Staff, friends and fans of the festival weigh in with their canadain cialis favourite Fantasia memories!

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HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS
Director, Blood Feast, She Devils on Wheels

As a certified “geezer” in the evolving splatter film world, I’d have thought any recognition of my dubious contributions would long since have been tossed into the dustbin of history and forgotten. What a rebirth my visit Amazing product. One of the most affective products I have tried on the market, levitra online canada immediate delivery. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy® (NABP®) inspects Internet pharmacies and awards a "VIPPS" seal to those that meet its criteria. to Fantasia was, last year! The highlight was being able to sing the theme song from “Two Thousand Maniacs” … which to this day is my personal favourite of all the films I’ve excreted … and have the audience join in yelling out  the “Yee-haw!” segments. That I was invited (and treated like a celebrity), then reveled in such enjoyment, is a high point in what I laughingly call my career. Thank you, Mitch and your gang, buying generic cialis mexico rx for a memorable experience.

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ADAM GREEN
Director, Hatchet 1 +2, Frozen, Spiral

It was my first time in Canada and I had two very different films premiering at the Fantasia Film Festival simultaneously in the same weekend.  The first was my introduction to the world of genre filmmaking, the comedic slasher throwback HATCHET, and second was my follow up, the very emotional jazz-infused psychodrama SPIRAL.  To say I was nervous would be an understatement.  I had heard so much about the fans at Fantasia and how seriously they take their genre films.  While I had already screened HATCHET to enough rowdy gore loving crowds to know that it had a chance at going over well, how would that same crowd react to the slow burn and emotionally vulnerable SPIRAL the very next night?

HATCHET premiered to an over sold 800 seat theater of die-hard horror fans who’s screams, cheers, and applause during the film’s kill scenes rivaled that of any concert I had ever attended.  By the time the screening was over there were two separate standing ovations, one at the conclusion of the film and one when festival director Mitch Davis introduced me for the best discount cialis Q&A.  There’s actually a photo on-line somewhere that shows me stunned, holding my head, and emotionally touched by that second standing ovation.  I’ve always said that HATCHET introduced me to a few million like-minded friends that I just hadn’t met yet, but there is no greater example of that then at Fantasia.  Never before had I felt so welcome and embraced and I stayed for one of the most casual and personal Q&A’s I’ll probably ever take part in.  Afterwords I hung out in the lobby for another hour or two signing posters and ticket stubs for every single fan who waited as I always do, but the common thing I kept hearing from most everyone was “thank you”.  I saw seasoned genre fans who were literally misty-eyed as they hugged me or gripped my hand in theirs http://www.spectacularoptical.ca/2021/03/canadian-online-pharmacy-no-prescription-needed/ and told me how long they had waited for something like HATCHET to come into their lives again.  I was more than just overwhelmed, I was truly moved.  All of the awards, critical praise, and success in the world can’t match the feeling of looking directly into the eye of a seasoned horror fan and having them tell you from the heart… “thank you.”

The next night as I stood before much of that same crowd to introduce SPIRAL, I was terrified that those same fans would now turn on me.  Would they be let down that SPIRAL was so much more serious and dramatic?  Would they be into it?  Would they be let down that there was not an ounce of gore, nudity, or silly humor anywhere in the film?  As SPIRAL played to near silence, I took on the fetal position and prepared for the worst.  However the reaction from the crowd rivaled the previous nights in many ways.  While much quieter and restrained, they were able to completely switch gears with me and enjoy SPIRAL on a whole different level.  Not only did they love the film and the fact that I could make two completely different films at the same time, but their questions and comments were some of the most thoughtful and intelligent I had ever seen at a Q&A.  I was blown away by how smart the audience was and by how specific and acute their attention to the subtle details were.  Fantasia’s audience proved to me what I have always hoped for about this genre’s fans, and that is that we are smarter than those of any other genre.  Too often fans of horror and fantasy are considered pedestrian, mean spirited, or simple minded fools that are easily entertained by any amount of sex and violence.  But the truth is we’re so much more than that.  We’re a true community and a family that is entertained not just by blood and gore, but by heart and the artistry of good storytelling and imagination.  I left Montreal convinced that the real genre fans were not only still alive and well, but in many ways doing better than ever.  I arrived home in Hollywood not only confident in myself and the films I had made, but confident in “us” as a culture and a community.

Oh, I also made a mental note to bring ear plugs next time.  This crowd is the loudest on the planet.

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CHRIS ALEXANDER
Editor-in-Chief, FANGORIA Magazine

I’ve loved film all my life. It was cinema that saved me in some respects and if you’re like me – and if you’re reading this, dear Fantasia faithful, I presume you are – than you know how certain pictures and the minds of the men and women behind them attain a kind of myth. And no matter how many of these myths I meet, the glow of sharing space, thoughts, words and ideas with them, never wears off, if nothing else it intensifies.

So last year, meeting Ken Russell was a major, major moment in the adventure of life. Not only meeting him, but having lunch with him and his lovely wife Lisi, then hours later joining them at the Cinematheque and watching a 35mm print of Russell’s 1988 camp horror film LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM and –  during the stompin’ celtic rouser “The D’Ampton Worm” – even singing along with him. As a kid, I must have watched LAIR 50 times or more, a battered Vestron VHS that I treasured. It was my entry point into Russell. I wrote a chapter of my book on it. It was the picture that helped form my taste, appreciation and enthusiasm for the art of the absurd and made me demand it in all strains of serious dark art. I never thought I’d ever be able to look Mr. Russell in the eye and tell him as much, nor give him a copy of that book, hand to hand…poetry.

Mine is a front seat in the greatest of film schools and I’ll forever thank FANTASIA for facilitating one of my master classes.

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JEFFREY COMBS
Actor, Re-Animator, Nevermore

My time with the fine people of Fantasia was a glorious thing. They graciously invited me to perform my one man show of Poe, NEVERMORE just last year. The goodwill and hospitality I received was unparalleled. I was provided with a glorious theatre and all the technical and artistic support I needed to make the show possible. I will always cherish my memories of doing Poe in that beautiful space. Bless you all and here’s to many more years of celebrating film in Montreal. Merci and merci again.

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ANDREW VAN DEN HOUTEN
President, MODERNCINÉ

Fantasia has been a place that has fostered and supported MODERNCINÉ from the beginning.  Our screenings at the festival for “Home Movie” and “Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door” were followed by distribution deals in both the U.S. and Canada being inked.  Not only did the exposure to the core fan base help get the films a deal but the prestige associated with being in the festival as well.

As a filmmaker, I go to many festivals and film markets all over the world each year showing MODERNCINÉ’s latest and greatest.  It’s funny how each place you travel, experiences and locations  begin to blend into one another.  It’s hard to remember every little detail or crazy thing that happens, especially given how much one can consume during the intense co-mingling with other creative types, and the rolling around from screening to screening.

Fantasia is one of the only festivals I have been to where I consistently get and eclectic program of hardcore cinema.  Super-human cinephile Mitch Davis and his team knows how to bring together the best in the genre and shares it amongst the community with great fervor.  Through interesting parties, dinners and late night trips to sketchy strip clubs you really get to have an experience with your fellow film folk…something to remember and speak of for a very long time.

Mitch and the team are the type of programmers that really understands what the fans of horror are looking for.  They also are incredibly opinionated and do not placate or program just for the sake of pleasing fans, filmmakers or distributors.  I would say Mitch’s taste specifically is 95% of the time right in line with what I like, except for when he didn’t program the film I directed OFFSPRING…which is TOTALLY cool;)  Whether it’s a new Frank Henenlotter film, a Sundance documentary about animal sex (Zoo) or an obscure Yakuza film presented by Marc Walkow, I know that I will always find a delicious meal for my celluloid appetite at Fantasia.  We are lucky to be part of the Fanatasia family and look forward to many more fests to come!
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SCOOTER MCCRAE
Director, Shatter Dead, Sixteen Tongues

There are a lot of film festivals all over the world – and I’m pleased to say that my first feature, SHATTER DEAD, made the rounds at a number of them.  Both the New York and Chicago Underground Film Festivals screened my first feature-length project, which even managed to win the Best Independent Feature award at the Fantafestival in Rome despite the fact that it was in competition with a bunch of other movies with considerably larger budgets (and that had been shot on film instead of video).  So I’ve had the honor of getting a taste of what other film festivals have to offer.

So when I say that Fantasia was the first and only choice that me and my producer, Alex Kuciw, had in mind to (hopefully) premiere SIXTEEN TONGUES at even while we were still in production, it was from firsthand experience that I knew we had to unspool this unholy cinema sickness at what we considered the very best film festival either of us had ever attended as civilians.

