REEL LIFE, REAL MONSTERS: DOCUMENTARIES, CULT ICONS & THEIR FILMS AT MONSTER FEST 2026
Sometimes the stories behind our favourite films are every bit as wild as the movies themselves.
This year, MONSTER FEST is digging behind the screen with four documentaries celebrating some of the filmmakers, artists, performers and cinematic oddities that helped shape genre cinema – and we’re not stopping when the credits roll.
Each documentary is accompanied by a film connected directly to its subject, giving you the chance to hear the story and then see the madness for yourself. Charles Band is followed by one of his early 3D creature features. Steve Johnson’s incredible practical-effects career leads directly into one of his most memorable showcases. Tura Satana’s remarkable life story is followed by one of her wildest cult movies. And after BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL makes its case for one of horror cinema’s most divisive sequels, we’re putting that film straight back on the big screen.
And because reality can only take you so far, we’ve also got DOGGOD and I LOVE PARIS – two films that borrow the language of documentary filmmaking to create worlds so strange we almost wish they were true.
FULL MOON RISING: THE CHARLES BAND STORY
If you spent any significant amount of time haunting video stores in the ’80s and ’90s, chances are Charles Band had something to do with making you fall in love with movies.
Puppet Master. Subspecies. Trancers. Dollman. Demonic Toys. Castle Freak. Tourist Trap. Ghoulies. And that barely scratches the surface.
Sarah Appleton’s FULL MOON RISING: THE CHARLES BAND STORY celebrates the extraordinary career of the writer, director, producer and tireless cinematic showman who turned low-budget filmmaking into something approaching an industrial process – filling video-store shelves with killer puppets, miniature assassins, intergalactic cops, homicidal toys and monsters of just about every conceivable description.
Featuring contributions from Band himself alongside family, collaborators and admirers including John Carpenter, William Butler, Debra Dion, Larry Karaszewski and Richard Band, FULL MOON RISING is both a celebration of one of independent genre cinema’s great showmen and a journey through an era when the right VHS cover was almost more important than the film itself.
Monster Fest presents the Australian Premiere of FULL MOON RISING: THE CHARLES BAND STORY.
FOLLOW THAT UP WITH A PARASITE OR TWO… IN 3D!
Once you’ve heard the Charles Band story, we’re following it with the kind of movie that could only have come from Charles Band.
PARASITE 3D is Band’s 1982 post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror starring Robert Glaudini, former Runaways singer Cherie Currie and a young Demi Moore in one of her earliest major film roles.
In a dystopian future, scientist Paul Dean has created a deadly parasite capable of feeding on its human host. Unfortunately, he knows this because he’s infected with one himself. On the run from the organisation responsible for the experiment, Dean arrives in a desert community where a second parasite falls into some very unfortunate hands.
And because Band wasn’t one to let a fad pass him by, he shot the whole thing in 3D.
We’ll be presenting it the way nature intended: monsters, mayhem and assorted unpleasant things coming directly at your face.
BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL
There are making-of documentaries, and then there are documentaries that make you want to immediately go back and reconsider the movie you thought you knew.
David Kittredge’s BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL is very much the latter.
Premiering at the Venice International Film Festival as part of Venice Classics, the documentary revisits John Boorman’s audacious attempt to follow one of the biggest horror films ever made with something completely different and altogether stranger, more ambitious and deeply personal.
Rather than simply talking about the film’s disastrous release, Kittredge digs into what Boorman was actually trying to accomplish – the ideas, imagery, African mysticism, psychic connections, experimental technology and sheer creative ambition behind the production.
Most importantly, it makes a compelling case for looking at the resulting film again.
Boorman and Linda Blair are joined by filmmakers and admirers including Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling), Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House) and Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) in a fascinating reassessment of a film whose reputation has often been judged by what it is not – the original The Exorcist – rather than what it actually is.
And we’re giving you the opportunity to do exactly that.
THEN EXPERIENCE THE HERETIC FOR YOURSELF…
EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC brings Linda Blair back as Regan MacNeil, now a teenager undergoing therapy with Dr. Gene Tuskin, played by Louise Fletcher. Using an experimental device that allows two minds to synchronise, Tuskin begins exploring Regan’s memories of her possession – and discovers that Pazuzu may not be finished with her yet.
