This was the film festival that very nearly wasn't. Although contracts were signed with Scarborough Borough Council a year in advance of the event, just eight days before tickets were due to go on sale the wheels of bureaucracy ground into motion, threatening to pull the plug on the festival. This eleventh-hour action led to rumours of cancellation in the press and inevitably affected ticket sales. However, organiser Mike McCarthy soldiered on, and successfully delivered the first Bram Stoker International Film Festival - an ambitious 4-day event with feature films, shorts, and even a burlesque performance on the bill.
The festival took place at the Whitby Pavilion which, as some of you may know, is the regular haunt of the Whitby Goth Weekend - it's a good space for something of this kind, with an excellent cinematic set-up in a beautiful (if tempestuous!) English seaside town. As the historical and spiritual home of Bram Stoker's Dracula it's eminently suitable for a horrorfest - however, it is somewhat remote, and this may be a challenge for future years, at least until the event becomes an established fixture on the filmgoer's calendar.
The weekend kicked off in style with a Cabaret Gothique by the girls from Velvet Burlesque (http://www.velvetburlesque.co.uk/) - an eclectic group, whose material ranges from traditional burlesque performance to the altogether atypical: zombie belly dance, anyone? Generally good fun, although the space in which the performance took place was rather large (it's hard to be titillated at a distance) and some of the music choices were…unique. I've seen many things, but never a woman stripping to Terrorvision.
Of course, ultimately this was a film festival and the selection of films was excellent. It's gratifying to watch new films in the company of directors, producers and actors and present at the festival were Devi Snivley (http://www.devisnively.com/) Rod Morris (producer of Dying Breed) and Catherine Taylor and Caroline Haines of new London vampire flick Temptation. Some of the highlights of the festival included shape-shifting, all-singing Korean foxes (The Fox Family), a rural Lovecraftian evil (Colour from the Dark), a werewolf community (Una Storia di Lupa) , a mysterious photograph (The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow), zombie rights (Wasting Away) and some amateur organ transplantation (Excision).
The BSIFF has had a difficult birth but it is a welcome addition to the UK horror circuit, especially as Edinburgh's Dead by Dawn is on hiatus next year. The enthusiasm - and determination - of the organisers in the face of some serious red-tape deserves credit and, though this year was not a sell-out there was a decent atmosphere and a sense of good things to come.
Review by Keri O'Shea