Perhaps learning lessons from the mistakes of Hypercube, writer and director Ernie Barbarash very wisely decides to go back to basics with this entry and bring it closer in tone, style and ideas to what made the original such a great film; so gone are the overtly sci-fi overtones and the dreadful CGI FX and back is the grungy, dark, moody, claustrophobic atmosphere and the focus on character with the emphasis on the psychological nature of the set-up. Another thing it has going for it is that in going backwards they’ve ditched the implausible, badly-animated CGI boobytraps and gone back to the simpler, nastier traps (so real props and prosthetics, with perhaps just some CGI enhancement), which are far more effective as they not only elicit that immediate, knee-jerk “Yowch!” reaction, but they simply seem more real and therefore more threatening.

Plotwise it partly uses the same device and structure with which anyone who has followed the series up to this point will be familiar – several complete strangers awaken inside a cube-shaped room with their recent memories erased and no idea how they got their or why, and they slowly discover that they are trapped inside a fiendish puzzle where entering the wrong room may prove fatal as they are boobytrapped with deadly devices designed to instantly kill and maim. What distinguishes this entry in the series from the others, however, is that for the first time we see the story unfold from two perspectives – the now-familiar point of view of the captives, as mentioned, but we also finally see other strands taking place on the outside of the Cube, from the point of view of the captors (it’s actually a little more nuanced than that in the end, but to say too much would be to spoil it).

On the one hand, this is used to raise some interesting ideas and explore the nature of the “game” behind the Cube in a slightly different way, another layer of the onion to peel away and feel trapped by. It also means that by tackling it from this perspective it doesn’t come across as merely a rehash of the original movie and has its own sense of purpose, giving the impression it’s been thought out more than the average sequel. There are, however, some notable downsides – the first is that by flipping between the two narratives there is never really that same sense of sustained tension and urgency that was the heartbeat pulsing away at the back of Cube’s story and keeping it alive. The second is that along the way it does seem a little disjointed and messy at times, and marrying the two strands can occasionally be seen as a contrivance. The other thing, and personally speaking this was the hardest thing to reconcile, is that the original film was really at its best as a standalone feature, it deliberately left certain questions unanswered, and the mystery and ambiguity of some details were part of its strength rather than a weakness. By necessity of taking the route that it has and of being a prequel, Cube Zero shatters some of that hard-earned mystique by answering some of those questions in a way which was never really necessary or wanted.  Furthermore, it’s arguable that whenever this kind of information is filled-in it’s never as interesting as it was when left unanswered, when we as audience members could go away and ponder it endlessly (something which could be called “Prequelitis”, as what they amount to in most cases is needlessly filling in backstory – afterall, how much less interesting is Darth Vader now, knowing that under the suit he’s nothing more than a floppy-haired emo kid with mother issues?). One other problem was the “twist” in the ending, which can’t be discussed for spoiling too much, but I can only assume was meant to be a satisfying little nod to fans of the first movie and to definitely cement this as a prequel – but in actual fact it comes across as contrived and slightly silly too, one idea that was trying to be a bit too clever and ultimately falls flat.

Cube Zero isn’t perfect by a long way, but it at least attempts to explore some new themes and ideas, to build on the Cube mythos, but also to retain those things that made the first film so good. It never quite gripped me, but it was enjoyable enough and was perfectly watchable, even manages to have a few points of interest of its own (even if some of them are a little clichéd) rather than merely be content to be a clone or of the lazy, soulless “bigger, better, faster!” stable of sequel/prequel making. Passable but not memorable.

Rating: 5.5 out of 10 stars

The basic construct of the plot is the same – several strangers awaken inside a giant maze made up of interlinking cube-shaped rooms, with their recent memories erased so they have no idea how they got there or why they might be there. Right off the bat, though, in trying to outdo the original film a mistake is made by changing the nature of the Cube itself. Originally, it was a beautifully simple set-up – in each of the rooms there were six doors which would lead to other rooms, but the trick was that five out of the six offshoots were boobytrapped, and choosing wrongly would lead to instant death, usually in quite a nasty, visceral way. This meant that the group had to rely on their wits and wiles to survive, the exploration of which, amongst a group of mismatched, volatile people under duress, gave the whole setting a feeling of edge and tension. Cube 2 bizarrely scraps this in favour of an approach which ultimately shifts the balance more towards sci-fi than horror (which wouldn’t be a problem, if it had been done well), as this time the danger appears to be a big wibbly-wobbly CGI “shimmering” effect that comes out of the wall and is meant to signify some kind of deadly time/spacial displacement. Yes, it is as crap as it sounds.

This wibbly-wobbly effect is at the heart of the plot, having something to do with experiments into temporal manipulation and parallel universes (which have been good, solid sci-fi fodder for years). Somewhere in there is the ghost of a potentially interesting idea which is sadly glossed over, reduced to a little expository technobabble from a couple of the characters and never really makes any sense, serving only as an excuse to occasionally kill someone off. Even that’s not something to get excited about as it’s accomplished mainly through CGI which is so badly done and uncreative that it distances the viewer and never has the impact or menace of the simple-yet-nasty traps from the previous film. One death in particular reminded me of a sequence from The Lawnmower Man – and let’s face it, if something is reminding you of that cheesetastic turkey, it’s a bad, bad sign.

Furthermore, the incoherent plot has a knock-on effect to other areas, mainly the pacing and the structure of the film. One of the strong points of the original Cube was that there were clues for the group to follow and the traps/patterns they worked out had their own internal logic so you could follow with them as the plot twisted and turned. Here there is no logic or cohesion as to the when and where this CGI shimmer will attack and the problem with this lack of consistency is that Cube 2 never seems to know where it’s going or to have any sense of mounting tension, characters go from one room to another, some weird (but uninteresting) distortions in time/space happen as a result of the “killer shimmer” that don’t have very much relevance in the scheme of things and the one “clue” that is mentioned throughout and proves to be the solution in the end is a total deus ex machina cheat that the audience couldn’t have worked out at any time sooner (because it’s load of nonsense anyway). Honestly, this wouldn’t have passed muster as a Star Trek episode, and it’s about as scary. It even manages one more instance of mindnumbing idiocy by casually throwing away the air of deliberate ambiguity and mystery that Cube left as to the actual purpose of the maze, and worse still it does so by opting for a lazy, hackneyed sci-fi convention. Brilliant.

The cardinal sin, and the one which informs the rest, is the fact that the people who’ve created this sequel really did not understand what made Cube work in the first place, and the evidence is everywhere. What made the original compelling were the tight script, the mystery, the claustrophobia, the tension, and most importantly the ticking timebomb of the characters themselves, who had to work together despite their differences but were, due to their natures, doomed to tear each other apart. The characters in Cube 2 are a bunch of one-dimensional stereotypes (a couple of whom are shallow ciphers for characters from the original film in terms of fulfilling certain needed plot roles), there’s no investment or interest in them, and consequently no danger. The acting is average, and one of them in particular might as well have had “VILLAIN” tattooed on his forehead, I swear there were times I was tempted to shout “He’s behind you!” in true Pantomime style, he was cutting such a thick slice of ham.

Overall, despite having a higher budget and CGI at its disposal, its incoherence and complete lack of understanding as to what made the original Cube a decent film render Cube 2 a shoddy, ill-conceived sequel whose existence seems primarily due to someone at Lionsgate buying the rights because they thought it may be profitable to make a franchise. Unless you have some strange fetish borne of a youthful Rubik’s Cube fixation you’ll get nothing out of it. Avoid.

Rating: 4 out of 10 stars

Five complete strangers awaken to find themselves inside a cube-shaped room, with no recollection of how they got there or why they might be there. The room is bare except for the glowing coloured wall tiles and six hatches – one at the centre of each wall, one in the ceiling and one in the floor. Each hatch leads off into an almost identical room, seemingly ad infinitum, a maze which would be hard enough to navigate in and of itself but is complicated further by their discovery that only one of the six offshoots from every room will give them safe passage to the next, five out of the six are boobytrapped with a range of highly sophisticated mechanisms designed to kill anyone who enters unawares, in a variety of cruel and unusual ways (as the attention-grabbing opening sequence capably demonstrates in gloriously grisly fashion). No food, no water, no clue as to why they might be there or even if there’s a way out, they’re going to have to band together and rely on their grouped wits and skills to survive and solve the puzzle (if there is one) of the cube.

To go into specifics would be to spoil it, as it’s one of those films that benefits from the viewer being along for the journey and discovering the unfolding plot and its twists at the same pace as the characters. For it’s these characters and their interactions that are at the core of the film’s success – watching them as a reflection of society in microcosm for all of their different attributes and personalities, watching how far each will go in a bid for survival under extreme duress poses interesting philosophical and moral questions along the way. Stick together, or every man for himself? Is survival enough, or does being human mean more, something lost if we sacrifice our principles merely to continue existing? It’s to the cast’s credit that they each do their respective parts justice and pull this off nicely (occasionally I felt that the actors who played Holloway and Quentin erred on the hammy side, but not so much that it bothered me and they’re still a cut above the general standard of low-budget horror/sci-fi flicks). If the cast hadn’t been as able then the film would definitely have fallen flat and the viewer would lose interest at the half way mark. Gladly this isn’t so as you’re with them all the way to the final reel, breathless as the sense of danger, of events spiralling out of control and the overall claustrophobia of their situation keeps the tension cranked high. Claustrophobia only partly describes it, as it’s not merely a sense of being trapped within an enclosed space, it’s something greater that gnaws away, something hard to describe but comes from the awareness of being trapped inside something seemingly inescapable, that desperate, manic desire inside us all to live and to find any way out even when we’re staring death right in the face.

