First American screening for Devil's Rock

THE DEVIL'S ROCK will have its first official screening on the North American continent at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, which gets underway on July 15.

This is a pretty exciting development for us. Though the US and Canadian rights to the movie have already been sold, the North American landmass is a potentially colossal market, and as we want as many people to see the film as possible, we want the word to travel right across it.

In that respect, we couldn't really be in better comnpany at Fantasia. Look at some of the other movies that will be exhibiting there: Kevin Smith's RED STATE, the tale of a bunch of outcasts who fall victim to the worst kind of fundamentalism, and Robin Hardy's THE WICKER TREE, described as the 'spiritual sequel to the 1974 classic, THE WICKER MAN, not to mention sundry other fascinating-sounding forays into the world of movie terror.

We're defintiely in august company, and if THE DEVIL'S ROCK can hold its head up among contemporary motion pictures of that standard then we'll have done our job.

Director Paul Campion will be present at the Fantasia screening, along with stars of the film, Matt Sunderland and Karlos Drinkwater.

In related news, Paul Campion is interviewed at length on the GOREPRESS website.

It's the most in-depth interview that I've seen with Paul to date. He talks about the intensely detailed prep and research that we had to do to bring this movie to life, and how he handled the suicidally swift production schedule. He also heaps praise on all his staff, who were as professional as it was possible to be under such circumstances, and talks about one of our movie's most shocking moments, now being referred to in some online quarters as the "German Deep Throat". This was a scene I enjoyed writing very much, though apparently more than a few viewers have been horrified by it (well tough - it's a horror movie, ya know!).

But there's some good, informative stuff in there. For those interested in actually hearing Paul chat about the movie, you can tune into The Vue Film Show, Channel 4 on July 7th, 11.50pm, where he gives another interview.

If nothing else, it's worth listening to Paul because he knows what he's talking about. After all, he was schooled at the knee of one of the masters of modern cinema - Peter Jackson. It was quite an eye-opener for me, working through the script with him, and on occasion being told: "We can't afford to have a hand chopped off here. That would be too expensive. It costs five grand to chop off a hand, but only about two grand to chop off a finger and thumb. Can we keep the hand but lose the finger and thunb?"

Yep, that's the kind of surreal world I was living in while THE DEVIL'S ROCK was being born.

Anyway, those are the latest updates on the film, though folk may be interested to know that Paul Campion and I are now developing three other movies together, a horror, a thriller and a wartime actioner. In two cases the scripts are already written and all that remains to be settled is the money - you know, that famous bugbear of all creative artists who have the temerity to want to do this for a living? - but meetings in that regard will be kicking off next week, so fingers crossed (if they haven't been chopped off, that is).