The Seasoning House and Cockneys vs Zombies open Film4’s FrightFest the 13th
The Fan Carpet were lucky enough to be in attendance on the opening night of Film4’s Fright Fest.
The annual horror festival is in its 13th year and opening the festival this year was Paul Hyett’s The Seasoning House where Sean Pertwee, Anna Walton, Jemma Powell, Kevin Howarth and rising star Rosie Day were in attendance.
The Seasoning House was followed by Matthias Hoene’s Cockneys vs Zombies where Michelle Ryan, Harry Treadaway, Rasmus Hardiker, Jack Doolan, Ashley Bashy Thomas and acting legends Dudley Sutton and Alan Ford in attendance.
Our presenter Stefan Pape was there to speak to the stars and first up was Anna Walton who told us about The Seasoning House where she plays Violeta “It’s the story about a girl who gets her revenge, she’s taken into The Seasoning House, I play her mother and we need to show the life that she’s come from – a happy life, a hard life with a loving family – and what she’s taken in to and her strength and will to get out of it.”
When asking director Paul Hyett about the film, he said “Well owing to the fact that this is real and people go through this, I didn’t want to do it in an exploitive way, I wanted to stay faithful to the reality of the situation, so I wanted people to see it and to understand what was going on. I did a lot of research and it seemed like the ideal film to make.”
Kevin Howarth who plays the villainous Viktor commented “As actors, when someone comes to you with a role, you look into it – good bad or indifferent – whatever’s wrong psychologically or physically, it’s our job to portray these people, it’s what we do, so it’s not as hard a decision as you think, as long as the script is great – which is was, then you just think this’ll work, it’ll be great.”
Speaking of her experience and if she wants to do more films, Rosie Day who takes on the role of Angel gushed “I would love it if it was film, acting is my favourite thing in the world, even if its theatre, tele, doing this film was an amazing experience.”
When asked about his involvement in the horror genre, Sean Pertwee revealed “I love it, and friends of mine have excelled in it and im honoured to have been a part of it.”
When asked about the future for director Paul Hyett, Jemma Powell who plays Alexa said “I think he’s very talented, and I think everyone around him knows how talented he is, so I think he has a very sparkly, bright future.”
Speaking to Matthias Hoene about his excitement to be at Fright Fest he said “I’m absolutely excited to be bringing Cockneys vs. Zombies to the Fright Fest audience, it’s a film I made for the fans, it’s my inner fan expressed in every which way I could you know. I made Cockneys vs. Zombies as my dream project for having heists, gangsters, zombies, girls with guns, pensioners with guns, everything I wanted to see in a movie is in there.”
Veteran actor Dudley Sutton who plays Eric shared “I just loved the script, I loved the dialog, especially Alan’s, it’s lovely, it’s full of fun, it had some life to it, when you get to my age in the business, you have to fight, but when there’s pensioners in the business with something to do, it’s great.”
When asked if he was happy to be at FrightFest, Rasmus Hardiker said “I am thrilled to be here for many, many reasons, the movie, the cast, I was ust saying that this genre is so popular and hopefully we’ve brought something different – funny, scary, guns, Honor Blackman, Alan Ford – it’s great man.”
When asked why he got involved, Harry Treadaway who portrays Andy revealed “I read the script, thought ‘wow that’s loads of fun, and different from other stuff that I’ve done before, great cast’ but yeah loads of fun.”
Alan Ford who plays Ray was thrilled to be at FrightFest but “more thrilled to be in it! I’ve got a lovely part in a lovely film, I read the script and thought this could be rolling off my tongue, these lines are so good! And when I met the writer, he said he wrote it with me in mind, so the business doesn’t get any better than that does it?”
Speaking about his character of Metal Mickey, Ashley ‘Bashey’ Thomas said that the director was encouraging him to be as crazy as he could explaining “He was like more, more, Ashley I love it, more. He ramped it up, then I ramped it up, then he did, then I did.”
Speaking about her love of the cast, national treasure Michelle Ryan who portrays Katy revealed “I loved that everyone was so individual, these actors aren’t who you’d necessarily see in an action movie, but there’s a real heart and charisma to each character I think. And you have the younger actors and the older actors, so there’s a real mix from both perspectives.”
Jack Doolan shared his thoughts on the script and revealed “I was sent the script about two years ago and I though this will either be fantastic or bloody awful. was persuaded by a friend to read it, and I loved it, I loved it, it was just the most bonkers and mental script I had read but it had a lot of heart, then I read for Davey a couple of times with Matthias and luckily he offered me the part and I jumped at the chance.
I thought ‘what better way is there to spend six weeks of my life, running around the docklands, armed to the teeth dispatching zombies with a group of really talented people like Ashley and Rasmas who’s great and Harry Treadaway who’s a great actor, and to top it off we have the old guard of Richard Briars, Honor Blackman, Dudley Sutton and Alan Ford who are all fantastic actors!
The thought of doing that for six weeks was a no brainer!”
Sharing her weapon of choice when asked if she liked using guns, Michelle Ryan added “No actually I prefer the Samurai Sword, I’m more comfortable with doing Krag Magraw which is a martial art with a sword, I find guns are too heavy.”
Cockneys vs Zombies Film Page | Cockneys vs Zombies Review
COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES IS OUT ON AUGUST 31