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The programme for this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival has been released, and as usual there is plenty on offer that will appeal to discerning genre fans such as your good selves. To save you from having to scour the website to look up details of every one of the scores of new films on offer, we have assembled a preview of those available that we think might interest you.

The UK premiere of Pixar’s summer release has been a staple of the festival for years, this year bringing us the family superheroics of Incredibles 2. You may have heard that the film’s general release has been pushed back a month because of some football tournament, so this will give you the earliest chance to see it. Another annual event is a screening of a seminal film accompanied by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra performing its score live, and this year comes the turn of the greatest shark move ever made, Jaws.

The festival’s self-explanatory Best of British strand has previously brought us the likes of the excellent My Pure Land and The Library Suicides. In Calibre, a pair of Edinburgh friends head up to the highlands for a weekend of deer hunting, only for an accident and its cover up leaving them facing a large group of gun-toting villagers, and since for the first time in years we appear to be missing a mental Japanese movie from the festival line up, perhaps this is continuing an alternative trend of ‘Deliverance with highlanders,’ although it won’t have to do much to top last year’s The Dark Mile in this regard. Dead in a Week (Or Your Money Back) is a black comedy about a suicidal young man who keeps failing at the task and hires an aging hitman with a quota to meet to do the deed for him, only for the situation to get complicated when he meets the woman of his dreams after the arrangement has been made. In The Devil Outside, a teenage boy raised in evangelical Christianity and taught that evil lurks around every corner makes a new friend in the local rebel, and believes that a dead body in the woods in a sign from God. In In Darkness, a blind musician hears the murder of her upstairs neighbour, a war criminal’s daughter, and after the death is written off as a suicide she is gradually drawn into London’s criminal underworld. Mary Shelley tells the story of a teenage girl who falls for a charismatic and married poet, and the ensuing scandal and passions that she channels into the creation of the world’s most famous piece of gothic fiction, Frankenstein.

The American Dreams strand showcases the best of new US indie filmmaking. The Negotiator is an ‘80s-set espionage thriller where an alcoholic former diplomat is brought in to mediate when an old friend is kidnapped in Beirut, his buried past subsequently resurfacing. Papillon is a new adaptation of the famous novel set in a brutal French penal colony, where two inmates set their sights on freedom. Searching tells the story of a widowed father looking for his missing daughter, the film’s visuals all taken from screens within it, be they TVs, computer monitors, smartphones, or any and all devices in between. Terminal is a neo-noir assortment of interlocking plotlines circling a tale of revenge, variously featuring a pair of mismatched hitmen on an assignment, a teacher with an incurable illness and an eccentric train station janitor, all linked together by an enigmatic waitress leading a double life.

The Night Moves strand can always be relied on to provide some quality genre fare. Anna and the Apocalypse is a horror comedy musical where a teenage girl bands together with her friends to defeat an undead horde that invades on the night of the school Christmas concert. Blood Fest is a self-aware horror comedy where a group of teens must utilise their knowledge of horror movies to escape an influx of monsters when a horror festival turns real-life bloody. Period piece The Most Assassinated Woman in the World sees an actress at the Grand Guignol theatre become embroiled in a series of brutal murders. In psychosexual drama Piercing, a new father who develops a compulsion to kill his child decides to instead take it out on a call girl, who turns out to be more than a match for him. Possum sees a children’s puppeteer return home to face up to his stepfather, and also try to deal with the control the eponymous hand puppet has over him. In Solis, an astronaut trapped in an escape pod is caught in the gravitational pull of the sun, with only a weak connection to a mission control commander to hear his urgent pleas for help. In White Chamber the near-future UK is ravaged by civil war, and a woman awakes imprisoned in a high tech torture room and interrogated for information she claims not to have, it soon transpiring that all is not as it seems.

Some other new offerings to put on your radar include Zombillenium, an animated children’s film set in a theme park staffed by the undead, where its first ever human employee teams up with his new friends to stop the vampires from taking over; haunting drama The Secret of Marrowbone, where four British siblings escape their abusive father by travelling to America to live on their mother’s decaying family estate, where a presence may be lurking upstairs; and documentary Life After Flash, showcasing the career of Sam J Jones beyond his brush with stardom as the saviour of the universe.

