So it was about 10 years ago when Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura was first introduced to international audiences with Versus.
The quirky, but brilliant mashup of yakuza meets zombie meets samurai gorefest thrilled audiences and became a cult classic.
A decade later, Kitamura is back.
Premiering his film No One Lives at Midnight Madness Saturday night was “The greatest moment of my life,” he told a Sunday morning audience who had come to see his latest work.
No One Lives is an example of why the Toronto festival works as an important global incubator for genre film.
That initial attention many years ago propelled Kitamura onto the international stage, where he crossed over into English language film.
“This is a movie called No One Lives. So you know I’m going to f------ kill everybody,” the gregarious director promised to wild applause from the Sunday morning audience.
Meghan Swaby, an actress who works part time at the TIFF ticket office, had no idea who Kitamura was but liked “the fact that the trailer said it would be exuberantly gory,” she said of her decision to line up at midnight.
I never did find out whether Swaby found No One Lives worthy of that lineup. I suspect she didn’t.
In the movie, a bloody massacre leaves 14 students dead and a young heiress, Emma (Adelaide Clemens), missing.
Kitamura pits a sampler box of backwoods villains against an anti-hero played by Luke Evans (The Three Musketeers).
The film also has some interesting cameos, with WWE wrestler George Murdoch (a.k.a. Brodus Clay) helping out with some of the gory action.
“Luke Evans basically kicked me in the nuts like 50 times and it’s on the screen for like 15 seconds,” Murdoch complained to the Toronto audience.
READ MORE: http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/tiff/article/1253696--tiff-2012-no-one-lives-midnight-madness-diary-day-3
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