Dreamscape – Toyah Willcox Fansite

British distributors Icon Home Entertainment have announced that they will release on Blu-ray Steve Oram’s thriller Aaaaaaaah! (2015), starring Julian Barratt, Holli Dempsey, Noel Fielding, and Lucy Honigman. The release will be available for purchase on January 11.

Steve Oram, known for hit Brit thrillers Sightseers and Kill List, stars in his long-awaited directorial debut feature with a host of famous names. Get ready for the most unusual celluloid primal scream – an anarchic, hilarious, disturbing and touching look at the human condition. The film was recently nominated for the Discovery Award at the British Independent Film Awards.

Special Features:
– Carolla Cooks – Carolla Cooks is a 10 min version of the cooking show you see at the beginning of the film with Shelley Longworth
– PUB! – Pub is the full 5 min version of the sitcom that the characters are watching at the end of the film. Stars Tony Way and Alice Lowe
– The Cast Speaks
– Audio commentary with Steve Oram

• Continue reading at Blu-ray.com.

Aaaaaaaah! is screened tonight at the 38th Denver Film Festival.

Aaaaaaaah!: Friday, November 6 at 11:30pm: In British actor/director Steve Oram’s debut, Aaaaaaaah!, humans have the same urges as wild apes, but set in a quiet suburban London neighborhood. Vulgar, violent, and at times funny, this genre-defying film is a simultaneously endearing and upsetting commentary on devolution.

Realm of Horror: Steve Oram’s “Aaaaaaaah”! nominated for BIFA: I caught this one at the Mayhem film festival earlier this year and can say, it’s certainly one of the weirdest films I’ve seen this year – Continue reading…

Aaaaaaaah! has been nominated for “The Discovery Award” in the forthcoming Moët British Independent Film Awards, which will be held next month. The nominations were announced yesterday by Gemma Chan and Thomas Brodie Sangster.

Aaaaaaaah! is up against Burn Burn Burn, Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, The Return and Winter in “The Discovery Award” category which is sponsored by Raindance.

The winners will be announced at The Moët British Independent Film Awards on Sunday 6th December at Old Billingsgate. The event will be live streamed on www.bifa.film.

Toyah was interviewed earlier this month, in Metro‘s “60 Seconds With”, discussing Aaaaaaaah! and more.

The actress and singer, 57, is starring in a dark British comedy where all the characters act like wild apes.

Your new film, Aaaaaaaah!, is brilliantly bonkers. Why did you say yes to a movie about humans behaving like apes?
It was a clever. well structured, brilliant script with absolutely no respect for anything. It was fabulously complex and incredibly rewarding to do. But I never thought, ‘What the hell have I got myself into?’ because it was a team of really great comedians (including Julian Rhind-Tutt and Julian Barrett) and so they had licence to do something as mad as this.

How do you describe it to your friends?
The first thing I say is, ‘Don’t go and see it!’ I’m 57, so my friends aren’t that much older than me. I said, ‘If you can’t handle vomit, poo, semen, gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence, this isn’t for you,’ and they say, ‘Oh God we’ve got to see this film!’

What was the maddest scene?
It was a kitchen scene. I cook for my husband (musician Robert Fripp) three times a day and so to do the cooking scene was very natural. But to do it where there are no social norms and no hygiene is a very different thing. To do a cookery scene while watching telly with one of the most brilliant interpretations of food porn I’ve ever seen and then to take a crap in the corner – I just thought it was utter genius… Read more…

• Diana Remembered: October 27th 1986 ~ Princess Diana meets singer Toyah Willcox, at Women Of The Year Lunch, Savoy Hotel – View photos at Twitter / Watch Toyah’s speech from the lunch at You Tube…

• Veronica: A rare Toyah feature in a 1982 issue of Dutch magazine Veronica – View at ebay…

• Saturday Superstore: Toyah, looking beautiful, performs The Vow in 1983 – Saturday morning TV used to be unbelievably good – Watch at You Tube…

• Kurious Planet: Kaleidoscope Man: Being camera assistant on Kaleidoscope Man was an amazing experience. Not only did I get to work with some very talented cast and crew including Gordon Hickie, cameraman for the BBC’s Holby City and Toyah Willcox, legendary singer and actress – Continue reading…