A retrospective of mainstream American horror movies of the early to mid ‘80s brings us big screen showings of seminal werewolf outing The Howling, early slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street, zombie classic Day of the Dead and ghost story Poltergeist, while cult vampire flick Near Dark and post-nuclear survival tale Testament screen as part of a showcase of the decade’s female directors.

A selection of European classics includes M, where a child murderer stalking the streets of Berlin is hunted down by beggars and criminals; La Belle et la Bête, the first ever adaptation of Beauty and the Beast; The Seventh Seal, where a knight returning from the Crusades challenges Death to a chess match to forestall his demise while searching for meaning in his nihilistic existence; and Solaris, where a psychologist travels to a distant space station whose crew have been experiencing visions and hallucinations, only to realise a greater force is at work when he is visited by his dead wife.

For more filmgoing fun, in the weekend prior to the festival St Andrew Square garden is transformed into an open-air cinema, offering free screenings of a variety of blockbusters and family fare, which this year features Wonder Woman, Casablanca, Top Gun, The Incredibles, Paddington, Paddington 2, Big, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Moulin Rouge!, Thor: Ragnarok, Jason and the Argonauts, The Greatest Showman, Ghostbusters, Big Trouble in Little China, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Tickets for all films are now on sale, and can be bought from the festival website, where further information on each screening and their venues is also available. The festival itself begins on Wednesday 20th June and runs until Sunday 1st July.

The year was 1981.

Horror was dominating the cinema, mainly riding the wave of the stalk and slash craze of formulaic films that adhered closely to a predictable pattern of horny, hormone addled teenagers being slaughtered by masked maniacs, until only the one virtuous girl was left. Halloween 2, Friday the 13th Pt 2, My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday to Me, Hell Night, Graduation Day… the list of slasher films released in that year goes on and on.

But among the slice and dice movies was one film that although different in tone and quality was undoubtedly part of the genre, it also paid a self-aware homage to the roots of the teenage hacking craze and made audiences a little wary of those travelling carnival attractions where, behind the brightly painted façade, something far nastier could be waiting. Welcome to The Funhouse.

Director Tobe Hooper had already made an indelible impression on the horror scene seven years earlier in 1974 with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As a feature breakthrough, this was remarkable – a film so unrelentingly grim and terrifying, it was immediately deemed un-releasable in the UK and had only been seen in London. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre wouldn’t be officially seen in cinemas in this country until 1999.

Hooper had followed his success with Eaten Alive, also known as Horror Hotel and Death Trap. Call it what you will, it was also prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act and immediately removed from UK video shop shelves. It wasn’t until he directed the TV adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot that British audiences could actually sit down and watch a Tobe Hooper feature without fearing the overzealous police coming knocking at their door.

Sadly, a blunder by the UK’s moral watchdogs also caused The Funhouse some problems. It was mistakenly, not to mention unsuccessfully, prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act. Overzealously, the film was seized from shelves having been mistaken for another film, The Last House on Dead End Street, which was released under an alternative title of The Fun House. Understandably, despite the matter being cleared up, and Hooper’s film being released legitimately, albeit with several seconds of cuts, most video store owners erred on the side of caution and removed the videotape from their shelves just in case. Those tapes were hard to come by for many years and like Hooper’s previous films in the time of the so-called video nasties, The Funhouse became the stuff of legend, spoken about by people who largely hadn’t seen it. Fortunately, in more enlightened times, The Funhouse has become easily available on DVD and on Blu-ray, so we can finally give this flawed little gem the appraisal it deserves.

The film hits the ground running from the opening sequence, which shows a teenage girl at home preparing for a shower. It’s obvious that we are seeing this from the point of view of a person watching her. We pick up a mask and put it on in a direct lift from the opening scene of Halloween, and we select a weapon – in this case obviously the weapon of choice is a knife. We then close in on our pretty young victim, who’s unaware of our presence and completely vulnerable. In a scene heavily reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho, the shower curtain is pulled back, the girl screams and tries to defend herself vainly – but the blade plunges down toward her bare abdomen – and bends.