Fantasia is in a class of it’s own.  It is run by cinemaniacs with a singular love for all things good in movies, many of who also are filmmakers themselves and know the insanity and dedication it takes to start and eventually finish a project.  To be judged worthy of inclusion in Fantasia is to have been chosen by ones peers and not a panel of theorists who don’t have the first idea what it’s like to have an actress change their mind about taking their clothes off on-set or have the make-up creation that your efx person has been working on for two weeks straight spontaneously combust before having been able to appear on camera.

TONGUES got screened twice at the Salle J.A.De Seve theatre at Fantasia and filled that room both times.  Audience reaction was good and it was two of the most amazing screenings I’ve ever had.  Actor extraordinaire Ray Wise even attended the second screening and, to my surprise, sat through the whole movie – but I suppose I should have expected nothing less from a performer who’s put in his time with David Lynch and has probably experienced his share of movie weirdness.

But just don’t take my word for how things went.  Here’s the video link to part 1 of “Fantasia or Bust!” so you can see the 20 minute video document that Alex shot and edited about our crazy experiences at the premiere screening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYVCpdo_NDo

There was drunkenness, nervousness, friendship and all sorts of the little details that you’ll see lead one to have a fun and successful screening.  Godzilla was even there, too, and we’ve got the video that proves it!

Our thanks to Mitch Davis and all the other wonderful people we’ve met over the years through the kindness of himself and everyone else who works at the festival.  Maybe one day we’ll have another movie to screen there if we’re lucky.  Regardless, I hope the festival outlives all of us and continues to bring the best movies you’ve never previously heard of to one of the most patient and adventurous audiences it’s ever been my pleasure to be a part of as a viewer and stand before as a moviemaker.

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BUDDY GIOVINAZZO
Director, Combat Shock, Life is Hot in Cracktown

I attended my first Fantasia in 2008 with my film LIFE IS HOT IN CRACKTOWN, and as a special treat Mitch Davis also screened my first feature COMBAT SHOCK. I’d always felt like sort of the genre “blacksheep” in that my films never fit comfortably in any one category. If you know my films, you know that they’re sort of horrifying, but not really horror, and I’ve always felt a bit outside of the fan base because of that. Until I went to Fantasia. It was fantastic to be surrounded by so many film lovers, people who understood and loved what I was doing, it was inspiring! Aside from the fact that it was one giant party with really cool people, I saw so many great films and met some great guests; David Hess, for instance, who scared the hell out of me when I was a kid in LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and we’ve since become friends; I met other like minded filmmakers like Doug Buck and Karim Hussein, Lee Demarbre, Mark Lebanon. And the selection at Fantasia was so eclectic and varied, everything from horror sex films, to monster movies, to slasher films, to my own idiosyncratic films. It was as if I met a family that I never knew I had before, and this sense of support, friendship, and just plain twisted pychosis that hovers over the festival like a giant cloud of dementia-causing plutonium, is something I’ll never forget. My wife Gesine and I love Fantasia, there’s no other festival like it.

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ANGUS SCRIMM
Actor, Phantasm series

I was dazzled when my plane to Montreal was met, not by the usual hired limo driver, but by three of the Fantasia film festival’s top men headed by president Pierre Corbeil, plus the gifted, ruggedly maverick South African filmmaker Richard Stanley. I’ve learned that people meeting the Tall Man actor for the first time expect somebody who exudes Karloff and Lugosi’s gravitas and charisma, auras in which I am patently deficient. Nonetheless, my genial quartet of hosts whisked me off to a late supper where the drink and the conversation flowed convivially.

Early on, Richard made one stipulation: The name of a certain American film actor who was anathema to him was on no account to be mentioned. Now in my own sole encounter with that same actor I’d formed a favorable impression of him, and as the evening’s good Canadian beer and my hosts’ even better anecdotes wore on, I heard the forbidden name trip lightly and forgetfully over my tongue. Richard ever so slightly stiffened. For the rest of the evening, he remained courteous and politely friendly, but it was as though an invisible curtain had descended. Richard was on the guest list for some of the festival events I too was invited to attend, but showed for none of them and—my loss—to this day I’ve never seen him again. Of course, I’ve never seen Spielberg, Lucas or Cameron either, but I don’t think that’s related. The rest of the festival is a haze of dinners and sightseeing with six of my favorite companions: Tony and Marguerite Timpone, Don, Shelley, Andy and Chloe Coscarelli—and of course, film screenings in the old Imperial theater, just a brief walk from our hotel. Maurice Devereux’s eerily romantic LADY OF THE LAKE was a standout, and Coscarelli’s PHANTASM OBLIVION, which he and I were in Montreal to introduce, played to a sold-out house with Tony hosting the rollicking Q&A.

One last memory: In every town I visit for the first time, I check the local phone book to see if it lists any Scrimm—a name I coined for myself many years ago in an attempt to devise an appellation that would be utterly unique. In Montreal, at last I found a single Scrimm listing and compulsively dialed the number. It proved to be the residence of a lady who lived on an island off the Montreal coast. Scrimm was indeed her husband’s name, she told me, and he would have been delighted to talk with me, but regrettably had died seven months before.

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RICHARD STANLEY
Director, Hardware, Dust Devil, The Theatre Bizarre

What can I say about Fantasia that hasn’t been said before? What is there left to say about an event that has become the pre-eminent festival of its kind in the world today, an invaluable genre summit that has forged friendships and professional relationships and, has ultimately provided the creative impetus for my most recent project – ‘THE THEATRE BIZARRE’? Or should I simply admit that it’s the most fun I’ve ever had at a film festival? I was asked to pick out my favorite festival moment but I have amassed too many fond memories to be able to single out any one highlight. Tearing open the pillows in my hotel room perhaps in order to gently sprinkle feathers onto the unsuspecting audience during a crucial juncture in a screening of Michelle Soavi’s ‘STAGE FRIGHT’on my first outing to Montreal or maybe it was the shock and moral outrage displayed by certain members of the critical community following the first screenings of Nacho Cerda’s ‘AFTERMATH’ and Mitch and Karim’s magnum opus ‘SUBCONSCIOUS CRUELTY’ back in 1997, the first year that the festival expanded its brief to include genre product from all over the world rather than confining itself to Asia alone, proving that the visual medium could still evoke the same fierce emotions expressed by silent movie patrons in days of yore when they rioted and attacked the screen at the long ago premier of Louis Bunuel’s ‘L’Age d”Or’.

It is often only in the face of dire adversity that we show our true colors and perhaps unsurprisingly it may be the occasional set-backs and mondo weirdo curve balls that I recall most fondly, such as the power outage that interrupted Dennison Romalho’s mesmerisingly malefic ‘LOVE FOR MOTHER ONLY’ leading Doug Buck ( the director of ‘CUTTING MOMENTS’ ), Jorge Olguin ( the director of ‘SANGRE ETERNA’ ), the unsinkable Mitch Davis, a berserk gorehound who insisted on calling himself Mr ‘Darkside’ and myself to break into the science lab next door, using a plastic comb fished from my back pocket to pick the computerized lock in order to locate and repair the faulty fusebox, an escapade that ultimately grew so surreal that no-one would believe all the details of what transpired even if I were at liberty to divulge them. Then there was the reel that went missing from the print of Dario Argento’s ‘DEEP RED’ during a 1997 screening, prompting programmer Karim Hussain to spontaniousy act out the missing scenes for the audience in a breath taking, utterly unrehearsed, improvisation that giddily snatched a deranged, triumph from the very teeth of disaster.

At the end of the day, as with any festival, it’s the audience that makes the difference, every single dog man one of ’em from the hardcore horror, rock n’ roll and martial arts buffs to the equally fanatical Christians who turned out to rail against Jim van Bebber’s work print of ‘CHARLIE’S FAMILY back in 1997’, not to mention the extraordinary cross section of ages and nationalitieswho packed the theatre in 2003 for the screenings of my own distinctly non-generic documentaries, ‘THE VOICE OF THE MOON’, ‘THE SECRET GLORY’ and ‘THE WHITE DARKNESS’ when Afghan muslims rubbed shoulders with Haitian voodooists, WW2 veterans and even a few neo- Nazis who dropped by in search of a few cheap esoteric thrills and left the theatre, changed and chastened by the experience. I can’t imagine any other audience on this planet that has done more to nurture the dark flames of the genre that I know and love or any place where I feel more at home than among the beloved Fantasia audience , front row centre. Perhaps I’ll see you there this year…

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GEORGE MIHALKA
Director, My Bloody Valentine, Pinball Summer

Serbian Film mindwarp, the lights go up as I slowly make my way out of the theatre, reality tingles at the edge of my perception as my brain tries to think again. Double vodkas with S.C. is the only possible short term cure; the Irish Embassy beckons. A common bond has been established, those fresh from the screening huddle together over drinks. We are numb zombies; the images and impressions branded into our psyches impossible to share with those who have not been there. We are like refugees from some gruesome alternate apocalypse, the smiling faces and cheerful banter of those with no idea where we have come from ring hollow. We have seen the other side; their innocence irritates our wounded senses. We need to infect them, they cannot escape unscathed; they all have to go see it, feel it, drown in it, only then can they understand… See you all tomorrow, and let’s celebrate Ken Russell, watch the Devils in the presence of the Master, and give thanks that there is Fantasia.