• Byronesque Vintage: Epic. Toyah Willcox in Issey Miyake, 1980s – View at Instagram…

• Official Instagram: A fantastic retro Prostitute t-shirt… Toyah and some zombies (from the forthcoming Doctors episode)… Toyah and a huge tennis ball in Bridgwater…

• The Lost Highway Hotel: Review: Aaaaaaaah!: Like it or not (and many will quite understandably hate it), this is one of the most audacious films of the year. It’s detractors will call it over-indulgent nonsense of the worst kind, but they’ll be missing how, regardless of its ugliness and supposed flippancy, perseverance yields results. Somehow, amid what seems like nonsense, Oram conjures emotional investment. The film’s finale is quietly devastating – Continue reading…

• Dear Mr Kershaw – A Pensioner Writes: The Letters of Wilf Turnbull and Derek Philpott, which included a letter to Toyah about I Want To Be Free, are now published as a book – More info/Buy it here…

Steve Oram on AAAAAAAAH!, monkey business and Battenberg

We talk to Steve Oram about his mad monkey movie Aaaaaaaah!

You’ve not seen anything quite like Steve Oram’s dark comedy Aaaaaaaah! Set in a dystopian world where everyone behaves like apes (complete with grunting, there’s no dialogue), it’s a viciously funny and totally odd piece of work that’s been building excellent word of mouth since its debut at FrightFest.

The film has been going round a few festivals, how have you found the reaction so far?
We’ve had various screenings all around the country, we had a little tour with Picturehouse Cinemas, so we’ve been going round with them and it’s been brilliant. We’ve been doing Q & As at most of these places and I’ve been blown away by the response, it seems people like no-dialogue films these days! FrightFest was a really good start for us, it was amazing. It really seems to be growing, which is great. We had a really good screening at Mayhem in Nottingham on Sunday, which went really well. Really great crowd there, very pleased.

Did you have actors in mind?
I did, I wrote most of the parts for the actors that ended up playing them. They’re gathered from the comedy world and most of them are good friends of mine, Tom Meeten who plays my beta male in it and Julian [Barratt] and Noel [Fielding] and Julian Rhind-Tutt, Holly Dempsey, they’re all really good friends, but Toyah [Willcox] was the one I didn’t know. I just sent her a script because I was a huge fan of her in Jubilee and Quadrophenia, her early work I think is just incredible. And she loved it and fit right in with all my mental friends! Which was really great, a really happy coincidence.

• Continue reading at SciFiNow.

Actor & Comedian Steve Oram In Leeds to Hold Special Late Night Screening of His Debut Film, Aaaaaaaah!

Comedian, actor & writer Steve Oram is bringing his new debut feature film to the Hyde Park Picture House this Saturday, where it will show at a special late night screening, alongside a Q&A with the director. The film, entitled AAAAAAAAH! , is a hilarious, anarchic and touching look at the human condition, and stars many of Oram’s comedy contemporaries including Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding, Alice Lowe and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Aaaaaaaah! plus live Q&A with director Steve Oram is at the Hyde Park Picture House on Saturday 24th October at 11pm.

• Continue reading at North Leeds Life.

Aaaaaaaah! is available to download now, from all the usual online digital stores. Comedy set in a primate-like society, a roaming alpha male comes into a town, along with his beta friend, where he finds a feud happening in the local community. He decides to challenge the dominant male there in a bid to take over the tribe and restore order to the area. Click below to buy or rent, in SD or HD, from Amazon.