Another wise decision of writer/director Vincenzo Natali‘s script is that nothing is over-explained, there are some things left ambiguous which makes it all the more mystifying and terrifying for the characters, who all posit their theories on their situation, ranging from military testing and extraterrestrials, to some form of Big Brother style sadistic gameshow. No clue is given, the people who have done this and their motives remain elusive and it’s all the better for it, as you can really invest in the characters’ mounting paranoia that way, plus as a viewer it remains more interesting to chew over afterwards. Even the time period that Cube is set in isn’t clear, because the design of the environment could just as easily be some grungy Alien style spaceship set in a dystopian future or it could conceivably be a present day/near future R&D facility for some shadowy organisation. Similarly, and again to the film’s credit (and what keeps it on the right side of the horror/sci-fi blend), the traps have a kind of down-and-dirty feel, occasionally feeling a little like something from James Bond, but more often being like a precursor to the kind of thing found in Saw, and the effects they have are suitably graphic too, with a nice “Ick!” factor. Natali’s direction is assured and the pacing is good, it never wastes so much as a second of its lean 90 minutes and at no time do I recall it ever feeling baggy or slow, for even when there’s not much physical action happening the emphasis is on the characters and the ever-unravelling mystery of the Cube.

Inventive, clever and tense, it’s a testament to the power of a good idea. Highly recommended.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): A Retrospective

In 1981, writer/director Wes Craven could have had no idea that the script he had just completed, entitled A Nightmare on Elm Street (henceforth ANOES) would be such a phenomenal commercial success; a milestone horror movie that would define the decade, launch his career into the stratosphere (Craven had previously been associated only with low-budget horror such as 1972′s Last House on the Left and 1977′s The Hills Have Eyes), as well as kick-off the acting careers of Heather Langenkamp and a then-unknown Johnny Depp. It would also lead to the creation of a globally recognised horror icon in the story’s loathsome villain – Freddy Krueger – whose enduring appeal as a character has sustained six direct sequels to Craven’s initial picture (seven if you want to include 2003′s Freddy vs. Jason, although it’s probably non-canonical in the ANOES mythos), spawned a short-lived television spin-off in the form of Freddy’s Nightmares and whose image, to this day, can be found on a plethora of merchandise – everything from t-shirts and tattoos to comic books, costumes and computer games.  Freddy’s scarred profile may yet be in the media again as this year has seen his resurrection in a new form, courtesy of a lacklustre and lamentable remake, the less said of which the better. Anybody and everybody knows Freddy…

…Or do they? Therein lies one of the problems that newcomers to the original ANOES face, something to do with the series’ meteoric popularity and that old adage that “familiarity breeds contempt”. Today, Freddy is an instantly recognisable name and image, whether we’ve previously seen any of the ANOES films or not. Even children know him from the media, from MTV videos they’ve seen and the Halloween costumes they’ve probably worn, even when they’re too young to have watched one of the movies. Time passes, the children grow up and that’s what Freddy is to them – a costume, a toy, a brand – he’s not the bogeyman, he’s fun old “Uncle Freddy”.

When these children at some point watch one (or all) of the ANOES films, in some ways this image is solidified. As the series continued and Freddy’s popularity skyrocketed, he inevitably became the star, the single component that was consistent throughout while the majority of the casts served only as disposable prey. Freddy became more visible, both physically (no longer a hideously burned creature swathed in shadows) and figuratively (in that the sequels had expanded on the original story to explain every detail about him, not to mention warping the central concept, taking it down different and not always logically consistent avenues to keep the bandwagon rolling despite ever-thinning plots), meaning that as the sequels lurched on he lost his mystique and his power to scare. By the sixth instalment in the series, Freddy’s Dead (1991), he’s all but indistinguishable from the creature born in the first ANOES, instead he’s become a quipping funnyman with an extravagant, comic way of dispatching his successive victims – for instance, one scene has a death sequence that could be right out of a Looney Tunes cartoon, like something that might be inflicted on Wile E. Coyote when one of his ACME devices backfires. A victim is plummeting from the sky (making a whistling sound as he falls), and Freddy appears beneath him, wheeling from right-of-camera a giant bed of nails ready for him to fall on. Freddy then breaks the fourth wall, looking directly into camera and miming over-exaggerated, comical wheezing at the weight he’s just pushed. It’s effectively winking at the audience, all that’s missing is him pulling out a carrot and in a Bugs Bunny voice adding “Ain’t I a stinker?”

In essence, the monster that Freddy was when he first appeared has been diluted, reduced to a friendly, comic presence. There’s an element of practicality in this – as Robert Englund once noted: “If we had tried to top the primal horrors and gore in part one, we would have hit a ceiling very early on… There is not much more we could have done unless we had Freddy…go around decapitating babies; instead he turns you into a giant cockroach. There is a sense of humour which is almost Kafkaesque in the Nightmare films.” It can’t be ignored that there was also a very canny financial reason too – as Freddy became the pop-culture icon that kids loved, the studio became as complicit as the adults who let them watch and realised that there was a huge market to be tapped, and so Freddy, who was the draw and the entire reason for commissioning a sequel regardless of whether the script was any good, was made child-friendly, his claws were clipped.

So here’s what you need to do. In the words of Yoda, “You must unlearn everything you have learned”. Whether you’re a Nightmare virgin or a confirmed fan, to fully appreciate ANOES you have to mentally go back in time (flux capacitor not included). Forget the sequels, the remake, the merchandise – they’re gone. It’s 1984 and this is all brand new, you’re back on Craven’s territory. Eyes drooping, sun setting, it’s time to sleep. Let the nightmare begin afresh…

When the film was released in 1984, ANOES was something new and original. The concept was very astute – as Robert Shaye, producer of the movie and founder of the then fledgling New Line Cinema (a business that this franchise effectively saved from liquidation and afterwards it affectionately became known as “the house that Freddy built”) said: “It was an original idea, dying in your dreams meant really dying. And four kids all had the same monster come to them while they slept… Here was the perfect common denominator. We all have to sleep.” This takes the mechanics of an otherwise normal slasher picture and elevates it to something more psychologically disturbing. The killer is no longer a mere physical being; he has the ability to attack his prey mentally and at the point when they are at their most vulnerable. Nightmares, like dreams, have an elastic reality and Craven exploits this to great effect, such as when the wall behind a sleeping Nancy suddenly becomes rubbery and indents with the impression of Krueger hovering over her prone form, ready to pounce. One sequence has Freddy appear almost as a living shadow, stretching his arms impossibly across the whole expanse of an alleyway, preventing one victim from escape, and though the low-budget FX used to create this are a little creaky by 2010 standards, there’s something still primal about it that recalls tales of the bogeyman, or those twisted Victorian childhood tales of the great, long, red-legged Scissorman who’d appear out of nowhere to cut off the digits of naughty boys and girls who suck their thumbs, or any number of nightmarish archetypes from childhood stories. This is where Craven’s picture is leagues ahead of the remake and most of the sequels, because he understands the power of those sequences is in the symbolic imagery of nightmares as extensions of the subconscious, metaphors and ideas that goes back to fairytales and to the things that haunt us from childhood, and it’s what he draws on to make Freddy in this incarnation a figure of fear rather than fun. What makes it worse, and is the genius of the whole concept, is that just as there’s no escape in the dreams, there’s no escape from the dreams – we all have to sleep eventually, it’s something we can only fight for so long before giving in. It’s the ultimate setting, because it’s not a haunted house or a patch of woods, places we can avoid or entertain the hope of running from in reality; it’s our cosy beds in our quiet suburban homestead, the place we feel most secure, or it’s the sly nap at work or school, or even just the quick droop of an eyelid and nod of a head – the killer is inescapable.

For a film to blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy was not, at the time, an overused concept and Craven’s execution of this is extremely subtle (unlike in the new remake, which hits you like a ton of bricks with its big-budget CGI and loses the point entirely in doing so). It takes but a single flutter of a character’s eyelids and that’s it, they’re in Freddy’s domain. It’s not always noticeable at first to the audience, which is intentional, putting us in the shoes of the dreamer who doesn’t yet know that he/she has finally succumbed to sleep. Slowly, the revelation comes through small injections of surreality, followed by more identifiably nightmarish elements, a process which allows the tension to build as we, along with the character, then realise that the beast is lurking somewhere, waiting to psychologically torture us before striking with his wicked blades. And Craven doesn’t skimp on the gore, though it never reaches laughable excess and none are played for comic value. In the bloodbath of Tina’s infamous “ceiling crawl” demise, the lurid neon blue lighting of the scene and the almost black splashes of of blood are reminiscent of some of the Italian giallos – gripping, haunting, instantly memorable. Compare it to the remake’s cack-handed re-staging of this setpiece, which in trying to outdo the original fails miserably by having the victim bouncing off the walls like she’s in a psychotic pinball machine and looks ridiculous, it has none of the power of the image from Craven’s picture nor the dramatic impact.

Then there’s Freddy himself. He’s not loquacious here, though sometimes he displays a black, cruel wit and sadistic pleasure radiates from him as he plays with his prey, wearing them down before striking. Aside from an explanation that he was a child-murderer and that he met justice at the hands of the children’s parents, there’s no real history to Krueger. At best, the film intimates that a more raw, cosmic evil may reside in this entity (a theme that became more thoroughly developed in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), through the speech delivered by the high school English teacher as Nancy tries to stay awake in her class: “What is seen is not always real… According to Shakespeare there was something operating in nature, perhaps inside human nature itself, that was rotten – a ‘canker’ as he put it…” So again, Freddy is more mythological, more terrifying for this, he’s the local urban legend that lives on to haunt generations of children.

Even Freddy’s choice of weapon – the now iconic razor-tipped glove – was something original and far more disturbing than the average slasher killer’s mundane machete, axe or kitchen knife, before it again entered pop culture and lost its power. Think about it, especially that opening sequence where we see Freddy lovingly construct his glove, caressing it tenderly – the blades become an extension of his own body, giving him sensual pleasure as he penetrates his victim’s flesh and tears them open, a true sadist feeling ecstatic as he bathes in the pain and death he inflicts on others. And who are these “others”? Society’s most innocent and fragile – children. Although the film only explicitly defines him as a child murderer, everything points to more, hinting that Krueger was a paedophile (something which the 2010 remake goes at with all the subtlety of a brick to the face). Englund recalls the original script: “Wes wrote the most evil, corrupt thing he could think of. Originally, that meant Freddy was a child molester.” But this was changed, he goes on to state, because at the time of shooting a child molestation scandal broke out and Craven did not want to be accused of exploiting a terrible situation, happy to go for a more subtle approach, which ultimately works out better.

