DER NACHTMAHR: Parasites In Cinema

"Pssst, do you have any Reese's Pieces?"

 If you haven't yet seen Der Nachtmahr, now's your chance. Its last screening is tonight.

What's Der Nachtmahr about you ask? The TIFF Vanguard blog is here to help!

After a wild night out, a Berlin party girl finds herself haunted by a twisted, repellent little creature that no one else can see.

Is he an alien? Is he good or evil? Is he a parasite? You'll have to see Der Nachtmahr to find out, but in the meantime we thought we'd pay our respects to some well-known (or perhaps underrated) cinematic parasites.

Parasite, 1982
Set in the nearly impossible to imagine future of 1992, when gas is $40 a gallon, this is a Charles Band production, the guy who gifted the world with the Puppet Master series as well as Evil Bong: High 5, currently in pre-production according to IMDB. Parasite not only boasts Demi Moore's first film role as "the lemon girl," it also includes former Runaway Cherie Currie as a "hooligan." You might be able to find it on YouTube; we're not sure.

Basket Case, 1982
Parasite never had a chance against Frank Henenlotter's deliriously twisted creation. Filmed in a grody and gritty pre-Guiliani New York City, and using actual residents of the seedy Times Square area, Basket Case is both funny and frightening. Duane Bradley carries his deformed conjoined twin named Belial around in a basket as they seek vengeance for the surgeon who separated them.

How To Get Ahead In Advertising, 1989
Before Mad Men's Don Draper, there was Richard E. Grant as the unfortunately named    
Denis Dimbleby Bagley, whose obsession with trying to promote a new pimple cream backfires in the most grotesque way: he develops a huge boil that becomes sentient and begins talking to him. It's delightfully and horribly hilarious.

The Bay, 2012
We couldn't talk about parasites without mentioning our favorite, the Unofficial Midnight Madness Blog Mascot: The Isopod! We first fell in love with these cuddly creatures in Barry Levinson's The Bay, which not only played at the Festival but also definitely appears in the Top Ten list of best found footage movies.

Watching Vanguard movies makes isopods hungry.

DER NACHTMAHR Final Screening!
Sun. Sept. 20, 6:00PM SCOTIABANK 14

MEN & CHICKEN: Anders Thomas Jensen Director Profile

Did you know that Anders Thomas Jensen is one of the filmmaking community's most prolific screenwriters? It's true!

Go check out his IMDB profile. We'll wait.

See what we mean? Since 1996 he's written 50 screenplays. That's like, a LOT of screenplays.

Some of these scripts have been for hugely successful and/or critically acclaimed films: Mifune's Last Song, In China They Eat Dogs, Open Hearts, Stealing Rembrandt, and Brothers. Several of these films have been directed by Danish dynamo Susanne Bier. More recently Jensen wrote A Second Chance (with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Kristian Levring's epic Western The Salvation (with Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Eva Green).

Although Jensen has only directed four of his own screenplays, that doesn't mean that those four movies are any less wonderful.

All right boys, we're gonna swim the HELL out of this lake!

Flickering Lights sets the stage for Jensen's ability to elicit empathy towards the most screwed up, unlikable characters you can imagine. It's also terrifically funny and touching, but not maudlin or cliché.

Mads Mikkelsen's very bald forehead just needs a few minutes to collect itself.

The Green Butchers was Jensen's next directorial effort and like Flickering Lights, itincludes Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Ole Thestrup, and Nicolas Bro. And nothing on the menu is vegetarian.

Hannibal Lecter is amused by your cannibal references.

Did you eat the last cookie?

Adam's Apples, again starring Mikkelsen, Thestrup, Bro, and Kaas, is another movie about severely dysfunctional people led by a dysfunctional pastor whose dysfunction is literally the only thing keeping them all from complete mental breakdowns. It's a whole lot funnier than it probably sounds and again, is surprisingly poignant.

The cheese will never stand alone if these three have anything to say about it.

Men & Chicken takes the same Jensen trademarks and amps them up to become even crazier and more hilarious and perhaps most shocking of all, genuinely heartwarming.

Don't miss Men & Chicken's final screening. It's a movie you won't soon forget. Trust us. We know these things.

MEN & CHICKEN Final Screening!
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN: More Madstache Movies

I brought you some cheese. And a sparkler. And my moustache.

