Screamfest 2005 Winners
The Screamfest L.A. Horror Film Festival has posted a list of the winners of its 2005 awards on its website:
- Audience Choice Award: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
- Best Picture: Cookers (producer Jeff Ritchie)
- Best Director: Dan Mintz (Cookers)
- Best Actor: Brad Hunt (Cookers)
- Best Actress: Cyia Batten (Cookers)
- Best Cinematography: Christopher Duddy (Cabiniet of Dr. Caligari)
- Best Editing: Fransico Javier Guitierrez (Brasil)
- Best Musical Score: Jesse Lucas (Sigaw, a.k.a. “Echo”)
- Best Special Effects: David Lee Fisher, Josiah Holmes, Barbara K. Hintz (Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)
- Best Makeup: Kyla Rose Tremblay (Severed)
- Best Horror Short: Staring at the Sun (director: Toby Wilkins)
- Best Student Horror: Dead West (director: Eli Sasich)
- Best Animated Horror Short: Little Dead Girl (director: Lee Lanier)
- Best Comedy Horror Short: Zombie Movie (directors: Michael J. Asquith & Ben Stenbeck)
- Best Screenplay: NIghtfall (by Paul J. Da Silva)
- 2005 Career Achievement Award: Sean S. Cunningham.
With four awards to its credit, the big winner appears to have been COOKERS, which is about two outlaw drug addicts who steal a van-load of chemicals and break into a farm house hoping to cook up a batch of speed — until they are interrupted by strange and terrifying visions, which may or may not be drug-induced hallucinations.
Will success at Screamfest translate into a successful U.S. theatrical release? That remains to be seen. From last year’s festival, only one film got any noticable theatrical release: DARKNESS. But that film had the advantage of several established names in its cast: Anna Paquin, Giancarlo Giannini, and Lena Olin. Without that advantage, we’ll have to wait and see whether the Screamfest awards, on their own, are enough to boost COOKERS’ profile to the point where it gets picked up for a significant domestic release.