Speaking of Englund, his contribution into the creation of Freddy cannot be underestimated, as much of what makes Freddy so menacing is given through Englund’s jaunty, swaggering performance. Since the character in the original ANOES is virtually an unknown predator, Englund’s decision to put so much into sheer body language was a masterstroke, and it also helped to separate Freddy from other stalkers populating the slasher films of the day. “The stance was just trying to be as far away from any kind of monster or Frankenstein walk; I decided to put in a bit of cockiness, sexuality and threat.” He also decided to take the initiative and “play” the glove, taking inspiration from Klaus Kinski’s performance in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, which put alongside the series of teeth-setting metallic scratching, squealing sounds used to announce Freddy’s presence long before he’s seen really amp up its cruel purpose.

In all, these elements – the hideous killer, the concept so ripe for a fertile imagination to pick up and run with, and the psychological nature of the horror – are what make this movie formidable. Even today it still retains that initial power to get under the skin and into the mind. The sequels may have diluted the idea, but when given the due respect and consideration it warrants, A Nightmare on Elm Street remains a unique and frightening experience, well-deserving of its accolades, its popularity and its status as a true horror classic. Remember, kids: Evil never sleeps…and accept no substitutes.

My, how this one had the morally righteous brigade positively shaking with apoplectic indignation – “Donkey Punch is the vilest film I’ve ever seen” is the header of one article the Daily Mail saw fit to print, which you can peruse here: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1035810/Donkey-Punch-vilest-film-Ive-seen-says-AMANDA-PLATELL.html . For a horror fan this vilification is a wearily familiar press tactic and brings to mind the whole “Video Nasties” debacle once again, for just as the author of this thoroughly uninformed and confused piece tries to justify her opinion by first stating that she has no prejudices against the horror genre (and sounding for all the world like those people who, when they’re about to launch into a bigoted diatribe, preface it with “Some of my best friends are [insert group in question], but…” as if it somehow manages to balance their hate-fuelled bile), her attempt to seem balanced merely shows that she is versed only fleetingly in the genre and at its most mainstream (referencing her liking for The Blair Witch Project and even commenting “Gory as it was, I adored Silence of the Lambs…” – she must have been watching an altogether different version of Silence of the Lambs to the one I saw to call it “gory”, since apart from in the final act when we see Lecter escape there’s hardly so much as a drop of blood present, Christ alone knows what she’d think if confronted with Pete Jackson’s Braindead). This is reminiscent of the events which led to the “Video Nasties” furore in that it reflects how, back then, people who had no exposure to the genre outside, say, Hammer horror movies (and that might have been at a push) were suddenly having The Evil Dead pushed in their faces, so naturally kneejerk reactions from already conservative-minded individuals followed, and the rest is history. The same applies here, Donkey Punch will be absolutely nothing extraordinary to anyone who’s into horror and that’s even if their tastes don’t extend towards the sleazier shades of the exploitation spectrum, but for anyone with mainstream tastes who comes to this then yes, there’s probably enough on display (drug and booze-fuelled sex, loose morals and death, oh my!) to send them into a tizzy. If Ms. Platell’s comments weren’t enough to display her relative genre-ignorance, at one point in the article she calls Donkey Punch “torture porn”, and the semantic debate as to whether this phrase is idiotic and misleading aside, it’s clearly misused here as it has nothing in common with the “torture porn” stable of horror.  This has to make one wonder whether she was being careless, clueless or perhaps just bandying around a particularly evocative buzzphrase which, like the article’s headline, would be bound to whip up a certain core readership’s fury irrespective of whether they’ve actually seen the movie or not. But then that would be to suggest there’s sloppy, sensationalist journalism allowed to be published in tabloids, and who could ever think such a thing, eh?

In some respects Donkey Punch has this criticism coming, because not only does the film knowingly pick subject matter which is bound to be controversial and stir-up the “This film is the end of civilisation as we know it!” groups out there (who coincidentally also seem to argue that the behaviour on display is a true representation of society’s callous youth – although how they can say that the art is imitating life in one breath, thus implying that the “wickedness” is already out there, and then claim that it’s the movie which is the corrupting influence, thereby suggesting all was innocent and pure before it came along, is a logical Gordian knot that’s yet to be unravelled), but it deliberately feeds that frenzy as the script never has the nous to deflate or turn around these stereotypes, or offer them up in a light that’s thought-provoking (I’d cite Hard Candy as an example of a recent film that does just this, courts controversy with its subject matter but has a script that’s clever enough to defy expectations and never becomes prurient). There is a seed of recognisable reality here and there to the characters, certainly, but it’s taken to excess and caricature, not unlike the recent Eden Lake which also has the potential to divide audiences in that its depiction of the “evil hoodies” does have some recognisable basis in reality, but at the same time can also be seen as somewhat pandering to the overwrought media hype machine over the perceived menace to society. Eden Lake might just about get a pass, but where Donkey Punch goes wrong, however, is that there are times it genuinely feels as if there’s an almost infantile desire to deliberately exaggerate not for the sake of the plot, but merely to appear “edgy”, to outdo its competitors in the shock stakes.  This creates a sense that it’s trying a little too hard, something which disengages the viewer at a time when they really need to be drawn in, because there are plenty of aspects of the plot leading up to and including the titular act which don’t stand up to close scrutiny, the most clunking of which is the way that the explanation of what the “donkey punch” actually involves is worked into the script, it displays the same jaw dropping lack of smoothness that George Lucas employed with the “What are midichlorians?” dialogue from the rueful Phantom Menace prequel.

If it were some rough exploitation flick from the 70′s, these might be traits that were not only forgiveable but desirable, and naturally controversy can sometimes be its own reward in terms of free publicity – after all, what self-respecting horror fan wouldn’t be enticed to see a film that the above article touts as “a morally bankrupt tale of teenage group sex, violence, drugs and sadism”? – but in such a high gloss production which was bound to capture attention, then it’s a substantial failing. Basically, if you’re going to paint a bullseye on your back then at least have the smarts to duck and weave, especially since horror is already a maligned genre in many eyes, so playing into their hands does it a disservice and will have knock-on effects to productions beyond your own. Afterall, is Ms. Platell not in that very article spitting blood over how it was funded by National Lottery (i.e. public) money and government-backed via the UK Film Council? Clearly Donkey Punch is not the second coming, but it’s not a bad film and nor is it devoid of merit, the fact that it got made at all is something that’s a minor miracle with the state of the UK film industry, and if responses like the one featured in the Daily Mail can stir up enough of a hornet’s nest you can bet that the same institutions would think twice before backing another project in the same genre if they think it might involve any supposed “risk” of media-fuelled public ire, even though the journalism that’s causing the fuss is based solely on something as arbitrary and personal as the author’s cinematic tastes.

Speaking of that comment “a morally bankrupt tale of teenage group sex, violence, drugs and sadism”, it’s worth mentioning that this again shows the author of said article’s misreading or deliberate misreporting of certain aspects of the film for the sake of her story having more salacious content – the most important of which is this “morally bankrupt” comment, which she expounds upon further, saying:

“For the sad truth about films like Donkey Punch is that they not only apparently glorify the worst of human behaviour, they also serve to normalise it. They desensitise a society where young people are unsure of the rules any more, where children can be led to think it’s not cool to say ‘No’ to anything not to drugs, to knives, to sex, to violence.”

Steering entirely clear of that whole debate about the media being able to create monsters (although I will say that her point about the young being desensitised and led astray is entirely irrelevant – Donkey Punch was given an 18 Certificate in the UK, minors are forbidden from seeing it, something which she completely skates over in the attempt to link the two points together, and any kids seeing this is a whole other debate, one to do with responsible parenting, but of course by this time the rabid peanut-crunching crowd who are buying into her argument are more than happy to skip such details when they might interfere with their hubris), the sad truth about Ms. Platell’s statement is that it is entirely and wilfully false – Donkey Punch no more glorifies the acts that it shows on screen than Hellraiser glorifies sticking pins in one’s face. Apparently, though she adored Silence of the Lambs and Blair Witch, Amanda must have missed out on Scream, because if she had seen it then she might have had more chance of realising just how formulaic the plot of Donkey Punch is in that it follows the “rules” – in the time-honoured tradition, those who do “bad” things (drugs, sex, booze etc.) more often than not come to a very sticky end. So how can what is essentially a morality tale be “morally bankrupt”? Furthermore, anyone who watches these idiotic characters make one bonehead move after another and sees the predicament they find themselves in as the film progresses and thinks to themselves ”Wow, how glorious! I must go forth immediately and emulate this display of awesomeness!” has to have a slate loose in the first place.

In the long run, Donkey Punch is an average film – I’ve touched on most of the flaws, so on the plus side, the acting from the young cast is decent (albeit it does occasionally feel like Hollyoaks meets Dead Calm), the direction from first time director Oliver Blackburn is tight and the pace enjoyably brisk and even affords some suitably tense moments as it reaches its climax, particularly if you can enjoy it for what it is and not question the leaps in logic too much. It helps too if you recognise it for what it is – for although it initially has the traits of a psychological thriller (and occasionally seems to have pretensions of being a black comedy in the Shallow Grave mould), by the final act it devolves into something that’s more familiar and along the lines of a teen slasher flick from the 80′s, which in one sense is somewhat disappointing as it becomes predictable and with a more adept script the psychological twists and turns in the characters and how far they’ll go to save their own necks, coupled with the confined locations, would have been more intriguing, but at the same time is perfectly serviceable. In fact, if you approach it in the manner of a slasher and don’t expect too much, then many of those concerns about logic go away since idiotic teenagers doing dumb things that get them into trouble is a staple of the genre, not to mention T&A and violence, which it also delivers. On these terms, you can do a hell of a lot worse and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was sufficiently entertained, despite the obvious flaws. If you’re going into it with the idea that you’re going to be blown away by something extreme, then you’re going to be disappointed; if, on the other hand, you’re interested solely for the purposes of tutting and commenting on the depravity of it all, then let’s face it, this film’s not for you…in fact, this genre’s not for you…hell, I’m not sure what is for you, maybe crocheting. So rather than getting worked up and letting your blood pressure rise, why don’t you just walk on by and leave it to us sane people that can differentiate between reality and fiction, m’kay?

