THE WORLD’S BEST GENRE CINEMA COMES TO MONSTER FEST
If you want an indication of the calibre of films coming to MONSTER FEST this October, you only need to look at the company we’re keeping.
This year’s program includes films selected by some of the world’s most prestigious international and genre film festivals – SXSW, Tribeca, Locarno, Venice, Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Sitges, FrightFest, BIFAN, Overlook, Beyond Fest, MOTELX and SLASH – with several picking up awards, selling out screenings and earning further festival selections along the way.
From films that have already been celebrated by international audiences to some of the most anticipated new discoveries of the year, these are films earning attention on cinema screens around the world.
And this October, they’re coming to Cinema Nova.
THE GLORIOUS DEAD
The latest film from Toby Poser, John Adams, Zelda Adams and Lulu Adams arrived with some serious pedigree even before anyone had seen it.
The filmmaking family behind Hellbender, Where the Devil Roams and last year’s MONSTER FEST Golden Monster winner Mother of Flies have become firm favourites of Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, and THE GLORIOUS DEAD continued that relationship with its World Premiere at the festival.
It has since been selected by FrightFest London and Fantastic Fest in Austin, with further screenings following MONSTER FEST at Sitges, Grimmfest, Celluloid Screams and Knoxville Horror Film Festival.
Small-town Sheriff Deb McCloud is already having a pretty shitty Sunday when the power goes out, phones stop working and bloody arsehole-like mounds begin sprouting from the ground. Then people begin disappearing, the dead start getting back up and grotesque creatures emerge from the woods. Before long, religious fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists and armed lunatics are joining the party as Deb and her deputy Mikey attempt to make sense of a town – and possibly a world – going completely to Hell.
Funny, freaky and surprisingly heartfelt, THE GLORIOUS DEAD takes the Adams family’s uniquely handmade brand of horror and blows it up to apocalyptic proportions.
That’s an impressive collection of some of the world’s leading genre festivals – and Melbourne audiences get to see what all the fuss is about when THE GLORIOUS DEAD makes its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST.
BLOODY TENNIS
BLOODY TENNIS comes to MONSTER FEST having made its World Premiere somewhere with a very different reputation – Switzerland’s prestigious Locarno Film Festival.
Directed by Nikias Chryssos, the film screened Out of Competition at Locarno before making its North American Premiere at Fantastic Fest and heading to Vienna’s SLASH Filmfestival. Following its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST, it adds another of the world’s great genre festivals to the list with Sitges.
Set within an elite tennis academy, BLOODY TENNIS follows a group of fiercely competitive young players caught up in an increasingly brutal world where the pursuit of athletic perfection takes a horrifying turn. The international ensemble includes Elina Löwensohn (Nadja, Let the Corpses Tan) and Zlatko Burić (Pusher, Triangle of Sadness), with a score from Jim Williams (Possessor, Titane).
Think Suspiria, Fast Girls and Squid Game served with a killer backhand.
Locarno. Fantastic Fest. SLASH. Sitges. Clearly we’re not the only ones who think there’s something special about this one.
I LOVE PARIS
Perhaps the greatest international success story in this year’s MONSTER FEST program belongs to Australian filmmaker Nicky Murphy and his gloriously scrappy vampire mockumentary I LOVE PARIS starring hip hop artist Calamity aka Aminata Thiboult.
The film had its World Premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival – and didn’t leave empty-handed.
Audiences voted I LOVE PARIS the Gold Audience Award winner for Best International Feature, putting Murphy’s micro-budget Australian/French production at the top of one of the world’s largest and most respected genre film festivals.
Since then, I LOVE PARIS has been selected by Vienna’s SLASH Filmfestival, and following its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST will continue to Sitges, Toronto After Dark and the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
The film follows aspiring singer Paris, who dreams of fame, social-media stardom and musical success. There’s just one complication: she’s now a vampire. Alongside her accidental vampire mother Lutèce, Paris discovers that immortality and bloodsucking might actually be useful tools in their increasingly chaotic pursuit of celebrity.
It’s a pretty extraordinary result for a defiantly independent Australian/French production.
And now we’re bringing it home.
HALLOWARRIOR
Ben Sottak’s HALLOWARRIOR made its World Premiere at one of the biggest film festivals in the United States – New York’s Tribeca Festival.
The film has subsequently appeared at MOTELX in Lisbon, Beyond Fest in Los Angeles and Vienna’s SLASH Filmfestival, before its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST and another prestigious international date at Sitges.
Milly Shapiro (Hereditary) stars as Pumpkin, a 16-year-old girl who believes she’s the last person left alive three years after a plague wiped humanity from the face of the planet.
With Halloween approaching, Pumpkin refuses to let the apocalypse spoil her favourite night of the year, transforming her home into the ultimate haunted house party and issuing an invitation over the radio just in case somebody – anybody – is still out there to hear it.
