The 2009 New York City Horror Film Festival (NYCHFF) will be the eighth, and will run from 18 to 22 November at the Tribeca Cinemas (54 Varick Street at Canal Street). This year’s film lineup will include more than “fifty feature and short horror and sci-fi films… from numerous countries around the world that range in subject matter from terrifying, to gory, and to hilarious.”
“This year we received more entries than ever before, and are thrilled by the high caliber of excellent films submitted for consideration,” said NYCHFF Founder Michael Hein. “The 2009 NYCHFF will prove to be one of the best years for the festival, as well as for film aficionados and horror fans.”
The NYCHFF’s Opening Night Gala will take place at BLVD (Spring & Bowery) on 18 November at 8pm. Tickets to the gala are $10, which will include feature five bands, eleven short films, “one hour free beer”, and more.
Among the feature presentations will be Maniac, which they’ll be showing to honor the 20009 NYCHFF Lifetime Achievement Award Winner director William Lustig. “As a kid, auteur William Lustig avidly watched a huge volume of lowdown trashy exploitation fare on 42nd Street’s grindhouse theaters. Working way through the film business, Lustig found himself at the center of a storm of controversy when he made the grim, and gory landmark horror film Maniac which boasts an incredibly intense performance by legendary character actor Joe Spinell and hideously graphic make-up f/x by horror icon Tom Savini. Lustig followed up with the tough, gritty, and exciting urban revenge thriller Vigilante. He delivered another winner with the terrific Maniac Cop, and the series follow ups 2 & 3, Hit List and the suspenseful serial killer thriller Relentless all excellent and entertaining. Lustig’s last film as a director was the nifty fright flick Uncle Sam. William Lustig has also produced a staggering 84 films and TV projects to date. He went on to create the distribution company Blue Underground that lovingly restores and puts out some of the best classic genre films of all time.”
Hein also provided the following descriptions of this year’s feature films:
Maniac (Feature / Retrospective & Achievement Award), directed by William Lustig. “This 1980 grindhouse classic is back on the big screen! Maniac stars Joe Spinell as the deranged Frank Zito. Frank is an embittered loser who talks to himself and his dead mother, stalks a pretty model (legend Caroline Munro), and spends his spare time brutally murdering and scalping women. A pristine 35 mm print will screen as part of this Lifetime Achievement Award program dedicated to Director / Producer William Lustig.”
Must Love Death (Feature / Horror / Comedy), directed by Andreas Schaap. “Disappointed by love and suicidal, Norman arranges to meet a group of like-minded people. But when he arrives at the meeting for the alleged suicide pact, things go very wrong, and hilarity and blood start to flow freely.”
Sweatshop (Feature / Horror), directed by Stacy Davidson. “A group of rave promoters decide to throw a party in an enormous vacant factory, but when the oversexed friends throw back a few drinks and begin setting up, they soon realize a beastly all-seeing presence resides in this enormous place, and it drags a mammoth, inhuman weapon that serves only one purpose: to end the lives of anyone who trespasses here.”
The Revenant (Feature / Horror / Comedy), directed by D. Kerry Prior. “Officer First Class Bart Gregory is killed while fighting in Middle East. His body is shipped back to the United States and laid to rest, but before the lid can be put on his tomb, Bart inexplicably awakens in his coffin and climbs from his grave. A Vampire? A Zombie? No, a Revenant! Now, this average guy must feed on human blood or rot away.”
Nosferatu; Orlok The Vampire in 3D!! (Feature / Retrospective), directed by F.W. Murnau. “This classic 1921 silent film Directed by F.W. Murnau and staring the immortal Max Shriek as Count Orlok is reborn completely restored, remastered, and brought back to life in gorgeous 3D. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for film fans to see one of the greatest and one most recognizable classic silent horror films in 3D on the big screen!”
Maidenhead (Feature / Horror / Art House), directed by Jim Spanos. “Poor Martin doesn’t have much of a life. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, he hasn’t been sleeping well, and he still lives at home with his father, who is an obnoxious, bloodthirsty monster strapped to a bed. Did we mention he isn’t sleeping well? Martin (AJ Bowen of House of the Devil and The Signal) spends his days going numbly about the business of tending to his Dad’s grisly needs. Every day is just like the last, until Martin meets an innocent church-going girl named Meredith, who gives him hope of something more. But what about Dad?”
The Shadow Within (Feature / Horror / Ghost), directed by Silvana Zancolo. “In a gloomy and sinister atmosphere, little Maurice Dumont can’t escape his infernal reality. Dominated by an inhuman mother who rejects him, an absent father and the ghost of his brother who refuses to die. In a claustrophobic overwhelming environment, obsessed by dead and living presences, Maurice seems to have no way out, as death silently creeps into his old gothic house.”
Cornered (Feature / Horror), directed by Daniel Maze. “A serial killer is stalking the gritty streets of Los Angeles, but that doesn’t stop the crew at a local convenience store from their weekly poker game. Now, trapped inside the store with a deranged killer the group must fight to make it though the night alive. The film stars Steve Guttenberg, James Duval and the hysterical Ellia English.”
Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (Feature / Horror), directed by Frank Sabatella. “Long Island, 1978: A young girl named Mary Mattock gruesomely murders her family and is locked away at the notorious Kings Park Psychiatric Center. Ten years later Mary escapes, leaving a grizzly wake of bodies and blood. Gunned down by the police, Mary meets her own demise outside the sanitarium walls. This incident gave birth to the legend of Mary Hatchet’s walking ghost and the mischievous night named in honor of her death, Blood Night! Starring genre favorites Bill Moseley and Danielle Harris, Blood Night puts a neck-breaking spin on the gory and gut wrenching slasher films of the ’80s.”
The full film schedule is on this page. Tickets (including the $160 all-access pass) are available from this page.