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TONY TIMPONE
Fangoria Films

What a long, strange trip it’s been…

I first began attending Fantasia as a media guest (for FANGORIA), back in the festival’s second year in summer 1997. Accustomed to attending European festivals where political bigwigs might be sitting next to you, wife Marguerite and I showed up in Montreal wearing our Sunday best. Of course, we were ridiculously overdressed, and some local genre bulletin boards were abuzz with, “Who was the guy in the suit at DAY OF THE BEAST screening?”

The “guy in the suit” would soon become Fantasia’s “American connection,” as festival president Pierre Corbeil hired me to work on Fantasia the following year as an international programmer. Pierre tasked me with canvassing the major U.S. studios for key genre titles, as well as finding promising independent and foreign flicks that would either come across my desk or catch my eye at festivals like Spain’s Sitges or LA’s American Film Market. At the AFM in 1998, I spied my first key title, VAMPIRES, directed by the one and only John Carpenter. Being a fairly new fest, it became quite a struggle to convince Columbia Pictures, who had acquired the film after AFM, to allow Fantasia to screen VAMPIRES. They preferred to launch at the Toronto Film Festival in the fall. But my persistence eventually paid off, and that summer, Fantasia debuted VAMPIRES at the old Imperial Theater, with the reclusive Carpenter in tow.

In the years that followed, Fantasia has continued to land some big fish, including such audience favorites as THE X-MEN, NIGHT WATCH, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, ORPHAN, THE DESCENT, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS, REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT RAIN, CABIN FEVER, HOLLOW MAN, SHAUN OF THE DEAD, JEEPERS CREEPERS, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, STIR OF ECHOES and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, just to name a few. But it’s never easy. When you are dealing with huge corporations ripe with bureaucracy and second-guessing, it’s always a challenge (but a rewarding one!) when going after higher-profile films to supplement all the indie and foreign gems that Fantasia introduces to the world every summer.

In August 2009, my Fantasia tenure kinda came full circle. I’d been toiling on the event for 10 years and our annual treks to Montreal have become a highlight of the year (Marguerite and I never get tired of this beautiful city). For Fantasia’s 13th edition, I set my sights on the World War II romp INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. It would be a North American premiere for the eagerly-awaited film, so I knew from the get-go that you could call this one a longshot. It never hurts to ask, right? I put in a personal plea to the filmmaker himself, Quentin Tarantino. I’d met Tarantino many times since the early ‘90s, both when he showed up as a fan at my old FANGORIA conventions in LA, and as a guest at same promoting his films. I’d even interviewed Tarantino several times for the mag. So, with that shared history, the man stepped in on our behalf.

When the festival announced INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS’ surprise screening, tickets sold out in minutes. On the night of the show, lines snaked around the block (a nightly Fantasia occurrence), distribution execs showed up, the red carpet got rolled out and co-star Eli Roth took the stage to talk up the movie. Eli had been a longtime friend of the fest (his directorial debut CABIN FEVER played Fantasia, as well as THE LAST EXORCISM, which he produced), and he frequently went to bat for me anytime we hit a snag with unresponsive local distribs regarding playing his movies.

So there we were, Eli and I, in the packed Hall auditorium. The crowd, as expected, was going ballistic. They had been deemed worthy, and they would be the first audience in North America to witness Tarantino’s latest masterpiece. The room palpably vibrated with anticipation, excitement and electricity. It was a festival turning point, and for that reason, ranks as my favorite Fantasia moment.

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TODD BROWN
Twitchfilm

My favourite moment came a few years back and was something that happened away from the screening rooms but would never, ever have happened outside of the festival.

My birthday is in mid-July so it always falls within Fantasia’s dates. Sometimes I’m in Montreal for my birthday, sometimes not, though I don’t really make a big deal of it so people don’t usually know. This particular year was the year of Tokyo Gore Police so among the guests at the festival were Tak Sakaguchi and his main stunt guy, who were also there presenting Be A Man Samurai School.

A group of us decided that we needed to go out for dinner and grab a few drinks and sing some karaoke – which is kind of a lifestyle on the festival circuit. But we didn’t know where to go. So we asked around and were given an address for what we were told was one of the best karaoke rooms in the city. When we got there we were already half loaded up and it turned up it was in the heart of the gay village so this large group of very loud festival geeks ended up barging in to a very quiet moment with men singing French pop songs to each other. Tim League from Fantastic Fest won them over with a ludicrous rendition of Islands In The Stream and we eventually got Tak up to do Stand By Me.

So that’s a memory I’ll carry for a good long time, courtesy of Fantasia: Spending my birthday singing drunken karaoke in a Montreal gay bar with Tak Sakaguchi.

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JOHN HARRISON
Director, Clive Barker’s Book of Blood

Several years ago, I was invited to screen my latest film, Clive Barker’s BOOK OF BLOOD, at Fantasia. It would be the movie’s North American theatrical premier. I’d heard about the festival, but never had the chance to attend. Needless to say, I was pretty nervous about how the film would be received, especially by a crowd as sophisticated in the genre as Fantasia’s. But my pal from many Fangoria conventions and screenings, Tony Timpone, assured me that fans would enjoy it. On the night of the screening, I made my way alone from the hotel to the theater, taking in the Montreal atmosphere, pretending to be casual, when I came upon a line around the block. At first I thought this was the crowd for several films that would be screening that night. But when I found out it was the audience for BOOK OF BLOOD, my nervousness threatened to become panic. How would this sold-out crowd react to my translation of iconic Clive Barker short stories? Would I be greeted with polite if unenthusiastic applause, or worse: given a quick escort back to the airport to get out of town?

Fortunately, people liked the film a lot. The screening went off flawlessly. The auditorium was beautiful, the picture and sound were terrific (always a filmmaker’s biggest worry), and the Fantasia staff had everything organized down to the smallest detail. Most of the audience remained afterward for the Q&A so ably and graciously moderated by Tony himself. And when I told Clive about the evening, he couldn’t have been happier.

Of the several festivals I attended where BOOK OF BLOOD was screened, Fantasia would have to rate as its best presentation. You can be sure I will want my next film presented there…if the festival directors will have me.

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SION SONO
Director, Suicide Circle, Cold Fish

Congratulations on the 15th edition of Fantasia!
I really love the Fantasia Film Festival.
Please look forward to my new film which will knock out all the audience of Fantasia!
Let’s party together then! Wait for me!

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BILL MOSELEY
Actor, The Devil’s Rejects, Repo! The Genetic Opera

A big congrats on 15 years of the superb Fantasia film festival! I’ve had the privilege of attending the Montreal extravaganza for REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA and BABYSITTER WANTED. I was especially grateful to the fans who thronged to see REPO! when our misunderstood little horror opera was getting the cold side of the pillow from critics and distributors alike. I vividly remember that fateful night in Montreal when director Darren Lynn Bousman, Terrance “Graverobber” Zdunich, fellow REPO! cast members and I, on foot from our hotel, approached the Fantasia theater, not knowing what to expect. Would anyone attend the screening of our passion project? We turned the corner, and lo & behold, the line for REPO! stretched around the block! The fan enthusiasm warmed the cockles of our showbiz hearts, and the good news turned great when that enthusiasm exploded into wild applause at REPO!’s conclusion. Finally, someone who got-and loved-our movie! You’d have to ask Darren Bousman, but I’d wager that the love he felt that night at Fantasia propelled him to say to hell with the critics, put REPO! under his arm and barnstorm America (and Great Britain) with a 35mm print that sealed the movie’s cult status. So, thank you, Fantasia, may you carry on your great work of exposing and encouraging the work of fantasy/horror filmmakers the world over!

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AXELLE CAROLYN
Director, The Last Post; Actress, Centurion; Author, It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium

I’ve been to quite a huge amount of festivals in the past few years, but none of them ever felt as much like a rock concert as Fantasia, with its own rock star/show host, Mitch Davis, and its brilliantly vocal audience. To top it all, the first movie I watched there was Suck, the vampire rock’n’roll film. The following day Neil and I screened Centurion to a full house, and we stayed at the back for a long part of it, just to hear the crowd react and cheer at all the stabbings and beheadings. It was my first time in Canada, and people were warm and welcoming. I’ll be back!