As the film opens we’re introduced to Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde), a professor of psychology lecturing on the nature of superstition and how any power it has is linked solely to the individual’s belief in it, belief which gathers stray threads of chance and coincidence and fashions out of them a tapestry where all of these strands are linked in the believer’s mind by some supernatural force. In other words it’s all in the mind, to Taylor they would be coincidental fragments and explicable through natural means, for he is a sceptic who puts faith solely in that which is rational and within the realms of scientific understanding. Though he wouldn’t put it down to anything other than hard work and a little luck, Taylor and his wife, Tansy (Janet Blair), are in fact living something of a charmed life since he took his relatively new position in the university – happy relationship, wealth, nice home, well-liked and respected by (most of) his students and peers alike and despite being the most junior member of the staff it’s rumoured that the Dean will be awarding him a much-coveted position of seniority, so he’s a man on the up, a rising star. All of this, however, begins to change almost overnight when he discovers that Tansy is secretly a practising witch and fully believes that not only is his success attributed to her ramshackle collection of charms and paraphernalia, but that her protections are the only thing keeping him safe as outside forces are at work against them. Scoffing disbelief and mockery become outright anger, so fervent is his scepticism, that he demands everything be removed and burnt before his eyes, and it’s at this point that their lives are turned upside-down – but is it witchcraft at work, or a series of more tangible, unfortunate events assailing them from every angle?

The intelligent script wisely leaves this battle open and up to the individual viewer’s discretion as to which explanation for Taylor and his wife’s maladies that he wishes to accept, and whilst that’s not in itself an original concept (you can see the same thing being played with in several of those Val Lewton produced RKO pictures of the 40s, most notably Tourneur’s Cat People, and even the original Wolf Man has a stab at offering a psychological reason for phenomena that could just as easily be supernatural), it’s the quality of how well done it is that sets Night of the Eagle apart from others in the field, having a script that’s canny and puts it up there with the likes of The Innocents or Rosemary’s Baby (to which it is something of a precursor) which do a similar job.

From the moment Taylor insists on burning his wife’s trinkets, thereby challenging her beliefs with his own, director Sidney Hayers does a great job of keeping an understated sense of tension and foreboding running throughout, yet most everything is implied, gathering momentum in a chilling crescendo right up to the climactic finale, excellent pacing and not a single frame of film is wasted. It plays with the audience’s expectations too as it follows Taylor, whose wavering between the warring sides within him – his cold belief in logic versus primitive, superstitious panic – will have the audience wavering too as to what they truly think is the cause of it all. It works because no matter what your personal views might be, you’re at the mercy of celluloid’s agnosticism in these matters, particularly in the horror genre where supernatural, paranormal and the occult are everyday and are accepted without need for explanation, so there are times when it seems perfectly reasonable that he may indeed be the victim of black magic, but deciding to offer no definitive answer either way and leave it ambiguous is a smart move. Amid all this on the surface, Hayers manages to still balance the subtler threads of the movie, such as the quiet way that Taylor’s seemingly idyllic world is shown to be a bubbling pit of hidden lust, envy and hatred (the true motivations behind his struggles, whether the means are supernatural or not). One plot strand which relates to this is entirely prescient despite the film’s age, given how often the precarious roles of teachers and their relationships with students amid the current society-wide concerns (bordering on media-stirred neuroses) with abuse is constantly being reported on by the press.

There’s also a great deal to be said for seeing the film as being read in terms of the gender politics which were prevalent at the time, where the Women’s Liberation movement was a gathering storm waiting to explode and become one of the ’60s focal points of sociological change. Taylor, railing against his wife’s beliefs belittles at one point her supposed “women’s intuition” and in his rage there’s something which is an extension of paranoia almost, disliking her stepping beyond the sweet, domesticated wife role he clearly sees her as fulfilling, and if one is to believe the “beset by witchcraft” explanation for their troubles then it’s a battle between a domineering man and woman that is at the heart of the movie. There’s also more than a hint of pressure built up from sexual repression, it’s evident in the apparently passionless relationship Norman and Tansy share, and when he is at one point propositioned by a student, his outrage is so palpable that it feels like a statement about a particular entrenched viewpoint, one unable to cope the changing moral compass that the ’60s heralded and represented by the youth who would have been aware of it.

The performances of Wyngarde and Blair also merit a mention, each with their own levels of mounting terror at different stages of the story’s development – with Blair her initial claims that they are being threatened by supernatural forces and her ensuing hysteria seem tragically like the ramblings of a paranoid, delusional mind, but as the film then cleverly plays with the levels of coincidence and Wyngarde begins to show his own character’s ice-cold confidence and discipline being eroded, it leaves us in a limbo state (much like the character) and her performance then looks more like someone who is truthfully frightened and given genuine credence for her concern, a subtle but clever manipulation of the audience’s viewpoints.

Night of the Eagle is definitely a hidden gem in the crown of British horror cinema – smart, taut and chilling, it deserves greater recognition and if you’re a fan of that brand of implied, slowburning, ambiguous storytelling, then it’s a must see.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

As mentioned previously, it is clichéd but in such a way that it’s actually to the film’s benefit rather than its detriment, as what director John Llewellyn Moxey has done is hark back to the style of the Universal horror pictures of the 1930′s and 40′s – in the Ye Olde Village (TM) doors creak and shadows loom, there’s secret stone passageways bedecked by cobwebs and lit only by torchlight, thick fog rolls out of nowhere (occasionally giving an unplanned chuckle as it looks like the fog machine might have gone haywire and belted out too much) spooky sounds and chants emanate from unknown sources and there are rows of listing tombstones in an ancient graveyard full of dead trees that reach up like withered hands grasping for freedom… All great stuff in the Gothic tradition and if you are (like me) a fan of those old Universal movies then you’ll get a kick out of it because it really is done beautifully, the set decoration is fantastic and the black and white photography is crisp and suitably eerie when required.

Though Moxey’s direction often has that “solid if workmanlike” quality of someone who’s mainly had a career in television (working on everything from The Avengers and The Saint to Magnum, P.I. and Murder, She Wrote), there are some inspired moments that really give it a little kick – sometimes it’s just the way the camera moves, as in the prologue where there’s a shot of Selwyn on the stake and the camera closes in to an extreme close-up of her face (which has a peculiar quality, perhaps because it played in reverse as the camera really pulled back from her), or the odd placement of the camera in the corners and slightly at an angle which effectively complements that “not quite right”, nightmarish feel that the characters are experiencing once inside the village, something which at the time wasn’t so commonplace as it would become after being put to such wide use in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead eight years after City of the Dead‘s release.

What’s interesting about the film’s style is that by 1960 a lot of these Gothic conventions had already become anachronistic and were on the way out in horror cinema, indeed it’s telling that perhaps the most widely-recognised uses of the form in that decade were by way of parody/homage on family-oriented TV comedies The Addams Family and The Munsters (with Scooby-Doo getting in on the act by 1969). Even in terms of the British film industry’s contribution to the genre, the success of Hammer’s The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula (aka The Horror of Dracula) and The Mummy had set in motion a different Gothic aesthetic that would drive future projects, one which played to these being shot in colour and so had lusher tones, especially that legendarily vivid red “Hammer blood”, the appearance of which (alongside Hammer’s great tradition of having buxom beauties in heaving corsets) were signs of censorship relaxing somewhat and a move away from the more implied horror of the Universal pictures, which to some degree City of the Dead preserves. This is particularly noticeable when compared with later films of the era which deal with similar themes, like Witchfinder General or Cry of the Banshee (the former being a great film starring Vincent Price, and the latter being a bad knock-off of it which happens to also have Price picking up a cheque for being in it), both of which are more openly violent and sexualised. That, or you have films that took the black magic and placed it solidly in the present day, mixing in more psychological components and the battle between the supernatural and science, like Jacques Tourneur‘s fantastic Night of the Demon or the underrated Night of the Eagle, something which The City of the Dead had the potential to do plotwise, but never truly explores.

Speaking of the plot, it doesn’t hold any real surprises overall (though there is at least one plot twist that you may not initially see coming – let’s just say there’s a chance it might have been lifted structurally from Psycho, which had been released a few months prior), but it does have a nice sort of Lovecraftian feel in the way that the witch’s curse seems to grip the village and the people living there, like they’re suspended in time and in a place of everlasting torment, purgatory for the crime they committed against her. In the acting stakes, Christopher Lee is suave yet suitably sinister in a smallish role and Patricia Jessel is good value as the unrepentant hag, hovering somewhere between a twisted psychopath and the Wicked Witch of the West, so a little camp but fits in well with the movie’s tone.

All in all, The City of the Dead isn’t quite a classic and it’s not going to rock any worlds, but that being said it’s entertaining stuff with a solid production and tons of atmosphere. If you’re in the mood for some Gothic, spooky fun, well then you’re likely to be in for a pleasant time. Would make a good Halloween treat.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

I can’t say that back when I heard the announcement that Rob Zombie would be helming a remake of John Carpenter‘s classic Halloween that I was thrilled, not because I’m one of those people who hold a film in such high reverence that I consider a remake to automatically be verboten (after all, Carpenter himself has proven with The Thing that it’s perfectly possible to take an old movie that has plenty going for it in and of itself – in this case Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World – and with a good, intelligent script and some classy direction you can create something that’s its own beast and able to stand on its own two cloven hooves), but because both of Zombie’s previous directorial efforts, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, had left me cold.  So naturally, I wasn’t one of the people jumping up and down with excitement at his next project. 2007 arrived and on its back the promised behemoth, I bit the bullet and got in line at the cinema with everyone else to see Zombie’s take on the iconic Michael Myers…let’s just say I was less than impressed.

