"Let me out...": One Night At The Grove Park Inn (a true story)

It was August of 2000.  I had been living in Asheville for just over two weeks.  With abandon I had thrown myself into the ways and customs of that curious city in the North Carolina mountains.  And not just for sake of my new job as investigative reporter.

No, it was more personal than that.  Asheville was finally a crack at life on my own, now 26 and a year after an extended season of college.  I wanted to make the most of it.  To make an escape from previous disappointments with the breaking of new ground.

Part and parcel of that was meeting new people.  And being a reporter gave me an edge.  Especially in Asheville.  A town my landlady had described as "a mixed bowl of nuts".  Thirty percent rock-ribbed Christian conservative, thirty percent very liberal, and forty percent anything and everything in between.  Being a journalist there puts one in contact with all the characters.  Already I had met the mayor, the district's representative in Congress, a purple-haired man calling himself Cassandra (after the woman in The Iliad who prophesied about the fall of Troy but wasn't believed), "the Thong Guy" (don't ask), and a number of other interesting folk.  Still to come was covering the massive "We Still Pray" Christian rally, the "We Still Work Magic" rally the local witchcraft community held a few weeks later at the same high school stadium, being called "a--hole" by a future President of the United States, and a photo together with Bill Cosby that I can't show anymore.

As wildly entertaining as that all sounds, it was serious business.  And I still hold dear the lessons and virtues of good and impartial reporting that the editor and publisher shared with me.  However I may go as a writer for the rest of my life, I owe much to each of them.

So even when it came to the "Summer Spook Series",  I was determined to approach matters with an objective eye and a mind divorced from suggestion or duress.  Not to be a prejudiced skeptic, but neither to be overwhelmed with sensation about the supernatural.

It was "for fun," my editor had said.  "Part Scooby-Doo and part The Blair Witch Project". But we were still a weekly newsmagazine toward which there was responsibility to be had.  The readers were owed the facts, whatever they may be, and the opportunity to weigh it on their own.

And so it was, at 9 p.m. on a Monday night, that ten of us - the wife of the editor, a fellow reporter, some high school students, a business owner, and a few others including Yours Truly - met in the lobby of the Grove Park Inn.  Reputedly one of the most haunted hotels in the world.

-----

The Grove Park Inn opened in 1913, after nearly a year of construction.  The dedication address was delivered by William Jennings Bryan.  It has since seen visits by everyone from Henry Ford to Sir Anthony Hopkins to Chuck Norris.  Ten United States Presidents have been guests at the hotel.  During World War II it was the site of internment for German diplomats.  In recent years it has been  revealed that in the event of a nuclear attack on America, the United States Supreme Court would have been relocated to the hotel.

It had been in the final months of the Belle Époque that the Grove Park Inn first opened its doors.  But it was in the decade after the Great War that the place truly exploded to life.  The Roaring Twenties came hard and raucous to this hotel in the hills above Asheville, and even today one without understanding why might expect to see flapper girls and catch the whiff of expensive French cigarettes.  And Prohibition be damned!  The liquor flowed well within the halls and rooms of the Grove Park, with a sly wink and a knowing grin.

Maybe that has something to do with how it is that the name of the young woman who died there around 1920 has been forgotten.  She fell to her death within the hotel, from over a balcony and onto the hard stone of the Palm Court three stories below.  As any large resort or park or fine ocean-going vessel, tragedy can and will transpire amid revelry.  And there was little revelry as that in the wake of the Kaiser's vanquishing.

All that is known today is that she died instantly and that she had apparently been staying in Room 545.

At least, however, we know who had been a guest in Room 441 for a year between 1935 and 1936.  It had been none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The author of the celebrated novel The Great Gatsby had consigned himself to residence at the Grove Park Inn.  Hoping out of desperation that the environment might stimulate his writing.  As well as being close to the sanitarium where his beloved wife Zelda was receiving psychiatric care.

Fitzgerald spent much of the darkest period of his life at the Grove Park Inn.  A few years later in 1940, he died a broken man.

In 1948, the nearby Highland Hospital was destroyed in a fire.  Stories persist that the patients had been drugged and locked within their rooms, abandoned by a vengeful nurse who lit the match.  Zelda Fitzgerald and eight others perished in the flames.

-----

Late one evening in 1998 a newly-hired security guard at the Grove Park Inn believed he had spotted a guest "wandering around drunk on the grounds, in an old-style costume."  He radioed his supervisor about it and was met with a  screaming voice demanding that he return to the hotel.  Bewildered, the guard looked toward where he had seen the woman, but she was no longer there.

Upon entering the security office the supervisor was shouting threats about immediate termination.  And then the threats stopped when the boss realized that in sincerest honesty the guard, who had just relocated to the area, had never heard about the Pink Lady.

It was sometime in the Twenties that the woman in Room 545 began letting staff and guests understand that she was reluctant to leave so abruptly.  The new guard had become just the latest to witness her comings and goings.

Even today, guests report that they feel tickled during the night, especially on their feet, by "someone else" in their room.  Lights flicker on with no one touching the switch.  Young children tell their parents the next morning about "the nice woman" who came to visit them during the night.  

She is the Pink Lady.  A spectral young woman who has been sighted hundreds of times throughout the Grove Park Inn.  And over the decades many of them have come from guests staying in Room 545.

There have also been stories about Room 441.  About the sound of typing coming from behind its doors when no one was staying within.  And at times, sightings of men and women in period attire who vanish upon a second look.

It is not surprising then that the Grove Park Inn has become the subject of numerous studies by paranormal investigators: some professional, many not.  One respected group, L.E.M.U.R. Investigations, had recently finished an extensive study of the Grove Park.  Their findings: based on the weight and consistency of the reports from so many guests and staff, something was amiss at the hotel.

