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Director: Charlie Steeds. Writer: Christopher Lombard. Cast: Kate Davies-Speak, Mark McKirdy, Natalie Martins, Makenna Guyler, Matt Swales and Kane Surry. Barge People is the third film from United Kingdom director Charlie Steeds (Escape from Cannibal Farm). Another Dark Temple Motion Pictures production, this feature was completed in 2018 and released later that year, in London. Finally in North America, this indie horror title delivers a decent synth' soundtrack to a boat trip, gone very wrong. Meanwhile, writer Christopher Lombard knows his horror well and brings in elements of Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) here, with a cannibal family stalk-and-chase. The make-up effects are spot-on, while the initial set-up is a bit slow. This viewer liked Barge People more on the second playthrough, with the film offering a bloody good time along a deadly canal. Sam Benjafield's music consistently gels well with the film. The soundtrack moves from softer melodies,...

Rlje Films, a business unit of AMC Networks, will release the horror film The Barge People on August 18th, 2020 on VOD, Digital HD, DVD and Blu-ray. Written by Christopher Lombard (The Writer) and directed by Charlie Steeds (Deadman Apocalypse), the film stars Kate Davies-Speak (Off Grid), Mark McKirdy (Electric Man), Makenna Guyler (King of Crime), and newcomer Matt Swales. Rlje Films will […] More...

Rlje Films, a business unit of AMC Networks, will release the horror film The Barge People on August 18th, 2020 on VOD, Digital HD, DVD, and Blu-ray. Written by Christopher Lombard (The Writer) and directed by Charlie Steeds (Deadman Apocalypse), the film stars Kate Davies-Speak (Off Grid), Mark McKirdy (Electric Man), Makenna Guyler (King of Crime), and newcomer Matt Swales. Check out […] More...

Amazonian lagoons, Chicago sewer systems, Korean rivers, and the open ocean: all have been beset by submarine monsters with a hankering for human flesh. But until retro-styled man-fish-freakout The Barge People, Britain’s canals had yet to be given the genre treatment.

Directed by Charlie Steeds and penned by Christopher Lombard, this is a fish-out-of-water story in more ways than one. We follow sisters Kat (Kate Davies-Speak) and Sophie (Natalie Martins) and their respective partners Mark (Mark McKirdy) and Ben (Matt Swales), four well-to-do thirty-something city dwellers who hire a barge and set sail down the Kennet and Avon Canal in search of respite from modern-day distractions only to fall foul of a few of the area’s less hospitable denizens.

Britain’s waterways, rendered here in gorgeous golds and greens by cinematographer Michael Lloyd, are a fertile setting for fear and loathing. The narrowboat locale isolates the characters threefold—in a confined environment,...

Stars: Kate Davies-Speak, Mark McKirdy, Makenna Guyler, Natalie Martins, Matt Swales, Kane Surry, Emma Spurgin Hussey, Tim Cartwright, Carl Andersson, David Lenik, Barrington De La Roche, Sam Lane, Harrison Nash | Written by Christopher Lombard | Directed by Charlie Steeds

Sisters Kat and Sophie, and their boyfriends Mark and Ben, are looking forward to a relaxing weekend cruising through the glorious British countryside canals on a luxury barge. Tension arises when businessman Ben refuses to turn off his mobile and fully enter the party spirit and stress is raised further when they damage another barge and its tenants track them down to the local pub. But nothing has prepared them for the intense midnight attack on their vessel by a family of flesh-eating fish mutants who have been lurking in the dark waters, waiting for their next meal.

Much like his 2017 film Escape From Cannibal Farm, Charlie Steeds’ The Barge People is...

Horror described as The Hills Have Eyes meets H.P. Lovecraft.

Toronto-based Raven Banner has boarded worldwide sales rights on the cannibal creature feature The Barge People and will launch sales in Cannes next week.

Charlie Steeds’ horror takes place in the British countryside canal system as two couples head off for a relaxing weekend. Unbeknown to the tourists, they are in the province of flesh-eating fish mutants that lurk below, awaiting their prey.

Christopher Lombard wrote the screenplay to The Barge People, which is described as The Hills Have Eyes meets H.P. Lovecraft.

The cast features Kate Davies-Speak,...

Tagline: "No One Escapes." The Barge People is the latest film from production house Dark Temple Motion Pictures. Also developed by director Charlie Steeds (Escape from Cannibal Farm, 2017), this is the third film from Dark Temple. Their latest involves a trip on a canal. In the water, flesh-eating creatures lurk just out of sight. This British film is still in post-production. It is expected to release in late 2018, or early 2019. As well, the film stars: Kate Davies-Speak (Deadman Apocalypse, 2015), Mark McKirdy, and Makenna Guyler. The film's first trailer is hosted here, along with the film's official poster. The long form synopsis mentions a boat crash. Two sisters and their boyfriends run into a canal dwelling family. Unhappy with the results of the conflict, this family breaks into their boat, at night. They torture everyone aboard, with mutant fishmen joining the fray. The trailer is a good one. It shows some...

Electric Man

Written by Scott Mackay and David Barras

Directed by David Barras

Scotland, 2011

The opening credits sequence of Electric Man is structured as an animated comic, with panel shifts and camera manipulations aimed to recreate and enliven the experience of reading a comic. It’s a fun, kinetic sequence that actually seems to display some of the excitement of reading a comic. Unfortunately, it is one of the few moments in a film ostensibly populated with lifelong comic-book obsessives that feels even slightly enamored with the graphic medium. Electric Man often seems written from boilerplate, like someone took a Mad Lib of screenwriting clichés and mistakenly put it into production. The film is increasingly frustrating to watch, as missteps become missed opportunities and bad moves become bad habits.

The story is so standard, it’s rote at this point: Jazz (Toby Manley) and Wolf (Mark McKirdy) co-own a comic...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Over the past couple of decades from Sex, Lies & Videotapes and El Mariachi until now (via The Blair Witch Project) it has become increasingly more practical for film industry outsiders working on relatively tiny budgets to make what might be considered ‘professional’ movies. What many of these attempts demonstrate, however, is that while HD cameras can be purchased fairly cheaply on Amazon, talent cannot. Part of the pleasure of Electric Man is that, while imperfect, there is clearly a great deal of talent bubbling under the surface.

The film’s writer, Scott MacKay, and director, David Barras, are originally from Armadale, West Lothian. The film received an enthusiastic response on its premiere, at the Glasgow Film Festival, and screened to an equally enthused crowd last week at Bathgate’s Regal Theatre – once the cinema where MacKay and Barras received their early film education. They are of...