The victim is Amy Harper (Elizabeth Berridge), who is getting ready for her first date with a new boyfriend, and she has just been the target of the latest practical joke by her younger brother Joey (Shawn Carson). It has to be the latest in a long line of cruel pranks because he selected the rubber prop knife from an extensive selection of what seem to be torture implements on display on his bedroom wall. He’s a horror film fanatic, with his posters of Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange, but the collection of whips, flails and other sadistic torture devices on show should raise an eyebrow with his parents – who, while their daughter is screaming for her life in the shower, are downstairs watching The Bride of Frankenstein on TV taking no notice whatsoever of her terror.

When she recovers enough (and covers herself up) she follows Joey to his room and tells him threateningly that she will get even – plus she won’t even take him to the fair he’s been looking forward to. The brat looks shaken and later tries to sneak downstairs to watch the horror film but in a rare display of responsibility, his parents send him back to bed.

The father is concerned that Amy is going to the travelling fair, which they think has been implicated in some deaths at their previous stops. The mother is more concerned that her date is with a guy working at the local filling station. In a way, both are entirely right to be worried, because the evening will definitely be a bad one for poor Amy.

The new boyfriend, Buzz (Cooper Huckabee), is indeed an irresponsible idiot, and with another couple of similarly foolish peer, pressure-inducing friends, Richie (Miles Chapin) and Liz (Largo Woodruff), they’re soon on their way to the fair while smoking dope. To her credit, though, Amy has at least tried (but failed) to convince Buzz to take her to a movie instead.

In the meantime, Joey has decided to sneak out and follow his older sister to the fair, encountering a crazy redneck on the way who points a rifle at him for no apparent reason other than his own sadistic glee.

The fair is every bit as cheap, nasty, and gaudy as could be expected, and the four teens wander and explore the various attractions, which include a fortune teller, strip show, a magic act and a freak animal show including real deformed cattle. Oddly, but eerily effectively, three of the barkers who entice the customers into the tents are all played by the same actor (Kevin Conway) in different costumes.

All the while, Joey is watching the group and keeping out of sight.

As the evening draws to an end, the fair closes down – but Richie has come up with a plan to extend their fun evening. They will visit the funhouse, a large ghost train exhibit, hide and spend the night there. This will, of course, involve good girl Amy phoning home and telling a lie to her parents about staying over at Liz’s house.

Putting their plan into operation, they make their way to the funhouse, pay the attendant who is lumbering around wearing a Frankenstein monster mask and jump on board their cart then hop off mid-ride to enjoy their evening as young teen couples in horror movies tend to do. They’re disturbed by a noise in the basement below them – which is an inescapable gaping hole in the film’s plot. Bearing in mind that the fair is a travelling one, all the rides are portable and carried from venue to venue on trailer bearing trucks. The funhouse here seems vast, wide, high and labyrinthine rather than narrow and claustrophobic – and it also has a cellar.

Disturbed from their intimate activities, the teens investigate a light and voices coming from a room below them. Peering down through a grating, they see the funhouse ride attendant, still in his costume, negotiating a sleazy deal with Madame Zena the fortune teller (Sylvia Miles) who insists on a fee of $100 for her services as a prostitute. The deal goes sour when the attendant finishes prematurely and Zena refuses him a refund. In a rage, he strangles Zena, leaving her body on the makeshift bed while the teens, silently watching everything, begin to panic. Sadly, for all her assumed mystical powers, Zena didn’t see THAT coming.

Three of them try to escape but find themselves locked inside the attraction. However, Ritchie has his eyes on the cash in the strongbox that Zena’s fee was taken from, and takes his opportunity to sneak down and steal it before re-joining his friends.

Conrad, the funhouse barker, discovers Zena’s body and notices that the strongbox is now empty. Assuming the attendant took the money, he starts to beat him. The mask goes flying and his true face is revealed. He is largely bald, with long, thin white lanky hair. His skin is albino white and his eyes are bright red. His teeth are deformed, long fangs and he drools constantly. He is largely mute, emitting only guttural, grunting noises. His name is Gunther (Wayne Doba) and he is Conrad’s stepson. His frankly startling make-up and prosthetics are a highlight of the film and were created by Rick Baker, just before his incredible work on John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London.