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FRANK HENENLOTTER
Director, Basketcase, Bad Biology

I was trying to be calm. I was trying to pretend that it was no big deal. But I’ve never been comfortable appearing before a crowd of people and, after dropping out of filmmaking for 16 years, I was even more ill at ease than usual as I was waiting to be introduced before the screening of “Bad Biology,” the film that ended my dry spell. So I was pretty much a nervous wreck even before this crazy person, this Mitch Davis guy, used my introduction to whip the crowd into what sounded like a frenzy. It was as if I was some kind of rock star, not an overweight and terrified movie director who’s afraid of the real world, and the more the crowd cheered, the more I wanted to seriously bolt and run.

Most of what then followed is still a blur. I apparently survived the intro but what made more of an impact was how cool and how much fun the festival quickly became. I mean, this is one serious fan fest, full of incredible enthusiasm from not only the audiences but from the organizers as well, and, not surprisingly, I became comfortable almost immediately. In fact, I was back two years later after I encouraged Something Weird to let Fantasia host the world premiere of our H.G. Lewis documentary. Congratulations on your 15th Anniversary. You guys rock.

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DAVE ALEXANDER
Editor-in-Chief, Rue Morgue Magazine

I’ve been attending FanTasia for one third of its life, and given all the films, friends and fistfuls of beer, it’s tough to pin down a particular recollection. Every year feels more and more like a family reunion, where filmmakers, journalists, programmers, label reps, moviegoers and, of course, Mitch Davis and his merry band of festival workers all melt together into one big, pulsating lump of genre fangasm. (And if you’ve ever hit the patio at nearby pub The Irish Embassy on a hot Montreal summer night, you know I mean melt.) A communal geek-out with people from all over the world, involved at all different levels of the movie biz, just talking movies over beer — it’s all so perfectly fun and unpretentious. Where else are you gonna casually shake hands with someone who made a Godzilla movie? Talk horror history at a table filled with people from a half-dozen different countries? Have your beer tab picked up by an Arquette? Ha! If I have to choose one memory, though, I’ll risk being a shameless self-promoter and say that those pub beers went down better than usual the night I got to premiere my own short as part of the Small Gauge Trauma program at FanTasia in 2009. It felt really great to have my movie talked about … at least a little bit.

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DONATO TOTARO
Editor, www.offscreen.com

Fantasia has held a very special place in my heart as my favorite festival ever since day 1. I am somewhat nostalgic for the early years (say 1996-2000) when seeing 35mm prints of retro titles on a huge screen with a ripped audience was more the norm (The Beyond, Untold Stories, and Cannibal Holocaust merit special attention). The films remain the main attraction, but meeting seminal horror directors (list too long to mention), hanging out with like-minded friends and new acquaintances comes a very close second to what makes Fantasia the unique occasion it is. Many such inspired and haphazard nights occurred back in 1996 and 1997 (and still continue today) at the quaint, divey tavern on the corner of St. Catherine and Bleury (name escapes me now…) that was one of the post movie watering holes. I remember the excited chaos and semi-drunken energy along a long table where an Italian entourage of Sergio Stivaletti, Loris Curzi, and Mariano Baino and a core group of British critics and writers, Harvey Fenton, Jason Slater, Martin Coxhead, and Marcelle Perks, were conducting interviews over the din of clanking glasses, background music and cross-talk. Such attempts at ‘work’ mixed in with play occurred all the time, my own (of many) examples being interviewing  Deborah Twiss and Todd Morris of Gun for Jennifer in-between band sets at the noisy Cafe Sarayevo, or Doug Buck (Cutting Moments) at the St. Catherine bar over several of those (cue another nostalgia item) beer pints. Having lunch with Jose Mojica Marins has to be up there as a highlight, but the moment that perhaps best defines the unpredictable nature of Fantasia occurred during an impromptu private preview screening of Karim Hussain’s first feature, Subconscious Cruelty. Karim wanted some feedback from friends he trusted and respected so organized a screening for about a dozen or so people one afternoon at the Imperial. One of the invited was none other than Deep Red man himself, (sadly the late) Chas. Balun. My incredulously cherished moment came after the screening, when I got into a friendly debate with Balun over another film that played a few days earlier, Nacho Cerda’s necro-short Aftermath, a film he loathed and I defended. I found it perversely ironic to be defending such a gut-wrenchingly emotional film from the man whose critical signature was “the gore score” and “films that hurt!” But that is just the sort of pleasing conundrum you can easily find yourself in if you hang at out Fantasia land long and loud enough.

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BILL PLYMPTON
Director, Idiot and Angels, Hair High, I Married a Strange Person

I travel to a lot of festivals around the world — sometimes four a month! But to my mind, “Fantasia” is at the top. Their programming is super — my kind of over-the-top films.

Plus, the city of Montreal is fantastic, and the audiences are the best in the world.

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ANTHONY TIMPSON
Incredibly Strange Film Fest, Headstrong Films

My introduction to the world of FANTASIA came via The Imperial cinema. I think it was via an old message board about someone from Montreal looking for 3D prints. I had recently come across a stack of stunning 3D prints that were owned by the shiftiest movieman since Dwain Esper. was supplying some 3D prints for a festival there and through that met the Fantasia gang. And what a motley gang of film freaks they were; “Gobble gobble one of us one of us”. I instantly felt at home. I came for 3 weeks and stayed for 3 months. This was around 1997 or 98 and the Festival had just begun to hit its stride and become a fixture on the Montreal entertainment calendar.

My first impressions of Montreal, Hot women, fatty food, strip clubs and tense locals. All the gang (Karim, Julian, Sandro) were lovely to me but especially Mitch; the Kroger Babb of Quebec, always smiling, always hyper-enthusiastic. Then there was the Big Kahuna himself, Pierre Corbeil the silent assassin, watching from shadowy corners as his staff got merry with the out of towers. It always started at Luba Lounge and always ended up at Cleopatras. One visiting actress spurned on by our incessant encouragement, got buck naked and danced better than most of the employees there. Fantasia for me was always more than just the movies. It was about connecting with other arrested-developed souls and feeling groovy about it. Several lifelong relationships and businesses were born from those late 90s post-film endless nights of horror minutiae and who was going to sleep with the hot volunteer. It also acted as a connector in that through it I met Kier-La Janisse, a lifelong friend, whose friendship prompted me in helping out with her fest in Vancouver, from there I ended up in Austin with my pardner in crime Tim League and many others who all ended up being part of Fantasia in some way. You can run and you can hide but all roads lead back to Fantasia.

Hazy memories include; The most brutal Q&A I’ve ever witnessed following Legion of the Dead, Olaf the lovely director of aforementioned film letting slip after too many pitchers that he created the Alien Autopsy FX, the first International screening of Ringu and the collective sound of 900 people shitting themselves, Richard Stanley laying some evil voodoo on me for playing with his tarots, Daniel and that fucking mic stand, dropping acid and breaking into the wrong hotel room, drunkenly calling Ray Wise ‘Leland’ all night and many more. Hundreds of memorable moments that will be forever be a part of who I am. Fantasia at its core was about the images on the big screen but the images that keep coming back to me are those away from the screen and that’s the best tribute one can offer a festival. That they matter. And I promise I will be back to finish off the pitcher I left at Luba Lounge in 2000.

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DOUGLAS BUCK
Director, Cutting Moments, Sisters, The Theatre Bizarre

It was back in 1997 when my second short film ‘Cutting Moments’ was accepted at the Montreal Fantasia Festival. Sharing the same geographically challenged gene as many of my fellow Americans, I barely knew where Montreal was, let alone how much it would end up meaning to my life and film career over the next fourteen years and counting. The two Fantasia programmers at the time, Mitch Davis and Karim Hussain, who were kind enough to program the short, have truly become lifelong friends, with Karim becoming an important film collaborator as well, as have so many other people I’ve met over the years at Fantasia. One of the great benefits of my filmmaking career has been the opportunity to travel to genre festivals all over the world and, while there are many wonderful festivals, none beats Fantasia. Whatever film directors, journalists and others I’ve met and become friends with over the years, too many to name here, nine out of ten times, it was Fantasia where we first met. The festival has a real knack for creating an atmosphere of camaraderie, both with the people who made the films and those who have come to watch in the audience. And the festival lasts for three and half weeks, for God’s sake! It’s wonderfully crazily long, all the while playing and supporting amazing and daring work from filmmakers all of the world. And thankfully the audience here goes to see and support so much of this challenging work! Along with on a personal level, there is no doubt that so much of my professional work has been tied in with friends and acquaintances made in Fantasia, including both for my directing and editing work. I’m quite sure this year’s The Theatre Bizarre, of which I’m involved in, would not have taken shape as it did, if at all, without most of these filmmakers’ pasts being so intertwined together in Fantasia. It is such an honor to be able to bring another project, especially one of which I am so proud, to the festival and its audience who have so consistently supported my work over the years. And, with all this, what do you know. Four years ago, my Montreal-born wife and I decided to move here with our daughter. I love this city and will always feel indebted to the Montreal Fantasia Festival, where so much started for me. Long Live Fantasia!!