Fearless Vanguarder and Midnight Madness Maven Carol Borden has taken you on a trip through the cinematic context of what we now refer to as "The Madstache." Now, we will guide your journey down Madstache Memory Lane.

Flickering Lights, 2000: You talkin' to me? Or you talkin' to my moustache?

King Arthur, 2004: Bonus Beard & Falcon! Which is the falcon & which is Mads? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

Adam's Apples, 2005: It's OK. My moustache will protect you. Failing that, you have a gun.

Flame & Citroen, 2008: It still counts as a moustache, Sam Elliott. IT STILL COUNTS.

Coco & Igor , 2009: Why yes, this is a dapper moustache. Did you know I composed The Rites of Spring?

Valhalla Rising, 2009: I may only have one functioning eye and no dialogue, but my moustache game is strong.

Clash of the TItans, 2010: Release the Kraken? My moustache, beard & bonus braid are aghast at the thought.

The Three Musketeers, 2011: I am a proud Spanish peacock. What is haggis?

Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas, 2013: That's a mouthful. Just look at the moustache, OK?

The Salvation, 2014: Whatevs. At least I didn't lose an eye this time.

MEN & CHICKEN Final Screening!
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

HELLIONS: Bruce McDonald Director Profile

Canadian cult film fans are familiar with Toronto director Bruce McDonald. If you attended the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008, you might recall Pontypool, which mutates the zombie genre in the most fascinating and frightening ways.

McDonald is back at the Festival with Hellions, described as a "deliciously creepy tale about a pregnant teen whose home is besieged by a ghastly crew of trick-or-treaters." Sort of like À l'intérieur but set on Halloween instead of Christmas. Maybe. (You'll have to see it to find out, mwahahaha!)

Roadkill: Hand over the cowboy hat and no one gets hurt.

With more than 60 directorial credits to his name, McDonald defines "eclectic." He first appeared in the consciousness of both film and music fans with his 1989 movie Roadkill. It started as a tour documentary, but due to the increasingly unhinged environment surrounding the band A Neon Rome, it soon transformed into a fictionalized portrait of the madness of rock and roll. With a cast including Nash the Slash, Joey Ramone, and Don McKellar (another Canadian film icon), Roadkill is a bona fide cult classic. (And yes, McDonald admits that he did spend that $25,000 prize money on a big chunk of hash.)

Hard Core Logo: Hugh Dillon, rocking a cowboy hat.

But that wasn't it for Bruce McDonald. In 1996 he directed another music movie, this one about the dissolution of a fictional punk band called Hard Core Logo, hence the title of the film. With unforgettable characters like Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) and Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie), Hard Core Logo would inspire more than band names. It is considered one of the greatest Canadian movies ever made, not to mention one of the greatest movies about punk rock.

McDonald on the set of Pontypool wearing his trademark hat.

Not content to just direct fiction films, McDonald has also worked on several documentaries and many different TV series, including Twitch City (with Don McKellar and Callum Keith Rennie), Lexx, Queer As Folk, and the forever-beloved Degrassi: The Next Generation. And of course, 2008's Pontypool (did we mention we love this movie yet?).

Although Hellions is only McDonald's second horror film at TIFF, he did direct the blacker than black comedy The Husband, which screened at the Festival back in 2013. If that name doesn't ring a bell, it's the one about the man who's forced to care for his infant son alone when his wife is sent to prison for cheating on him with a minor. Yep, THAT movie.

McDonald has long praised Roman Polanski's The Tenant and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining as his favorite horror movies, saying that "people losing their minds" is "what I'm afraid of rather than monsters."

If that also terrifies you, you'll likely go mad for Hellions.

Of course, McDonald has also mentioned another thing that scares him:

"At the festival there's a certain kind of character that's around. It's this desperate, wide-eyed, glassy, I've had a script for 12 years that I've been working on kind of crazy. To me that's a bit scary and disturbing. You're not sure what's going on there."

HELLIONS Screening Times:
Thu. Sept 17, 9:30PM ELGIN/WINTER GARDEN
Fri. Sept 18 4:00PM, SCOTIABANK 4

HELLIONS: Retro Review of Bruce McDonald's PONTYPOOL

Notice the cowboy hat!

This year, Bruce McDonald's Hellions is screening as part of Vanguard, so we thought we'd take a look back at his last Vanguard entry, Pontypool.

