Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

A short feature on the production of the promotional poster for Aaaaaaaah! by The Private Press.

A 6 colour screen printed poster for a brilliant new film called ‘Aaaaaaaah!, written and directed by Steve Oram, including a cast of Julian Barratt, Toyah Wilcox, Julian Rhind Tutt and Holli Dempsey. The poster prints onto Fenner Paper’s Bright Red Colorset 270gsm and the zip prints a shiny metallic silver.

The posters were printed to coincide with the film’s premiere in Leicester Square as part of Frightfest 2015. More information on the film can be found at both the Rook Films and Lincoln Studios sites.

• Continue reading at The Private Press. (Photo © The Private Press)

Steve Oram’s entertaining drama imagines a world populated by vile beasts who look like humans but behave like apes

The directorial debut of Sightseers star Steve Oram is a singular item of monkey business that imagines a world populated by vile beasts who look like humans, but think, act and converse like apes. Shot for peanuts (or bananas) around decidedly trusting souls’ flats, the result often resembles an actors’ body-language workshop run amok, but between the territory-marking and leg-humping – funny on some primal level – a narrative and wounded psychology does evolve.

• Continue reading at The Guardian.

Another short interview with Toyah from the Aaaaaaaah! premiere at FrightFest 2015 a couple of weeks ago. This one by Red Carpet News TV.

Onion Talking: Steve Oram Opens Wide & Says AAAAAAAAH!

With AAAAAAAAH!, are you trying to say something significant about modern society, or is the construct simply an idea that you liked?

It’s just something I found funny; I didn’t set out to make something that was a satire or a commentary. I just really enjoyed creating an intricate world, and creating the interactions and the characters – making them do silly, extreme things.

You’ve worked with many of the cast members multiple times before, but how did you decide on which new faces to bring on board, like Toyah and Julian Rhind-Tutt?

With Toyah, I loved her work in Jubilee and Quadrophenia – I’ve been a massive fan of hers for years. I was trying to cast a lady in her 50s who wouldn’t mind having to do embarrassing sex scenes and have blancmange thrown at her face. There’s not that many of them! I didn’t know her before, but I sent her the script and she loved it.

• Read the full interview at The Velvet Onion. Browse all of our Steve Oram news.

Another screening and Q&A – including Toyah – has been announced for Aaaaaaaah!

This one, following last month’s premiere/Q&A at FrightFest 2015 and last Friday’s screening/Q&A at Picture House Central, will take place at The Electric Cinema in, Toyah’s home city, Birmingham on Thursday 1st October. The Electric is located on Station Street.

Shock & Gore presents Aaaaaaaah! + Steve Oram & Toyah Willcox Q&A
Thursday 1st October, 8pm: Screen 2
Director: Steve Oram. Starring: Noel Fielding, Julian Barratt, Toyah Willcox
UK 2015, 79mins

• Further details at The Electric Cinema and The Official Toyah website. Browse all of Dreamscape’s Aaaaaaaah! news…

Quadrophenia: ITV4: Sunday 13th September: 11pm
Quadrophenia: ITV4: Tuesday 15th September: 11.35pm
The Who wrote and produced this energetic story of a young man disillusioned with his life in 1960s London. Phil Daniels excels as the alienated anti-hero Jimmy Cooper. Director: Franc Roddam. Starring: Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash, Toyah Willcox, Philip Davis, Mark Wingett, Sting, and Ray Winstone. Also airing on ITV4 HD and Plus 1.

There’s a busy weekend ahead – Tonight there is the Aaaaaaaah! screening + Cast Q&A at Picture House Central in Piccadilly, London. Tomorrow afternoon Toyah guests on Dermot O’Leary’s BBC Radio Two show, and on Sunday plays an Acoustic, Up Close & Personal gig at Cottingham Folk Festival (scheduled to be onstage at 3pm at The Civic Hall)

Toyah and, Aaaaaaaah!’s, Steve Oram at last night’s Gala Screening of Ricki and the Flash, which stars Meryl Streep. The screening took place at Ham Yard Hotel, London. (Photos © Getty Images)

A final couple of Aaaaaaaah! reviews. See a selection of the recent opinion pieces on the film here.