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DON MAY, JR.
Synapse Films

I’ve been to Fantasia every year except the first and there are so many memories, it’s hard to pick the “best” one.  I guess the one memory that stands out for me the most is also the one that really solidified, for me, the power and fun that Fantasia brings their audience.  At the North American premiere of the Japanese film RINGU, I distinctly remember there were strange dudes, in the theatre aisles, wearing towels on their heads and pointing at people before the film started.  Now, I hadn’t heard anything about the film before the screening, so I had no idea what the fuck it all meant (this was before RINGU started the whole “J-Horror” craze, after all).  Then, while watching the film, it clicked and I was like… “Oh, yeah… that was pretty cool of them to do that”.  It was at THAT moment I realized Fantasia was the best film festival I’d ever been to.  It still is.  One that isn’t just about showing a film and herding people out for the next screening… the Fantasia folks know the films and they know how to have fun with the audience.  For one third of my life, Fantasia has been the place I want to go to get away, to escape, to take a break and enjoy some great cinema from around the world.  Of course, now that I’ve written this, other memories come to mind… Like the time a certain Danish film actor, while sharing an entire bottle of Vodka, ALSO wanted me to share a hooker with him, or the time we pulled an all-nighter with TWIN PEAKS’ Ray Wise (scratching “Party with Leland Palmer” off my bucket list), or maybe that time an American actor/director almost made me fall off a building at a roof party as I was peeing over the side of it.  Oh, forget that one…  But, if I did fall off, I’m sure it would be somebody else’s favorite Fantasia memory.

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STUART GORDON
Director, Re-Animator, Dagon, Edmond, Stuck

The first time I attended Fantasia, I was watching a very intense and bloody film (Neighbourhood Watch) and the guy sitting next to me passed out. The people sitting with him couldn’t revive him, so I went into the lobby to find someone to help. The only person out there was the girl selling popcorn. “The guy sitting next to me fainted,” I told her. “Far out!” she replied grinning from ear to ear.

I think this story says it all; why I love Fantasia so much. So Happy Anniversary, Mitch, popcorn girl and all of your insane co-conspirators!

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SIMON RUMLEY
Director, The Living and the Dead, Red, White and Blue, Little Deaths

It was the summer of 2006 and I was at Fantasia for the first ever time with The Living and The Dead. LIke most festivals, it went by in an incredibly enjoyable blur which consisted mainly of meeting, greeting, eating, drinking and watching a fair few movies. As soon as I got off the plane I went to see Scott Glosserman’s Behind The Mask which was one of my favourites from the festival as well as Sion Sono’s Strange Circus. One of the great things about Fantasia is getting to meet other directors, something that rarely happens in ‘real life’ – as it turned out, I socialized quite a bit with Scott and still keep in touch with him to this day (just about!). I also met Sion Sono a couple of times over a few days but he never remembered meeting me so I assumed he was either very drunk (which I don’t think he was) or he thought all white folk looked the same!   I’d done a few festivals with my previous films but nothing compared to what I’d end up doing with this one. What I particularly enjoyed about my film’s dynamics was that it was programmed in both ‘world cinema’ festivals and horror festivals alike. Fantasia was my first genre festival and whilst I wasn’t exactly nervous about it, I was curious to see what the general audience was like and really wondered whether my knowledge of all cinematic things dark and twisted was going to pale in comparison to that of everyone else’s. I think it was the fist night The Living and The Dead played after which everyone convened at a local brewery and shot the shit. As I was happily supping my beer, chatting with representatives from Rue Morgue and Dread Central I was felt pretty happy with myself and my ability to blend in. But then there was a commotion behind us, and, initially a pretty lame one at that. A couple of unthreatening college kids had been messing around; one had pushed the other onto  the road. The kid was peeved about this but not angry. But he shouted a few things to the guy who’d pushed him and what did anger him was that this guy largely ignored him. Minutes later the kid started shouting that he’d hurt his hand but still everyone ignored him so he upped the ante shouting at anyone and everyone to call him an ambulance. Seconds later he became hysterical and let the world know that actually he’d broken his hand. Around this point, he finally managed to stop whatever conversations were happening with and around me and everyone turned around to watch his hysteria. It didn’t take long for someone from our group to exclaim what a pussy he was. Everyone agreed, laughed a little and turned back to continue with their conversations. I never found out if the kid had really broken his hand but I did think to myself “Fuck man, these genre guys are TOUGH!”

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SHADE RUPE
Author, Dark Stars Rising, Funeral Party

Fantasia… Although the name of a film, and a festival, the word itself is a conjurer, a stirrer of thoughts, and feelings. When I first heard of such a festival, filled with unique world genre cinema, mythical mind-realms presented themselves as to what might be discovered. By the second year these were no longer mere pipe clouds in the sky, but yes, there truly was such a place, such a venue, such a month that held court in the European wonder of Montreal. 1997 marked that year, with newcomer Nacho Cerda stamping his place in the playground with Aftermath, Chas. Balun on hand to rail against the same film for its too-real violence, Grindhouse Releasing’s Sage Stallone paid homage, and brazen stalwarts Jim VanBebber and Richard Stanley holding court, while classic dark cinema also prevailed. Mitch asked me to offer some notes on Agusti Villaronga’s In a Glass Cage and I knew I was definitely home. By 2004 I finally made my way north and the wonders of Fantasia massaged my mind: Christian Alvart’s Antibodies, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, the incredible Godzilla: Final Wars, the unbelievable King Kong vs. Godzilla, Christopher Smith’s Creep, the debut of Ti West with The Roost, and the mind-boggling once-in-a-lifetime treat of Gen Sekiguchi’s Survive Style 5+, a film I am most indebted to Mitch and Pierre for presenting. Where else would we have seen this film but Fantasia? Guests from the incredibly far-out Udo Kier to the iridescent Danish actor Kim Bodnia, who I first met at a 3-D film at the Imperial, graced the halls along with rare prints of Curt McDowell’s Thundercrack! Subsequent years have proven that Fantasia is THE greatest North American genre film festival and will remain so. Fantasia has changed the landscape of the dreamworlds. Hail Pierre! Hail Mitch! Hail Fantasia!

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DENNISON RAMALHO
Director, Love From Mother Only, Ninjas, writer of Embodiment of Evil

Very few situations in the world can offer one a feeling that art can not only be liberating, but dangerously liberated. Fantasia is not just one of those situations. It is the Mecca of those! Here, there are no holds barring the sublime and the darkest to voice their expressions. On the contrary, Fantasia is the “volume 12 super-amp” for these voices to blast their imaginations aloud (and for the wildest audience in the world to hear them)! I had the honor of experiencing this unique vibe three times (showing my short films NINJAS and LOVE FROM MOTHER ONLY, and José Mojica Marins’ feature EMBODIMENT OF EVIL) and look forward to many others more! Long live, motherfuckers! May you keep on tinting our futures in blood-red, and we (audience and filmmakers) tint yours in gold. Inshallah! Saravá!

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TIM LEAGUE
Co-founder, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, Director, Fantastic Fest

My first Fantasia trip was in 2004, about a year before we decided to produce a fantastic film festival of our own in Austin Texas.  For years, I have been hearing from friends how amazingly epic Fantasia was, so I finally succumbed to peer pressure and went up to check it out for myself.  I got off the plane, took a cab to Concordia and immediately hooked up with a few old friends for beers and embarked on one of those rare and wonderful  perfect days.

