The Horror Channel: Cruel Britania Season

• 8th Mar 2011

The Horror Channel celebrates the best of contemporary British horror with a special season of UK TV premieres which showcases some of the finest home-grown directorial talent around.

Kick-starting the season on Friday 8^th April is the UK TV premiere of Steven Sheil’s debut feature MUM & DAD  – a film described as “one of the defining British horrors of its generation”. Imbued with a terrifying ferocity, it centres around a young Polish immigrant (Holby City’s Olga Fedori) who finds herself imprisoned in a suburban House of Horrors. It also stars Perry Benson (This Is England, Somers Town).

Sheil reflects: “The key to the horror lies in the perversion of parenthood: taking something quite normal and giving it a nasty twist.”

This is followed by the UK TV premiere of Gerard Johnson’s debut, the dark, brutal and bleakly amusing TONY: LONDON SERIAL KILLER, transmitting on Friday 15 April. It has drawn favourable comparisons to John McNaughton’s seminal Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and features a star-making lead performance from Peter Ferdinando – probably the most alarming cinematic anti-hero since Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle.

Johnson explains: “I want the film to lodge in the mind and shake the viewer a bit. We can all meet somebody like Tony.  The fact that he is a real human being is probably the most frightening aspect. He is not some exaggerated killer with a hockey mask”.

Next up is the UK TV premiere of SALVAGE, directed by Lawrence Gough, which screens on Friday 22^nd April. Starring Neve McIntosh and Shaun Dooley, this “instant British horror classic” focuses on the residents of a quiet English cul-de-sac who are suddenly plunged into a world of violence and paranoia when a special military unit arrives.  The threat is more monstrous than any of them could ever imagine…

Gough says: “I find horror a fascinating subject to explore. For me, the key to it is to look at human beings and discover what they can potentially do to each other. The horrific consequences of this fuelled the core idea for Salvage”..

Finally, there is the UK TV premiere of Simon Rumley’s critically-acclaimed THE LIVING AND THE DEAD, which screens on Friday 29^th April. Starring Roger Lloyd Pack, Kate Fahy and Leo Bill, the film is a truly nightmarish experience as we watch an aristocratic, impoverished and reclusive family descend into madness and self-destruction.

As Simon comments: “The emotional context of the film is a truly horrific one and because of this I was also keen to make the film a truly disturbing experience, the reality of which I wouldn’t wish on anyone”.

Each movie is accompanied by a filmed intro with the directors and the season is promoted on-air with some specially shot sequences presented by femme fatale Emily Booth.