• Little White Lies: Aaaaaaaah! Review: Actor Steve Oram has decided to make a movie, and the results are spectacularly disturbing… Let’s not mince words: Steve Oram is a master filmmaker. He’ll be known to British audiences for his co-starring role in Ben Wheatley’s 2012 comedy-horror hybrid, Sightseers, in which he played one half of an oddball twosome traversing the English countryside and who take a hatchet to the skull of anything or anyone that doesn’t chime with their quaint Midlands sensibilities. Aaaaaaaah! is his debut feature film as writer and director, a transgressive situationist comedy which is also one of the great British films of the new millennium. Explaining why is not going to be easy – Continue reading…

• Methods Unsound: Best of Film4 FrightFest 2015: Most Balls Out Insane Film: So let’s get to the heart of the matter, horror is often about extremes both visually and thematically, what was the most fucked up thing on offer? Aaaaaaaah! directed by Sightseer’s Steve Oram… The bluntness of the bestial activities throughout would be depraved and shocking in any other film but here they push up against human norms creating situations that are just hilariously surreal, such as Toyah Wilcox having a heart to heart with her daughter in grunts as she takes a shit on the kitchen floor – Continue reading…

Premiere Scene’s Alice Alexander and Anthony Bueno interview Toyah Willcox, Julian Rhind-Tutt, and Lucy Honigman for Aaaaaaaah! Screening at Film 4 FrightFest 2015.

Due to demand 100 extra tickets have been released for Friday’s screening of Aaaaaaaah! at Picture House Central in London’s West End, and the film has also been moved to a larger screen.

Steve Oram’s insane debut film begins a residency at Picturehouse Central with this exclusive screening + Q&A with special guests.

Director: Steve Oram. Starring: Julian Rhind-Tutt, Noel Fielding, Toyah Willcox. UK 2015. 79 mins.

The scabrous bleak humour of Sightseers, which Steve Oram starred in and co-wrote, permeates his directorial debut. The film’s pointed social commentary reflects how modern manners are becoming little more than grunts and gestures – mostly selfish, often aggressive.

• Continue reading/Book tickets (if there are any remaining) at Picture House Central.

• The List: List Film: Aaaaaaaah!: FrightFest 2015: Steve Oram and co literally go ape in a hilarious black comedy – Following the magnificently deranged, award-winning Sightseers was always going to be a challenge for its co-screenwriter and star Steve Oram. Undaunted, his directorial debut takes the transgression up a notch by replacing traditional dialogue with primitive grunts and shrieks, as it reduces humans to their base impulses – food, fighting, sex – while retaining the familiar trappings of modern society (lascivious cookery programmes, wild parties and ludicrous computer games) – Continue reading…

• Empty Screens: Review: Aaaaaaaah! (2015): The committed and skilled cast – including Toyah Willcox and Alice Lowe – embrace the material with panache, making Aaaaaaaah! a tasty but acquired treat that never outstays its welcome – Continue reading…

• Vodzilla: FrightFest film review: Aaaaaaaah!: The superb cast fully commit to the conceit, delivering brilliantly physical performances. Oram is particularly good as the aggressive alpha, swaggering and sneering up a storm, while Meeten is very funny as his craven companion. Honigman is equally good as Denise and has surprisingly strong chemistry with Oram, while Wilcox is a treat as the capricious Barabara – a flashback showing Ryan wooing her over a broken washing machine is one of several comic highlights – Continue reading…

