After Dark has moved into its second phase. The madness that was the weekend is over and the number of films per day has dropped significantly. The festival is now reserved for evening screenings, which means this reporter can finally get some quality sleep and a decent meal.

Fast-Food has been a hot topic, being the key theme behind Poultrygeist. Being on the run for three days highly limits your nutritional options. I could have packed a lunch but fast food is just such an easy alternative. However, being over-loaded with sodium and MSG is not exactly conducive to productivity. It’s a recipe for drowsiness.

It’s also hard not to think about food when you spend the whole day watching films about eating. Horror films display more visuals of people eating than any other genre. Sure it’s mainly zombie’s eating human flesh but it still translates into satisfying large amounts of screen hunger. Thankfully the films tonight do not feature any flesh-eating creatures to remind me of how hungry I am.

Each feature film is opened by a Canadian short film. This is one of the things the festival has done really well this year -- pairing the features up with worthy openers.

The experience of watching a short before the main feature is a throwback to old cinema. Over the course of history, a trip to the cinema has gone from being a complete entertainment experience showing cartoons, shorts, serials, news reports, trailers, and a feature. Now even this is unstable as theatre owners are dumping more trailers for commercial adverts.

Is it really any wonder that attendance is dropping? Sure there are other factors (ticket prices, film quality) but public awareness is important. Instead of trailers, the average filmgoer has to make decisions somewhat based on 30 second TV spots. I usually find TV spots effective if I have already seen the full-length trailer.

Back to my original point, the opener for the Vietnam period piece, The Rebel’s was The Bullet, a revenge-based Western, a different kind of period piece was well suited. Rebel itself was a martial arts extravaganza featuring the man in the suit for Spiderman 1 and 2, Johnny Nguyen. It was a nice change: scenic shots of Vietnam without American troops marching through explosions or sniper attacks.

The screening of Swine and The Tripper: Sean Linton, director of Swine, introduced the film. “You’ve probably seen this theme a million times - it’s the story of the special bond between a man and his severed pig’s head on a stick.” He continued to explain that they used a real pig’s head and after three days of shooting under film lights the head began to smell really bad.

Adam Lopez, festival director, introduced the slasher/thriller, The Tripper -- about a group of hippies gathering at a woodland music festival. A lunatic in a Ronald Regan mask (which makes sense since I’ve always found Regan terrifying) is running around hacking people. Lopez was lucky enough to spend time with David Arquette and pick his brain discovering Arquette’s inspiration behind the film:

“[I]n [Arquette’s] youth a law was passed…that basically let out a lot of people who had mental disorders onto the streets and in his town, David Arquette remembered, almost over night the streets became a very dangerous place with a lot of sort of psychotic people…. Another thing…was …hanging out with David Arquette was really interesting because he was totally out of his head the whole time I was talking to him.”

One definite contribution Tripper has given horror is that by having the hippies high on drugs there are no plot holes over totally illogical reactions to deadly situations. Above average for a slasher film, Arquette’s debut could have been worse and there are splashes of brilliance in this weird little movie.