Here’s how it all played out:

– Beers on an outdoor patio in the sunshine with movie nerd friends

– More beers with one of my all-time screen idols Kim Bodnia who just wandered in and joined the group

– Great screening and Q&A with Bodnia’s film THE GOOD COP

– Ushered from the cinema by Fantasia regulars and Bodnia for my first trip to Cleopatras, the somewhat dicey, somewhat frightening, but somehow friendly and comforting unofficial strip club of Fantasia

And finally, I dove into my very first order of late-night Montreal Poutine

As I laid my head to rest at 2:30 in the morning, I could not have been happier.  Looking back in retrospect, I realize that I absorbed something important that day.  This was the first festival where I felt the barrier between celebrity guests and movie nerds was non-existant.  At Fantasia, the guests are encouraged if not expected to hang out with the festival attendees, a guiding principle that we have taken to heart at Fantastic Fest in Austin.  To me, the most important festivals in the world still remain Fantasia and Sitges.  These are the festivals that I visited simply as a genre film fan, not a festival director, and from these two events I drew inspiration to create our own.  To Mitch, Pierre, Stephanie, Phil, Simon and all the gang in Montreal, thanks for being a beacon of inspiration and thank you for delivering a perfect day back in 2004.

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KEVIN MONAHAN
Director of Programming, Boston Underground Film Festival

Five years ago, a mixture of shrewd planning and dumb luck enabled me to spend the entire month of July in Montreal, gorging myself on Fantasia’s plentiful offerings.   I think I lost count of the number of films I saw that year at some point during the initial weekend.  I had been coming to Fantasia for a few years now, even before a film festival of my own would fall into my lap, but this was the first year that I was given full access to the screenings and invited to hang out with the amazing people that make Fantasia happen.

Fantasia 2006 sticks out in my mind in no small part due to the amazing programme featured that year.  It was the year that I was able to meet filmmakers who if I wasn’t already a huge fan of (Stuart Gordon, Lucky McKee, Robert Morgan) would become a few of my favorite directors working today (Sion Sono, Simon Rumley).  It was the year when the opening night film (The Descent) scared the absolute living shit out of me, causing tremors at the ensuing party, and The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai completely blew my mind apart.

Since its banner 10th year, Fantasia’s programming has only expanded and has never disappointed.  Just take a quick look at Boston Underground’s programmes for the past few years, and Fantasia’s influence is obvious.  For three years in a row, BUFF’s opening night selections were Fantasia discoveries (Jeremy Kasten’s Wizard of Gore in ’08, Frank Henenlotter’s Bad Biology in ’09 and Sion Sono’s Love Exposure in ’10) and I’m fairly certain that our opener this year, Hobo With a Shotgun, would not have been without the friendships and connections forged in Montreal at Fantasia. So it is with the utmost love and respect that I wish the Fantasia crew a happy 15th, and a hearty congrats on yet another kickass festival!

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STEPHANIE TREPANIER
Fantasia Programmer and Hospitality Director, Evokative Films Founder

Fantasia has been such an integral part of my life since the last 14 years that it’s hard to pin down the very best of my many joyous moments involving the festival. The love affair started in the best way possible though, with the World Premiere of Satoshi Kon’s PERFECT BLUE at the Imperial. That film blew my teenage brain. Over the years, I discovered seminal films such as PI, RINGU, BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and MILLENIUM ACTRESS at Fantasia. I waited in line for hours with friends and squirmed in my seat watching countless scary movies like ONE MISSED CALL.

In 2005 I was overjoyed to be added to the Fantasia team to help out with communications and guest coordination. The day before the festival started I went to the airport to get my first ever guests, the South-Korean Director Ryoo Seug-wan and his Producer Syd Lim. Seeing how happy they were with the sold-out Hall theatres and hour-long line-ups for ARAHAN and CRYING FIST, and getting their oohs and ahhs when I showed them Montreal from the mountain’s belvedere, were amazing moments. I never would have thought at that time that about 4 years later, Ryoo’s CRYING FIST would be the 2nd DVD I would be editing on my own film label.

This was the first encounter of the many I would have the luck to experience, having since then the amazing job of keeping our guests fed, drunk and happy with their time spent in our beautiful city. I got to be charmed by the great human and filmmaking spirits of the likes of David Blyth, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, Érik Canuel, Larry Fessenden, Scott Glosserman, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs and Dennis Paoli, Frank Henenlotter, Yang Ik-june, Tomas Villum Jensen, Lucky McKee, Glenn McQuaid, Yves Montmayeur, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Bill Plympton, Simon Rumley, Christopher Smith, Sion Sono, Srdjan Spasojevic and Nikola Pantelic, Tim Sullivan and Ben Wheatley, amongst many others. It fills me with pride every time I hear one of those filmmakers say how Fantasia is one of the best and most fun festivals on the circuit.

Fantasia provided me with a career, a film family and countless friends. That is very precious indeed!

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PHILIPPE SPURRELL
Director, The Descendant, Fantasia Operations Coordinator

As if making your first feature film wasn’t stressful enough, imagine what it’s like to present your precious “baby” to the world for the first time. In 2006 I found myself in the position of premiering my film, THE DESCENDANT, before a local audience of strangers and peers at Fantasia. Five years in the making had audience expectations fairly high for a film that ultimately straddles genres. Add to this, the fact that the similar sounding THE DESCENT was also presented that year. After spending weeks promoting the film in the many typically long lineups, the night finally arrived for my film to either fly or die or fall somewhere in between.

Sweating nervously and with my heart pounding, I sat way up near the back to watch the audience react. Meanwhile, executive producer Philippe Chabot kept walking out of the theatre, ready to vomit from anxiety.  When the credits ended and I was asked to come down for a Q&A I was greeted by a gradual standing ovation. I was blown away and spent the rest of the night on cloud nine. It was truly one of the best nights of my life.

I know that my film is far from perfect but the audience that night was moved by its underlying message of racial tolerance and were savvy enough to appreciate what goes into the making of a low-budget indie 35mm feature. I feel I got an A for effort. This is a testament to the open-minded audiences that attend this great festival.

The following day, someone came up to me and asked what it was like filming inside dark caves deep below the earth. I replied “Uh, that’s The Descent. My film is The Descendant. The scary parts happen in a cornfield.” That wasn’t the last time I had to give that answer to someone that summer but in the end, I was too happy to care.

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RODRIGO GUDIÑO
Rue Morgue Magazine

I attended Fantasia for the first time back in 1998 or 99; the year it came to Toronto. At that time Rue Morgue was just a baby publication, and what transpired over those three or so weeks ended up being a formative experience for the magazine. Like some weird act of magic, Fantasia brought out a lot of like minded people who I didn’t even know existed. I was introduced to Mitch Davis, befriended future RM contributors Joseph O’Brien and Brad Abraham, and even met Gary Pullin, who would later become Rue Morgue’s art director.

I remember the distinct feeling in the air, that feeling you get when something dangerous is about to happen. It was the kind of high we were all looking for at a time when Halloween: H20 was the big release of the summer and every horror movie poster was dominated by the floating heads of its principal cast.

Fantasia was on a collision course with all that. Here was a collection of the extreme and transgressive; cinematic rarities from all over the world finally exposed by the dusty rays of a projector. It was the kind of festival where anything could happen… and did. Nerves were wrecked by cinematic assaults like Gerard Kargl’s Angst, soothed by the arthouse horrors of Larry Fessenden’s Habit, thrilled by the long-awaited installment in the Phantasm series, only to be decimated once again by shorts like Douglas Buck’s Cutting Moments and Nacho Cerda’s Aftermath. Preconceptions withered, minds expanded. Watching films wasn’t safe again.

Fantasia doesn’t come to Toronto anymore which is why it has become an annual pilgrimage for us at Rue Morgue, a ritual where expectations are still met and often exceeded… with extreme prejudice. Later, when Mitch asked me to screen my own movies at the festival, it was a weird, fantastic moment. Without Fantasia Rue Morgue would not be the same magazine. Nor would I be the same filmmaker.

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ROB COTTERILL & JASON EISENER
Producer/Director of Hobo With A Shotgun

Fucking Fantasia! For me Fantasia is the best genre film festival in the world, and it holds some of my dearest memories. Memories soaked in blood, sliced by swords, choked by gore, and strewn across a cinema for all to curb stomp. Every screening at Fantasia is a special event, the crowds are rabid for films and each screening is like a rock concert.I have to share two particularly memorable moments that I had at Fantasia with you all. The first was way back, I think the first Fantasia – There was a screening of a rare film print of Michele Soavi’s Stage Fright – it was at the old imperial theatre, which had an amazing balcony.On that balcony one of the festival guests, Richard Stanley, then-programmer Karim Hussain, Mitch Davis and myself had conspired to enhance the screening.

We had acquired several feather pillow cases, and during the films climax – where post mass murder feathers are falling everywhere – we dumped our pillow contents – filling the cinemawith falling feathers, reflecting the light of the projector, the crowd roared. The second, forever burned in my brain experience that I am going to share was when Jason Eisener & myself, brought our short film, Treevenge, to its world premiere.We had finished the film the day before, and were nervous as fuck – we had never screened anything that we had made outside of Halifax, and certainly not to a veteran genre audience.