Fast forward to 2010 and I’m looking at the Blu-Ray sitting on my friend’s coffee table, accusation vivid in its baleful glare…well okay, so it was just sitting their innocuously, gathering a little dust, but you get my meaning. I’m often willing to give a movie I disliked a second chance, especially when time has passed between viewings, on the possibility that perhaps I missed something the first time around or that I just wasn’t in the mood for it, so my curiosity as to whether this would prove the case here was already setting the wheels in motion. What finally pushed it over the edge was the scrawl on the box which read “Unrated Director’s Cut”. I’d heard tell from various sources at the time that the theatrical version I’d seen had been horribly butchered and that a bootleg workprint of the film that was doing the rounds was vastly superior, and when this “Unrated Director’s Cut” hit the home media market it had restored many of these missing moments. So that was that, I was determined to go in with an open mind and give this movie another go-round.

It confirmed my suspicions: Rob Zombie should not be allowed near a camera for the rest of his natural life. Anyone who finds this irredeemable piece of shit even remotely entertaining has to have checked their standards at the door. Everything about this film is completely inept and puerile, from the script upwards. The whole “redneck/trailer trash/abusive family” backstory that is meant to give us some idea as to what turns the boy Michael into the brutal killer he becomes seems to have been sewn together out of every conceivable stereotypical anecdote going; if “Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel” from The Simpsons had wandered in at this point, he would easily have been the most three dimensional character on screen. This half-arsed notion was bad enough in the theatrical version, it reaches a whole new nadir in the “Unrated” cut with a scene that had been excised (and should have stayed that way) which provides an alternate method of the fully-grown Michael’s escape from the asylum and involves two hillbilly orderlies (whose dialogue and look makes you wonder if they walked off a remake of Deliverance) raping a patient. Oh, how cutting edge, how deviant of you, Rob, throwing a little casual rape in there for no good reason, other than shock value (at which, like the rest of your execrable movie fails miserably). Throw into that mix the laziest, most shallow pop psychology you can find and this is the supposed “depth” that is meant to be the foundation of not just Michael’s makeover but the reason the remake even exists.

The story from this point on, once Michael reaches adulthood and escapes from his imprisonment, pretty much follows and often is a direct lift of Carpenter’s film, the problem being that by packing this into the last half of the movie it has none of the build-up and pace that make Carpenter’s version an exercise in suspense, instead it feels rushed and as it goes from one scene to the next you feel neither shock, tension nor, failing these two, entertainment as any possible primitive glee a fan might derive from a particularly well done bit of violence or gore is absolutely ruined by camerawork that’s so shaky that it could have been filmed during an earthquake. The editing is so MTV-quick that it should come with an epilepsy warning, and naturally there’s that other culprit accompanying them, the overcranked sound effects which make everything THUD and BOOM at every given opportunity. None of this makes it in the least riveting or scary, it’s just plain annoying, and if it’s even possible to make it worse then it manages this feat by way of the grating soundtrack, which is intrusive and just so obvious in the choices of songs that it borders on the childish, it’s the music equivalent of a paint-by-numbers. By far the worst aural offender, though, is the complete misuse of the “Halloween theme” that Carpenter composed for the original film, a tune that’s instantly recognisable to genre fans and is a vital part of what makes Carpenter’s Halloween work in that it’s not merely “creepy background music”, it lives and breathes with the beats and scares of the movie, underscoring the mood of the piece rather than being in synch with on-screen character movement or overtly manipulating an audience’s emotional response to a scene. For a man whose background is in the music industry, Zombie’s lack of understanding as to how to make the theme work on any level is baffling, there are times when it’s clearly just there because someone thought to themselves that it should be because it’s a Halloween movie, without any appreciation for making it fit in with the rest of the picture’s style and as such when it does appear, it’s hamfisted and serves only to remind the viewer of just how effective it was in Carpenter’s flick, a comparison it could desperately do without.

Plot holes and contrivances abound, as reason is sacrificed on the altar of style, like the lamebrain way in which Michael’s iconic mask is re-introduced after he escapes incarceration – so, let me get this straight, the young Michael goes on a killing spree (I’m giving nothing away here, I’d hope) and then before the cops arrive he has the time, and not to mention the foresight, to hide a mask he’s going to conveniently want in the future, by not only pulling up but then replacing the floorboards perfectly so they look undisturbed? This dunderheaded contrivance has zero meaning, substance or internal logic, the sole purpose of this move is making sure there’s a reason why the mask has that aged, grungy look that Zombie had obviously set his heart on for the promo ads and to show just how “hardcore” his vision is meant to be, something which might impress the average twelve-year-old but nobody else. It all just adds to the overall ugliness of this vision – a grungy look and unpleasant characters that nobody cares for (only Brad Dourif as the Sheriff of Haddonfield comes through with anything approaching likeability, largely because it’s a cameo part – if it had been larger I’m quite sure someone would have written in a subplot about an incestuous relationship with his daughter and dropkicking puppies whilst crying “YEE-HAW!”). As for the acting, it’s largely dreadful, Malcolm McDowell hammily sleepwalks through the role and lets his hairpiece do most of the emoting, and Sheri Moon Zombie would never be allowed in front of a camera if it weren’t for nepotism and her husband being amazed by her skanky arse. Scout Taylor-Compton is uniformly irritating in the lead as Laurie Strode, giving a performance that’s one-note and overwrought – yes, we get that you’re scared, but if you keep yelling and whimpering every time so much as a floorboard creaks under your pursuer’s weight then he’s obviously going to find you and you have nobody to blame but yourself when he guts you, you silly bitch. Sheesh!

Every minute of this overlong turkey drags and feels like an age, muddled and careening with the delicacy and grace of a rugby player in a tutu from one boring, tensionless set-piece to the next, with Michael Myers becoming more and more like Jason Voorhees in full supercharged smash-through-walls zombie mode as it goes along. And at just shy of two hours, the anticlimactic ending can’t come soon enough – Christ, in 2001: A Space Odyssey it didn’t take Kubrick two hours to go from the origin of man to him exploring the cosmos and taking the next step of evolution 100,000 years (give or take) later!

Two skulls out of ten, and one of those is just because I appreciate how difficult it can be to get a movie made and into cinemas. Please, Rob, stick to music videos, full length movies are not your forte.

Admittedly, it’s an evocative idea that’s seemingly brimming with potential, but whether it’s a problem that lies with the original source material or just the way it’s been transferred to film, that potential is mostly squandered. Much of this disappointment stems from the fact that in the premise at the movie’s heart there is an almost perfect horror set-up – a town that’s isolated from civilisation, no help in sight, even the weather is against them, and yet because it’s perpetually dark that makes it the ideal environment for the creatures preying on them. It’s a situation not entirely dissimilar to that facing the Antarctic research team in John Carpenter’s The Thing, though what’s ever-present in The Thing (and deservedly earns it a place as a horror classic) and is completely lacking from 30 Days of Night can be summarised in one word: tension. It wants to play as a survival horror picture, with countless shots of the “heroic band” huddled in various locations, hiding from the vampires hunting them, and whilst these moments should all be riddled with suspense, they fall completely flat to the point of tedium (and at just shy of two hours, the film really suffers for it).

Perhaps it’s because there never seems to be any threat, either from their foes or from other factors that should have been playing a part – internal conflicts, need for food, heat, water, the inhospitable weather etc. At one point the film even makes the detrimental error of having Sheriff Eben (Josh Hartnett) reference these potential difficulties to the group of survivors as they try to wait out the thirty days until the sun will once again rise, only for the film to then do absolutely nothing with it.  Out of nowhere markers such as “Day 7”, “Day 13” and so on will turn up on screen, skipping over the intervening time periods and thus not showing any visible struggle having taken place.  This apparent lack of hardship not only throws away the inherent tension of the survival situation, but also is a rather massive plot hole, though it is one of many rather boneheaded moves in the plot department, not the least of which is the ending which is a dumb cop-out and anticlimactic to the extreme.

The general air of ennui could also be a symptom of it being incredibly difficult to muster any interest in these people – not because they’re horrible human beings, but simply because they’re entirely bland, both as characters and actors. In films where we have a similar format – a small group of survivors trying desperately to overcome monstrous hordes (like Aliens or Dawn of the Dead, for example) – it’s absolutely vital that we have some kind of empathy for the protagonists (we don’t have to like them, though, just recognise the threat on a human level), or at the very least have an interest in seeing them survive. Here, the movie gives us nothing – on the character front, there’s no time spent getting to know them, nor is there the subtle characterisation in the deceptively everyday dialogue between them like in Alien.  As far as acting goes, Hartnett just stands around looking handsome and stoic in the standard “hero” role and is as engaging as polystyrene package filler, whilst Danny Huston as the lead vampire tries to be menacing but generally lets the makeup do the acting. He’s also unintentionally funny – someone had the bright idea of having the vampires speak entirely in a language that sounds like something from Star Trek, and it’s done in such a serious, po-faced manner that it’s laughable, especially combined with the fact that Huston in his vampire makeup is a dead ringer for one of the singers in the Pet Shop Boys.

A note on the vampires – although it’s clear what they’re supposed to be, they drink blood and have a severe allergy to sunlight – they could just as easily be zombies, since that’s the way the script treats them. They don’t speak (aside from the occasional line of “Klingon”), they have a series of hisses and high-pitched snarls that make them sound like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park (only irritating to the Nth degree) and demonstrate little intelligence, as evident in another rather silly fault with the script that again damages any chance at creating tension – they have thirty days of darkness, right? So you’d think they’d hold back and make sure they have enough supplies to last them until their time’s up. But no, instead they go nuts, gorge themselves crazy and seem to decimate the entire town’s population within moments. Not only does this seem like another misstep in the plot, but there would have been so much more suspense in seeing them slowly whittle down the survivors despite their best efforts to defend themselves.  All of this is more suited to traditional zombie tactics, which would have been just fine had the script the wherewithal to look at how classic zombie survival horror movies use the claustrophobia of being trapped, the innate nature of humans to turn on each other under pressure etc. to ramp up the tension, but this doesn’t, and as such much of the film is boring.