The team of the "Summer Spook Series" would be the next to investigate the Grove Park Inn.

And the editor informed us that by special arrangement with the Grove Park's management, we would have Room 545 all to ourselves...

-----

Beginning at 10 p.m., we would split into teams and cover the hotel and the surrounding grounds.  Throughout the night on the hour we would meet back in Room 545 to give reports and compare notes.  Two of us would remain in the room itself.

The editor's wife had a couple of cameras, including one loaded with infrared film.  I had a notepad and a micro cassette recorder.  She and I and another team member were accompanied by a guard and given access to the clubhouse, near the Grove Park's golf course and not far from the hotel itself.

We used flashlights to navigate as we walked around the rooms, and the banquet hall had already been set up for a formal event of some kind.  That is where I found myself alone around 10:40.  The cassette recorder was still whirring away.  I had forgotten it was on at all after getting some comments from the guard.

If there had been anything unusual in the clubhouse, we didn't see it or hear it.

A little over an hour later during our group's second meeting in Room 545, as the others were discussing what and where to go next, I rewound the tape to find some bits of the conversation with the guard.  I thought I was close to it but I was wrong.  It turned out to be a segment from the time we were inside the clubhouse.

And that's when we heard it on the tape:

"Let me out..."

-----

As best as we could determine, it was from the time I had been in the banquet room.  Nobody else had been inside apart from myself.

But still, there it was.  A voice, gender indeterminate.  Whispering "Let me out..." followed by something unintelligible.  I rewound the tape and played it back several times, without suggesting to anyone else what it might be.

Every person in our group said that it sounded like someone saying "Let me out..."

-----

Okay, well... it was a bit spooky.  A week later an experienced investigator listened to the tape and remarked that it seemed very much that I had recorded what in the trade is called "electronic voice phenomenon".  And that there had been many such cases reported ever since the invention of the phonograph.  Even today, there are times when I think about that night and I wrack my brain trying to remember if anyone else had come into the banquet room that night.  But I don't recall anyone at all.  And I don't think I was speaking to myself either.  I certainly didn't say "Let me out..." in a hushed but quite audible whisper.

At fifteen after midnight we dispersed again.  Before we did, the editor's wife took a few random photos with the infrared-loaded camera inside Room 545.  Those were the first pictures made on the roll of film.

-----

I was with a group of other people, including my fellow reporter.  We walked a short distance to what was at the time the studios of ABC affiliate WLOS.  A cardboard standup of one of the on-air newscasters looked out from a window, his face beaming a cheery smile.  No doubt a great laugh during the daytime.  At night, strolling from the Grove Park Inn, it was a bit surreal.

Nothing happened between then and 1 a.m.  Neither did anything remarkable transpire between 1 and 2.

And nothing happened between 2 and 3 either.  That was when I decided to visit the fourth floor: completely empty of guests and staff at the time due to renovation.  Sheets of canvas and paint buckets and lengths of lumber and table saws were throughout the floor, up and down the hallways.

I was alone for almost the entire hour, sitting with my back to the wall.  Room 441 was within eyesight to my right.  The plaque on the door noting that it had been F. Scott Fitzgerald's residence during his time in Asheville reflecting what dull light came down from the upper floor.  There was not a sound from either above or the atrium three stories below.

At 3 a.m. I returned to Room 545.  The fourth floor had not yielded up anything unusual.

-----

The editor's wife wanted to see Fitzgerald's room.

I returned to the fourth floor, bringing her along.  We came to the outside of Room 441.  Again, not a sound apart from our own quiet voices.  Nobody had told directly us to stay off of the fourth floor, but neither did we assume that it would have been permitted had we asked.  We were being discreet about it.

The editor's wife took some photos with both regular film and the infrared-loaded camera.  Including one infrared shot down the hallway, with Room 441's door situated in the left of the picture, the floor immediately in front of it clear in the scope.

We saw nothing with our eyes.  But there was one curious incident that occurred.  She had brought a small magnetic compass with her.  We had been told beforehand that sometimes compasses would act odd in places supposedly haunted.  Not far from Room 441 she brought the compass out.  The needle was spinning.  Not far, but certainly not at a snail's pace either.  It would turn one way, then veer toward the other direction.

Why it did that, we could never explain.

-----

4 a.m.  The group met in Room 545 once again.  Nothing else to report.  And by 6 a.m. and the sun beginning to rise we all decided that we had done our part and that at least there was a ghostly voice to show for it.  We each went on our way.  I returned to my apartment and crashed for a few hours before going in to the office.

-----

"Okay, Chris, this is going to make your jaw hit the floor."

It was Friday morning.  Three days after the end of the first "Summer Spook Series" investigation.  The night at the Grove Park Inn was already falling behind in the rear-view mirror of my brain.  Yes, there had been the weird sound from the tape recorder but... heck, that could have been anything.

Then my editor showed me the photos.

It had taken a few days to get the infrared film developed.  They had received the pics the previous afternoon, after I had left for the evening.

The first two that he showed me were from inside Room 545.  The photos were a grainy black and white, but otherwise were not much different from pics taken with standard film.  However, in each of the photos and especially remarkable in one of them, there was a very clear "artifact" in view hanging over the bed.  It seemed very much to be not on the wall, but in the air itself.

What it was, we couldn't figure out.  There were two of our team in the photo and they seemed oblivious to it.  But there it was, right between them.

It was odd.  But otherwise, not something one's mind might linger upon.

The next photo however was absolutely disquieting.