We did our best to intro the film, nervous as hell – then walked to the back of the cinema to gauge the reaction. Something happened so unexpected and extraordinary, that thing you dream of whenyou make a film – for the audience to go off, and they did – there were screams, laughs, and cheers – it was deafening – Jason and I were stunned and in awe of how this very special audience embraced our crazy little film. And from then on we knew we had to keep making films for the people that can show their love for films in such a huge way, to make films for Fantasia.

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BRUNO FORZANI & HELENE CATTET
Directors, Amer

In 2001, we came to present our first short film Catharsis at Fantasia in Montreal, a town which from Belgium looked like the Eldorado for “alternative genre films”, earlier years having produced films such as Subconscious Cruelty and Divided into Zero from Karim Hussain and Mitch Davis, both programmers at the time.

In every way, the 2001 edition will remain one of the strongest film festival experiences we ever had, foremost because it was the first time we attended a 35mm showing of our film and because only a few days later, on Hélène’s birthday as well, we received a prize for the first time in our lives. Talk about an unforgettable moment, you can’t do better! But on the actual day of the showing, when we saw the ENORMOUS lineup outside the Imperial, we thought we were hallucinating: we had never seen such a big theater filled with people coming to see short films! We were shaking before going on stage. It was super impressive and we couldn’t see anything because of the lights blinding us, but we could hear our shaky voices fill the gigantic theater that is the Imperial. We were so stressed that Hélène almost tripped coming down the stage!

On that level, it was intense! From a cinephile’s point of view, though, the program was pure gold! We haven’t discovered so many good things in so little time since. Akira and Once Upon a Time in China projected in 35mm on the big screen, the poetry and subversion of Jose Mojica Marins, the extremely original independent films Dead Creatures and $lasher$, the surrealist Nekojiru-So… and two films that particularly inspired the rest of our cinematographic career: Sadistic and Masochistic by Hideo Nakata, which introduced us to Roman Porno and Konuma, of which the images have long haunted us and finally inspired a sequence in Amer. Finally, the last strike was Millennium Actress and its narrative. It was the first time of our lives we had seen a film so rich and so profound that it was possible to read it differently, depending on the angle once chose to look at it. It was such a shock that we were in tears. Later, we stumbled upon [its director] Satoshi Kon! Shaken by the power of what we had just seen, we started talking to him in English, telling him everything we felt during the film. He listened closely and seemed touched but when we finished our speech, someone accompanying him told us he didn’t understand English. It was an extremely powerful and totally absurd moment we had the opportunity to have with one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Thank you Fantasia!

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MATTHEW HAYS
Montreal Mirror, The Globe and Mail

One of the funnest memories I have of Fantasia was from their 1997 edition. They had programmed a kickass, low budget, quasi-feminist guns-and-gals flick, A Gun For Jennifer. I interviewed the director and star of the film for the Mirror for a big feature we did… A friend and I went to the screening, and as we approached the Imperial Cinema we could see a massive line-up around the block. I was so floored by how cool it was that such a huge crowd had gathered to see this little film that could. Watching the film, I was reminded about why the act of watching movies should almost always be a communal one: the crowd went nuts whenever there were long shoot-out sequences (of which there were plenty). There’s one quite drawn out shoot-’em-up sequence that must go on for over ten minutes, and after a while the Fantasia crowd began roaring their approval for the carnage. It was such a Fantasia, Up-with-wanton-violence! moment… and it was at that point that I realized the Montreal cultural landscape was shifting, and that a truly great film fest had been born. Viva Fantasia!!

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JOVANKA VUCKOVIC
Author, Zombies! An Illustrated History of the Undead, Director, The Captured Bird

The year was 1998. Toronto. Every horror fan worth his or her total blood volume was excited after seeing the posters around town. Fantasia was coming to Hogtown! The Montreal-based action, fantasy and kung fu film fest was in its third year and had expanded to include horror films, with Fangoria Editor Emeritus Tony Timpone on board as an international film programmer. Best of all, it was being hosted by one of the city’s stalwart rep theatres, The Bloor Cinema, a place I visited with furious regularity. For my part, Fantasia might as well he happening right in my living room!

Advertised were screenings for everything from the next entry in the Phantasm series (with The Tall Man himself in attendance!) to underground films including Nacho Cerdà’s Aftermath, an incendiary Spanish film that instantly shot to the top of my list of favourite shorts. Also on the menu were new horror comedies Cannibal the Musical and Killer Condom, plus a host of classics including 35mm prints of Lucio Fulci’s House by the Cemetery (complete with vomit bags!) and Roy Frumke’s Street Trash. There was even talk about John Carpenter appearing to close out the fest with his western bloodsucker film, Vampires. Could it get any better?
I think I had my ass in a seat at the Bloor almost every day of the festival and even called in sick to my job (I was a visual effects artist back then) to catch screenings. Though it would be the first and last year of Fantasia Toronto, it was safe to say I was in love. I won some trivia prizes and met some people that would ultimately change the course of my life a few years later. Then, in 2003, we began our annual five and a half hour treks to Montreal to cover the festival for Rue Morgue Magazine. I famously got a speeding ticket every single year as a keepsake. It was an event I looked forward to; the riotous screenings, social events at the Beer Garden and later the Irish Embassy, Mitch Davis’ ever-evolving eccentric hairdos and fashions, Daniel’s kung fu light switch performances, sharing a merch table with Fab Press’ Harvey Fenton – all these things became part of the Fantasia experience for me.
Then there were the filmmakers. Always in attendance were the men and women behind some of the weirdest and wildest cinema from across the globe – many of which were more than happy to attend the post midnight screening festivities in Euro-flavoured Montreal. From surreal coffee conversations with Richard Stanley (Hardware) to tattoo parlour antics with Jorge Olguin (Sangre Eterna) to furious film arguments with Jörg Buttgereit (Nekromantik) and getting hit on by Sion Sono (Suicide Circle) through his interpreter every year he was there, Fantasia was a carnival of outrageous delights and discoveries for filmgoers and fans like me. So when I was asked to be on the film jury in 2009, I jumped at the chance at being a more intimate part of my favourite film festival.

Yes, there’s a special kind of magic at North America’s largest and finest international film festival. Yet, as big as the fest gets, it always feels boutiquey and personal, thanks to the familiar faces that run it. You’ll regularly find friendly people like Mitch, Karim and Kier-La standing outside of Concordia University passionately discussing film with friends and fans. They’re like a comfy, human red carpet that gets rolled out every year for the fest (even though they work tirelessly all year round). And now that I’m a filmmaker myself, you can bet your ass that Fantasia is at the top of my list of festivals I plan to screen my first short film, The Captured Bird. Attending as a filmmaker, after attending as journalist and cinephile for 13 years, is going to be indescribably special to me. But in whatever capacity I attend, I’ll always be a fan.

Here’s to 15 more years of weird, wonderful world cinema at Fantasia!

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LARRY FESSENDEN
Director, Habit, Wendigo, The Last Winter

Getting up to Fantasia to show a film is always an outstanding experience, even though I always get interrogated at the border. Spearheaded by Mitch Davis’s infectious enthusiasm, the festival is like a long night at an open bar. They make every filmmaker feel like an essential component of the fabulous pageant of crazy-ass films. The year I first went to show Habit, I saw Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master on the big screen with a theater full of rabid fans, I saw Gerald Kargl’s Angst projected, and that rare gem has haunted me ever since, and I first met my friend and collaborator Douglas Buck. All seminal experiences from my first visit. Long Live Fantasia!

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VINCENZO NATALI
Director, Splice, Cube

I believe the year was 1999, or perhaps 2000, in either case my first Fantasia experience had a millennial feeling to it, a transitional moment leading to something new and indeed something very strange. I was invited to screen my short film, ELEVATED. Accompanying me was the star of the film and my lifelong friend and collaborator, David Hewlett. We knew immediately that we were not in the hands of a typical film festival when we were informed us that while in Montreal we would be staying at “The Bed and Banana”. The first question that leaped to mind as we approached a dubious-looking neighborhood was, “Which one of us gets the bed, and which one gets the banana?”. All fears were assuaged as we arrived at a quirky B & B run by high-functioning punks. David and I slept very comfortably in bunk beds. To my knowledge the eponymous Banana never made an appearance. As for the festival, I really had never seen anything like it. It was treasure trove of weird delights, brilliantly programmed and presented to a wildly enthusiastic audience. I don’t remember many of the specifics other than an outstanding wushu kung fu flick and a brain-scarring Japanese film called KICHIKU, which in spite of its innocent sounding title was and remains one of the most horrific and nihilistic works of cinema I have ever experienced (KICHIKU translates roughly as “Evil”). David and I were generously hosted by Mitch Davis and Karim Hussein and our little film was given an impressive showing at the beautiful Imperial Theater. Somewhere in the mix was a man in full rubber Ultraman attire. In subsequent years I would experience the delights and oddities of the festival, but nothing really could compare to that first phantasmagoric taste. It beckoned me closer to the East and made me realize that here in Canada we could be as strange an outrageous as any other nation. In short, it gave me hope. And continues to do so. On to the next 15.