It’s not a particularly terrible film, it’s too bland for that, it’s just that the overall product is dull and generally lacks bite. What may keep it tolerable is the glossy cinematography and the occasional burst of impressive gore (there’s enough of the red stuff on display to assuage any bloodthirsty gorehound), but that’s not exactly an accomplishment for what’s quite a high-budget affair within terms of horror movies. The style might be enough to keep some happy, but for the majority I suspect attention will wander during its overlong running time and for anyone versed in the genre it will prove a forgettable exercise in style over content.

Rating: 3.5 out of 10 stars

1981 was certainly the year of the wolf, at least in the world of horror cinema if not in Chinese astrology. With their amazing effects (which are still impressive to this day) and sharp scripts, An American Werewolf in London and The Howling reinvigorated the werewolf flick, dragging it kicking and screaming into the present and out of the doldrums in which it had arguably languished since Universal released The Wolf Man back in 1941. It might come as a surprise to some to learn that the same year also heralded the release of another great wolf-laden horror film in Wolfen. It’s a shame that it didn’t get more recognition, for whilst it certainly has its faults, Wolfen has plenty to offer that makes it well worth seeking out, though with two titans like that stomping around the box office in the same year it’s perhaps easy to see why it became overlooked.

This relative obscurity might also be attributed to the fact that of these three wolf-themed movies, Wolfen is an altogether quieter affair, perhaps partly because it operates also as a detective thriller, though it must be stated that it’s no slouch in the scares department – it may be the more unassuming cub of 81′s litter, but that’s actually where the film’s strengths lie. It’s heavily atmospheric (rather than being full of flashy effects and gore, though there are some bloody and violent moments), something which compliments the slowburning nature of the narrative and revelation of the mystery at the movie’s heart, allowing the pace to build tension. Director Michael Wadleigh uses this atmosphere wisely, creating a surreal, often dreamlike landscape through a combination of fantastic locations (the desolate, demolished slum area and the burnt out church that sits in the middle are strangely post-apocalyptic) and stunning visual images with a subtle underlying symbolism that really elevate the picture above the humdrum, reminiscent of the visual panache of Dario Argento‘s movies, like Suspiria and Phenomena. One of the film’s most memorable “tricks” is a visual one, with Wadleigh using a special process that paints objects in almost thermographic colours (similar to how, in Predator the alien sees in different light spectra) whilst seeing through the killer’s eyes. The camera in these moments glides with fluidity (a little like the invisible entity that inhabits the woods in The Evil Dead), giving it an eerie life and vigour.

Then there’s the cast – Finney is great as the slightly scroungy, grouchy lead, and is well supported by the likes of Gregory Hines, Edward James Olmos and Tom Noonan, all of whom are solid, watchable presences that lend these characters their own individual energy and strength. The script also plays it smart, having some nice set-pieces, a streak of dark humour and it manages to have a social conscience whilst fitting the pieces of the puzzle together to get the movie to its thrilling climax. If there’s a problem with the film, this is where it lies – there’s a sense that it’s sometimes trying to juggle too many balls at once, and occasionally some elements suffer, the pace could have been picked up here and there and at other times there seem to be a few logical jumps by the characters, as if there are some smaller moments been excised through poor editing. There’s also now and then a feeling that Wadleigh wasn’t sure which direction to take the film, whether to stick more firmly with that which is a real-world threat or to follow the novel on which the script is based and go with more supernatural elements (some of which could be product of the alleged difficulties between the director and the studio – it’s maintained that the cut of the movie which is out there today and which played theatrically is still not Wadleigh’s preferred vision of the film, but there’s still no word of a director’s cut or extended version on the horizon.) And though this is likely to be down to individual tastes, for some there’s a chance that the “message” of the film might be a little too preachy (though personally I thought it managed to do it without being too heavy-handed). None of these are huge problems, though, and don’t really detract from the enjoyment of the film.

Overall, an underrated movie that really is distinct and memorable, and worth seeking out on DVD for anyone who fancies a well acted, well directed, stylishly shot horror picture, and you can’t say those come along every week, can you?

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

“Superficial” is probably the word that best describes The House of the Devil, for whilst the filmmakers clearly went out of their way to recreate the feeling of a film that might have been made in the 70′s (many people are referencing it as being more 80′s, but I didn’t feel this other than on the surface – for although the film is set in the early 80′s, and recreates the time period perfectly in terms of fashion etc., the filmmaking style and the story owes more of a debt to 70′s classics like When a Stranger Calls (1979) or Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) and the gritty feel of Tobe Hooper‘s seminal The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), rather than anything post-1980), as commendable as that is I can’t help but feel that ultimately it was just window dressing, which may be visually interesting but doesn’t disguise the fact that inside the film is hollow. I hate to employ a phrase that’s become so overused of late, but the “Emperor’s new clothes” reference is certainly very apt here.

For when you scratch below the cinematography, directorial style and the set and wardrobe dressing, all of which are just a pretty-looking veneer, what’s lurking underneath is completely threadbare. As I have stated earlier, I am a fan of the slow-burning horror film – this is just slow, plain and simple. An hour passes and nothing happens, inexcusable for what’s essentially a set-up we’ve seen in a hundred other movies (babysitter in a creepy old house alone, unaware that bad stuff is happening elsewhere and coming her way), the director has no idea how to take this and make it tense, as in say John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978). We’re meant to be both creeped-out by Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov’s “odd couple” and yet unsure of what’s going on, but we’re neither, since what they’re up to has been telegraphed from the very first first frame of the movie when an opening text gives away the entire plot (and shows you just how thin and trite it is). The finale, when it finally comes, tries to pick up the pace but can’t escape the lethargy of the previous hour’s somnambulism, and furthermore it does so by becoming a lazy “final girl” scenario, one again that’s completely lacking in tension or suspense since it’s over as fast as a virgin’s first time. It’s just one cliché on top of another, smarmily trying to hide under the guise of “homage” and it just won’t wash. The biggest let down of all comes with the “twist”, which is is less a sting in the tail and more a flash in the pan – I don’t know what was worse, that it was such an overt rip-off of Rosemary’s Baby, or that it had been obvious that it was coming since that opening text an hour and a half earlier.

When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, The House of the Devil just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, especially when compared to the movies that it’s paying homage to. The style of the piece and cinematography are impressive, as is the acting (Jocelin Donahue as the lead, Samantha, plays the role well and with sincerity, not to mention looks like Margot Kidder circa Black Christmas), but it’s all let down by a dull, trite, empty script which makes it feel like a student film that’s an exercise in recreating a period through camerawork and cinematography rather than being a full-blooded, functioning piece of cinema. It’s something that might have worked nicely as a short feature, but as a full-length picture is a disappointment.

Rating: 4 out of 10 stars

The plot revolves around three female students (two from America and one local girl) who arrive in the small Romanian town of Prejnar where they hope to learn more of the town’s culture and folklore as part of their studies. They discover that history and superstition are intertwined for the local townsfolk, with belief in vampires rife and taken as lore, so much so that it is a part of their customs and celebrations. The trio soon find the legends becoming nightmarish reality when the evil vampire Radu (Anders Hove) returns to kill his father, the King of the vampires (Angus Scrimm – aka The Tall Man from the Phantasm series – who I’d say is in a “blink and you’ll miss it” cameo, except for the fact he’s wearing a wig Stevie Wonder would have trouble missing). Radu wants more than just his father’s throne and decrepit castle – the King is the possessor of a relic called the Bloodstone (I still can’t decide if it looks more like an ice-cream or a novelty sex toy), which is filled with the blood of all the Saints and is a source of great power.

Subspecies is unashamedly proud to be a b-movie, and that’s not to be considered a downside so long as that’s the value you’re looking for. In fact, it’s refreshing in a way to have just a plain, no nonsense, badass vampire like Radu (who unlike the other vampires in the movie looks like the bastard son of Max Shreck‘s Count Orloff in Nosferatu, complete with batlike visage and elongated fingers) sticking his fangs into some pretty necks, slobbering blood all over the place as he goes, rather than the countless post-Anne Rice romanticised softy vamps that fans have been made to endure (and in a world in which Twilight is a success, that’s only going to get worse). Even though the girls are rather generic and undeveloped (in the character sense, rather than anything physical…with evidence on film to support that statement, naturally), they don’t grate on the nerves and the real star is Hove’s Radu, who clearly relished the part and is perhaps why this one movie became a series and the character has something of a minor cult following.

The plot is fairly derivative (except that nonsense with the Bloodstone), and it sticks to the usual vampire clichés for the most part rather than trying to reinvent the genre, but again in that familiarity there’s something solid. Worry not, for it’s not all cookie-cutter stuff – something that does distinguish it, adds a unique flavour even to a film as rough and ready as this one, is the backdrop for the action. It was shot on location in Romania and many of the extras were just locals they hired rather than actors, and it truly does make elevate it somehow and make it more palatable. Toss in the fact there are some elements to the story that are completely barking mad – such as the antagonist’s ability to spawn his own personal miniature demon helpers (which have been animated through stop-motion rod puppets and blue screen…cheaply) by biting off his own fingertips – and you have something that will certainly keep you interested until the finale, though wisely it’s paced swiftly enough that it moves along at quite a lick and never outstays its welcome.

Yes, it’s silly, but it’s FUN, a factor that’s often underestimated, and because the film doesn’t take itself too seriously you just go along with it and enjoy it. It’s like the cheap ‘n cheerful, somewhat rickety rollercoaster at the local fair, it’ll never be the star attraction at Disneyland, but it’s not meant to be either and is still fun to ride.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10 stars

Ealing Studios is generally associated with very British, old-fashioned comedies of a bygone, more civil era, and certainly not synonymous with horror. Though if you stop to consider the pitch black humour of films like Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Ladykillers (1955), perhaps it’s not such a stretch to imagine that they would also be the studio which can be accredited with having given us a piece of horror heritage in producing the prototype for the anthology fright film, a template that has been used time and again since Dead of Night‘s release sixty-odd years ago. If you’ve seen any omnibus of scary stories since, whether it be one of Amicus’ classic offerings like Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) or something more like Romero & King’s collaborative Creepshow (1982), the structure of Dead of Night will instantly be familiar because it’s their progenitor, not only that but often with some of the more middling affairs the “wraparound story” got the least amount of attention and the other tales didn’t integrate well together, here everything fits together nicely like a jigsaw puzzle.

