Seen it all? For the most hardened cinephiles out there, the Shockproof Film Festival (Festival otrlého diváka) at Prague’s Kino Aero, now in its 13th year, presents a program ranging from splatterific gore to hardcore porno to Ed Wood-level awfulness.
The fest kicks off tomorrow, February 28, with a screening from the vaults of a longtime Shockproof standby: it’s lucha libre time with Santo vs. Frankenstein’s Daughter (in Spanish/simultaneous Czech translation with English subtitles) at 18:00.
That’s followed by one of the festival’s highlights at 20:30, the Czech premiere of the new sci-fi horror film The Void, which has drawn comparisons to works by Clive Barker and 1980s John Carpenter.
Bring a barf bag on Wednesday: the low-low-budget 80s German gorefest The Coma-Brutal Duel (in German with Czech subtitles) is followed by James Muro’s splatter classic Street Trash, which is actually worth catching.
On Thursday, Lucky McKee’s breakout feature May opens for John Carpenter’s actual classic They Live, easily the best film at the fest. It’s a must-see on the big screen in 2017, even for the initiated.
Over the weekend, Shockproof presents films including the well-received Romanian found footage flick Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, the Vincent Price classic The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, and the Italian Exorcist ripoff The Antichrist.
A recent festival tradition will be continued midnight Saturday with screening of the 1970s hardcore porno film Sex World, and the fest will close out on Sunday with the Troma gore flick Tromeo & Juliet, written by no less than Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn.
More information can be found on the Shockproof Film Festival’s official website, and advance tickets can be purchased online from Kino Aero.
