It's that time again. The UK's longest running horror film festival returns too the Edinburgh Filmhouse as it has done every April for twenty-four years. I've gone to the last four or five and it has become my favourite festival . This year I took my partner Robert, who had no interest in horror until he met me, but I persuaded him that Dead by Dawn is known as much for the beauty of the films as for the gore. Any insights here that seem intelligent are probably his.
 
Alongside the new films there are classics, which I won’t review. They’re generally on either at the beginning of the day or after midnight. This year we had:
 
PHENOMENA
THE DEAD ZONE
SCANNERS
MADHOUSE
HOUSE
THE MONSTER SQUAD
SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN
 ​

A few minutes into the opening sequence on this one and the brutality is exceptional. Les the Ghoul (Brant McCrea) is an alleged cannibalistic psychopathic serial killer who escapes being executed during a Prison transfer and goes on the run. The opening titles are interesting, with a girl singing and playing the piano on the back of a pickup truck. Unusual, which I think is setting the tone nicely for a film in which the ordinary definitely does not apply.

The Ghoul is seemingly indestructible; he’s on a mission to get his soul back. It’s a very quirky film, one which has a lot of lingering shots, surreal sequences and a bit of a ‘Sucker Punch’ vibe to it in the imaginative style but lacking the overall gloss of that particular film it descends into something more akin to Accion Mutante in that there’s little cohesion in the chaos.

I found the music during parts of the film such as the barbarian segment to be far too loud and thrashing, we’re talking headache-inducing here. I’ll forgive it that as some people like that; I’m just not one of them.

If your taste is in the more extreme horror then this could very well be worth your while, the gore is stylish and plentiful as well as imaginative. The scene with the black dildo in particular is something I hadn’t seen done before. There are so many bizarre elements to this film that it’s not exactly easy viewing and to be fair I think it’s a victim of its own style as it appears to be trying too hard to be remarkable.

Did I enjoy it? Not really no. I can see the merit of it, appreciate that it was reaching out with a different concept, and who knows, it may become a cult classic. There’s a 1984 film called ‘Ragewar’ aka ‘The Dungeonmaster’ which this reminds me of heavily. I loved Ragewar back in the day, but Chicago Rot isn’t Ragewar.