• Beyond The Joke: Film Review – Aaaaaaaah!: One thing is certain. You won’t see another film like Aaaaaaaah! this year. Or, probably, any year. And not just because Steve Oram’s directorial debut has no dialogue except for ape-like grunts, but also because it features Toyah Willcox having a shit in a kitchen and Noel Fielding getting his knob gobbled in a seedy cameo – Continue reading…

• Bloodguts: Aaaaaaaah!: Ever wondered what would happen if our evolution stopped part way through? What if we became the appearance of what we become with the mentality and attitude of the apes that came before us? Wonder no more as the premise behind ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ is just that… The performances of the cast are next to brilliant and watching Toyah Willcox slam a steak across a wall in imitation to something she has seen is a true reflection of how influential Oram is as a creative. If you can get the stars of The Mighty Boosh, Toyah Willcox and Tony Way to play a complete film with no sound except that of a monkey and mimic their actions in a way that becomes believable, then Steve Oram, you have our attention – Continue reading…

• Pissed Off Geek: ‘Aaaaaaaah!’ Review: There are some movies that are brave and they present something to the audience that is truly different. Aaaaaaaah! is a film that may be hard to acclimatise yourself to and will be outside of your comfort zone, but once it grabs you it won’t let go – Continue reading…

• Close-Up Film: Aaaaaaaah! Close-Up Film Review: Can you imagine what a Mike Leigh film would look like if the actors based all their lines/noises, behaviour and interactions on several hours of Richard Attenborough narrated Ape documentaries? If you can then you will have pictured something close to Steve Oram’s disquieting directorial debut Aaaaaaaah! – Continue reading…

• Electric Sheep: Aaaaaaaah!: Also caught in the adventure is Julian Rhind-Tutt playing an alpha male scoffing in front of a brand new plasma screen and playing video games; Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding from the surrealistic The Mighty Boosh; and Toyah Willcox, who played Miranda in Derek Jarman’s Tempest (1979) but also, prophetically, Monkey in Quadrophenia (1979), and who plays the leading female part. With Willcox came Robert Fripp, who happens to be her husband and who improvised a bewitching music that advantageously compensates the total absence of articulate dialogue. (And make sure you stay for the final credits if you are a King Crimson fan.) – Continue reading…

• The Guardian/Guide: Charlie Lyne’s Home Entertainment – Aaaaaaaah!: Frightfest Presents, VOD: Even as physical media starts to look like a relic from a less enlightened age, the internal hierarchy of home video lives on, decreeing that real films come out on Blu-ray – Continue reading… (Thanks to Lärwi for the scan)

• The List: 10 Best New Horror DVDs for Hallowe’en: 5. Aaaaaaaah! (Icon) Aaaaaaaah! is the pick of the new FrightFest Presents imprint (other titles include Some Kind of Hate, Estranged and Night of the Living Deb). The directorial debut of actor Steve Oram (Sightseers) verges on the experimental with a society that hasn’t developed language but communicates via grunts, hoots and gestures. Imagine chimpanzees in a domestic urban setting (anyone who has read Will Self’s masterpiece Great Apes will recognise the concept) as they fight, squabble and rut. Deeply weird but strangely brilliant – Continue reading…

• Westword: Denver Film Festival Announces First Wave of Programming and Early-Bird Discounts: LATE NIGHT – Aaaaaaaah! / UK (Steve Oram): Humans live like wild apes in the midst of a present-day London neighborhood — grunting, fornicating and fighting to kill — in this exuberantly low-budget mash-up of horror, comedy, cult sci-fi, and commentary on social devolution from co-star, screenwriter and first-time director Steve Oram – Continue reading…

• EW: Denver Film Festival to screen Gaspar Noé’s Love, action movie Camino, and Aaaaaaaah!: The Gaspar Noé-directed 3D erotic drama Love, the Zoë Bell-starring action-thriller movie Camino, and the horror-comedy Aaaaaaaah! — about humans living like wild apes in present-day London — will all screen at this year’s Denver Film Festival – Continue reading…

• Brutal as Hell: New Sizzle Reel For FrightFest Presents VOD Platform: At the stroke of midnight on 19th October, FrightFestPresents.com will release its first six titles for VOD. In conjunction with Icon Home Entertainment, the biggest name on the British horror fest scene are now bringing some titles from their 2015 flagship event into the digital realm for all to see – and the first movies to be released under this banner are The Sand, Estranged, After Death, Aaaaaaaaah!, Night of the Living Deb and Some Kind of Hate – Continue reading…

In his directorial debut, Sightseers star Steve Oram delivers a remarkable film that satirises human behaviour with apeshit craziness.

