If you’re in Los Angeles, or even can get here easily, and you’re a fan of genre flicks, then you need to add Beyond Fest to your yearly calendar of things to attend. Believe me, you’ll want to come back every year. Offering an eclectic rotation of both brand new movies and newly restored classics, Beyond Fest is always a hoot as it takes over the historic Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre for a fortnight. The 2018 helping of blood and beauty features some of the fall’s mostly highly anticipated horror, thriller, action, and dark comedy offerings, plus many opportunities to see this year’s guest of honor, the king of body horror himself, David Cronenberg. Long live the new flesh!
Cronenberg made a career out of exploring the political and socially relevant through the lens of utter grotesqueness, giving horror fans a filmography full of some of the most upsetting and thought provoking films in the genre. Not for the faint of stomach. Beyond Fest will be screening 13 of Cronenberg’s films, including an all-day marathon dubbed “The Shaping of Rage” featuring Scanners, Rabid, The Brood, and Dead Ringers, plus thematic double features like The Fly and Naked Lunch, and Videodrome and eXistenZ.
For new movies, Beyond Fest has only the year’s two biggest horror titles: Halloween and Suspiria. On October 6, they’re doing a triple bill of Michael Myers-approved scares with David Gordon Green’s Halloween along with John Carpenter’s original, and Bob Clark’s progenitor, Black Christmas, hand-picked by Green and Danny McBride as a major influence on their Halloween. And though it won’t be part of the festival proper, they’re presenting two free screenings of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria on October 22, both at the historic Cinerama Dome.
Other world premieres or West Coast premieres include Climax, Anna and the Apocalypse, The Guilty, Monster Party, The Wind, Widows, Bad Times at the El Royale, and Zhang Yimou’s Shadow.
As for classic movies, you can’t do much better than the slate at 2018’s Beyond Fest. In addition to all them Cronenbergs, you can also see brand new restorations of psychedelic sci-fi oddity Liquid Sky, the mega-sleazy slasher movie Maniac, spaghetti western icon Django, and giallo masterpiece All the Colors of the Dark, as well as screenings of Akira, The Wicker Man, The Monster Squad, and Japanese crime movie Doberman Cop, with Sonny Chiba himself in attendance.
I’ve merely scratched the surface of what you can see (and at what you’ll scream) at Beyond Fest 2018. The festival runs from September 26 until October 9. More information and tickets can be found at their website.
Images: 20th Century Fox, Blumhouse, Amazon Studios
