Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

I can on occasion, let my excitement get the better of me. When I like a film, I really like a film, and as is often the case, I'll wear myself out in an attempt to make every single person who crosses my path know that they must like said film as well. I suppose in a nutshell, that is the entire reason I started The October Country, so I could do really great services for the world like pass on movies such as this one, BlinkyTM. See, most of the charities around my neck of the woods are religious in nature which doesn't sit so well with me, so I figured informing the world about great works of genre art was the next best thing, karmicly speaking (hey, I'm not gonna get into hell on my good looks alone). So believe me when I say today, my excitement does runneth over for what is in store for you dear readers. Also, believe me when I say that out of all the short films that we have viewed for consideration of hosting on our site this year, BlinkyTM is by far our favorite, and hopefully soon to be yours as well.

A story about a boy, his robot and the consequences of his anger at the disintegration of his parents marriage.

Alex ( Max Records, Where the Wild Things Are) is looking for the normal loving family life that he hasn't got - his parents are too busy fighting with each other to worry about the effect on him. Modern technology comes to the rescue in the form of Blinky, a robot designed to be a companion/assistant but ultimately becomes more a best friend and surrogate family member.

Not getting the love he is looking for from Blinky, Alex soon becomes bored with Blinky and starts treating him badly, making conflicting demands of him that ultimately result in a failure of his software. On reboot, only one demand remains intact.

Equally moving and horrifying in equal measure, Academy Award nominated director Ruairi Robinson (Fifty Percent Grey, 2002) fills his masterful short to the brim with melancholy, angst, wonderment and our audience's favorite, slowly creeping menace that twists it's noose around the anticipating viewer right up until BlinkyTM's final, sick punchline. Proof positive that great horror comes in all shapes and sizes. Be they feature length films, or modest shorts. Even in the form of a friendly, pint sized robot you won't soon forget.

"Ready or not, here I come."

We are providing you with two options to watch BlinkyTM. The first is the embedded video below with simple instructions at the bottom to get it to play. The second is that you may watch BlinkyTM in HD over on Vimeo (which was not embeddable) by clicking here.




If you are having trouble with the player, simply click the "close ad" option at the bottom (then close the ad that pops up as a new window as a result) then click "start video now" and you should be off. Enjoy!

Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

18 year old Julie (Rachel Bright) is used to babysitting for pocket money but terribly bored by the children she has to take care of, finds that this particular evening is different: several times during the course of the night, Dorothy, the little girl she's looking after, behaves oddly, screaming from her bedroom. Each time, Julie puts her back to bed, comforting her by telling her it's just a nightmare... Or is it?

Coming across as a marriage between EC Comic's famous strip And All Through the House (later adapted rather famously by Robert Zemeckis for television's Tales From the Crypt) and the only worthwhile segment (Tabitha), from 2009's anthology Amusement, Alexis Wajsbrot and Damien Macé's Red Balloon does just enough with the tried and true babysitter in peril tropes to raise the appropriate amount of hairs on one's arm. Yeah, we've kinda seen this story a dozen or so times before and yeah you'll probably guess the twist if your paying enough close attention. But does that make the journey any less spine tingling when done effectively? No.

Working in the world of post-production visual effects, directors Wajsbrot and Macé' make their directorial debut with Red Balloon, shooting the film on RedCam 4K, admirably mastering many challenging CGI shots and all with just a team of 30 professionals backing them (including Danny Boyle's colorist Jean Clement Soret on grading). Red Balloon has been officially selected for screenings in over twenty-one film festivals, including the Palm Springs International ShortFest, Festival De Cannes Short Film Corner, Festival international de Clermont-Ferrand, Festival International Du Film Fantastique de Gerardmer and recently won the Directorial Discovery Award at Rhodes Island Horror Film Festival. So lock all your doors because The October Country is now proud to present to you Red Balloon.



RED BALLOON by Red_Balloon_the_movie

Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

It's not news to anyone that the very best of science fiction tales, whether they been cinematic endeavors, those of literature or any other form of storytelling, present to us the audience, a world fantastical beyond our wildest dreams and yet wholly recognizable as our own. Which is precisely what award winning director Grzegorz Jonkajtys (The Ark, Official Selection - Cannes Film Festival, Best of Show - SIGGRAPH 2007, and Mantis) has achieved with his stunningly beautiful and hauntingly realized short film, The 3rd Letter. Set amidst a distinctive, dystopian backdrop where humans utterly and completely depend upon bio-mechanical alterations to their bodies to withstand our world's deteriorating climate, The 3rd Letter manages (in it's brief running time) to not only come off as a lost Cronenberg-esque masterpiece (with shades of that director's eXistenZ aplenty), but catches it's viewer completely unawares with not only it's dark elegance, but it's wholly identifiable horror; Class disparities between the haves and the have-nots, unavailable medical treatment to those less financially fortunate and a gray, sickened world slowly decaying from humanity's very presence in it. It's a grimly gorgeous, wow-worthy 15 minutes and fully deserving of your time.

Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

I know I have already spoken of my deep seated love and admiration for the works of Montreal filmmaker Karim Hussain elsewhere on The October Country and I'm not likely to stop anytime soon. It's just that, well dear readers, I happen to think that he is one of thee most exciting horror movie makers toiling away at the margins of the genre right now. Period. When he isn't directing gorgeously disturbing cinema as with 2000's Subconscious Cruelty, whose twisted world of sex, mutilation and sacrilege was like nothing I had ever experienced before (or experienced since), he's collaborating with the likes of Spain's Nacho Cerdà on 2006's Fulci-esque fever dream The Abandoned (which he co-wrote) or Jason Eisener's recent Hobo With a Shotgun (for which he was the film's cinematographer). His output in feature length material certainly doesn't match that of his brothers and sisters currently working within the field, but he has managed to make his presence felt almost yearly in other forms of media (namely shorts) with his decidedly unique vision that consistently dares to trespass where the sacred and the profane become one.

So because we love him and simply put, we just can't get enough of his kaleidoscopicly colorful, twisted worlds, today we are offering up Hussain's brilliant short film from 2002, the Claude Jutra Award nominated The City Without Windows (aka La Dernière Voix). Co-directed and written with with Hussain's frequent producer Julien Fonfrede (Ascension, The Beautiful Beast), City's story unfolds in a dreamlike, bizarre future that has replaced our own. A future where one day, unrelenting acidic rain begins to fall and never stops. But that is just the beginning of the nightmare...



For more about The City Without Windows, Offscreen has a very in-depth interview with the film's directors on the making of the film. Worth a look for those interested in digging into the meat of this startling vision.

Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

Just the other day I got to thinking; "I really hate cats." I was watching Jeremy Saulnier's wonderfully acerbic horror / comedy Murder Party and got reminded of this when the film's put upon hero Christopher finds himself routinely locked in a battle of wills (over who gets the comfy recliner) with his cat Sir Lancelot. Well, you know that stubborn little fucker isn't moving. This of course reminded me of what I have always believed to be true; that if the common house cat was equal in size to say, it's brethren in the wilds of Africa, I don't care how many cuddles you've shared or how many Choice Chicken Friskie treats you feed the thing, it's going to eat your face off. It's going to eat your face right the fuck off and it's going to purr while doing so. Gay men and single ladies the world over better hope that we never experience some 1950's era radioactive nightmare wherein our pets get magically super sized overnight. Seriously. I imagine the drama will play out as something along the lines of what transpires in Burning Bright in households across the nation. You think Mr. Fluffy is cute now, just wait till you see him taking a door down with his claws in a vicious effort to, you guessed it, eat your face right the fuck off. By the way, I hear candles are the new cats if you are a honorary member of the lonely hearts club. Better to make the switch now so as to avoid becoming a statistic in what surely will go down in history as darkest day of horror the world has ever known. Until that day arrives though, I suppose other people's cats are fine and whatnot if they keep their distance but the minute their precious fur ball starts slinky about on the back of my leg, my guard goes up and I find myself in fight or flight mode. Again, seriously. Has there ever been anything so socially "innocuous" that in reality masks the true face of evil? Felines are like Mogwais right before their gremlin phase. "Awwww, how cute. Look at little Snowball rolling over on her back. You want some belly scratchin's girl? Here ya go, Mommy loves yo..." CHOMP. Amirite? Little bitches, they're like furry little gay men, nothing but bad attitudes and piss and vinegar (or the ones at the local gay bar I avoid like the plague at any rate). Anyway, all this pondering over the inevitable feline led apocalypse brought me back to this, what this post is really about, Robert Morgan's wonderful horror short, The Cat With Hands. Packing more atmosphere, surrealistic horror and downright creepy menace into it's brief 3 and a half minutes than a whole host of feature length, live action horror films could dream of, Morgan solidifies with this masterwork beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I have so desperately been trying to warn you dear readers; cats are not to be trusted. And in this instance, neither should some of your neighbors. Disturbing stuff.



With a staggeringly creepy body of work to his name, Robert Morgan has been the recipient of over 20 awards for his short films. Those interested in checking out his other, equally excellent films may do so by visiting his official site here.