It was the one his wife had taken on the fourth floor, aimed down the hallway and with the door to Room 441 in view.  Again, a grainy black and white image.

Yet very visible, in the center of the image, there was someone standing in the hallway.

Someone with a face.  Looking toward the camera.  It seemed to be the face of a woman.  Wearing, perhaps, a long dress.

She was smiling.  And eighteen years later, long after the most recent time I've seen the photo, those eyes still haunt me, for lack of any better term.

Nobody else had been on the fourth floor with us.  But there it was.  A third person, who had only turned up in an infrared photograph.

-----

The same professional investigator who examined my audio recording told us that he believed we had captured a legitimate image of... well, something.  And it is a testament to his objectivity that he could not suggest what it was.  Only that it was empirical evidence, along with the apparent voice on the cassette tape.

No one in our group saw anything with our own eyes, or heard with our ears alone.  But by at least three different means the equipment we used, we had detected some very, very peculiar "signatures" around the Grove Park Inn.  I still have the audio recording somewhere.  The photograph is in the possession of my former editor.

-----

So... is the Grove Park Inn haunted?  More to the point: are there such things as ghosts?

I'm inclined to say that there is something at the Grove Park Inn.  And that's just based on the testimony of people I interviewed personally, along with the mountain of documented reports over the past century.  It's more than enough to discount any mass delusion going on.

As to what precisely it might be...

I'm skeptical of the existence of ghosts as entities of a spiritual nature.  However, I have held to a theory for quite a long time now, even before that night at the Grove Park Inn.  It is this: that we still don't understand everything about the realm of electromagnetism and quantum physics.  There may be more than two dozen different dimensions to the universe, according to string theory.  But that's just conjecture based on math and bits of evidence from high-energy particle experiments.  That "grand unified theory" remains as elusive as ever.

Maybe what are known as "ghosts", are like a signature on a local environment.  Something analogous to a recording on a VCR (a "video cassette recorder" for millennials and younger who are reading this).  And every so often the recording "plays back" on its own or because of a stimulus.  Or maybe that's too wacky an explanation.  It's the only one I possess to my own satisfaction, however.

-----

And with today being Halloween, and it's been awhile since I've been able to post something on The Knight Shift (lots of stuff has been happening on my end keeping me from much writing at all) I thought it would be good to make up for it.  By sharing a very true story of what happened when I and a group of others spent a night doing what we thought was light-hearted paranormal investigation at one of the most famous - and most haunted - hotels in America.

On my honor, I can attest that the preceding account is a true and accurate one, as best as I can possibly convey.

And that's my ghost story for this Halloween.

 

 

 

 

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ActionFest 2012 reveals official poster and opening/closing films!

ActionFest returns in just over a month to beat the snot out of Asheville, North Carolina (I mean that in a good way). This will be the third year for the world's only film festival devoted to action movies and the people who make them possible. I am thankful to have been at the inaugural event and then last year's festival. And I'm looking forward to being at ActionFest 2012 as well :-)

Here's the official poster for the festival...

The opening night's film is gonna be Solomon Kane, and ActionFest will close out with Wu Xia. I've been looking forward to seeing Solomon Kane for awhile now and I've only heard insanely good stuff about Wu Xia.

Punch here for the press release that just went out. And I'll be seeing you at ActionFest! Go there, or perish in flame. It's your choice. But, not really.

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Chris finally recovers enough from ActionFest 2011 to file a report!

I got back from ActionFest late on Sunday afternoon. And I'm still whomp-boggingly exhausted from the sheer awesomeness of it! Part of me wants to crawl back into bed and try to recuperate some more. But being a responsible blogger, I can't do that!

So here's my report comin' atcha!!

(I said it during my live Twitter-ing from ActionFest and I'll say it again: the girl in the bumper that ran during this year's festival is cute as a button! :-P)

There was also a "30 Seconds of Action" competition for this year's festival. Here was the winning entry: "Action Figures"...

And here's another "30 Seconds of Action" entry: "Death Machine"...

I've been looking for the "Farmacide" clip, but can't find it on YouTube yet. If anyone else at ActionFest this year spots it, let me know at theknightshift@gmail.com 'cuz I loved it :-)

This was ActionFest's second year. And two things that I want to emphasize from the getgo: first, the festival's sophomore outing was MUCH bigger and extremely more well-attended than it was last year (and last year's was already pretty successful). Second, ActionFest has firmly cemented its purpose and reputation as being the only film festival in the world dedicated not only to action movies, but to the men and women who work to make them a reality and who unfortunately have gone all too unsung until now. And if it keeps to that, I can only see ActionFet getting bigger and bigger and better and louder and even MORE INSANELY UBERKEWL!!!

Okay, so here's what I saw that transpired there. Thursday night, April 7th saw the festival open...

Ironclad (2011, Directed by Jonathan English, United Kingdom)

This was the first time that this movie had been shown outside of Great Britain. And it's gonna remind everybody why that land will never, ever again have a king named John (the bastard!). Ironclad is an intense film about a little-known episode in English history: how King John attempted to go back on his word after the signing of Magna Carta and vent his fury on the barons who compelled him to agree to its terms. Very powerful cast in this one including James Purefoy (who already more than earned his action credentials in HBO's Rome), Brian Cox (one of my very favorite actors), Jason Flemyng, Kate Mara, and Paul Giamatti turning in a wicked performance as King John. The same folks who I saw drunk on Scotch while watching Braveheart back in the day are certainly gonna thrill just as hard or harder when they get to see Ironclad upon wide release. Darn good movie, in every way possible.

