The Dark Half

Horror/action fest Danger After Dark gets into bed with QFest.

by Shaun Brady

"It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time," Crawford says of his initial pitch to Ray Murray, TLA Entertainment president and artistic director of what was then called the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema.

"I was a freelance journalist writing about horror films and I came to Ray and said, 'I have this idea: We're going to show horror movies and action movies.' I remember Ray asking, 'Do you have a more defined idea of this?' And I said, 'No, I really don't, actually. Sorry. But it's going to be called…' and the words were coming out of my mouth, 'It's dangerous and it's going to be a late-night thing, so it's after dark,' and I literally went away from the meeting saying, 'I hate that name.' Are you kidding me? I'm stuck with Danger After Dark for 10 years now?"

Crawford hasn't been stuck with the title for that entire decade, actually. He stepped away from programming the series after the 2007 film festival, making his return for DAD's 10th anniversary, which also marks its debut as a stand-alone festival running alongside QFest — an odd couple to be sure, a result of the last-minute cancellation of spring's Cinefest. The internecine squabbling that has so disrupted Philly's festival schedule recently has nothing to do with his own involvement, but Crawford forecasts a reunion sooner rather than later. "I think that ultimately all the parties involved should recognize that programming film in Philadelphia is the most important thing," he says.

Back in year one, Crawford never expected the series to last. "The first film I programmed was Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, and I remember thinking, 'There will be no one in this theater. It's going to be completely empty.' We had a full house, and I was floored. I couldn't believe that we got 200 people to come out for a 30-year-old Japanese women-in-prison exploitation film."

This year's 11-film lineup is typically eclectic, ranging from the disturbing Greek psychodrama Dogtooth to the long-lost '70s grindhouse actioner Gone With the Pope, to the self-explanatorily over-the-top Japanese Big Tits Zombie 3-D. Asked to attempt a definition of a DAD film, Crawford offers: "It would have to be within some vague classification of 'genre.' It's going to have to be within the perimeter of the horror or action category. But that's a pretty broad categorization from my point of view."

Broad enough over the series' first decade to contain soon-to-be genre favorites like The Descent, High Tension and Ginger Snaps alongside vintage silent-era pornography, oddities by the likes of ultraprolific Japanese eccentric Takashi Miike and intense fare by art-house directors like Claire Denis and Catherine Breillat.

While the current schedule contains DAD standbys like HK action director Johnnie To (Vengeance) and a couple of gonzo Japanese spectacles, the field has changed over the decade to the extent that Crawford's program guide introduction rolls its eyes at the longhaired ghost girls of J-horror, once a series standby and now banished as cliché. Crawford foresees a further expansion of what that (admittedly disliked) name entails, looking toward what he refers to as "the vanguard of genre films."

"When it comes to film programming, I think that Philadelphia rewards mediocrity, and that bothers me. And that will continue to bother me," he says. "Coming back into Danger After Dark, I'm going to change it back to the way it originally was, more focused on art-house films and auteur films. I hate those classifications, but it's going to be a lot more Gaspar Noé than it will be Hideo Nakata."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)