Let's face it: with few exceptions, everyone is sick of zombies. That's not to say that zombie movies and TV shows are dead in the water (with zombie sharks), but it does mean that artists are going to have to do better than the standard ripoffs of "I'm coming to get you, Barbara."

Enter Tony Burgess and Bruce McDonald. Based on Tony Burgess's book, Pontypool Changes Everything, the McDonald-directed film Pontypool - which screened at the Festival in 2008 - is a breath of fresh air in a cemetery full of empty, stinking graves.

Pontypool is special because it's set in one location, the basement of a church that houses radio station CSLY. In that regard, it's more of a siege movie (think Assault on Precinct 13 or this year's Midnight Madness fave Green Room), than a straightforward zombie flick. Watching it reminded me of listening to radio plays as a kid (in library class, mind you; I'm not THAT old!), specifically "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "Bluebeard." This makes Pontypool a bit metacritical and self-referential, but it also makes it scary as hell.

No one really knows what is going on in Pontypool, and hearing the panicked voices of those trapped in precarious situations outside of CSLY - they increase in hysteria as the day continues - creates a heightened state of fear. Of course, Pontypool is also set on Valentine's Day, which means it's during the thick of Ontario winter. There's something to be said about the creepy factor of cold weather. Movies have been using this setting for years to great effect: Black Christmas, The Thing, 30 Days Of Night. We only see snippets of the snow in Pontypool, but we sense it constantly throughout the movie and that makes it more claustrophobic.

Pontypool opens with DJ Grant Mazzy, who serves as the crux of the action in the film. He's the one who discusses the developing situation on the air, he's the one who inspires admiration and frustration, and he's also the one who provides what he thinks is a solution to the crisis. Portrayed by Stephen McHattie, who McDonald has called his most favorite actor, it's the role of a lifetime. McHattie's voice is perfectly suited to being a radio DJ, but it's his weathered face and take-no-shit performance as Mazzy that make Pontypool the rare film that transforms a character actor into a genuine leading man.

There's no twist in Pontypool, although it does present a remarkable, brilliant variation on the tropes of virus and infection, one that is far more relevant to modern society than the idea of mindless consumers munching on human flesh. It's one of the most unique takes on the zombie genre and thus, required viewing for all horror aficionados.

HELLIONS Screening Times:
Thu. Sept 17, 9:30PM ELGIN/WINTER GARDEN
Fri. Sept 18 4:00PM, SCOTIABANK 4

MEN & CHICKEN: Review

In Men & Chicken, Elias and Gabriel are brothers whose father has just passed away. He's left them a videocassette revealing that not only is he not their biological father, but the woman they knew as their mother wasn't their biological mother. He also reveals that the name of their father is Evelio Thanatos.

The half-siblings venture to the tiny island of Ork to confront Thanatos with this news but they are literally chased off by Evelio's other sons, Franz, Josef, and Gregor. Yet, Gabriel and Elias are determined to reunite with their bad-tempered brethren. Men & Chicken is about that struggle.

It's easy to make your audience fall in love with flawed, yet appealing characters and film history is full of them. Even anti-heroes have their charms. What takes genuine skill is making your audience become emotionally invested in characters that they would never dream of even acknowledging in real life, much less caring about. That's Thomas Anders Jensen's genius and what makes Men & Chicken so incredible.

Horror films have their own anti-heroes and flawed characters. The heightened stakes of the genre engender fanaticism of a different sort. When fear, murder, and death are at stake, the intensity of emotion often gives way to intense devotion, hence the heroic stature of villains like Frankenstein or Freddy Krueger.

Men & Chicken, however, doesn't traffic in Grand Guignol, but petty annoyances and genuinely irritating people. You may spend the first half-hour of the film wondering why you are even watching it in the first place. The characters are by turns self-centered, impetuous, ignorant, violent, and frequently repugnant. Men & Chicken straddles a fine line between off-putting and engaging, between exploitative and empathetic.

There are probably critics who will write this film off as being contrived, self-consciously zany, or even pretentious. And it may be all of those things, but to dismiss Men & Chicken for those reasons would do the film a great disservice. It's both a hilarious comedy and a heartbreaking tragedy and the way it fuses the two makes it one of the most unique and unforgettable films you'll ever see.

MEN & CHICKEN Screening Times:
Wed. Sept 16, 10:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

ModernHorrors Has Love For HELLIONS And More

ModernHorrors.com has a full rundown of the genre films screening at this year's Toronto International Film Festival and Canadian filmmaking icon Bruce McDonald's Hellions appears on that list.