• The Ooh Tray: Monkey Business: Note: An ape translation of this review is available – Were it not for an ingenious comic conceit, Steve Oram’s highly original comic melodrama would be a familiar story. A man splits from his wife, meets a woman at a party, trapped in an unhappy relationship, and the two decided to make a run for it and get married, returning to the home and kicking out the ineffectual boyfriend. But in Aaaaaaaah!‘s universe, human language and instinct haven’t evolved beyond that of primates, and consequently you have an eccentric and often brutally honest comedy that lays bare the base instincts and absurd animal behaviour that fundamentally characterises human relationships – Continue reading…

• Screen Relish: #F4FF15 FrightFest: Aaaaaaaah! Review: Aah, the precarious position of the alpha male. Oh should I say AAAAAAAAH!? Because that is the delightfully appropriate title of Steve Oram’s feature directorial debut. An absurd horror comedy, the film offers no dialog at all – just grunts, as humans, devolved into ape mentality, go about their poop-throwing, territory marking, television smashing daily existence. It’s the kind of overly clever premise you expect to wear thin, but honestly, it doesn’t. Much credit goes to a game cast (including Oram) that sells every minute of the ridiculousness, and to Oram again as director. He keeps the pace quick, his images a flurry of insanity you need to see more than once to fully appreciate – Continue reading…

• I’m With Geek: Aaaaaaaah! – Review: Written and directed by Steve Oram (the genius writer behind Sightseers), Aaaaaaaah! is a movie not to be missed. If you like a little strange in your life then this film is absolutely for you. Premiering at Film4 Frightfest last night, some are steal wrapping their heads around the weird and wondering movie. The struggle here, is giving Aaaaaaaah! the review it deserves… – Continue reading…

A brilliant photo from last night, tweeted by Toyah this morning: “My first Premiere in Leicester Square was fabulous. Thank you to everyone at @Film4FrightFest“. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)

Browse a gallery of great photos, including a number of Toyah, from last night’s Aaaaaaaah! premiere at FrightFest 2015 at Contact Music. (Photos © Contact Music)

Screen talks to the British actor about his feature directorial debut, which receives its world premiere today [Aug 28] at Film4 FrightFest.

Set to be one of the most original films of this year’s Film4 FrightFest, Aaaaaaaah! is a twisted family drama with a difference: there is no dialogue, with all actors speaking in animalistic grunts and moans.

It marks the feature directorial debut of British actor Steve Oram who, along with Alice Lowe, wrote and starred in Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers.

Aaaaaaaah!, produced by Lincoln Studios, receives its world premiere today [Aug 28] and Oram believes FrightFest is the ideal place for the film to make its bow.

“FrightFest accepts and celebrates the weirdos, and we think we fit in quite well there,” enthuses Oram. “It’s the perfect showcase for us. It’s totally un-snooty and just about people who love strange films and horror films. It’s a big opportunity to show it to the people, which is all I care about really.”

• Continue reading at Screen Daily.

Dir/Scr. Steve Oram. UK, 2015, 79 mins.

In its enthusiasm for poo-flinging, food-fights, penis-chewing, cannibalism, tea-bagging and sudden stabbings, the film sets out to shock in a particularly cosy way

Inhabiting a waste ground somewhere between radical theatre and slob comedy, Steve Oram’s debut as a writer-director-star – following up his writer-actor work on Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers – is liable to corner a small but devoted cult following. It’s at least as interested in gross-out gags that out-gross the average Hollywood frat-boy film as it is in delivering a skewed yet pointed look at a suburban Britain where everyone communicates in grunts and gestures the way cavemen and women do in Hammer Fillms’ well-remembered prehistoric adventure films (One Million Years BC, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth).

AAAAAAAAH!’s specific precedents might include such one-offs as Richard Lester’s post-apocalyptic The Bed-Sitting Room, Akira Kurosawa’s rubbish-strewn Dodes’ka-den or Claude Faraldo’s Parisian troglodyte drama Themroc, but it’s fresh, distinctive and strange enough on its own and tight enough at 79 minutes not to outwear its welcome.

• Continue reading at Screen Daily.