And after the Ironclad international premiere, we were treated to an impromptu Q&A session with Richard Ryan, stunt coordinator for Ironclad and who also worked on The Dark Knight and a bunch of other movies!

During the festival I was lodging with my filmmaking partner "Weird" Ed Woody. We left the Ironclad showing and went back to his place, and proceeded to wind down a night of British ultra-violence with my DVD copy of Ultramarines, the first ever Warhammer 40,000 movie. Which is also pretty good, especially considering that it features the vocal talents of Terence Stamp and John Hurt. Yah I shoulda written a review of that already. Here's hoping there'll be more 40K movies (personally I'd love to see a Caiphas Cain one with Johnny Depp as Cain, but anyhoo...).

So the next day we spent watching the Blu-ray set of Tron: Legacy (and also the original Tron) before heading back to Asheville and more ActionFest! Up next was...

Little Big Soldier (2010, Directed by Ding Sheng, China/Hong Kong)

Set around 200 B.C. during a time of civil war between the various independent kingdoms of China, Little Big Soldier has Jackie Chan as an older soldier who (accidentally) captures a young general (Leehom Wang) from the opposing army after a brutal battle. Chan's character has it in mind to drag the bound general back home, where he'll be rewarded with rich farmland and the chance to continue his family name. If only the journey was that simple...

Okay, it's pretty obvious in Little Big Soldier that Jackie Chan... well, he's had a long and good career, and unfortunately he's not doing the stunts that he was so spry to do thirty and more years ago. But you know something? That doesn't matter, 'cuz even though Little Big Soldier marks Chan growing older, it also demonstrates that he has kept growing and has grown considerably as an actor. And instead of being hindered by a lessening agility, Chan is playing up to that. The result? One of the best action stars of recent memory with a great role in a movie that is a positivalutely hoot to watch! We giggled and cheered through every minute of it... right up to its heartbreaking but perhaps inevitable conclusion.

After Little Big Soldier, Ed and I chilled a bit in The Powder Keg (the lounge for those with VIP badges) and then at 7 p.m. it was time to take in...

Super (2010, Directed by James Gunn, United States)

Last year we got Kick-Ass. I saw Kick-Ass and... I didn't like it. Now, I sincerely respected what that movie was trying to do: realistically depicting what it would mean to be a costumed crime-fighting vigilante straight out of the comic books. But that movie... was missing something for me. Just didn't satisfy at all.

Super however was everything that I had been hoping to see in this kind of a movie.

Rainn Wilson (The Office) plays Frank D'arbo: a pitiful and self-pitying chap who struggles to cling onto some chance of happiness in life, of which his beautiful wife (played by Liv Tyler) is one of his few bastions of joy. Unfortunately she's got quite a drug habit and winds up in the clutches of heroin-dealing lowlife Jacques (Kevin Bacon). The police can't help Frank. And then the finger of God touches Frank's exposed brain (not kidding) and Frank realizes that it's now his divine mission to become a costumed superhero and clean up the streets.

Super is at last the film that warns us about the insanity of the superhero life and why choosing to follow it... isn't something to be taken lightly. And I keep thinking of the character played by Ellen Page (who was previously seen in Inception). Without spoiling anything, well... let's just say that Page's "Boltie" has a sadder career than Jason Todd ever had.

Some will say that Super is a dark comedy. I disagree. There is very, very little "funny" about Super (apart from a hilarious "Christian superhero" played by Nathan Fillion). This is a serious perspective of comic book superheroes that to the best of my knowledge hasn't been done (or at least not done successfully). James Gunn has produced a very good film here and I'm looking forward not only to watching it again but also discussing it with others.

There's not a poster image for the next film that we saw, 'cuz it had just wrapped a few days before and we were the very first audience to see it! But this screening did have one thing: the presence of director and actor Michael Jai White!

So with White in the house, we came to...

Never Back Down 2 (2011, Directed by Michael Jai White, United States)

I said it twice during the Twitter-in', and I'll say it again: Never Back Down 2 makes The Karate Kid look like The Care Bears Movie! You don't need to have previously seen the original Never Back Down: as far as I can tell the only thing the two films have in common is that they involve the increasingly popular sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Michael Jai White plays Case: a former MMA champion who was headed for great things before personal tragedy took him out of the game. White brings four young men from different backgrounds and trains them for "the Beatdown": an underground MMA competition run by a somewhat dorkish college kid named Max (Evan Peters). Never Back Down 2 also stars Alex Meraz (from the Twilight movies), Todd Duffee, Scott Epstein and Dean Geyer.

Okay, I really enjoyed the bejeebers out of this movie. This is Michael Jai White's directorial debut and I for one hope that he directs many more, 'cuz the man has some severe talent at directing hard action. But I'd also be remiss in my capacity as a journalist if I didn't also note that Never Back Down 2, as Rocky no doubt accomplished with many others, opened my eyes quite a bit on the realm of mixed martial arts. Until I saw this movie, I didn't think much of it other than it runs on Spike TV a lot and it looked pretty mindless and savage. "Savage"? Yes. But far from mindless. I also look forward to catching this again in wide release.

And after Never Back Down 2, Michael Jai White stuck around for a bit to sign autographs and get some photos taken! Here he is with "Weird" Ed and Yours Truly :-)

Good lord, I look hideous! Had barely slept and hadn't had a shower in like 48 hours. But Michael Jai White (who also played Spawn in Spawn, Gambol in The Dark Knight and a bunch of other stuff) always looks cool :-)

And speaking of cool, a few minutes later it was time for the midnight showing of a movie that I first discovered a few months ago, and had been looking forward to watching it with Ed to see his reaction to it. I speak of course about...