Seven years after his much-loved zombie thriller Pontypool, Canadian maverick Bruce McDonald returns to the horror genre with this deliciously creepy tale about a pregnant teen whose home is besieged by a ghastly crew of trick-or-treaters.

Modern Horrors highlights more than 30 titles in this Festival spotlight, including Vanguard titles like Demon, Der Nachtmahr, Evolution, February, and Lace Crater.

But wait, there's more!

The site also name checks Midnight Madness titles like Baskin, The Devil's Candy, The Final Girls, The Girl In The Photographs, GreenRoom, Hardcore, The Mind's Eye, Southbound, and Yakuza Apocalypse.

Thanks ModernHorrors.com!

HELLIONS Screening Times:

Thu. Sept 17, 9:30PM ELGIN/WINTER GARDEN

Fri. Sept 18 4:00PM, SCOTIABANK 4

DEMON Screening Times:

Fri. Sept 11, 6:15PM BLOOR HOT DOCS

Sun. Sept 13, 4:15PM SCOTIABANK 10

Sat. Sept 19, 9:15PM SCOTIABANK 13

DER NACHTMAHR Screening Times:

Thu. Sept 17, 9:00PM BLOOR HOT DOCS

Fri. Sept 18, 12:00PM SCOTIABANK 3

Sun. Sept. 20, 6:00PM SCOTIABANK 14

EVOLUTION Screening Times:

Mon. Sept 14, 9:30PM RYERSON

Wed. Sept. 16, 4:30PM BLOOR HOT DOCS

Sun. Sept 20, 8:30PM TIFF LIGHTBOX CINEMA 2

FEBRUARY Screening Times:

Sat. Sept 12, 6:30PM SCOTIABANK 1

Mon. Sept 14, 6:45PM SCOTIABANK 9

Fri. Sept 18, 6:45PM BLOOR HOT DOCS

LACE CRATER Screening Times:

Tue. Sept 15, 9:30PM SCOTIABANK 10

Thu. Sept 17, 9:30PM SCOTIABANK 14

Sun. Sept 20, 3:15PM SCOTIABANK 9

Midnight Madness:

GREEN ROOM Screening Times:
Thu, Sept 10th, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Sat, Sept 12, 2:15 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS

BASKIN Screening Times:
Fri, Sept 11, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Sun, Sept 13, 4:00 PM SCOTIABANK 13
Thu, Sept 17, 6:00 PM SCOTIABANK 4

HARDCORE Screening Times:
Sat, Sept 12, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Mon, Sept 14, 4:15 PM SCOTIABANK 14  
Fri, Sept 18, 1:00 PM SCOTIABANK 4

THE DEVIL'S CANDY Screening Times:
Sun, Sept 13, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Tue, Sept 15, 6:45 PM SCOTIABANK 9
Sat, Sept 19, 1:15 PM SCOTIABANK 14

THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS Screening Times:
Mon, Sept 14, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Wed, Sept 16, 5:00 PM SCOTIABANK 1
Fri, Sept 18, 9:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

THE MIND'S EYE Screening Times:
Tue, Sept 15, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Thu, Sept 17, 3:30 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS
Sat, Sept 19, 7:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

SOUTHBOUND Screening Times:
Wed, Sept 16, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Fri, Sept 18, 6:00 PM SCOTIABANK 13
Sun, Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 10

YAKUZA APOCALYPSE Screening Times:
Fri, Sept 18, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Sat, Sept 19, 3:00 PM SCOTIABANK 2

THE FINAL GIRLS Screening Times:
Sat, Sept 19, 11:59 PM RYERSON
Sun, Sept 20, 5:00 PM SCOTIABANK 2

LUNA: 5 Question Interview with Director Dave McKean

Dave McKean works in many mediums--comics (most famously his covers for The Sandman); illustration; painting; collage, music, photography and film. Aside from his previous feature film, MirrorMask (2005), McKean has directed two shorts, N[eon] (2002) and The Week Before (1998). He directed the film adaptation of the National Theatre Wales' The Gospel Of Us (2012). He's done design for Harry Potter And The Wizard Of Azkaban (2004) and the titles for Neverwhere (1996). Now he brings Luna to TIFF.  McKean was kind enough to answer a few questions. ~ Carol Borden

Where some of your other films are quite stylized and, in the case of The Week Before, almost expressionist, Luna combines fantastic, expressionist and animated elements with more naturalistic ones. What are some of the challenges in blending the fantastic with the naturalistic?