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MARC WALKOW
New York Asian Film Festival

I’ve been coming to Fantasia since 1999, first as a regular audience member, then as a fellow film festival programmer and finally as a collaborator. I’ve stood on its stage nearly naked, seen it move between three or more different locations, gotten drunk with its guests and organizers, and watched it grow from a niche event run by a mad group of fanatics into an internationally-recognized genre film showcase and international film festival in its own right. Although I’d been to Montreal several times before that first trip in the summer of ’99 (some family friends live in Outremont), for me and for many people I know, Montreal is now synonymous with Fantasia.

Because of this, picking an iconic moment from the past 12 years isn’t such an easy task. Not only are there many to choose from, I’m also not sure I remember some of the best moments so clearly, for reasons which should be obvious if you’ve ever attended the festival before and engaged in its frequent late-night recreation. But I finally settled on one from my first trip there, one which reflects my own interest in and dedication to Japanese cinema, and one which still infiltrates my subconscious from time to time.

I’d missed out on the first three years of Fantasia for a variety of reasons. I’d never heard of it in 1996, but it was quickly brought to my attention by some like-minded folks who’d attended. In 1997 and 1998 I’d planned to go but work duties intervened the first summer, a cross-country move the second. So by July 1999, I was more than ready, and especially excited because the festival was screening two highly-anticipated titles for me: Hideo Nakata’s Ring and Ring 2, which I’d heard very little about other than that they would fuck me up. Bring it on, I thought.

So I found myself one weekend night ready to watch the first film with my then-girlfriend (now wife) Jennifer, a gaggle of friends from NY and elsewhere, and our regular Fantasia traveling companion at the time, a small chihuahua named Scooter (sadly now deceased, he was a regular Fantasia attendee for many years). We were in our usual spot, front row center of the balcony of the Imperial Theatre on Bleury, the long-lamented original location of Fantasia. Full house, everybody’s expectations as high as the ceiling. To say we weren’t disappointed is an understatement. As anybody can tell you who experienced the movie before its hype peaked – and before the Hollywood remake – it was a terrifying, mesmerizing experience. Those curious, degraded images on the poisonous videotape instilled a primal horror into those of us who saw it at that time, and the climactic sequences of Sadako emerging from the television had the Imperial full house audience literally climbing the walls and screaming at the top of their lungs. It is an experience I will never forget.

But the real horrors came later that night, after Jennifer and I had returned to Outrement to stay at our family friends’ creaky old, mansion-like house, empty but for the two of us in an upstairs corner bedroom…looking out into a narrow hallway…which overlooked an open staircase with balcony. Unfortunately for me, I found myself in the unenviable situation of having to walk down that hallway to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Like many others attracted to horror and fantastic cinema, I was often scared as a kid and found comfort in making the images that terrified me part of my life and embracing them as “my friends,” so to speak. I thought I’d outgrown some of these night terrors, but soon realized that Sadako had brought them to the surface again, and I was literally shaking as I left the room and walked down the shadowy hallway – dimly lit from above by a skylight letting in the Montreal moonlight – toward the dark, dark bathroom. I reached the bathroom, turned on the light (no waterlogged Japanese ghosts here…), did my business, turned off the light and prepared to head back to the bedroom, then realized to my horror that I’d have to walk the 25 feet back to the bedroom not only in near-darkness, but with the pitch-black, open bathroom door directly behind me where I couldn’t see what lurked within. At first I made my way back slowly and with confidence, telling myself that I was being silly, but nevertheless, my steps soon quickened, my breath came faster and I finally dashed through the bedroom door and into bed where two warm bodies (a woman and a chihuahua) provided security and comfort, my heart racing with terror.

Thank you, Fantasia, for messing me up that night and for countless nights to come. Thanks to you, I still have those lovely bad dreams.

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MARTIN SAVAGEAU
Fantasia Co-Founder

Being one of those behind the scenes, I must admit that Fantasia’s first edition remains my favorite. Why? Many reasons, one of them being the “first time” syndrome. Like our first kiss or our first slow-dance; it’s the kind of moment we don’t forget.

In fact, one specific memory is engraved in my mind when I think of that first edition. It’s Friday July 12th, 1996; opening night. Three inaugurating films are slated to open. The spectacular My Father is a Hero gets the ball rolling, followed by Hong Kong-native John Woo’s Bullet in the Head before topping the evening off with the jubilant Story of Ricky.

It’s just past 11pm and people are filing out of the Woo screening. I’m in the lobby of the Imperial cinema, testing the waters and paying attention to various reactions from the departing crowd. A young man quickly moves towards a pay phone and, as soon as the other side picks up, in an excited hurry exclaims that he’s just seen “the best movie he’s ever seen in his life”.

It may sound cliché, or even cheesy, but as far as I’m concerned, for a reaction like that alone, the birth of what is now considered to be “the biggest genre film festival in North America” will have been worth it.

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KIER-LA JANISSE
Blue Sunshine Psychotronic Film Centre, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies

My first visit to Fantasia came in 1999. I’d been poring over the programme in envy the previous year, and with my own festival (CineMuerte) wrapping up a few weeks before Fantasia kicked off, I was free to enjoy being a spectator again. My favourite memory is hanging out for a week with German underground director Jörg Buttgereit, a longtime hero of mine.

While looking for a seat at the Imperial for a screening of Shusuke Kaneko’s Gamera 3, I ran into none other than Jörg Buttgereit, whose films (Nekromantik 1 + 2, Der Todesking, Schramm) I had been championing in B.C. in an attempt to get them off the banned list. I think he was relieved to find out that I didn’t have three heads or a bladder problem (“a girl writing a horror magazine is very suspicious”, he told me, after admitting that when I first sent him my magazine (originally called Cannibal Culture, then CineMuerte Magazine) he thought the “written by a woman” thing was a marketing ploy.) We sat together for the film, and afterwards we met up with Mitch Davis and Karim Hussain, the two tirelessly enthusiastic film buffs who were then the festival’s international programmers (Mitch has gone on to be co-director of the festival and Karim is now a renowned DP and film director), and went to a pub to drink. I sat next to Shusuke Kaneko (the aforementioned Gamera director), whose English was not great at the time, and in an attempt to talk to him about something Japanese, I made the mistake of mentioning the Guinea Pig movies. He understood ‘Guinea Pig’ but not anything else I said, and consequently, for the rest of the night he was afraid to make eye contact with me. But that’s okay because it forced me to talk to the other people around me, who turned out to be none other than Adele Hartley of Scotland’s Dead by Dawn Festival, Anthony Timpson of New Zealand’s Incredibly Strange Film Festival and David Whitten of Greycat Films, all of whom became great friends.

The next day I discovered Jörg’s obsession with donuts. It seems that in Germany, donuts don’t have holes in them, so Jörg wanted to get his fill of these baked novelties while he was here. We took a field trip to the amusement park La Ronde (“Amusement Park? This sounds like a porno shop!” commented Jörg) where I went on my first rollercoaster ride ever and then we went on the Ferris Wheel to pretend we were in Nekromantik 2. Then we went back to the city, not knowing that we had forgotten our friend Kelly at La Ronde. He was really mad.

I spent the next day photocopying, folding and cutting so that I could flog customers at Fantasia’s screening of Nekromantik with my ‘Save Nekromantik from the censors’ flyers. The flyer outlined the basics of my legal appeal against the B.C. Film Classification Board, and I went up on stage before the film to encourage people to write letters. Someone yelled out “We love you Lisa Simpson!”, and I didn’t get the reference, having never watched the Simpsons. Luckily Jörg is a Simpsons expert, and he explained to me that the person was making fun of me for crusading.

Before Nekromantik, Jörg’s short film Mein Papi was screened, for which I was charged with the great honour of reading out a live translation. It was supposed to be a funny film about his father dying of a brain tumour, but nobody laughed. Well, I did, but that was just at the theme song.

After being inseparable for a week, Jörg finally had to go home, but I felt privileged to have met him and remain extremely grateful to Fantasia for making it happen.

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About the author:

Kier-La Janisse

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024), House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), and produced the acclaimed blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023).