Monster Fest 2023

Overview

October is made for weird, wild and wonderful movies filled with shocks and scares. 'Tis Halloween season, after all. So, the world obliges, including on screens big and small — and, in 2023, via the return of Australia's genre film festival Monster Fest, which is dedicated to flicks of the spooky, dark, twisted, offbeat and out-there variety.

Monster Fest doesn't always pop up in the month when everyone is worshipping pumpkins and thinking about costumes; however, the timing obviously couldn't be more perfect. As it always does, it'll run long in Melbourne, taking over Cinema Nova from Thursday, October 12–Sunday, October 22.

Standouts titles on the 2023 program include Suitable Flesh, which stars Heather Graham (Extrapolations) as a doctor going mad, takes its inspiration from HP Lovecraft and boasts Joe Lynch (Creepshow) behind the lens; The Last Video Store, a horror-comedy set, yes, in one of the last video stores; and Norwegian flick There's Something in the Barn, about a gnome uprising that plagues an American family (including Party Down's Martin Starr) who've relocated to Scandinavia.

Or, there's also sci-fi comedy Time Addicts, Australian slasher Bloodmoon getting a 4K restoration 33 years after its OG release and Trim Season's nightmarish trip to a weed farm.

When Evil Lurks and its demonic infection will launch the Victorian capital's leg of the fest. From there, that's also where Red Rooms, which recently won Best Feature at the 2023 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, joins the program. And, so does the kung fu-filled The Invisible Fright, a 4K restoration of Jim Jarmusch's (The Dead Don't Die) Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai and a 30th-anniversary session of ninth Friday the 13th entry Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (screening on the appropriate date, of course).

On  the doco front, erotic thrillers are thrust into the spotlight in We Kill for Love, Satan Wants You looks back at 80s-era satanic panic and Enter the Clones of Bruce surveys the talents that endeavoured to replicate Bruce Lee after his death. Going all in on Bruceploitation, Monster Fest is also putting on a double of  The Dragon Lives Again and Challenge of the Tiger, where Dracula and James Bond are among Bruce's foes.