• Film Credits

  • Country: Canada
  • Year: 2008
  • Language: English
  • Runtime: 95 minutes
  • Format: Colour/35mm
  • Rating: 14A

  • Production Company: Ponty Up Pictures Inc.
  • Executive Producer: Henry Cole, J. Miles Dale, Jasper Graham
  • Producer: Jeffrey Coghlan, Ambrose Roche
  • Screenplay: Tony Burgess, based on his novel Pontypool Changes Everything
  • Production Designer: Lea Carlson
  • Cinematographer: Miroslaw Baszak
  • Editor: Jeremiah Munce
  • Sound: Steve Munro
  • Music: Claude Foisy
  • Principal Cast: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly, Hrant Alianak

  • Canadian Distributor: Maple Pictures
  • Trailer: www.maplepictures.com
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Headed to work on a particularly foul Valentine’s Day morning, caustic radio personality Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) isn’t expecting anything different. He’ll update the weather and the obits, run through school closures – and fight with his producer about how a little controversy makes good radio. But right from the start, things don’t quite seem so run-of-the-mill. A distraught woman nearly runs into Mazzy as he’s heading into the studio. Then there’s a shootout involving police and a group of ice fishers. Apparently, the suspects were talking gibberish, running around completely naked, and missing body parts.

Directed by acclaimed maverick Bruce McDonald and based on a novel by Tony Burgess, Pontypool could be called a zombie movie. In truth, however, McDonald and company have dropped us into a far more disturbing world of metaphysics and linguistics, where even a know-it-all radio host can get messed up. With last year’s Top Ten film TheTracey Fragments, McDonald brought together the hipster and more experimental elements of his work for the first time. Pontypool is an even more audacious step along the same road, an avant-garde, cerebral genre movie that’s thought-provoking and creepy. The film is driven by phenomenal performances, especially McHattie’s unforgettable turn as Mazzy.

Toronto International Film Festival * Best Dramatic Feature, Edmonton International Film Festival

- Steve Gravestock

Panel Statement
A truly captivating film, Pontypool manages to be alternately horrifying and hilarious. The bleak moments of humour only further its existential edge. And just when we thought it couldn't be done: a fresh and invigorating new take on the zombie movie.
- Matthew Hays

Bruce McDonald Bruce McDonald was born in Kingston, Ontario. He has worked extensively in television and has been a maverick on the Canadian film scene since he made his breakthrough feature, Roadkill (89), which won the Toronto-City Award for best Canadian feature at the Festival in 1989. His films include Highway 61 (91), Dance Me Outside (94), Hard Core Logo (96), Picture Claire (01), The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess (04), The Tracey Fragments (07), which was one of Canada's Top Ten films of 2007, and Pontypool (08).