Enter Richard Burton’s Father Lamont, psychic powers, African mysticism, swarms of locusts, James Earl Jones in a giant grasshopper costume and one of Ennio Morricone’s most extraordinary horror scores.
Whatever you think you know about EXORCIST II, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL provides the perfect reason to see it again – or discover it for the first time – with fresh eyes.
RUBBERHEAD: THE LIFE AND MONSTERS OF STEVE JOHNSON
You might not immediately recognise the name Steve Johnson, but if you grew up watching horror movies in the ’80s and ’90s, you absolutely know his monsters.
Videodrome. Ghostbusters. Fright Night. Big Trouble in Little China. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4. The Abyss. Species. Blade II. Night of the Demons – and they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
Johnson spent the golden age of practical effects creating some of the most memorable creatures ever committed to film, working alongside the likes of Rick Baker, John Landis and James Cameron while constantly pushing what could be achieved with rubber, latex, animatronics and an limitless imagination.
Nick Taylor’s RUBBERHEAD: THE LIFE AND MONSTERS OF STEVE JOHNSON took seven years to make and tells a story every bit as excessive as the era that produced it – extraordinary artistic achievement, impossible deadlines, Hollywood excess, addiction, self-destruction and Johnson’s marriage to scream queen Linnea Quigley (The Return of the Living Dead, Night of the Demons).
It’s a warts-and-all portrait of one of practical horror’s great unsung artists, and Monster Fest is proud to present its Australian Premiere.
THEN SPEND THE NIGHT WITH HIS DEMONS…
What better way to follow a documentary about Steve Johnson than with one of the films that let him get the most creative?
Kevin S. Tenney’s NIGHT OF THE DEMONS is pure 1988 Halloween horror: ten teenagers, one abandoned funeral parlour, a séance and an extremely poor understanding of the consequences of summoning evil spirits.
When a Halloween party at the notorious Hull House unleashes something demonic, the guests find themselves trapped inside as possession spreads through the group and the evening descends into a showcase of gross-out practical-effects mayhem.
Starring Amelia Kinkade and Linnea Quigley, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS gave Johnson the opportunity to create some of his most memorable demonic make-up and prosthetic effects – including at least one moment that anyone who has seen the film will never, ever forget.
TURA!
Before there was Furiosa, Beatrix Kiddo or any number of leather-clad cinematic badasses, there was Tura Satana.
Cody Jarrett’s authorised documentary TURA! tells the extraordinary story of the woman immortalised as Varla in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – burlesque performer, cult movie icon and a screen presence whose influence can still be felt across film, music, fashion and pop culture.
Narrated by Margaret Cho and featuring rare archival material alongside interviews with family, friends and admirers including John Waters, Dita Von Teese and Pamela Des Barres, TURA! draws upon Satana’s personal archives and home movies to reveal the remarkable woman behind the image.
Following its international festival run and recent Opening Night screening at Sydney Underground Film Festival, TURA! comes to MONSTER FEST for its Victorian Premiere.
But you can’t celebrate Tura Satana without putting Tura Satana back where she belongs.
On the big screen.
BLAST OFF WITH THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES…
Following TURA!, we’re heading back to 1968 for Ted V. Mikels’ gloriously unhinged sci-fi horror THE ASTRO-ZOMBIES.
John Carradine stars as disgraced aerospace scientist Dr. DeMarco, whose attempts to create artificial superhumans capable of surviving space travel go somewhat awry when his corpse-built Astro-Men escape the laboratory and begin ripping vital organs out of unsuspecting Los Angelenos.
Naturally, this attracts the attention of the CIA and a foreign spy ring led by the formidable Satana, who wants DeMarco’s research for herself.
Mad science, espionage, mutilation murders, solar-powered monsters and Tura Satana looking impossibly cool while everyone around her loses their minds.
IF ONLY THEY WERE REAL…
Not every documentary-style film at MONSTER FEST is particularly concerned with little things like facts or reality.
Rounding out our documentary offerings are two films that borrow the language, look and immediacy of non-fiction filmmaking to create worlds so strange, funny and wonderfully deranged that by God, we wish they were real.
