Calgary Underground 2017 Announces Lineup: Kaiju! Bigfoot! Booze! Headbangers! Sugar-Cereal! and The Shower Scene

The Little Hours

A young servant takes refuge at a convent full of emotionally unstable nuns after he cuckolds his master. Pansexual horniness, substance abuse, and wickedness are all descriptors in this glossy, medieval nunsploitation romp starring Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie and John C. Reilly. The Opening night film of the festival is director Jeff Baena's Life After Beth. (Fun Fact: Baena co-wrote David O. Russell's severely underrated I Heart Huckabees.

Jeff Baena and Aubrey Plaza will be in attendance for the Opening Gala.

Colossal

After rave reviews from TIFF and Fantastic Fest, Nacho Vigalondo's mash-up of the toxic relationship drama with the stomping Kaiju genre is both fan approved, and very much of its time. That is to say, Colossal is highly resonant right at this moment in American culture. Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Stevens and Seoul, Korea are featured prominently on a film that smartly walks the line between comedy, science fiction, and social justice.

78/52

Documentaries specifically on a single feature film (or genre) have been trendy lately, from Hearts of Darkness (Apocalypse Now) to Dangerous Days (Blade Runner) to films that never got made such as Lost in La Mancha (Gilliam's Don Quixote) and Jodorowski's Dune.

Here, however, Alexandre Philipe spends an entire feature documentary on the 3 minute shower sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a sequence that had 78 set-ups and 52 cuts. The results are magnificently obsessive; think Room 237 with less conspiracy and more brains.

American Bigfoot

Many will remember Bobcat Goldthwait's riff on The Blair Witch Project, a faux doc centred around Bigfoot, the solid horror pic, Willow Creek. Here is a short film he made on the annual Ohio Bigfoot Convention.

Lake Bodom

This Estonian/Finnish homage to the slasher genre sees a gang teens visit an infamous crime scene hoping to solve the murder by reconstructing it minute by minute.

Director Taneli Mustonen previously hit box-office pay-dirt in his native Finland with his previous feature, Reunion. He will be attending the Canadian Premiere of the film.