Six Films to Stream this Weekend at Nightstream

This weekend marks the return of the NIGHTSTREAM Film Festival. Last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of regional genre film festivals teamed up to present a virtual film festival in leiu of their planned in-person events. This year NIGHTSTREAM is produced and presented by the Boston Underground Film Festival, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, North Bend Film Festival and The Overlook Film Festival. You can buy passes to individual films or in packs of 5 or 10. All proceeds go to the filmmakers, the participating festivals, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and the climate change advocacy group The Sunrise Movement. The fest has a great line up of movies and panels and here are some of the ones we're most excited about.

ALIEN ON STAGE 

If you're in the mood for something fun and heartwarming, this documentary about a group of bus drivers from southwest England who decide to put on a stage adaptation of Alien might be just the thing. It's got a great scrappy underdog energy and a fun look behind the scenes at build garage-level special effects that look much better than they have any right to.

BEYOND THE INFINITE TWO MINUTES

This Japanese sci-fi import was shot on an iPhone, but what it lacks in budget it more than makes up for in inventiveness and charm. It follows a coffee shop owner who realizes that there is a two minute time loop between the computer in his cafe and the one upstairs in his apartment. Eventually, this "Time TV" attracts the attention of friends and neighbors (not to mention more unsavory individuals and mysterious entities), as they push the limits of what you can do when you can see just a tiny bit into the future.

HELLBENDER

This folk horror movie is actually a family affair, co-directed by and starring an actual mother, daughter and father (Toby Poser, Zelda Adams, and John Adams, respectively). It's about a mother and daughter who live on the outskirts of civilization (but still have a rockin' band) due to a "disease" that prevents the daughter from coming into contact with other people. As the daughter gets older and desires freedom and friends of her own, the true nature of the disease and how it relates to the family's history becomes apparent.

MAD GOD

Phil Tippett is best known as the guy behind the stop-motion special effects of some of your favorite movies, including Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Robocop. For 30 years he's been filming an experimental stop motion epic bit by painstaking bit and it's finally finished. Mad God is a nightmare come to life with some of the weirdest, wildest, and often grossest stop motion imagery ever put to film.

THIS IS GWAR

It's a documentary about GWAR. What more do you need? Oh yeah, don't be surprised if you end up a little misty eyed before the end, even if you don't know Oderus Urungus from Jizmak Da Gusha.

WOODLANDS DARK AND DAYS BEWITCHED: A HISTORY OF FOLK HORROR

Watching this three hour documentary is essentially the same thing as auditing a class in Folk Horror and, in a just world, would count for college credit. It's an absolute must-see for any fan of Folk Horror or the Horror genre in general. NIGHTSTREAM is also streaming a program of four selections from the upcoming ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS box set that was inspired by this movie.