FrightFest's Jones slams Araki over 'Kaboom'

Film4 FrightFest organiser Alan Jones has blasted director Gregg Araki for withdrawing his movie Kaboom from the festival.

Araki's apocalyptic teen drama, which screened at Cannes earlier this year, was confirmed for the 2010 horror event last month. However, in a posting on the FrightFest website, Jones said that the US filmmaker chose to pull Kaboom from screening because he didn't want to show it to "a bunch of geeks".

Jones wrote: "Can you imagine our surprise then when we were told that Araki wanted Kaboom pulled from our lineup because he didn’t want it being seen by a ‘bunch of geeks’, his alleged words.

"The first thought that crossed our minds was, how come he’s taken this long to tell us when we’ve been publicising the programme for a month now and every major website has carried the news. The second thought was what sort of film does he think he’s actually made. The third was so much for the pleas of tolerance and acceptance he advocates in his movies. The fourth was, Wow has he got the FrightFest audience wrong. The fifth was, F**k him, we don’t need his movie if that’s his blinkered attitude."

Brett Anstey’s Damned By Dawn will replace Kaboom at the festival, which runs from August 26 to 30 and is showing movies such as I Spit On Your Grave, Serbian Film, Hatchet II and The Last Exorcism.