Black Dynamite (2009, Directed by Scott Sanders, United States)

This is a movie that demands to be watched during a midnight showing! Preferably with lots of other people too (and I don't think that will be a problem :-) Black Dynamite is already being called a modern classic and according to Michael Jai White himself, it's even now achieving cult status only afforded to such rare films as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Hey, I can dig that! At the ActionFest showing people were screaming lines at the screen ("Cream Corn, NOOOOOOO!"). I need to buy the Blu-ray of this sometime, and not just watch it whenever it appears on Starz :-P

After that we went back to Ed's place to grab what few hours of sleep we could before a full day of Saturday at ActionFest.

Oh yeah, all during ActionFest there were clips provided by Trailers From Hell, featuring numerous well-known filmmakers giving commentary on classic (and some not so classic) movie trailers. Like this one f'rinstance: The Real Don Steele announcing that "RON HOWARD POPS THE CLUTCH AND TELLS THE WORLD TO EAT MY DUST!!!"

And this one for Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!...

Anyways, Saturday at noon and it was time for...

Bangkok Knockout (2011, Directed by Panna Rittikrai and Morakot Kaewthanee, Thailand)

Bangkok Knockout... is a movie that I can only best describe thusly: it is The Running Man meets Hostel with a gracious dash of The Mighty Ducks thrown into the mix. And maybe even fare like American Idol for good measure. I even heard some say that they were reminded of The Hangover (no I haven't seen that movie, and don't know if I will anytime soon but I digress...)

Bangkock Knockout is about a group of youthful performers take part in a martial arts and stunt competition, of which the winning team will be brought to Hollywood to take part in a major film production. Well, that's what they think they've won, anyway...

Yes, there is a plot (and a rather brilliant one) in Bangkok Knockout. But that is merely the springboard from which is launched some of the craziest stunt sequences that I've seen... ever, in the history of anything! Including a guy who fights with a flaming axe and a climactic battle in and around and under a moving tractor trailer. This was classic Asian action cinema in its finest form... and the audience loved it!

The next good while at ActionFest, we attended the panel discussions. And the first was a tribute to the recipient of ActionFest 2011's Lifetime Achievement Award: legendary stuntman, stunt coordinator, second unit director and actor Buddy Joe Hooker!

Hooker has worked on Blazing Saddles, First Blood, Octopussy, Scarface, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, the television series Airwolf, and a ton of other movies and shows! Hooker's showbusiness career goes back to his appearing on the TV series Rin Tin Tin, and some other series before he went into stunts full-bore. The tribute ended with a clip from Clay Pigeon, showing a car Hooker was driving turning over and over and over and over nonstop down a hill: I found myself screaming "Oh Lord make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STAAAAWP!!!" But fortunately it did (and I'm happy to report that Hooker's two sons have also chosen to go into stunt performing :-).

After the Buddy Joe Hooker panel, it was time for The Art of Fight Direction panel, featuring renowned kung-fu movie scholar Ric Meyers, Michael Jai White, Richard Ryan, and Larnell Stovall (who was recipient of last year's ActionFest Award for Best Choreography). I posted the details of that in the Twitter feed and for sake of brevity I'll just say that it's all there. It was quite a good discussion, especially about the growth of fight choreography in the video game industry.

We also attended the ActionFest Awards ceremony. One movie that I didn't get to see is A Lonely Place To Die, and now I wish that I'd made the opportunity to see it 'cuz there was a lot of strong buzz about that film (it won the Best Action Film for the festival).

Well, at 7:30 there was a free screening of a film that Buddy Joe Hooker was involved with, and a movie that had one of the biggest explosions in cinema history.

It also stars Charlie Sheen.

Yup, from 1986 it's The Wraith

The Wraith also stars Sherilyn Fenn (a few years before playing Audrey Horn on Twin Peaks... what does that say of me that I knew that without having to look it up?), Nick Cassavetes, and Randy Quaid. This screening of The Wraith was a beautiful 35mm print and came courtesy of Destroy All Movies!!!: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (published by Fantagraphics Books). Oh yeah, I learned something new from The Wraith: drinking hydraulic fluid isn't all that hot an idea.

Ed and I went back to The Powder Keg and waited a short while and then made our way to the 10 p.m. showing of the movie that has me feeling the most conflicted of any film that I've seen during two ActionFests thus far...

Bellflower (2011, Directed by Evan Glodell, United States)

I need to see Bellflower again. I honestly do want to see Bellflower again. Because... I'm not sure exactly how I feel about Bellflower.

I've been that way about movies before. Feeling obligated to give one the benefit of the doubt before making a final decision on whether I like it or not. I think if I had seen Bellflower at anything other than a film festival devoted to action movies, that I might have gone away with a more decisive mind about the matter. And toward the end of the movie I did feel a little twinge of "okay I get this now..." But it's not quite all there. Not yet, anyway.

Bellflower is about two childhood buddies who have watched The Road Warrior perhaps too many times than it probably healthy. These guys are now obsessed with the character Lord Humungous and have daydreams of ruling the wasteland once the Apocalypse comes. So Woodrow (Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Tyler Dawson) do things like build their own flamethrowers and trick-out a muscle car with armaments and smokescreens and set out to start their gang, "the "Mother Medusas".

I think the biggest disappointment I'm feeling about Bellflower (but that might change in time) is that, okay... it's like Chekov's Rule of Drama: if the gun is to be fired in Act 3, it must be shown on the wall in Act 1/if the gun is shown on the wall in Act 1 it must be fired by Act 3. Well we see a lot of cool homebrewed weaponry in Bellflower... but we don't really get to see it used to its maximum potential!

