DAM’s Quebec director Jerome Sable (left) and co-writer Eli Batalion kept us in stitches too. Expect a feature from these talented guys very soon.

The lovely Lowry wowed us in both THE THEATRE BIZARRE and a revival screening of David Cronenberg’s SHIVERS (the latter part of a tribute to Canadian horror mavericks André Link and John Dunning), but she really rang our bells when she hit the karaoke stage after hours one night. The comeback kid has several additional genre flicks on the horizon, including Dante Tomaselli’s TORTURE CHAMBER, SCHISM and GEORGE: A ZOMBIE INTERVENTION.

TERMINATOR’s Michael Biehn, who toplines French helmer Xavier Gens’ bomb-shelter nightmare THE DIVIDE, lent the Canadian event major star power. Also due from Anchor Bay, THE DIVIDE plumbs the darkest depths of human nature when survivors of a nuclear attack on New York City begin viciously turning on each other while waiting for the (radioactive) dust to settle. As much as we loved the film, we doubt we could make it through Gens’ promised, even longer director’s cut. This version was rough enough!

The Ontario-lensed MONSTER BRAWL, in which eight classic monsters battle to the death in a Wrestlemania-style competition, enjoyed its world debut at Fantasia. Just about everyone associated with the fun flick—from actors to caterers—took the stage to talk up the prosthetics-heavy flick. Cast on hand included SHERLOCK HOLMES’ towering thug Robert Maillet (second from left) and THE BROOD’s Art Hindle (in white jacket, next to bearded writer/director Jesses T. Cook).

Veteran Canadian director Ted Kotcheff (FIRST BLOOD, WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S, UNCOMMON VALOR) never directed a horror film during his long career (“They frighten me too much,” he said), but that didn’t stop audiences from coming out to see his once-feared-lost 1971 Australian drama WAKE IN FRIGHT, about a schoolteacher who loses everything during an alcohol-fueled weekend in the Outback. Still working at a young 80, Kotcheff delivered a fascinating Q&A about the film’s production, disappearance and rediscovery, and even signed a few Rambo posters after the show.

During the fest’s latter days, genre great John Landis provided a huge dose of hilarity and enthusiasm with the Canadian launch of his period black comedy BURKE AND HARE. The AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON/ANIMAL HOUSE director also accepted a Fantasia Lifetime Achievement Award at his sold-out screening. Besides the U.S. release of his all-star (Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Curry and Christopher Lee!) film, Landis’ fall will see the publication of his gargantuan coffee-table book MONSTERS IN THE MOVIES from DK Publishing.

We still have a bunch of follow-up Fantasia 2011 news stories and reviews to run, so keep perusing this site, and scope out our magazine coverage later this fall. And start making plans for the fest’s 16th edition next summer. We’ll save you a seat!

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