Calgary Underground Film Festival closing weekend highlights include the Canadian premiere of Slamdance opener The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, about the former professional wrestler known for bringing snakes into the wrestling ring with him, most famously his python, Damien.
The exploding head scene in David Cronenberg's 1980 film Scanners is legendary – much discussed and dissected, right down to the leftover hamburgers that were used as part of the yucky non-CGI head-stuffing.
It's one thing to watch Louis Del Grande's exploding noggin at home, but seeing it the way it was intended, on the big screen, is a whole other experience – mind-blowing, no doubt. (Sorry.)
This weekend, the Calgary Underground Film Festival wraps up with a boom, with a screening of Scanners as part of its Cronenberg retrospective (which also includes Videodrome, The Fly and The Brood).
Other CUFF closing weekend highlights include the Canadian premiere of Slamdance opener The Resurrection of Jake the Snake, about the former professional wrestler known for bringing snakes into the wrestling ring with him, most famously his python, Damien.
Another weird stardom-to-messed-up-obscurity-to-possible-redemption story, I Am Thor, also screens Saturday. It follows the Canadian bodybuilding rocker Jon Mikl Thor, big in the 1970s and 1980s – with his signature blowing up a hot water bottle like a balloon trick – as he attempts to stage a comeback. Then, witness Thor live as he performs later that night at the Palomino. As he says on film: "Eventually, I've got to stop coming back and say: 'Hey, I'm here.'"
The Calgary Underground Film Festival is at The Globe Cinema in Calgary through April 19.
Marsha Lederman