At the opening, Adam Lopez, After Dark festival director, promised seven amazing nights of cinematic mayhem. That was possibly the understatement of the festival.

After Dark, in terrifying fashion, delivered 50 cult, genre, and international films in 16 screenings. Including 14 feature lengths -- 6 made their Canadian premier; and 36 shorts -- 7 with their World/International premier.

Highlights of the features were the contemplative New York rat-zombie extravaganza Mulberry Street, the twisted Korean futuristic animation Aachi and Ssipak, the devilishly funny black comedy Blood Car, and the Russian fantasy epic Wolfhound.

A Canadian short opened every feature adding a touch of old-school cinematic magic from when a trip to the theatre was more than commercials followed by 90minutes of CGI.

There were a number of spectacular Canadian shorts including the world premiers of Eat the Parents a crypt-zombie comedy and Swine a twisted story about a man and his pig’s head. Hopefully future festivals will have some Canadian feature film premiers.

The International shorts were just as lively, including: It Came From the West a zombie puppet western; Wok, an Australian torture comedy; Cracker Attacker -- Nazi animal crackers threaten mankind; and From Inside an adaptation of John Bergin’s graphic novel.

The festival also featured the renowned Toronto Zombie Walk where zombie fans march the streets of Toronto dressed as the undead. The festival also gathered a variety of international filmmakers to introduce their films and participate in Q&A. Among them: filmmakers behind Mulberry Street, the notorious boxing filmmaker Uwe Boll, the king of independent gross-out-gore comedy Lloyd Kaufman, and Murder Party’s brown knight himself Chris Sharp.

Boll is famous for making critically-panned films and challenging his critics to boxing matches. Chris Alexander, one of the critics Boll defeated in a boxing match, hosted the Q&A. Boll was promoting his film In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, which runs 150-minute.When asked about his cast’s reaction to the film Boll responded, “Only Jason Stratham thinks the movie is too long. I told him it is not Transporter 3, so he is a little pissed.”

Last year the event drew over 4000 cinemaniacs. This year organizers were hoping to pull in over 5000. According to Lopez they have blown through that and expect the final numbers next week, “There are over 80 film festivals in Toronto and according to the latest numbers we are in the top 10% of all the festivals in Toronto in our second year.”

While the attendance can be taken as a gesture of fan support, filmmakers were able to verbalize their opinion. Lloyd Kaufman, who screened Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead commented, “We didn’t go into the Toronto Film Festival, we went into Toronto After Dark because we supported them in their first year and they are growing. It’s a real grassroots festival and the fans there are real film lovers. So [we thought] let’s go there instead. Why do we have to be at Midnight Madness? That’s like being in the ghetto. It makes no sense, it makes absolutely no sense.”

Mulberry Street director, Jim Mickel, commented on the intimate nature of the festival, “Adam [Lopez] kept saying, ‘We’re so sorry we can’t give you what the other festivals do… ‘ But it’s kind of not true at all because the last festival we were at was the Sitges Festival in Spain, which is a great festival, but hundreds of movies are packed into not enough time, not enough days, and you just kind of wind up feeling like you are a spectator that happened to have a movie shown there. We screened at three in the morning after two other over the top zombie films… so it’s good to come up and have your movie be the only movie of the night and then a party afterwards and a sold out crowd happy to be there.”

Mickel’s producer, Adam Folke, commented, “I look forward to see how the festival grows, because it’s only its second year. [Lopez] seems to be really smart in the way he’s marketing it, putting it out there and programming it. So I think it’s going to be a really good festival, especially in the years to come.

PHOTO BY DEBORAH KANFER, Freelance Photographer