But as I said, I might change my mind about Bellflower. And based on the final moments of the film and what I was led to contemplate because of them, I do expect to do that. Probably landing in the margin of people that do think it's a great movie. But as things stand now, I want to see it and mull it over some more. And that's only fair.

And then, with a few minutes before midnight, it was time for a movie that I have been eager to see for a very long time...

Hobo With A Shotgun (2011, Directed by Jason Eisner, Canada)

Without a doubt, my absolutely FAVORITE film of ActionFest 2011! I have to say that because this movie has obligated me to ponder it more than just about any action movie I've seen in years. And some of what I'm about to say about Hobo With A Shotgun is going to have many readers going "Huh? Say WHAT?!" But just hear me out...

To me, Hobo With A Shotgun is as profoundly a Christian a movie as is A Clockwork Orange. This is a film about the world gone straight to hell, because good people have been intimidated into just letting the wicked run amok. Fercryinoutloud, that's a child begging for help in the car window of that mall Santa pervert... and nobody is bothering to even care! Everyone that is, except for the Hobo (Rutger Hauer), easily the greatest cinematic hero with no name since Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name.

The Hobo isn't out to be a bad-a$$. All he wants to do is save up enough money to buy a lawnmower and start his own landscaping business. This is a guy who wants to earn his keep. Who wants to be a productive and hard-working individual. Except that the world he's in won't allow him that opportunity. And then there are the innocent children that he sees around them. The children that, he knows he can't let them grow up in a world like this.

That is what the Hobo is, in my mind. He is the one shred of conscience in the ultimate town without pity. A place run by a lunatic named the Drake (Gregory Smith) and his demented sons, a city rife with murder and prostitution and drugs and worse.

Hobo With A Shotgun is the most brootal, most unrelentingly vicious movie that I have ever seen. It is also one with a surprising amount of heart and soul. And this movie absolutely makes Jason Eisner as a filmmaker to watch. His Hobo With A Shotgun began life as a faux trailer for Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse contest a few years ago. And if you've seen that trailer then you're likely knowing what to expect from the full-length Hobo With A Shotgun feature. Instead, Eisner has made it into something profoundly more.

And I can't wait to see it again with some friends when it hits wide release! I'll probably have a lot more to say about it then, too.

Well, the next day was Sunday, the final day of ActionFest 2011, and I had time to take in one more film before I had to head back home. So I ended my personal festival experience with...

Tomorrow, When The War Began (2010, Directed by Stuart Beattie, Australia)

I want to see this movie again. And again and again and again. That, and I want to find the bestselling novel series by John Marsden that this movie (the first of a planned trilogy) is based on.

And I also want to scream until my lungs are bloody ravaged shreds of tissue about why it is that this Australian movie shows more bluster and courage and sheer cajones than the ones here in the United States who are committing an abominable FUBAR of a travesty with the Red Dawn remake.

Tomorrow, When The War Began follows a group of Australian teens who go camping in the Outback, only to return home and find that their hometown has been invaded and taken over (along with a huge chunk of the rest of Australia) by "the Coalition": a group of Asian countries that is obviously dominated by communist Chinese forces. So the teens decide that whether they want to or not, that it falls to them to do what they can to fight back.

We were told that Marsden's series of books drastically outsells the Harry Potter novels in Australia and if this film is any indication, I can see why. It's a young adult mythos that chews up and spits out those "vampires" and werewolves from that other franchise (coughcoughTwilightcoughcough...). Incidentally, Tomorrow, When The War Began marks the directorial debut of Stuart Beattie, who's already written all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Disney. Yet another movie that I look forward to seeing in wider release (its ActionFest appearance heralds the movie's first screening outside of Australia).

And that was my ActionFest 2011 experience. My expectations were really set high after last year's inaugural festival, and this year wildly exceeded them! I just hope that the festival stays in Asheville: it really is the ideal town not only for action movies, but for appreciating the individuals who labor to make them a reality.

Bigtime props to everyone involved in this year's festival! Can't wait to attend again next year :-)

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Back from ActionFest!

I am... frazzled.

But then again, four nearly nonstop days of action movies at the world's only film festival devoted to action movies and the (largely unsung) talented individuals who make them happen, will do that to anyone. Heck, just back-to-back nights of Never Back Down 2, Black Dynamite and Hobo With A Shotgun is enough to pack a wallop!

Full report coming soon. I gotta decompress first :-P

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Gone to ActionFest in Asheville!

"The Film Festival With A Body Count" is back... BIGGER AND BADDER AND BLOODIER THAN EVER!

Yes faithful readers, in a short while I shall depart home for a few days and drive out into the dusk for the mountains of North Carolina. Destination: Asheville. The reason? the second-ever ActionFest! The inaugural festival last year was a huge success (here's the after-carnage report that I posted) and this year is gonna be even more honkin' sweet! It all kicks off tomorrow night, April 7th with Ironclad: a hack 'n slash epic set against the signing of the Magna Carta and starring Paul Giamatti, James Purefoy, Brian Cox, Jason Flemyng.

And what else is playing at ActionFest? How about... Hobo With A Shotgun!

And Friday night at midnight... because this is soooo a movie that must be seen at midnight on the big screen... it's none other than Black Dynamite!

I am purposefully going in fairly blind to what's scheduled, 'cuz I wanna replicate the delight and discovery that I had at last year's ActionFest. Anyhoo, my filmmaking partner "Weird Ed" Woody and I will be there together and if you wanna hang out with us, shoot me an e-mail at theknightshift@gmail.com and we'll hook up or something!

And just like last year, I'll be Twitter-ing from the festival, so feel free to follow the action from your desktop or laptop or smartphone or iPad or whatever. But don't be content to follow it at all 'cuz... YOU OUGHTTA BE AT ACTIONFEST!!