Set in a superficially recognisable South London of semi-detached houses, football pitches and fashionable clothing boutiques, Aaaaaaaah! nevertheless offers an alternate reality that entirely eschews dialogue for primal grunts and gesticulations, with civilisation repeatedly shown to be a thin veneer over simian wildness.

Aaaaaaaah! features some dark and comically extreme sequences, but it’s not too aloof in its arthouse outlook. Plotwise, it’s essentially Romeo and Juliet.

• Continue reading at Chortle. Catch up on all of our Aaaaaaaah! news here.

The world of VOD is sometimes seen as the bargain bin of film but new services like Frightfest Presents and its new ape drama might be about to change all that

British comedy stalwart Steve Oram’s directorial debut Aaaaaaaah! sees a host of famous faces (Toyah Willcox included) occupy a world in which human beings act like apes, their social graces eradicated and all known language replaced by a series of unintelligible grunts. So far, so kooky, but from the opening moments of the film – in which Oram’s character weepily urinates over a photo of his ex-wife – Aaaaaaaah! reveals itself as something much more tender than its offbeat premise might imply.

• Continue reading at The Guardian.

The Aaaaaaaah! T-Shirt, first revealed by Toyah and Steve Oram at the Birmingham screening of the film at the beginning of October, is now available to buy online from Last Exit To Nowhere.

The vibrant red shirt, with the Aaaaaaaah! image on the front and logo on the reverse, comes in various sizes (small to xxl) and is priced £20 plus postage.

Aaaaaaaah! – Regular T-shirt
Inspired by Aaaaaaaah! (2015)

We’ve been working with Rook Films on a T-shirt for Steve Oram’s (co-writer and star of Sightseers) subversive comedy and directorial debut, Aaaaaaaah! A six colour design, hand screen printed on a regular fit, 100% cotton red t-shirt.

Aaaaaaaah! has its Scottish premiere at the Cameo, Edinburgh this Friday… There’s a screening at the QFT, Belfast on Saturday 17th October… It’s also showing as part of the Mayhem Film Festival in Nottingham on Sunday 18th October (All of these include a Q&A with director Steve Oram)… There’s another screening this Friday at the Picturehouse, London… Aaaaaaaah! is released as a digital download by Frightfest Presents on Monday 19th October… Catch up on all our Aaaaaaaah! news by clicking – on the new promo image for the film – below.

Toyah Willcox on why she wasn’t terrified of the sex scenes in new film Aaaaaaaah!

Former teenage rebel stars in new film where the actors resort to grunting rather than words

Hell hath no fury like a woman with a frying pan in her hand when men are being stupid. But if you asked Toyah Willcox’s latest film character Barbara what she’s doing with it, you might not be able to understand her answer.

In the directorial debut of Sightseers’ actor and comedy star Steve Oram, the cast began with a script in English and then threw it away after breaking the words down into grunts. The result is Aaaaaaaah! – the year’s most original comedy horror, about a dysfunctional community who seem to be taking the human race backwards in south London. Although the actors look like humans and the film is a study of the human condition, the characters on screen behave and grunt like apes.

With Toyah playing a community leader called Barbara, the story is about men’s relationships with each other and the opposite sex while trying to reach for alpha-male status. While it’s a rare 18-certificate movie with no bad language, the 79-minute film is peppered with explicit and sometimes violent sexual scenes which include dismemberment.

• Continue reading at the Birmingham Mail.

Toyah, Steve Oram and the, hot off the presses, new Aaaaaaaah! t-shirt at The Electric Cinema, Birmingham last night, for the latest screening/Q&A for the film. (Photo © Toyah Willcox)

Aaaaaaaah! is screened in, Toyah’s home town, Birmingham tonight, at The Electric Cinema. Toyah, along with Director Steve Oram, will be in attendance for a Q&A post-screening. Due to demand more tickets have been released for this event. Further details by clicking below.

Don’t forget a limited edition Aaaaaaaah! poster is also currently available from Rook Films.

• On Demand: Aaaaaaaah! will be released as a digital download and on demand via Icon and Frightfest Presents from 19 October. Further info at horrorchannel.com and toyahwillcox.com.