DOGGOD plays like a long-lost piece of mondo cinema, dropping us into the bizarre inner workings of a Bangkok religious cult where enlightenment, manipulation and blind devotion eventually lead to the worship of a stray dog.
Then there’s I LOVE PARIS, a mockumentary following an aspiring Parisian singer documenting her relentless pursuit of fame – a career trajectory that receives an unexpected boost when she becomes a vampire.
One has false prophets, cultists and canine deities. The other has influencers, bloodsuckers and dreams of pop superstardom.
Neither story is real. Frankly, reality is poorer for it.
DOGGOD
Few films arrive at MONSTER FEST with a history quite like DOGGOD.
Originally shot on 16mm in Thailand in the mid-’90s under the title My Teacher Eats Biscuits, Ing K’s film was made by a group of first-time filmmakers on a shoestring budget using borrowed locations, friends, family and even a household pet. Then, one day before it was due to premiere at the inaugural Bangkok Film Festival in 1998, Thai government censors banned it for being deemed “offensive to all religions.”
And then it effectively disappeared for 25 years.
But perhaps the strangest thing about DOGGOD is the film itself.
Shot with the rough immediacy of a documentary and unfolding with the anything-can-happen insanity of a mondo movie, DOGGOD sends a foreign cult investigator into a bizarre Bangkok ashram to rescue a woman and her child from a mysterious New Age sect.
What follows increasingly feels like somebody pointed a 16mm camera at an actual religious cult and simply kept filming.
Spiritual enlightenment gives way to manipulation, sex, desire, blind devotion and the very human need to worship something – even if that something happens to be a stray dog. The result sits somewhere between faux-documentary, cult psychodrama, surreal satire and cinematic blasphemy, with a grubby vérité quality that only makes its increasingly outrageous events feel more unsettling.
The film’s history proved almost as extraordinary as its contents. DOGGOD fought censorship all the way to Thailand’s Supreme Court, before director Ing K eventually returned to the original 16mm material and reconstructed the film decades later. The film once deemed too offensive to screen is now recognised as part of Thailand’s National Film Heritage.
After more than a quarter-century in the wilderness, DOGGOD finally makes its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST, with actor Dr. Daniel Sussot joining us at Cinema Nova.
Sometimes God works in mysterious ways.
Sometimes he just cocks his leg.
I LOVE PARIS
If DOGGOD looks like a documentary about a cult that shouldn’t possibly exist, I LOVE PARIS looks like the documentary an aspiring celebrity would make about herself.
Australian filmmaker Nicky Murphy’s blood-soaked mockumentary introduces us to Paris, an aspiring singer who is absolutely convinced she’s going to be famous.
There’s just one problem.
Nobody else seems particularly interested.
So Paris hires a cameraman to document her inevitable rise to stardom, throwing herself into the humiliating world of social media, self-promotion and the Paris music scene in the hope that fame will eventually catch up with her.
Then, while filming a TikTok one night, she gets bitten by a vampire.
Honestly, it might be the best thing that’s ever happened to her career.
From that point on, the camera keeps rolling as Paris and her accidental vampire mother Lutèce discover that immortality, bloodsucking and the occasional murder might actually be useful tools in the pursuit of fame. The entire film is presented through the camera of Paris’s unseen documentarian, turning her increasingly bloody adventures into one long, chaotic chronicle of ambition, nightlife and vampirism.
Shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Paris without a traditional crew, budget or permits, I LOVE PARIS blurs mockumentary, vampire movie, music film and show-business satire into something that feels appropriately homemade, hedonistic and alive.
And audiences are ready to join her fan club.
Following its World Premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival, I LOVE PARIS took home the Gold Audience Award for Best International Feature, before continuing on to SLASH, Sitges, Toronto After Dark and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Now I LOVE PARIS makes its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST.
Turns out becoming a vampire is easy.
Building a following is fucking murder.
SEE THE STORY. THEN SEE THE MOVIE.
From Charles Band’s VHS empire and Steve Johnson’s practical monsters to Tura Satana’s extraordinary life and the ambitious ideas behind EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, this year’s documentary program isn’t just about looking backwards.
It’s about putting these people, films and monsters back on the big screen where they belong.
MONSTER FEST 2026 runs October 2-10 at Cinema Nova, Melbourne.
Check out the complete program and grab your tickets HERE.