Mini Black Sunday 2

Arthur's Review of Mini Black Sunday 2

It was almost a year between mini festivals before the next one arrived and even longer for Arthur as he hadn't been able to attend the previous one (although he's still not 100% certain he didn't go - it's so hard to remember!). Again it was the min festival format and again it was showing at the Mayfair cinema. This cinema was yet another old style cinema complete with Balcony, but it was a bit bigger than the other venues. Because of relatively poor ticket sales (approx 200 people) only the balcony was used and Arthur remembers it seemed a bit odd looking down into the totally empty stalls.

Being a smaller event, producing programs, T-Shirts and posters was not going to happen, but the other vendors were still there. However it was about this time that the backlash against video nasties had hit the newspapers with the ever reliable Daily Mail proclaiming the end of the world because copies of the Exorcist (which was still unavailable at that time) had been seized alongside copies of Disney films at comic fairs. As such, the selling of pirate videos of uncut and banned horror films was very much frowned upon and organiser Dave had to think of the reputation of the festival and his new film magazine. Thus Dave put his foot down and politely asked for the trading and selling of copied tapes to stop. The people with the wallpaper pasting tables full of tapes were forced to pack up. However trade just moved outside into the car park and an impromptu car boot sale was set up. Dave's hands were clean and the fans got their uncut videos. And once more balance and harmony had been restored in the British horror scene.

Unlike the full length festivals, the mini fests had their full line up announced in advance, which may go some way to explaining the lower than usual tickets sales. In a climate where horror films were becoming less popular and fewer were being made, Black Sunday had expanded to include more mainstream and general action type films. Buffy the Vampire Slater was the original movie version with Kritsy Swanson in the lead role, long before Sarah Michelle Geller even got a look in. It was an enjoyable horror comedy with a start turn by Paul Rubens, better known as Pee Wee Herman.

Rapid fire was a reasonable American action type film and Unlawful Entry was the slightly more serious drama film. The line up was completed by Once Upon a Time in China, a great traditional, historic martial arts film starring Jet Li that Arthur really liked. Unfortunately not everyone in the audience loved it so much.