A few weeks back I went to Holehead Film Festival in San Francisco where I saw SUMMER SCARS, the latest ‘horror’ entry from Julian Richards, the director of THE LAST HORROR MOVIE. More a troubling thriller than a flat-out horror movie SUMMER SCARS was nonetheless a tense and unsettling experience.After a hit and run incident involving a stolen moped, a gang of bickering teens hide in the woods where they are befriended by their victim, a vagabond named Peter who is looking for his lost dog. (It took me several minutes to realise that the actor playing Peter is Kevin Howarth,  the man resposible for serial killer Max Parry in THE LAST HORROR MOVIE). Pleased to hear “young voices in the woods again” Peter takes the gang on a series of mis-adventures including cutting the tail off a dead fox, spying on a couple copulating in the back seat of their car and testing their endurance with a punch bag - but that is when comparisons with Rob Reiner’s coming-of-age classic STAND BY ME come to an end and the innocent tone of SUMMER SCARS takes a decided turn for the worse.Unbeknownst to the kids, Peter is a schizophrenic and his behavior oscillates from Jekyll to Hyde. The kids soon realise they are being held hostage, and when Peter acknowledges that he has gone too far, that is when things really start to get hairy!It would spoil the impact of SUMMER SCARS to reveal what happens at the end, but what I can tell you is that the performances are all incredibly naturalistic and Richards compounds this sense of authenticity with documentary style camera work - long lense, hand held, available light. The mood is suitably claustraphobic and the color tone shifts from warm orange to cold blue as the terrifying day draws to a close. Simon Lambros’s percussive score suggests a military backstory to Peter’s character, emphasizing his capacity for violence, whilst the incidental hip-hop played on the kids ghetto blaster provides an unsettling urban contrast to the otherwise rural surroundings.According to British press SUMMER SCARS is the first in a new wave of nihilistic thrillers involving British Youth, including EDEN LAKE, DONKEY PUNCH and BETTER THINGS. Since completion in 2007 SUMMER SCARS has screened in forty internatonal film festivals and won several awards including Best Feature at Santa Cruz, Best Director at London Independent, Best Actor at Austion Fantastic, as well as two British Academy Awards for writer Al Wilson and titles designer Craig Wilkinson.On September 30th 2008, SUMMER SCARS will be released on Region 1 DVD by TLA on their DANGER AFTER DARK label.