Ritchie might well have got away with the theft, if it isn’t for the fact that in leaning over the grating while Conrad is confronting Gunther, his lighter falls out of his pocket and tumbles to the floor of the cellar and the chase is on. To make matters worse, not only do they have Conrad after them to eliminate any witnesses, but he has ignited a homicidal rage in Gunther.

Outside, in the deserted park, Joey has seen his sister enter the funhouse, but hasn’t seen her leave. He is surprised and understandably terrified when he stumbles across the now unmasked Gunther but is caught by two other fairground workers who call his parents to come and collect him. When they do, he remembers his sister’s threat to get even – and doesn’t tell them where she is. It’s implied he’s spitefully leaving her to her fate.

Despite arming themselves with props from the attraction, one by one, the victims fall prey to their stalking tormentors. Richie is first (deservedly) hung by his neck and mounted on one of the ride’s carts to terrify the remaining three. Liz falls through a trapdoor near an industrial vent and is at the mercy of Gunther. She tries to entice him, and he seems to succumb to her charms until she stabs him with a knife she’s holding. But this is a horror movie, Gunther is the monster, and he isn’t going to die that easily – he wrestles the knife away and stabs Liz to death.

Buzz and Amy try in vain to break out through one of the exit doors but are stopped by Conrad who has armed himself with a gun. The kids plead for their lives and ask why Conrad wants to kill them. He explains that he’s only protecting his stepson who had killed a couple of girls earlier in the season after they tried to seduce him. This, presumably, is the incident referred to earlier by Amy’s father.

Taking advantage of his distraction, Buzz tries to wrestle the gun away, but in the struggle, Conrad dies impaled on a sword. Gunther arrives and immediately attacks Buzz, who tries to shoot him while Amy tries to escape. Offscreen, Buzz fails and is himself shot, with his body being found seconds later, inexplicably as Amy was running away, unless she just ran a circle.

In the traditions of the genre, the lone, surviving ‘good girl’ has to have a final showdown with the killer in the final reel and so it happens here. Amy makes her way through the funhouse and its nightmarish props to a large maintenance area with industrial cooling fans (remember, this is still in the travelling fair) and Gunther, convinced of an easy last kill, follows her.

A crowbar is all she finds to defend herself with, but Gunther easily takes it away from her and begins to swing it, to land a devastating killing blow but succeeds only in electrocuting himself when he accidentally smashes the crowbar into a fuse box. That stuns him temporarily, but then he gets caught on the chain that pulls the carts through the ride. That slows him down, but not for long.

In a final lunge to get his victim, Gunther is dragged by the chains into two large gears that crush him to his ultimate death. The nightmare is finally over for Amy as she leaves the funhouse, meandering through the fairground as the workers begin to dismantle the rides ready for the next destination. Though how they’ll dismantle the funhouse and its basement and load it for the journey is anybody’s guess. Plus, poor Amy will have to explain the six dead bodies in there.

Despite its grim subject matter, the film overall is technically far better than Hooper’s previous outings with the director showing a finesse that was absent from both his earlier films but was beginning to manifest itself in Salem’s Lot. The camera work is elegant and nowhere near as crude as his earlier work.

By the time The Funhouse went into production, Hooper’s talent had already been spotted by Steven Spielberg, who was developing E.T: The Extra Terrestrial at the time. It wouldn’t be long until the two would collaborate on perhaps the greatest ghost house film of the eighties. But that’s a story for another time.

You can enter THE FUNHOUSE when it screens on Horror Channel on May 23rd. Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.

Manchester is famous for being a hive of creativity and a place where lots of amazing things begin. Now in its sixth year, The Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July, filling the city with fresh and exciting comedy and drama, much of which is on its way to the better known Fringe Festival in Scotland. Let’s take a look at some of the cult entertainment style shows on offer in 2018. And don’t forget to visit STARBURST’s favourite bar, Fab Café, for some pre-show drinks beforehand.

