Devotees also can catch screenings of the maestro's first feature film in nine years, The Ward, on Friday and Saturday. A studied, meticulously timed ghost story, the film is set in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s. It follows the fortunes of a young woman named Kristen (Amber Heard) who is committed against her will. The halls of the hospital, she discovers, are haunted by a vengeful spirit.
Carpenter says he took a break from Hollywood because he had become "burned out and exhausted" after three decades of nonstop filmmaking.
He's nonchalant about his momentous return.
"I hadn't made a movie for about seven or eight years, so I decided, why not give it another try," he said from his Los Angeles home. The character-driven Ward, he said, was an ideal way to ease back in.
"It was a small [cast] and it was a limited location, and it was mainly an acting piece, which is what I really wanted to do."
Other "Danger After Dark" films of note include Stake Land, Jim Mickle's follow-up to his terrific 2006 shocker, Mulberry Street. An intelligent social critique of modern America, told in the form of an exciting postapocalyptic vampire yarn, it's about a vamp-killing drifter who takes on a teenage apprentice.
Also not to be missed is The Woman, a controversial and very violent film about misogyny from vastly underrated director Lucky McKee (Roman, The Woods).
The festival's most disturbing genre film is also one of its least violent. Womb, from Hungarian-born writer-director Benedek Fliegauf, stars Eva Green as a woman who misses her dead lover (Doctor Who's Matt Smith) so much that she uses his DNA to impregnate herself with his clone. Her plan: to carry him to term and raise him to be her lover again.
This year's festival also includes a genre fan's ultimate fantasy: a series of martial arts and crime flicks from Asia.
The program is dominated by two great martial arts masters, Tony Jaa and Donnie Yen.
Jaa, 35, recently made headlines when he quit filmmaking to become a Buddhist monk. The festival will hold a marathon screening of his three-film trilogy, Ong Bak 1-3.
For his part, the Hong Kong-based Yen stars in what are perhaps two of the best martial arts films ever produced.
Ip Man 2: Legend of the Grandmaster tells the real-life story of Bruce Lee's teacher, kung fu master Ip Man.
The action is even more furious in Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen from director Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs). Set in Shanghai in the 1920s, it combines elements from genres as diverse as noir, martial arts, war, and superhero films to tell the story of a masked hero (Yen) who fights, a la Batman, for justice. This is a film you would forever regret not seeing.
Contact staff writer Tirdad Derakhshani at 215-854-2736 or tirdad@phillynews.com.