In terms of the tales themselves, as with all of these compendium pieces it’s a mixed bag, but quite an even one, there’s no hugely weak link in the chain. The only real odd-duck in terms of tone is the story of the two golfers, penned by none other than H.G. Wells, but only in so much as it’s played totally for laughs. In practice it works out well, not the least because it comes between two of the best (and ergo creepiest) segments, thus giving a nice bit of levity which strengthens the impact of the other two stories, but also it has some genuinely funny moments. This segment aside, however, what’s interesting is that within the stories are a set of ideas and themes that have since been used over and over (both in other anthology shorts and in some cases the subject of full length features) and are still universally considered “spooky” – déjà vu, premonitions of death, creepy mirrors, ventriloquist’s dummies, possession, hauntings.

The standout for me is the final segment with the ventriloquist – not only because do you have in microcosm the essence of every “scary doll” movie since made (the Anthony Hopkins film Magic (1978) comes to mind), but there is even a seed planted by this segment that could very well have influenced Psycho (1960), with Michael Redgrave‘s performance every bit as powerful and compelling as that of Anthony Perkins. Two other segments really stood out also – the possessed mirror and the Christmas haunting. Both of these are incredibly simple, the latter in particular is really just a campfire ghost story (which allegedly was based on an experience of the actress playing the part herself and concerned an actual, real life murder case), but they work nicely because of that, relying on the old-fashioned technique of letting the audience’s imagination do the work and make it scary for them.

That I would say is the one caveat to the viewer, despite the deserved praise this movie receives and it’s not really a fault of the film itself: overall it truly has that “ghost story” feel rather than the kind of bang-boom stuff most modern audiences are used to. If your idea of a good ghost movie is Poltergeist (1982) or The Frighteners (1996) and anything quieter leaves you cold, then there’s a chance this’ll just be a snoozefest for you. To get the most out of it you really have to be able to appreciate the more subtle approach of a horror film made in the 40′s or perhaps be particularly sensitive to tales of the supernatural. If you’re the type of person who can watch the old Universal monster movies or episodes of The Twilight Zone and still get a cold shudder then this is going to be perfect for you, or even if you’re just one of those all-round fans of the genre and want to check this out for the sake of posterity, it’s well worth your time as this is a well-crafted, memorable and effective film, deserving of its standing as the granddaddy of anthology horror flicks as we recognise them today.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

I have to say, I enjoyed this film thoroughly from start to finish. The design and story borrow heavily from two previous genre entries in particular – The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The War of the Worlds (1953). The two represent the opposing sides of the spectrum of 50’s alien invasion movies, the former being a cautionary tale in human hostility and the latter being the template for the “earth’s screwed” camp of alien domination flicks. Curt Siodmak’s (famed for penning 1941′s The Wolf Man) script, very cleverly and knowingly, plays the field between them, leaving the viewer on uncertain ground to begin with.

At first, when the saucers appear their intentions are unknown, neutral, then when they land humanity shoot first, through fear. For the audience, this recalls “pacifist” genre movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still or It Came from Outer Space (1953), and humanity is made to feel like the aggressor, with the aliens’ retaliation (a shocking first glimpse of their devastating destructive capabilities and a prelude of what’s to come) therefore seen as self-defence. We’re made to feel this all the more soon after, when Dr. Marvin discovers a hidden message meant for him and sent prior to the attack, a message that hinted at a peaceful meeting at the location of the conflict. The violence was therefore a product of miscommunication rather than intent, as they expected Marvin to have understood the message, so when he later meets with the aliens (disobeying military orders to do so, feeling personally culpable for failing to decode the message sooner, as well as the guilt of being on the side of the attacker), their question of why they were attacked seems accusatory, and by association the aliens seem benign because of their confusion at this response.

…And this is the point at which the rug is firmly pulled out from under us. Having set us up for the first act of the film to believe the aliens are going to be of the peaceful kind (though perhaps with a strong message about humanity’s armaments), it suddenly switches pace and becomes The War of the Worlds – yes, they wanted a peaceful meeting with humans, but it was a very considerate, polite gathering in which they were to tell humanity that they are now in control and it would be futile to resist. Following a chilling display of their technological superiority they give humanity fifty-six days to decide their fate, upon which they will return to conquer, one way or the other, and this brilliantly sets up the latter half of the movie, which is a suspenseful race against time for Dr. Marvin and the world’s scientists to create a way to defeat these would-be invaders, and the last act being its implementation, the showdown, the Earth vs. the flying saucers as the title promises.

The pacing of the film is excellent, with just the right amount of build-up, spectacle, action and a satisfying conclusion. One particularly innovative idea, that would later be purloined by (and indeed prove to be the most memorable part of) Roland Emmerich’s dumb, bombastic popcorn flick Independence Day (1996), is to set much of the finale’s action against notable US landmarks, with some of them being left worse for wear by the altercation, giving these sequences an added energy and sense of scale. The whole is elevated by the saucers’ masterful animation by stop-motion god Ray Harryhausen (and also some great sound design to go with their appearance, though it is somewhat in the shadow of War of the Worlds in that respect). Whether flying in formation over Washington or teetering slightly on their mad central landing mechanism, they ooze charm and character, and despite being models Harryhausen knows how to animate and film them to give these sequences cinematic scope and feel, something that a lot of similar effects work on UFOS, spaceships etc. in other movies of the period lacked (and still sometimes lack today in all their mundane, CGI rendered glory…yes, Mr. Lucas, I’m looking at you and your bloody prequels). So effective are these shots, in fact, they’ve been used time and again in other pictures, and homaged to death in films like Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! (1996).

If you can get past the schlocky title and embrace the essence of a 50’s sci-fi B-movie, then this is a classic example of that genre and is highly recommended.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

Tarantula this ain’t, it’s pretty awful indeed, but also unintentionally funny in so many ways – from the ludicrously convoluted way they try and get a “cool” musical number in there to appeal to the hipsters of the day (not unlike the cringe-inducing interlude near the beginning of I Was A Teenage Werewolf) to the moment which sees the “teenage” leads (who look about 40 – all I can say is these kids must have had long paper rounds) marvelling at this amazing new substance they’ve discovered, wondering what it is – it’s meant to be a giant web, which they don’t realise, but clearly it’s nothing more than a line of cheap old rope and net, without even the slightest attempt to conceal the fact.

My favourite laugh comes courtesy of the guy who, knowing that the giant spider is beginning to break through the wall next to him, stops to try and use the payphone to call the police for help, rather than running like hell for safety and finding somewhere better to call from. He even lets it ring six or seven times, determined to get through at all costs…I swear, if answering machines had been invented he’d have left a message (one that would have ended “AAAAAAaaaaargh! *gurgling noises*”).

Disengage brain, perhaps add alcohol and some like-minded friends and this one will be good for an evening poking fun at. Oh, and a moment that’s bound to make any fanboy chuckle is the one where director Bert Ira Gordon shamelessly plugs some of his other wonderfully cornball low-budget shockers.

Rating: 4 out of 10 stars

There’s not a lot to be said about The Deadly Mantis, since pretty much everything it has to offer had been done before (often better) in earlier offerings in the genre. It’s a largely by-the-numbers big bug affair, which pilfers heavily from Them! (1954), (plotwise using it almost as a template, in fact) but relocating the lion’s share of the action to colder climes, which is reminiscent of Howard Hawk’s The Thing from Another World (1951) and has a dash of the origin of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) thrown in for good measure.

It lacks the suspense of Them!, and the cast seems rather wooden and lacking chemistry all round, but it’s serviceable if unsurprising and the giant, prehistoric mantis effects are rubbery fun. So it’s not the top drawer of the big bug invasion, but it’s a nonetheless passable piece of hokum that will probably suit fans of the subgenre more than the casual viewer and would while away a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Rating: 5 out of 10 stars

I will go on record (and no, that’s not a pun referring to the film’s title) and say openly that I dislike The Blair Witch Project (1999), I’ve had scarier bowel movements. Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a great idea at its heart, using handheld cameras to take the documentary/found footage approach one step further (probably having its origins in Cannibal Holocaust) and really immersing the viewer in the thick of the action, breaking down the comfortable distance between what is traditionally perceived in the audience’s mind as “just a movie” and that which is more familiarly thought to be “real”, something that years of watching cinema and genuine documentaries have ingrained in us.

Why mention my position on The Blair Witch Project? Because it’s the one that most people will immediately associate with this style of film, it has just as many fans as it does detractors, but in either case it’s likely that it will be used as the yardstick by which other movies that employ the same handheld/shakycam gimmick will be measured. So it was with a kind of reticence I went to see [REC], thinking I would be likewise underwhelmed by the experience.

How wrong I was, I absolutely loved it. For one thing, I felt this was the first time that this type of movie got the shakycam balance pitch perfect, giving the viewer plenty to see but also providing that breakneck, whirlwind, realtime immediacy. I also think it’s helped by the fact that the set-up really sells it and makes it believable, reconciling the situation and the handheld style with a naturalness that draws you in, playing upon audience familiarity and the comfort associated with TV viewing (it’s in our homes; it’s where we feel “safe” watching). There are plenty of twists and turns and some well-placed “jump” scares that will keep you on the edge of your seat, and the directors have an impressive sense of pacing, the frantic action being interspersed well with lulls that allow the viewer to take a breath, but not at the expense of the tension. If anything, these slower moments give some character development which make the audience care more and ultimately serves to increase the tension when things go straight to hell. Using the block of apartments as the backdrop for the action is also shrewd in this sense (perhaps taking a cue from Cronenberg’s Shivers), as it’s very claustrophobic and dark, perfectly conveying that urgent feeling of being trapped and desperate, especially since the “zombies” share the rabid, brutal, fast-moving characteristics of the “infected” in Danny Boyle‘s 28 Days Later.

