MONSTERS, MAYHEM AND THE PURSUIT OF FISH-BASED SUBSTANCES
April 1, 2011 
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Albert Birney and Jon Moses’ monochromatic stop-motion feature is a sight to behold: peopled by fantastical creatures and inspired by dreams that made their way into the film’s whimsical plot, The Beast Pageant tells the story of Abraham, a young man who is about to best discount cialis experience an existential awakening.
Abraham’s cramped apartment is one of the film’s many hand-made sets, where he sits in a single chair before an elaborate contraption designed to give him everything he needs to get by in life. With a series of tubes and wires framing a TV screen that plays animated commercials for fake products (many made out of or related to fish) the machine tries to placate Abraham into forgetting that his life is dismal and lonely.
One day a tiny singing cowboy grows out of his abdomen – sort of like a musical counterpart to Bruce Robinson’s How to Get Ahead in Advertising or Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage – and leads Abraham on a journey through the wonders of nature, which prompts a series of spontaneous musical interludes where various mythical forest creatures strut their stuff to Moses’ original tunes. Full of monsters and maidens of all shapes and sizes, beastly costumes galore, and a clear lust for chaos, The Beast Pageant is truly inspired indie filmmaking with a wackiness that recalls the utopian mockumentaries of Jim Finn (Interkosmos) or the shorts of Winnipeg stop-motion weirdo Mike Maryniuk (Cattle Call, Fish Arms).
Shot in and around Rochester, New York and produced in part with audience-funding through the online Kickstarter program, the film was shot on a 16mm Bolex rescued from a dumpster – a fitting beginning for a film as crafty and budget-defying as The Beast Pageant.
Read more about the film and stay tuned for a screening near you on the official website HERE.
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– Kier-La Janisse
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About the author:
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024), House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books viagra now including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), buy discount cialis and produced the acclaimed blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023).