More regular blogging when I return in a few days. In the meantime, try to behave y'all :-)

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Chris finally files his ACTIONFEST after-carnage report!

I've more than a gut feeling that this past weekend was but the first of many, many years for ActionFest: the first ever film festival devoted to action movies.

It all went down at Carolina Cinemas in Asheville, North Carolina. And your friend and humble blogger was there for most of the spectacle!

Several weeks ago my filmmaking partner (and old college roomie) "Weird" Ed Woody told me about ActionFest, being that it was happening in his neck of the woods. My calendar was empty for the weekend save for a friend's wedding on Sunday, so we ordered our badges and I lodged at Ed's inner sanctum somewhere between Asheville and the dark territory known to the locals as "Little Canada" (note to revenuers: do not go in there). On Thursday morning I headed out to Asheville, spent a few hours seeing my old adopted hometown again and even hooking up with some people that were a big part of my life then, and that afternoon hooked up with Ed at his pad. We took off for town and following a dinner at Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company - which still has some of the best pizza I've ever ate - we headed to Carolina Cinemas and ActionFest

ActionFest is founded by Bill Banowsky, Dennis Berman, and Aaron Norris. Aaron is the brother of action film legend Chuck Norris, who on the last night of the festival became the recipient of ActionFest's inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award. As such there were a number of Chuck Norris films programmed for the festival. The official ActionFest poster depicts Chuck Norris from Invasion U.S.A. standing in front of a mushroom cloud hanging over downtown Asheville.

And even the local sponsors got into the spirit of the event. Check out this theatrical one-sheet ad for the Grove Park Inn!

At 7:30 on Thursday night came the first film of ActionFest: the world premiere of Neil Marshall's Centurion!

Starring Michael Fassbender and featuring a number of fairly familiar faces including Noel Clarke (who played Mickey for the past few years on Doctor Who), Centurion is a grim 'n bloody telling of the tale of the legendary Ninth Legion of Rome, which went missing while trying to civilize ancient Britain. Set in 117 A.D., Centurion focuses on Quintus Dias (Fassbender) who gets captured by the Picts north of Hadrian's Wall, escapes and is then re-assigned to destroy a particularly troublesome bunch of primeval Scottish in retribution. But the Picts don't play nice and the Romans are soon whittled down to seven soldiers from across the breadth of the Empire, now struggling to survive. Hot on their trail is Etain (Olga Kurylenko): a treacherous Terminator-ish tracker who won't stop until her tribe is avenged (and she's also feeling more than a bit pokey after the Romans cut out her tongue).

If you loved HBO's Rome but wanted it to ratchet up the brutality, then Centurion is for you. I imagine this is going to do some handsome business when it opens wide. I enjoyed it tremendously!

The next afternoon Ed and I took in Kick-Ass, which wasn't part of the festival but we were both curious enough about it to check it out (and I'll be posting a review of it soon). After we caught that, it was time for ActionFest proper.

Up next it was 1985's Code of Silence:

Starring Chuck Norris and directed by Andrew Davis (who also directed The Fugitive, including much of it in the nearby town of Sylva and the legendary train wreck in Dillsboro), Code of Silence is regarded as the most critically acclaimed of Norris' many films. Eddie Cusack is an incorruptible cop on the mean streets of Chicago, set against both a brewing drug war and bad cops within his own department. We got to enjoy Code of Silence via a beautiful, practically virgin 35mm print and it was gorgeous! Nothing like seeing Chuck Norris going to town against the bad guys with his fists, his guns and one kick-butt battle robot.

Up next was a film that I'd been eager to see for a month or so now ever since first hearing about it: Harry Brown.

Harry Brown is the movie where those old guys from A Clockwork Orange get mad as hell and break bad on the asses of Alex and all his droogs. It is also the closest I imagine we will ever get to a film adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns. Directed by Daniel Barber, Harry Brown stars Michael Caine as the titular character: a recently widowed pensioner who despairs at the violent crime getting worse daily outside his window. When his only friend and drinking buddy is killed one night by a bunch of hoodlums, Harry - a former British marine - begins a one-man war as much against apathy as it is against the much-younger miscreants who are plaguing his neighborhood.

I think it's next week when Harry Brown gets a wide release here in the states, and I can easily imagine it striking up some dialogue on this side of the pond: about self-defense, about how our society has grown inured to cruelty, about how far one might be willing to go in order to have a peaceful life. Michael Caine is bloody brilliant as Harry Brown: we see the legendary man of action that he was in the original Get Carter and the Harry Palmer films, but also as the more gentle and tender presence that he has become in more recent years. In short: Harry Brown shows Caine at his most full-bore caliber. Can't wait to see it again.

At 10 p.m. on Friday night Ed and I decided to check out the world premiere of Operation: Endgame.

Originally titled Rogue's Gallery (a title which I like more as I think about it), Operation: Endgame is a film that I think has potential. What we saw wasn't the final film: there were still some unfinished effects and a bit of color work in a number of places that needs to be completed, so I'm looking forward to seeing it in the more polished and slicked-up form. As I said, there's some promise here. Operation: Endgame is like one of those Eighties "cloak and dagger spy" movies as envisioned by Dilbert creator Scott Adams: about two competing groups of secret agents who do battle with each other in a facility deep underground after their boss is found murdered in his office. Joe Anderson plays "Fool", the newest recruit among a body of agents all named after Tarot cards (like Lost's Emilie de Ravin as Hierophant, Ving Rhames as Judgement and Odette Yustman as Temperance). Also look for Zach Galifianakis as Hermit and Ellen Barkin as Empress. I think that with finished effects, a bit more editing and by changing the title back to the original if at all possible, this movie could prove to be a box-office winner. We were entertained by it anyway.