I think it's easier to sustain a very stylized form of storytelling for a short film. I like stories that exist both in the naturalistic world and in our imaginative lives, films are so immersive in that sense, we can explore how our characters think and dream, as well as how they exist in the real world. I think it's very easy to just go down the rabbit hole, or through the door to Narnia or Oz. I'm interested in the parallel narrative of our fantasy lives, or as Dean puts in it Luna, our imaginative lives. How the moment of 'now' that is palpably real, is surrounded by our memories, our dreams and hopes, the stories and connections that our brains make as we navigate the world--a universe of fantasy, or unreality, or surreality. I'm keen to explore this very human experience, how our minds create our own realities--a blend of fact and interpretation of fact.

What do you think fantasy, surrealism and magical realism's strengths are in reflecting and understanding people's lives?

They function like a lens I think. They allow us to see our everyday joys, fears, dramas, tragedies, triumphs in terms or story, or even poetry. Our brains tend to join the dots, make connections. We create dramatic arcs by seeing the relationship between things, but this is our brains creating stories. So these associative images magnify and intensify our experience of the world. They create meaning.

As someone who's worked with illustration, painting, collage and photography, what are some of the differences for you in working with a moving medium rather than a static one?

In some ways they are very similar. I'm always thinking about story, and the development of ideas or images, so with all of these media, I'm simply trying to communicate the feelings and ideas in the story or characters in the most appropriate and effective way. Film gives me live actors, editing, music, sound, a huge and powerful toolbox to play with. If there is a problem for me, it is that film gives me too much. There is less room for the audience to add their side of the conversation. The reason I love comics is that they DON'T move, and there is NO sound. As a creator I have to evoke those elements in the drawings and writing, and the reader has to create those elements in their own minds. Reading a good comic is a creative act. Watching a film is often a more passive experience, and since I'm interested in engaging that conversational aspect of creativity, I'm trying to find ways of achieving that in my films.

McKean working on the set of Luna

Does your illustration, collage and painting inform your filmmaking, and, if so, could you share how it does?

They all talk to each other. Sometimes the things I learn making paintings or drawings--composition, colour, expressionism, texture--can directly influence the making of a film. Sometimes it's great that they are different, and simply taking a break from one medium to spend time with another, recharges the batteries and I feel refreshed.

Who are some of your favorite filmmakers and how have they influenced you?

So many--there are so many extraordinarily creative and brilliant technicians and actors working in the field. The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. they have an aesthetic and social point of view. And there have been so many of these. I love the silent era because you can see the rules being written, the grammar of film being created. Murnau, Dreyer and Sjöström I love, as well as many of the Ufa films created in the 20's. Most of my films (all of them?) are in some way love letters to the silent era. I love directors and animators who take complete control of their film world; Svankmajer, Trnka, the Quays, Maddin, Lynch, Fellini. I love the great masters of time and landscape--Tarkovsky, Angelopoulos, Sokurov, Lopushansky. I remain a huge Woody Allen fan, despite the rough years. I love the group of truly modern filmmakers who have really got to grips with the digital realm; Jonze, Gondry, Glazer, Taymor. And I love Lars von Trier--he is, and I never use this word, a genius. I could go on for hours. Oh, and Bob Fosse--my favourite film is All That Jazz. Oh, and Michael Powell.

Okay, that will do.

LUNA screening times:

Sat., Sept. 6, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema 6:30 PM
Mon., Sept. 8, AGO Jackman Hall 9:00 AM
Sun., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 9 8:45 PM

Director Profile: Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY'S TEARS)

Not content to remain merely inspired by the giallo films of the 1960s and '70s, filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani seem determined to reinvent giallo as its own genre. The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is their latest foray into feature film and it is screening as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's Vanguard Programme.

Cattet and Forzani made several short films on a miniscule budget before their feature debut, Amer, in 2009. These short films speak in a commanding language despite containing little to no dialogue.

2002's Chambre Jaune was awarded Best International Fantastic Short Film at Sitges and also screened at Montreal's Fantasia Festival, eventually appearing on Synapse Films' Small Gauge Trauma: Vol. 1,  a 2006 compilation of Fantasia short films.