• Aaaaaaaah! at The Electric: Shock & Gore presents Aaaaaaaah! + Steve Oram & Toyah Willcox Q&A Thursday 1st October, 8pm: Screen 2. Tickets are almost sold out – Continue reading…

• Aaaaaaaah! Posters: Extremely limited, beautiful 5 layer screen print by Brighton’s finest The Private Press of Jay Shaw’s artwork for Steve Oram’s debut feature AAAAAAAAH! 100 copies only… when they are gone – they are gone! – Continue reading…

• Taste Of Cinema: Aaaaaaaah! – VIFF 2015 Review: Aaaaaaaah! is adventurous and bombastic postmodern cinema, full stop. Puritans, the easily offended, the mild-mannered and the populist filmgoer need not apply. And this, trust me, is a very good thing… Utilizing a fully committed and courageous cast of unlikely and unlikeable characters, including alpha male Smith (Oram), his object of affection, Denise (Lucy Honigman), the culinarily-challenged Barbara (Toyah Willcox), the emasculated Jupiter (Julian Barrett), and inept shop clerk, Carl (Noel Fielding). The cast alone ensures Aaaaaaaah!’s cult status while its Beckett-like scenario and savage ravel all but cinches it – Continue reading…

• Shooting People: Aaaaaaaah!: One of the cinematic highlights of my year has been watching Steve Oram’s sensational new film “AAAAAAAAH!”… “AAAAAAAAH!” which is perhaps the best sequel I could ever imagine to the original “Planet of the Apes” is funny, obscene, ludicrous, poignant and braver, bolder and better than anything else you will see this year- Continue reading…

• Aaaaaaaah! @ Dreamscape: Browse all of our related news…

Discover true terror on October 19th as Icon Film Distribution and FrightFest, the UK’s leading genre film festival, team up to launch FrightFest Presents, an all-new expert driven social community-building label ready to deliver true shocks and scares straight into your home just in time for Halloween and beyond…FrightFest Presents will bring you the most unsettling feature films from the festival; a series of movies that wowed and earned critical accliam hand-picked by FrightFest directors Alan Jones and Paul McEvoy.

The first phase of six films hand curated by FrightFest Presents will be available to download from October 19 and are: The Sand, Estranged, After Death, Aaaaaaaaah!, Night of the Living Deb and Some Kind of Hate.

• Continue reading at the Horror Channel.

Aaaaaaaah! was featured in The Sunday Times’ Culture magazine on 20th September – Monkey business – The actors go ape in a new movie that has grunts instead of gags. It’s already a cult hit. Click below to read the article. (Thanks to Lärwi for the scan)

Welcome to our 150th “Newsy Bits & Pieces!” since changing to the WordPress format three years ago…

• Straight: Your guide to the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival: Of the 350-plus other movies coming to Vancouver between September 24 and October 9, let’s say it’s not unreasonable to expect the same quality, not to mention journeys near and far… Among the cinematic delights at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival is the appropriately titled AAAAAAAAH!, starring Toyah Willcox – Continue reading…

Den Of Geek: Aaaaaaah! review: Looking for a very different – and disturbing British indie comedy? Then check out Steve Oram’s Aaaaaaaah! If one of the jobs of a filmmaker is to present us with something we haven’t seen before, then it’s mission accomplished for writer, director and actor Steve Oram – Continue reading…

• Classic Rock Revisited: Tony Banks – A Chord Too Far Review: The rock side of Banks has seen him collaborate with the world’s most respected musicians including singers Toyah Willcox, Fish and Nick Kershaw – Continue reading…

• Rebel Run: Released this very week in 1983 – Now get down and stay down – A Toyah pop skatertastic classic! Download ‘Rebel Run’ at iTunes, view the promo video, and the airing on Top Of The Pops. Watch Toyah perform the single on Hold Tight and Saturday Superstore. Listen to the song live at Hammersmith Odeon on the ‘Rebel Run’ Tour in December 1983. Andromeda Rising covered the song in 2005. Listen to their version here.

Mearns FM: Toyah in Stonehaven: Eighties pop icon Toyah Willcox will play Stonehaven Town Hall this Friday and Saturday night (18th & 19th September) with the singer eager to look around the town – Continue reading…