It's Day 10 - your last chance to catch the 18th annual Victoria Film Festival.

It's been something of a roller-coaster ride so far.

Just when it appeared to be settling into a smooth groove after the opening weekend excitement sparked by Hollywood filmmaker John Landis, the zany antics of A Little Bit Zombie's cast and the aftershocks of the racy opening feature House of Pleasures, the action revved up midweek and hasn't stopped since.

Tuesday's CinemaSwiss exhibition opening and screenings demonstrated how precise, polite and gifted the Swiss can be.

"Victoria reminds me a lot of Switzerland, from how clean the streets are to the price of the cappuccino," said Reto Caduff, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker who curated the Swiss poster art show and screened his Visual Language of Herbert Matter.

The closing weekend's main attraction has been Linda Blair, who charmed fans Friday at The Exorcist screening and yesterday's fundraising reception at Bon Rouge for the Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation, her animal welfare charity.

A slight, feisty straight shooter with a big heart and sense of humour to match, the actor and animal rights activist got some of the week's biggest laughs, like when she calmed any concerns front-row patrons at Empire Capitol 6 might have had.

"I didn't have pea soup for dinner," she deadpanned. "It's OK, you're safe."

For someone reportedly weary of talking about The Exorcist, the husky-voiced actress was remarkably accommodating.

"Oh my God, I cannot throw up on cue! I do not have that skill," she told the appreciative crowd, recalling her initial reaction to the script's requirements. And she didn't hesitate to share what she thinks of her more unprintable dialogue.

"I still don't approve of the language," said Blair, a vegan who IN CONTRAST TO A RECENT HOLLYWOOD EXPERIENCE -- presenting the film's makeup designer Dick Smith with AN HONORARY Lifetime Achievement Oscar--found herself shopping for hosiery in Victoria and lunching at Rebar with Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe.

Blair also reminisced about the studio's decision to release The Exorcist before Christmas to qualify for Oscar consideration.

"That was the big joke," she recalled. "It's a little 'Christmas movie.' "

The festival attracted several filmmakers, including Foreverland's Max McGuire, Sisters & Brothers auteur Carl Bessai, Vigilante Vigilante's Max Good and Deborah Shaffer, co-director of To Be Heard. The screening of her inspirational documentary about South Bronx public high school students empowered by a radical poetry program was preceded by homegrown slam poetry delivered by students from Esquimalt and Reynolds secondary schools.

Michael Peterson, writer-director of Lloyd the Conquerer, described the festival as being in a league of its own.

"I've really been impressed with the calibre of people," said the Calgary-based filmmaker whose affectionate send up of the live action role playing subculture has been a crowd-pleaser.

"Everyone seems to be treated equally well."

He said such exposure is invaluable for low budget indies struggling to compete with major releases.

"We're going to have to spend as much on marketing and distribution of Canadian films as we do making them," he said. "If you make a movie in America for $5 million, they'll spend another $5 million on advertising. There's too much stuff out there."

Vancouver actor Scott Patey, who also appeared in Sunflower Hour, said being in Lloyd the Conquerer was life-changing.

"I've completely embraced nerd culture and been made part of it now," he said. "It's all about the LARP-ing."

Patrick Gilmore, who plays a creepy gay-bashing puppeteer in Sunflower Hour, said he was astonished to learn about some of the festivals and cultural institutions at which Aaron Houston's risqué mockumentary is being showcased.

"I'd never show it to my parents, and yet it's playing at MOMA [New York's Museum of Modern Art]," he quipped.

Landis confided he wouldn't discount the possibility of directing a film in Victoria if the material was right.

"I'm available!" said Landis, who visited the Royal B.C. Museum and Maritime Museum with his wife, Oscar-nominated costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis, some 20 years after travelling across Canada by train and visiting Butchart Gardens.

The festival wraps today with the End of Festival bash and awards at 9 p.m. at Spinnakers.

Here are Michael D. Reid's latest Victoria Film Festival reviews. The 10-day cinematic showcase wraps up today.

HOUSE OF PLEASURES

Where: Empire Capitol 6

When: Today, 2 p.m.

Rating: 1 1/2

It's unquestionably artful and ravishingly photographed, but that's the best that can honestly be said about Bertrand Bonello's wearisome, indulgent and seemingly endless portrait of a Parisian brothel's final days at the end of the 19th century. Pleasures are few and far between in this languid snore that, despite a cast dominated by beautiful women, abundant nudity and simulated, at times kinky soft-focus sex, couldn't be less arousing. Bonello takes his time - and wastes ours, frankly - to fashion an impressionistic exercise that in place of narrative substance emphasizes art direction and long, lingering shots of prostitutes sipping champagne, smoking opium and stroking the egos and bodies of their contemptuous clients. It's so evocative you can practically feel the silk and smell the perfume, semen and sweat that the leering camerawork captures the ladies washing off their bodies. And while there are references to the risks of sexual disease, debts incurred by this sisterhood of sluts and boredom that proves infectious, there's not much narrative meat on the bones of Bonello's admittedly eye-catching tale of sexual slavery. Gratuitous close-ups, repeated in slow motion, of a blood-spurting courtesan dubbed the Woman Who Laughs being so facially disfigured by a sadistic, knife-wielding slasher that she resembles the Joker were meant to create the impression Bonello is Bunuellike, perhaps? Please. All it does is demonstrate how bereft of originality or inspiration this film is, and the lengths to which a filmmaker will go to satisfy his ego.

DONOVAN'S ECHO

Where: Empire Capitol 6

When: Tonight, 9: 15

Rating: 2 1/2

B.C. director Jim Cliffe, who co-wrote with Melodie Krieger, achieves mixed results as he attempts to put a fresh spin on familiar material with this intriguing but annoyingly slow-paced paranormal thriller about an alcoholic retired physicist who returns to his hometown 30 years after the tragic death of his wife and daughter. Films from Nicholas Roeg's classic 1973 suspenser Don't Look Now to The Gift spring to mind as Donovan, portrayed with quiet intensity by Danny Glover, is plagued by premonitions of a local family's impending tragedy. As this kind, well-intentioned math whiz obsessively tries to warn a mother (Sonja Bennett) and her daughter (Natasha Calis) with visual clues that coincide with his own family's dark past, he is increasingly regarded as a delusional old drunk, even by his sympathetic but exasperated brother-inlaw, a local police officer (Bruce Greenwood). While the film's sluggish pacing gradually improves and Glover engages us with his performance as the mournful and misguided title character, the plot details don't amount to enough to prevent us from feeling cheated by the time it's over. Although not a film to be dismissed, it just doesn't deliver the mind-blowing payoff you might have hoped for.

mreid@timescolonist.com