L'Etrange Portrait De Le Dame En Jaune, from 2004, won The Cult Film Archive Award at the 2006 Kinofilm in Manchester as well as Best Short Film at Spain's Festival de Terror de Molins del Rei in 2005.

In 2009, Cattet and Forzani released Amer, which examined three different phases in its female protagonists's life--childhood, adolescence, and adulthood--all marked by sensual discovery and visceral unease.

In an interview with Australia's Desktop, the duo reveals that Amer was not only shot in 39 days, but also that they "tested all the storyboards with a DV-cam and tested all the camera settings before the shoot." Additionally, they note, "we shot the total film with the two of us acting all the characters" before the actors eventually came on board. The result was 900 shots and 2,200 cuts, which is astonishing considering their limited funding.

2012's The ABCs of Death boasts a segment from Cattet and Forzani, the exquisite "O is For Orgasm." Like their previous work, it shows Cattet and Forzani continuing to explore and expand the same visual and sonic hallmarks of their previous works: garish colors, deep shadows, experimental mise en scene, and re-recorded and non-diegetic sound.

For The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, screening at this year's Toronto International Film Festival Vanguard Programme, Cattet and Forzani adopted a slightly more narrative approach, described on the AnonymesFilms website as such: "A woman vanishes. Her husband inquires into the strange circumstances of her disappearance. Did she leave him? Is she dead? As he goes along searching, he plunges into a world of nightmare and violence . . . " 

With Cattet and Forzani behind the cameras, one can expect more sumptuous, provocative images, but no doubt there will be surprises, too.

THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS Screening Times:

Wednesday, Sept 11th, 6:00 PM THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Thursday, Sept 12th, 9:30 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:30 PM SCOTIABANK 8

THE SACRAMENT: Flashback to Jonestown, Part I

Peoples Temple member Venus Harris

"We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."

--The Reverend Jim Jones, founder of the The Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church

“Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death.”

--Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party

In November 1978, more than 900 people died in the largest mass suicide/mass murder in history (before September 11, 2001). The location of this grisly event was Jonestown, a religious commune in Guyana. Jonestown was inhabited by about a thousand followers of the Reverend Jim Jones, who had founded The Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church in the 1960s. 

Ti West's latest film, The Sacrament, is screening at this year's Festival and bears many similarities to this real-life tragedy, so let's take a closer look at whathappened.

In the mid-1950s, Jim Jones had quit his job as Assistant Pastor at the Lauren Street Tabernacle in Indianapolis, Indiana because the church board refused to allow integration of African-Americans into the congregation. He started the Peoples Temple soon afterwards to deal with social issues like racism and class inequality, but it was also a way for Jones to communicate his Marxist beliefs.

The beginnings of the Peoples Temple were auspicious: Jones established nursing homes and developed projects in the inner city to help both poor and homeless people, in addition to donating money to humanitarian and political causes such as the anti-apartheid movement. In 1960, Jones was even appointed the Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission, but the constant harassment and death threats from racists caused so much mental and physical strain that he left the position the next year.

The Peoples Temple had a reputation for practicing what they preached: a "human rights ministry." Yet soon, cracks in the beautiful façade of the Peoples Temple began to show. Eight former members of the church (referred to as "defectors") told stories of surveillance, forced confessions of bad deeds, physical abuse, and blackmail.

By the time the 1970s rolled around, Jones's Communist teachings became more obvious in his sermons and he renounced what he called the "Sky God" in favor of a new "apostolic socialism." He argued that no benevolent God would allow his children to suffer and saw the Bible as a "text filled with lies." He promoted the idea of the "Divinity of Socialism," in which love was the "central ordering of society."

Eventually, Jones appointed himself as the manifestation of the God personification of Socialism, claimed to have supernatural powers similar to those of Jesus Christ, became increasingly obsessed with the Apocalypse and Judgement Day, and openly condemned capitalist governments. Soon, the rest of the world became less tolerant of the Reverend and the Peoples Temple, particularly the media.

Article from the San Francisco Examiner

After being excoriated in the as a fraud with a messiah complex and denied tax-exempt status, Jones set up a new compound for the Peoples Temple in Guyana, and by the end of the 1970s, there were close to a thousand people living there. But the attempt to escape from their persecutors proved futile for soon the Peoples Temple was being pursued by the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and US Customs.