Moon Quest – Casagua Productions – July 6th & 7th, 3MT. July 9 & 10th, Kings Arms: Theatre
We are always up for a bit of pulp sci-fi, and Moon Quest looks set to deliver. Gabi is an ace pilot and intrepid spacewoman, sent to Mars to find a lost explorer. On her way she’ll meet strange aliens and become part of an insurrection. Moon Quest is inspired by the likes of Star Crash, Flash Gordon and Moon Zero Two. Sounds like fantastic fun to us.

One Man Bond –  Invisible Six Productions – July 17th, 18th & 19th, Kings Arms: Theatre
Every Bond film in 60 minutes. Brian Gorman plays over 200 characters, including every James Bond from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig. We loved this show when we saw it at 2018’s STARBURST Media City Festival, so if you missed it, here’s your chance to catch it again. Watch one man throw himself into the world of Bond. Brilliantly entertaining stuff. Features an ultra-realistic Daniel Craig.

Quina Chapman: Fan Girl – MissQuinaC – July 19th & 20th, Kings Arms Studio
A light-hearted look at music and fandom, Fan Girl combines storytelling, poetry and original live music with tales from real-life super fans. Featuring scientific facts, a history lesson and a cameo from The Beatles. Utterly compelling stuff and a must for those with a fannish heart.

Pretty Evil – Hivemind Theatrical Solutions – July 4th, 27th & 28th, 53two
When the superheroes clean up all the crime, what’s left for their former foes? Three wannabes hire a local community centre and workshop giving evil a new face. When good triumphs, evil has to work on its CV. A play about three villains who haven’t a clue. Sounds like a good chuckle to us.

Chaos of Delight – Robin Ince – July 10th, International Anthony Burgess Foundation
A work-in-progress from the funny one out of The Infinite Monkey Cage. Robin is back on the road with his latest show, and among his experimental subjects are the lovely theatre-going people of Manchester. The multiple-award-winning comedian mashes up the two cultures of art and science, going from Dali to DNA.

The Girl in the Grate/Me, You & Godzilla Too – Cathianne Hall – July 5th, 3MT
Join Cathianne Hall and Jowanna Rose in a double-bill. From the sinister world of 1960s sitcoms to the party from hell, it’s a Babycham-fuelled journey into what it means to feel trapped, and how one makes the great escape. Expect more than a few surprises.

The Séance – Andous Productions – July 5th, 6th & 7th, 53two
We do like a good ghost story. This one is about love, loss, soulmates and dodgy toasters. Danny’s dead, but that’s not going to stop him from defying the laws of universe so he can make his beloved Kate his lawfully wedded widow.

Constellations – Ensemble Estate – July 9th, 10th & 11th, 53Two
A love story between a beekeeper and quantum physicist? Where each scene takes place in a parallel universe? Sounds like exactly our sort of thing. Constellations is the story of Roland and Marianne, which asks questions about love, fate, classic models of the universe, and bees. An intimate play by the award-winning Nick Payne.

Burn the Witch – Norris & Parker – July 11th & 12th, Kings Arms: Theatre
Weird. Odd. Deeply Funny. From the team who brought you the award-winning See You at the Gallows, Burn the Witch promises to be a late-night sketch comedy for lovers of the strange, the sordid, the musical and the dark. The witching hour is upon you. For those who like their comedy dark and clever.

Conspiracy Theory: A Lizard’s Tale – Half Chips/Half Rice – July 26th, 27th, 28th & 29th, 53two
One man’s journey into the world of lizards and denial, the truth may be out there, but it’s probably nowhere near the characters in this cracking bit of Fringe theatre. A revised version of last year’s critically acclaimed show.

Questions of England – Rampant Plays – July 2nd, 8th, 16th, 23rd & 30th, The Whiskey Jar (Free Entry)
Experimental improv comedy, which uses British pop culture and history? There’s bound to be something for everyone in all of that. Includes a bell you can ring for attention. Wouldn’t be a Fringe Festival without this sort of improv.

How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse – Narthen Productions – July 19th, 20th & 21st, Kings Arms TheatreLife seems pretty much sorted for Phil (job, partner and Coach holidays) and Mark (girlfriend, potholing and zombie films). Time may be ticking – but it’s a tick easily ignored. Dare they face their own personal zombie apocalypse?

For more details on all of this and so much more, be sure to visit GreaterManchesterFringe.co.uk.