What Happens After Midnight in Toronto...

September 11, 2012, 2:27 pm

By MEKADO MURPHY

TORONTO - “Would you like to see a movie with lots of naked witches worshiping goats?” asked the musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie, as he introduced his latest movie, “The Lords of Salem.” last night. For the amped-up audience at that midnight screening, there was only one answer to that question.
Carnage, mayhem and rowdy crowds are the order of the evening during the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program. Those willing to stay up until the wee hours will have the pleasure (or displeasure) of seeing a stream of blood-soaked genre films unspool each night of the fest.

All of these screenings take place at the Ryerson Theater, a capacious venue (more than 1200 seats) on the campus of Ryerson University. The crowds skew young, but always eager. And their makeup shifts in different ways, depending on the film. “Lords of Salem” drew a more tattooed, metal-tinged audience, while “Seven Psychopaths,” the star-driven genre-hopping Martin McDonagh comedy/thriller, had a diverse audience, from those who loved Mr. McDonagh's previous film, “In Bruges,” to those just interested in some psychopathic debauchery. This program is likely the only at the festival where ambitious killing scenes elicit strong cheers from the audience.

The evenings are emceed by Colin Geddes, the fearless programmer of the section whose enthusiasm onstage before screenings is exceeded only by his taste for the outrageous. And the crowds seem ready to take most any of the craziness he has procured, whether it be scenes where a character uses a corpse as a hiding place (the on-the-nose titled “No One Lives”) or slo-mo-action blood-splattering (“Dredd 3D”). The craziness continues through the weekend, where the festival will screen the chaotic horror anthology “The ABCs of Death” and close out, appropriately, with a film called “John Dies at the End.”