Sean Parker
It’s time to welcome back the Sohome Horror Pride Film Festival. The fifth annual rendition of the festival celebrating LGBTQ+ filmmakers is set to take place in just over a week, the weekend of 18-21 July. Sohome’s Pride festival is on a donate-what-you-can basis (asking £45 or $58) and will feature eleven fierce features, twenty slaying shorts, and five can’t-miss live events. This will also be your chance to see some brilliant films I’ve been talking about over the past year that absolutely deserve your attention, as well as some can’t-miss events featuring Peaches Christ, horror musicals, and a farewell salute to Ghouls Magazine.
For the Opening Night gala, director Erlingur Thoroddsen’s The Piper makes its UK Premiere. The Piper stars the late Julian Sands as the deceased mentor to a young composer who inherits his work, summoning deadly consequences when she plays it. The Piper is a modern twist on the story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, and the film ultimately “crescendos into a cacophony of chaos.” Two shorts will accompany The Piper: Don’t Turn off the Ghost Light and Free Bench Must Pick Up Today.
Closing the festival, Kill Dolly Kill takes you on a slay ride through the trailer park courtesy of Tromaville. In a follow-up to 2016’s Dolly Deadly, audiences will reconnect with Benji (Donna Slash), now living as his drag queen alter ego, the titular Dolly. Journey through a twisted and imaginative land of punk rock music, hot rods, barbecues, murderous drag queens, and psych wards in this horror-musical sequel that’s sure to evoke comparisons to early John Waters films. Kill Dolly Kill fans may also be excited to feast their eyes on Sohome Horror Pride’s Sing or Die: A Celebration of Horror Musicals event that features special guests and songs from Saw: The Musical.
Speaking of John Waters, join hosts Trent Reese and Sharai Bohannon for a live podcast taping of Nightmare on Fierce Street, where they’ll discuss Female Trouble. Waters’ super raunchy follow-up to Pink Flamingos is a masterstroke of grindhouse guerrilla filmmaking the way only the Pope of Trash can provide. From innocence to depravity, the tragedy of Dawn Davenport (Divine) starts with her parents not buying her the cha-cha heels she wants for Christmas, and things only get more violent and absurd from there. Join Trent and Sharai for what’s sure to be a fun and captivating discussion of one of Waters’ best.
Next up, a deliciously wild “meat-cute” about chowing down and getting down, fresh from the Chattanooga Film Festival, it’s a Special showing of Aimee Kuge’s Cannibal Mukbang. The film played at the Soho Horror Film Festival last year, but if you haven’t seen it, I implore you to satiate your cravings for some sexy, gory fun and see one of the best horror comedies of the year. Screening with Cannibal Mukbang is short film Sweet Juices from directors Will Suen and Sejon Im. The plot sounds appropriately voracious, as the world’s financial infrastructure depends solely on Chinese food delivery as the ultimate currency. However, the image posted for this short on Sohome’s website is so retch-inducing and provocative that I can’t decide if I’m intrigued or just going to lose my lunch. Either way, the image is forever seared into my retinas. Take a look for yourselves. It looks grotesque and magical.
Cannibal Mukbang will be featured in tandem with the farewell to Ghouls Magazine. Ghouls Magazine has been a beacon of insightful, female-identifying, and non-binary perspective reviews, essays, panels, and podcasts over the last four years. The Final Ghouls three-part celebration will start with Ghouls Forever: An insight into the formation and legacy of Ghouls Magazine with creator Zoe Rose Smith, move onto the Cannibal Mukbang tie-in, Girl Dinner: A round table discussion into feminine cannibalism in all its feral sensuality, and finish with Ghouls Group Chat LIVE!: A breakneck and irreverent immersive Zoom experience into the ferocious but insightful nature of the Ghouls group chat. Boasting hot takes and “longful thirstings,” this will surely be as whip-smart and incisive a discussion as any material the Ghouls website produced. Ghouls Magazine has forever been a place of profound and imaginative horror appreciation. The site announced they were taking a hiatus in April and will certainly be missed.
Short films have always been a massive part of Soho Horror, with festival director Mitch Harrod programming a stellar assortment of unique and unmissable films throughout the years. While every feature at Sohome Horror Pride will have a short film introduction (something movie theater chains should adopt instead of playing ads), there will also be a special event for Peaches Christ and Michael Varrati’s Midnight Mass, where the indomitable drag queen will present a variety of her shorts.
In addition to that Midnight Mass offering, this year, Sohome Horror Pride is spotlighting trans voices and stories in the block T-Shockers: A Short Film Showcase of Trans Excellence, highlighted by the world premiere of Robyn Adams’ The Estrogen Gospel. Adams’ story offers a spiritual reckoning when a trans woman goes for a hike and hears the beastly voice of an ancient evil attempting to knock her off her path. The best part is that Beast is voiced by none other than Schizo and Satan’s Slave writer David McGillivray. Adams’ short is just one of a handful in the block, yet effortlessly the one I’m most excited for. She’s joined by the love and castration short Glory, Hole, the thin skin of Papergirl, the spicy-sweetness of childhood vengeance in Gummies, and the hair-raising Smooth.
Not many synopses have left me speechless, but Mamántula is one of the few. While the overall idea of a desirable playboy who’s secretly a giant tarantula in disguise carries some Mimic meets Looney Tunes overtones, the line in the synopsis that reads “his insatiable lust for blood and semen” has me recalling the kinky Spider-Man-esque superhero that showed up in last week’s episode of The Boys. Plot details include alternate dimensions, liminal spaces, and a noirish storyline, making Mamántula one of my must-sees of next weekend’s festival, if only to decode the affable words in the press release. I have a feeling Ion De Sosa’s film will be equally sick and surprising.
If you’re a huge Hellraiser fan, you’ll need to see I Am Monsters!, which chronicles the actor Nicholas Vince’s experiences that led to the creation of cenobite creature The Chatterer. Presented as a one-man show, Sohome Horror returnees will recall a similar depiction from their inaugural festival back in 2020, but here it is in its fully formed glory, presented as a special preview with the European premiere of Thom Hilton’s short film Matinee Bay.
Now, I could continue highlighting every screening in next weekend’s impressive lineup, but this article would become an unruly length, and my editor would kill me. If you’ve read my reviews for Femme or Saint Drogo, you know these are two extraordinary films more than worth the price of admission. Femme will also have the added benefit of a live filmmaker’s commentary. When you add the conversion therapy nightmare that is Ganymede, hot from screening at the Chattanooga Film Festival to rave reviews, the value of what’s playing at the Sohome Horror Pride 2024 festival becomes unmatched. Add in House of Izabel, The Bell Keeper, Wild Eyed and Wicked, and We Are Animals to round out a four-day horror celebration celebrating some of the most graphic, sapphic, and queer entertainment on the planet.
Tickets are now on sale on Sohome Horror Pride’s website. Again, it is on a pay-what-you-can basis, but the asking price of £45 ($58) is a steal. You will never see all these films together again like this at this price, and from the comfort of your home, no less. So throw some glitter at that bad b*tch/beast in the mirror, put on your best horror-glam t-shirt, pull up your comfy chair, and join Sohome Horror Pride this 18-21 July.