Film4 FrightFest tweeted this great photo from last night’s premiere: Aaaaaaaah! Cast and crew go Ape on the media wall. (Photo © Film4 FrightFest)

• Cine Vue: Steve Oram’s directorial debut, Aaaaaaaah! (2015), comes on like a collaboration between Dogme ’95 and Chris Morris. It’s hard to think of another film closely like it in British cinema. It really is that out-there and singular. You can bet your bottom dollar on Aaaaaaaah! becoming a cult oddity in years to come, but it’s equally fair to say that the general cinema-going audience would be left nonplussed. It’s an experimental work for the arthouse crowd, certainly, but it’s also one of the funniest and most poignant movies of the year – Continue reading…

• Nerdly: Aaaaaaaah! is a film that defies easy categorisation, not to mention pronunciation. It is set in a fictionalised London that looks and operates much like the one we know – except all of its inhabitants communicate purely through animalistic grunting, whooping and mewling. Everyone understands each other (more or less) within the film but the audience is left to figure out the subtext through the actors’ onscreen actions, most of which are violent or hyper-masculine in nature – Continue reading…

• The Velvet Onion: One of the things that distinguishes the artists that we write about at The Velvet Onion is their ability to think differently and to make waves in a sea of entertainment mediocrity. At their best, they conjure up ideas and dream of worlds so creatively vibrant that they force us, the audience, into a different headspace ourselves. In this respect, Steve Oram‘s AAAAAAAAH! (always written with eight ‘A’s) totally nails it – Continue reading…

• Flickering Myth: Aaaaaaaah! is a bizarre choice for a directorial debut, but I can guarantee, hand on heart, you have never seen a film like this in your life. And more likely, you never will either. Due to its incredibly bonkers nature, Aaaaaaaah! is destined to become a cult classic in the same vein as Pink Flamingos, but it won’t appease anyone. It will be very interesting to see the reaction to the movie coming off the back of its debut at FrightFest, that’s for damn sure – Continue reading…

• Movie Ramblings: Once part of the psychopathic duo in Sightseers (Ben Wheatley, 2012), Steve Oram makes his directorial debut with the barmy concept that is AAAAAAAAH! Presented as “Romero and Juliet meets Planet of the Apes”, the bizarre narrative sees 80s queen Toyah Willcox star along side Boosh boys Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt, with Green Wing’s Julian Rhind-Tutt – Continue reading…

Human beings have the same violent tribal urges as wild apes in this surreal horror comedy, the directing debut of British actor and screenwriter Steve Oram.

An outlandish blend of wacko sci-fi horror and grotesque comedy, this low-budget British oddity will divide critics, but it should pick up a devoted following among fans of macabre, surreal, cheerfully disgusting cult cinema. The feature-directing debut of its writer and co-star Steve Oram, AAAAAAAAH! takes place in a contemporary London where humans behave like wild apes, speaking only in simian grunts as they masturbate, defecate, urinate, copulate and engage in deadly tribal rivalries. Vulgar and violent and intermittently hilarious, Oram’s uncompromising experiment in arty trash has its world premiere this weekend as part of Frightfest in London.

• Continue reading at The Hollywood Reporter.

As well as Aaaaaaaah!, 3 Sides Of The Coin, Kaleidoscope Man and Extremis – Toyah is also about to begin work on a fifth new film, Lies We Tell.

Byrneholics reported yesterday: Lies We Tell is in pre-production in the UK, with a release expected in 2016. Director Santosh Sivan tweeted on August 23 that he is headed to West Yorkshire, UK to begin filming.

A trusted driver must deal with his dead employer’s British-Pakistani mistress, her dark past pulling him into a quest to save her 16 year-old sister from a forced marriage to their gangster cousin.

Director: Santosh Sivan, Writers: Ewen Glass (screenplay), Andy McDermott (screenplay), Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Reece Ritchie, Toyah Willcox.

• View further info at the film’s imdb entry.