Stay tuned to the Vanguard Blog for Part II of"Flashback to Jonestown."

THE SACRAMENT Screening Times:

Sunday, Sept 8th, 5:15 PM THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 9:45 PM SCOTIABANK 7

Friday, Sept 13th, 8:45 PM SCOTIABANK 3

THE SACRAMENT: Director Profile: Ti West

Is there anything Ti West can't do? He's a director who's also written, shot, produced, and edited his own movies as well as collaborated on the score for one (2004's The Roost). As an actor, he's appeared in films by Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, and Joe Swanberg (You're Next, Drinking Buddies, All the Light in The Sky, Silver Bullets). The Sacrament is his latest film, and it will premiere as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's Vanguard Programme

 

In 2004, West made his feature directorial debut with The Roost, which has a classic horror premise. On Halloween night, four teenagers on their way to a friend's wedding manage to get their car stuck in a ditch. They walk to an abandoned farmhouse and run into killer bats, zombies, and in a bit of self-reflexivity, a TV horror host played by Tom Noonan.

2007's Trigger Man, in which three friends go camping in the wilderness only to find themselves stalked by unseen prey, has the vibe of the film Rituals. Even the final shot in the trailer resembles the dam in the underappreciated 1974 Canuxploitation classic..

West's next endeavor, writing, and producing the 2009 sequel to Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, didn't have a happy ending, even for a director whose movies don't traffic in them. He wanted Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever to goin one direction, but the producers had a different idea, so he exited the film, leaving them all of his shot footage.

Fortunately, for Ti West, 2009 also saw the release of his superlative flick The House Of the Devil. A college student needs to make some quick cash in order to put a deposit on an apartment, so she takes an unorthodox babysitting gig in a giant, old house out in the country. If reading the premise gives you a nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach, be warned. The film creates an environment of excruciating tension heightened by quick bursts of terror that is nearly unbearable.

The House of the Devil is set in the 1980s, but as West notes in Interview, "it's not kitschy, video-killed -the-radio-star Eighties. It's brown, feathered hair, wood-paneling Eighties."  Such attention to detail makes it all the more effective.

Would you be interested in film like this? A couple of hotel employees are stuck working the last weekend at a soon-to-be-closed hotel. They kill time trying to prove the existence of the ghosts rumored to haunt the place and are warned against going into the basement by a creepy visitor. Did you answer yes? Then you should see The Innkeepers, West's 2011 film. Of course, the above synopsis doesn't encompass everything that happens. Things do get weirder and scarier from there (this is a Ti West movie, after all).

The 2012 found-footage anthology V/H/S includes a contribution from West. "Second Honeymoon" does what it says on the tin with one exception: someone is following the couple. "Second Honeymoon" transcends the found-footage genre by being both utterly realistic and scary. As a horror hound, I am not ashamed to say that I had to turn on the lights while watching it AND I couldn't sleep after it was over.

The ABCs of Death segment "M is for Miscarriage" was West's next directorial effort in 2012. Although grotesque and interesting, it's too short to successfully establish the aura of dread at which West excels.

This year's Toronto International Film Festival Vanguard Programme features The Sacrament, a movie in which three journalists visit a relative at a religious commune. Eli Roth is the producer, but West has been quick to point out that it's not an Eli Roth Movie. In an Entertainment Weekly interview, West says, "It’s a very confrontational movie and it’s very horrific and it’s very dark. It’s different from what people might expect from me and something different from what people expect from Eli as well.”

Ti West bristles at being pegged as a "horror director." In a genre that is overpopulated by weak narratives, excessive exposition, and no genuine horrors to speak of, this is probably a good thing. "All of the stuff in the film that's not horror is what makes all of the horror stuff work," says West, zeroing in on exactly what distinguishes a boring horror movie from an outstanding movie that also happens to be a horror movie.

He also seems to enjoy exploring the theme of "people in a rural and/or unfamiliar place who are then terrorized by something or someone." This coupled with his remarkable ability to craft slow burn scares through suspense and imagined, briefly glimpsed, or unseen horrors, ensures that The Sacrament will add another thrilling accomplishment to Ti West's oeuvre.

THE SACRAMENT Screening Times:

Sunday, Sept 8th, 5:15 PM THE BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 9:45 PM SCOTIABANK 7

Friday, Sept 13th, 8:45 PM SCOTIABANK 3