Unfortunately, someone is.
A ghoulish family of raiders led by Thalia, played by Shannyn Sossamon (A Knight’s Tale), hear Pumpkin’s invitation and descend upon the house. But as they’re about to discover, they picked the wrong house and the wrong girl.
HALLOWARRIOR has its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST.
DRAG
Our Closing Night film DRAG has amassed one of the most impressive festival résumés in the entire program.
Written and directed by Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer and produced by Jake, Lucy and Danny DeVito, DRAG premiered at SXSW before playing The Overlook Film Festival, BIFAN, Fantasia International Film Festival, Popcorn Frights, FrightFest, MOTELX and Beyond Fest.
And it hasn’t simply been filling screening slots.
At Popcorn Frights, DRAG took home the Jury Prize for Best Film.
The film follows two sisters who break into a remote house expecting an easy score, only to discover they’ve chosen very much the wrong place. When a badly timed back injury leaves one of them seriously compromised, the robbery spirals into an increasingly unpredictable and viciously funny descent into violence and madness.
The cast includes Lizzy Caplan (Cloverfield), Lucy DeVito, Christine Ko and John Stamos (Full House).
Following its Australian Premiere as our Closing Night film, DRAG heads to Sitges, adding yet another heavyweight international festival to an already formidable list.
GODMOTHER
John Veron’s desert-set Satanic horror GODMOTHER comes to MONSTER FEST with the seal of approval of Fantastic Fest, where it celebrates its World Premiere – and has already sold out its screening at the Austin festival.
From there, it heads directly to Melbourne for its Australian Premiere at MONSTER FEST, before continuing to FilmQuest in Utah.
GODMOTHER sees a romantic desert getaway take a deeply unholy turn when a young couple – unexpectedly joined by a recently single wild-child sibling – encounter a seemingly friendly group of retirees who develop an increasingly disturbing interest in their young and fertile new neighbours.
Paige Evans and Cameron Cuffe (Krypton) star alongside Riley Dandy (Christmas Bloody Christmas) and genre royalty Dee Wallace (The Howling, Cujo) and Bruce Davison (Willard, X-Men).
Co-written and produced by Australian gaming personality Alanah Pearce, GODMOTHER also gives this international success story a homegrown connection, with Pearce joining us at Cinema Nova to present the film and take part in a post-screening Q&A. Monster Fest lists the film as an Australian Premiere.
BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL
Perhaps the most prestigious festival laurels in this year’s program belong to David Kittredge’s BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL.
The documentary had its World Premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, where it was selected for the prestigious Venice Classics program, before hitting Beyond Fest, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival – where it won the Broze Audience Award, FrightFest Glasgow, Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, Boston Underground Film Festival, Overlook Film Festival, Offscreen Film Festival, Brugggore Filmfestival, Wisconsin Film Festival, and the Seattle International Film Festival.
BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL digs into the extraordinary creative decisions, troubled production and hostile reception surrounding one of the most notorious sequels in Hollywood history, and the decades of debate and reassessment that have followed.
John Boorman himself is joined by Linda Blair (The Exorcist), alongside filmmakers and commentators including Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling), Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House) and Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, The Invitation) to reconsider a film that has spent decades as one of Hollywood’s favourite punching bags.
Following its selections at Venice and Overlook, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL makes its Victorian Premiere at MONSTER FEST.
TURA!
Cody Jarrett’s TURA! has built an impressive festival résumé, beginning with its World Premiere at the San Diego Asian Film Festival before going on to screen at Sitges, the Brisbane International Film Festival and Finland’s Night Visions International Film Festival – before opening this year’s Sydney Underground Film Festival just a couple of weeks ago.
The authorised documentary celebrates the extraordinary life of Tura Satana, the formidable star of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, whose remarkable story stretches far beyond her status as a cult cinema icon.
Featuring rare archival material alongside interviews with family, friends and admirers including John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble) and Dita Von Teese, with Margaret Cho narrating, TURA! reveals the woman behind one of exploitation cinema’s most instantly recognisable figures.
WORLD-CLASS GENRE CINEMA RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
Fantasia. Fantastic Fest. SXSW. Tribeca. Venice. Locarno. Sitges. FrightFest. BIFAN. Overlook. Beyond Fest. SLASH. MOTELX.
Some of the world’s most prestigious international and genre film festivals have already celebrated the films above – through major selections, World Premieres, awards and sold-out screenings.
From I LOVE PARIS taking home Fantasia’s Gold Audience Award to DRAG winning at Popcorn Frights, BLOODY TENNIS premiering at Locarno, BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL at Venice and GODMOTHER selling out its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest, there’s some serious international pedigree in this year’s MONSTER FEST line-up.
And Melbourne audiences don’t need a plane ticket to see them.
MONSTER FEST 2026 runs October 2-10 at Cinema Nova, Melbourne.
Check out the complete program and grab your tickets HERE.