And next up, at midnight, came the film that we had become bigtime stoked about ever since reading about it in the festival's program. And it did not disappoint.

It was time to watch Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.

GOOD LORD I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!! Please SOMEBODY get this film distributed and into as honkin' wide a release as is all humanly possible! Sometime this summer would be terrific. Yes, I can definitely see Tucker & Dale vs. Evil as being the sleeper hit of Summer 2010.

Ed and I agreed: this was our most favorite film of ActionFest. Starring Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine and directed by Eli Craig (from a script co-written with Morgan Jurgenson), the best I can describe Tucker & Dale vs. Evil in brief is if I told you that it's "Clerks meets Deliverance". It takes the whole "lusty kids going into the woods and getting slaughtered by hillbillies" motif of slasher films and turns it on its head in hilarious fashion. 'Cuz you see in this case the hillbillies in question - Tucker (Tudyk) and Dale (Labine) - are really a couple of nice fellas! They're just two good ol' boys, never meaning no harm. All they want is to fix up a shack in the deep West Virginia woods to have as their dream vacation place while they hunt 'n fish and drink beer. Unfortunately they cross paths with a group of college students who have obviously seen way, way too many horror movies for their own good.

I don't know how much more plainer to put it than this: I not only want to see Tucker & Dale vs. Evil in the theaters immediately, I want to see at least six more Tucker & Dale movies! Not to mention how neat it would be to have some Tucker & Dale action figures. Maybe the most fun start to a potential franchise that I've ever seen. Everyone in the theater was laughing 'til it hurt! Ed saw it again on Saturday night and reported an even bigger crowd that was just as entertained and wanting more. I can't wait to watch this with more friends when it hits wide release.

The next day, with Tucker & Dale vs. Evil still on our brains, Ed and I headed back to ActionFest to catch what unfortunately had to be the last film of the festival that I was able to see: Je-Woon Kim's 2008 action spectacle from South Korea, it's The Good, The Bad, The Weird:

Clearly inspired by the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, The Good, The Bad, The Weird is the mad story of bandits, bounty hunters and assassins (along with a good helping of the Japanese army) crossing paths in Manchuria circa 1930 in pursuit of a treasure map. Rife with gunplay, motorcycles, heavy artillery, opium dens, one of the kewlest train heists I've ever seen in a film for an opening gambit, and an even crazier chase across the Chinese desert toward the end (along with one helluva plot twist), The Good, The Bad, The Weird was the perfect movie for a Saturday afternoon. I wouldn't mind owning this one on Blu-ray.

ActionFest was such a well-programmed festival, that there really was no way to be able to catch all of the movies scheduled. I'd wanted to see Power Kids (at least I know such a movie does exist out there somewhere :-), Merantau (ditto) and Valhalla Rising, but wasn't able too. 'Course that my own schedule required me to head back on Saturday night didn't help things. I'd also love to catch Golden Blade III: Return of the Monkey's Uncle at some point, which was filmed entirely in the Asheville area and as you can tell its poster promises all sorts of outrageous good humor...

Following The Good, The Bad, The Weird at 3 p.m. there was The Amazing ActionFest Stunt Show, featuring something I've never heard of being done at a film festival before: real stunts by Hollywood stunt legends! Jeff Habberstad arrived in true fashion: by bailing out of a passing airplane and parachuting down...

(Okay, that high-flying jet is not the plane that Habberstad jumped out of, it just happened to have been in the field of vision from where we were standing. Had to clarify that :-)

And then Kinnie "the Rocket Man" Gibson arrived on his jetpack, coming in over the Carolina Cinema building and landing in the parking lot...

At 5 p.m. that afternoon Drew McWeeny of HitFix.com moderated a panel discussion about "The Art of the Second Unit"...

Ed and I found this discussion to be educational, enlightening... and very entertaining. And it gave me an entirely new appreciation for the second unit's role in film production. As several of the panelists noted, it's the second unit which has the real fun on a movie or television project, because they're the ones that aren't necessarily stuck inside listening to "talking heads" as one person put it. But it is also in some ways one of the most demanding of a project's many aspects: not only making sure that the second unit's footage "jibes" with that of the first unit, but also the sheer planning and logistics. Paul Weston (who did stunts for many of the James Bond movies as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman) shared one story about how he was supposed to be filmed crawling along the outside of a building and how it almost didn't work out. And we also heard about how stunt people really do have to be able to say "no" to a director if something is going to be more dangerous than it's worth. After all, as was noted: there wasn't a single person up on that stage who hadn't lost a friend to doing a stunt that had gone wrong.

And if there is one thing that I would wish to convey that I learned from ActionFest, it is this: that the men and women who put themselves to such extremes for sake of a few seconds of footage, in order to create an illusion of danger... folks, I have a completely new respect for these people now. Having the chance to meet several of them and talk with them and hear them speak of their craft, and hearing the very sincere humbleness that they bring to their trade... well if you ask me, professional stunt people are in the same class of admiration as that afforded to firefighters. There's a mutual sense of brotherhood and respect for each other among those in this profession, and having seen that firsthand I can certainly say that it's high time that these people and the genre that lets them shine the most have a film festival celebrating their talent and their passion.

And that is what ActionFest was most to me: a festival not just of good films, but of the very best of the human spirit. I am already looking forward to next year's event, and here's praying that it will only get bigger and better from here on out.

Thanks to everyone behind ActionFest for such an amazing event! Y'all succeeded wildly :-)

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