French Customs Seize “Last Look” Headed to Cannes

May 14th, 2007 in Festivals, Movies, horror

It was headed to the Cannels Film Festival for its world premiere showing, but “Last Looks” was stopped by French Customs and may not see the light of day, at least not at Cannes. Officials have quarantined a 35mm print of the controversial film, which director Nick Browns labels a “a disguised act of censorship”. Brown believes that the public should have the chance to view the film for themselves before it is condemned.

The film apparently shows the actual deaths of actors and behind-the-camera crew members during the production of “The Evil Eye”, a low budget American indie horror flick that was filmed in the summer of 2006 among the Turkish and Greek Islands in the Mediterranean. The filming of this film was apparently plagued from the start. According to local newspapers, the crew, who was filming on a ship, docked July 3, 2006 at the port of Faliraki in order to seek medical help for one of the film’s actresses, Malaysian born Ying-Yu Tan. She later died of unnamed injuries. But that wasn’t the end of the deaths. Director Zack Freedman, cinematographer Scott Maher, and soundman Ryan Denmark (all of the US), were killed when their boat blew up during a staged explosion at see. This is when filming of the movie finally stopped. It was also reported that French actress Verane Pick was killed during the filming of a stunt scene involving a prop knife that turned out to be a real one.

Greek authorities investigated the incidents, and were quoted as saying that it was impossible to say just how many people had been killed or were missing. They believed that some of the dead may have been buried at sea, and the surviving production team refused to comply with authories and fled the country. They did, however, hold one person of interest in custody - the then 19-year-old videographer Nick Brown. Brown was said to have captured the events on his own camera.

Brown was not charged with any crimes, and was then released. Brown, a British citizen, returned to his home in New York City, where he edited the material into a feature-length movie called the “Last Looks”.

Nick Brown is reported to be flying to France in a last-ditch effort to resolve issues with the French authorities who have seized the film. They were apparently tipped off by relatives of the deceased in his film. Of the whole ordeal, Brown says: “One way or another this film will be shown at Cannes, and I predict that people will find, in spite of all the rumors swirling around, that it is a very entertaining movie.”

Will he be able to pull it off, or has “Last Looks” already gotten its last look? I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

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