One last personal concern with these kind of films is their ability to withstand repeat viewings, and having seen this now perhaps three or four times I still find it effective. Even when the “jump” moments have lost their initial surprise, there’s plenty to watch just as a decent film – the characters are well observed and there’s lots of little things to pick up on many of them which stops them being generic, and it’s not all conveyed through heavyhanded exposition, a lot of it comes through the actors (especially Manuela Velasco in the lead, who is totally convincing as the reporter). Other things that set it apart, for instance, are the internal conflicts and prejudices within the community who live in the building and as the tension rises it’s interesting to see how these come to the fore as a study of urban civilisation under pressure, and the whole way the authorities deal with the situation has some resonance to it (for example, bringing to mind the response of the US authorities’ to the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina in 2005).

Forget the needless, almost shot-for-shot US remake Quarantine (2008) and grab a hold of the original, which is a well-made, highly recommended watch. I for one am looking forward to seeing what these filmmakers do from this point on, including the anticipated sequel to [REC] which should soon be released.

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Universal’s picture is a solid production all-round – the acting is fine, particularly Leo G. Carroll’s professor, a portrayal that successfully secures different audience reactions to his presence at different stages of the film. When the character first appears, Carroll plays him with a somewhat cold air of superiority and also a degree of furtiveness over the nature of his work, making him seem “guilty” in the eyes of the viewer, however as the film progresses and events unfold, this is deftly turned around and there is more an air of pathos, of good intentions having paved that road straight to Hades, and with that the character garners sympathy and a kind of tragic nobility.

The effects were excellent for the day and still hold up well, since most of the time it’s a real tarantula on display utilising camera trickery, and it works better than quite a lot of CGI spiders in recent years (enough to still make the average arachnophobe uncomfortable).

For the most part the pacing is good, building up towards the conclusion, drawing all the threads together for the inevitable conflict between man and spider, but here is where the film slightly lets itself down – the finale. Movies like King Kong (1933), Gojira (1954) and Them! (1954) left some huge paws, claws and antennae to fill in the denouement stakes, especially in terms of how the creature is to be finally brought low by man. Tarantula’s curtains come down just a little too quickly and easily, without enough sense of suspense, struggle or danger. That’s not to say it’s unsatisfactory, it just maybe could have used a beat or two more, and it’s the one very minor flaw in an otherwise greatly entertaining, excellent “big bug” outing.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

So if that’s your bag and your expectations are set for this kind of schlock, then chances are you’re going to have some fun with Graduation Day; if, however, you’re expecting a high production masterclass in Hitchcockian suspense, might I suggest you give it a wide berth. As slashers go it’s derivative and proudly so – hell, it’s likely the plot was scribbled as an addendum to the title, a gimmick just so they could cash in on the popular trend for slasher flicks being associated with a holiday or event. Speaking of the plot, it revolves around the death of a college student who dies in front of spectators on the running track as she pushes herself beyond the brink of exertion because of the screams and jeers of her pushy, obsessive coach. The tragedy strikes just before the students’ graduation day and as the event approaches the rest of the track team suddenly begin disappearing one-by-one, stalked and murdered by a killer whose identity is unknown but motive seems to somehow be in avenging the death of the young female athlete. There are plenty of suspects – could it be her elder sister, toughened after a stint in the navy and returning to pick up her sibling’s graduation papers in her stead? What about the coach himself, compulsive to the point of cruelty in his desire to build champions, a man who will not accept failure on any level, not to mention his penchant for leering at the girls as they perform? Either way, the killer will clearly stop at nothing until these potential Olympians become worm fodder.

So whilst there’s no surprises in terms of the story, it still manages to be pretty entertaining because what it has going for it is tongue-in-cheek, occasionally bawdy humour (the music teacher is a very 70′s, medallion-wearing Vegas reject, like a cross between Englebert Humperdink and Austin Powers and tries his best to sleep with his female pupils, students screw the professors for grades, the head gropes his secretary. In fact most of the adult males are lecherous pervs, it’s all very Carry On…), and a playfulness that “straight” pictures wouldn’t, which even extends to the way the director often plays with the film itself in terms of cuts, overlays and music, some of which are genuinely effective and interesting, others of which are kind of trippy – one scene in particular that stands out is a double murder that’s overlayed by a rollerdisco with a gloriously 80′s band singing a song as the couple are killed…it’s quite catchy, until it reaches the seven minute mark and you’re beginning to go slightly bug-eyed wondering if it’s ever going to end and what the director was smoking at the time. But these kind of add to the goofy charm, along with the overacting, the cheesy death scenes and the silly plotting (the ending actually feels like several endings, throwing every cliché at you including the kitchen sink). Throw in a few excuses to show some nudity with the blood (fans of Linnea Quigley watch out for an early role where she was apparently cast as a last-minute replacement and yet still manages to…umm….bring her ample talents to bare), and you have a perfectly serviceable piece of trashy entertainment, no more and no less, which if you’re in the mood for will probably surprise you with its energy and sense of silly fun.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

Well, no. For one thing, I’m of the opinion that ideas like this, while brilliant on paper, often end up being lacklustre, disappointing films because the people involved often think that’s as much as it needs and grow lazy and complacent. Exhibit A: Dead Silence (2007), James Wan’s directorial effort after his success with Saw (2004). You can see all the way through that turgid craptacular that the people involved clearly sat down in a room and said “Hey, you know what’s scary? Ventriloquist’s dummies and dolls” and from that point on thought they had it made, maybe watched superior movies on the subject like Magic (1978) or the classic Ealing anthology Dead of Night (1945) for ideas to help them tick the boxes, but didn’t care one iota if the script was any good and didn’t understand the mechanics of those films and what made them scary, content to instead rest on their laurels and trust that a few fast cuts and the occasional appearance of a dummy’s face onscreen would be enough to secure them a masterpiece of horror.

The other way this type of thing can be the instrument of its own destruction is when the filmmakers go out and intentionally try to create a “cult” film, which is something that just happens, it’s organic and attempting to make one happen by looking at what other cult flicks have in them and then trying to emulate it will end badly. Exhibit B: Undead (2003), a movie that on one level is perfectly serviceable, but there’s a niggling feeling throughout that the filmmakers were just trying far too hard to make you like it. It was obvious they’d run through Peter Jackson’s back catalogue, most notably Braindead (1992) and Bad Taste (1987), and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy and rifled them not so much for ideas but trying to work out why these are cult movies and tried their hardest to duplicate it, but it falls short. Even trying to make a horror/comedy with zombies is a rocky area these days because not only do you have a plethora of horror-comedies like the two mentioned above (Re-Animator (1985), Dellamorte Dellamore (1994), Night of the Creeps (1986) and Return of the Living Dead (1985) also automatically spring to mind as being significant entries in this subgenre’s heritage) – but Shaun of the Dead (2004), being a superb comedy within a horror setting confused the issue some more and since then imitators have also had to contend with throwing in some lazy, half-assed “comedy” too – Exhibit C: Evil Aliens (2005).

So I went into Død Snø with something of an air of trepidation, trying not to set my hopes too high. I’m happy to say that, despite the pitfalls it could have so easily fallen into, it doesn’t do either of these things – the idea of having Nazi zombies hasn’t been the sole focus, the pace is good, going from slow and tension-building to more manic towards the finale (even taking the time for a slow, almost “campfire tale” telling of the backstory which is effective) and the characters are nicely drawn with a few surprises to be had in the way in which they’re treated, in that it takes genre stereotypes and uses them in ways which are non-formulaic. Nor does it vie for a position as a “cult” movie, director Tommy Wirkola doesn’t seem to have deliberately tried to make it quirky or ironic. Yes, it does reference heavily both Braindead and The Evil Dead, visually as well as actual namedrops, but it does so more in the way of homage than trying to pass these ideas off as its own or via the increasingly irritating “sly wink at the audience” method.

Maybe it’s because it just played it straight, no grandiose air of pretension or total laziness, but I enjoyed it for what it was and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a good tongue-in-cheek zombie flick. A classic? Not in my opinion, as like Dance of the Dead (2008) it’s not really innovative or special, but it is disposable fun with an all-round good mix that’ll probably allow occasional repeat viewings – I chuckled here and there, there are a few “jumpy” moments and plenty of gore (although the one “eww” moment for me had nothing to do with viscera nor zombies, but a couple having sex in a toilet). Overall it’s good, clean fun that’ll entertain you for 90 minutes and not outstay its welcome, and you can’t say fairer than that.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

Apart from an older generation (and fans of period dramas) to whom the word may conjure images of powdered tobacco being snorted from ornate tin boxes, for the rest of us, especially the cine-literate, the word is associated with death, in particular the (alleged) real on-screen murder of another human being for the purpose of titillating the audience for whom the material was filmed, with profit as a possible motive. The debate over “snuff” continues unabated – the main topic usually being to do with its existence (the “there’s no actual proof” versus “if human beings are capable, it must exist somewhere” argument), but even its definition will often be contested (for instance there are some who would like to include in that definition the selling of material that includes actual footage of humans being killed accidentally or political executions, which would make, for example, the Faces of Death series “snuff”).

It’s almost an urban legend, the cinematic equivalent of Bigfoot, belief is fuelled more by faith and hypothesis than any emergent hard evidence. Its origins are allegedly born in the 60′s, courtesy of a rumour that Charles Manson and his “family” filmed themselves murdering victims and buried this footage (never found), which became the subject of high-profile tabloid rumours, leading naturally to it becoming fodder for exploitation moguls like Allan Shackleton to cash-in on, with the likes of Snuff (1976). Snuff apparently started life as a piss-poor slasher that would have been almost un-saleable, but with the buzzwords being bandied about by the media, Shackleton saw the potential in re-issuing it with the altered title, removed the end credits and added the now infamous tagline: “Made in South America – where life is cheap!”. It was a shrewd move financially, as the concept is one that both tantalises with the possibility of salacious, taboo content and also courts natural controversy, which is great free press – just look at how well Snuff did out of the “Video Nasties” panic in the UK; it had all but been forgotten, but since the short-sighted people involved with that little fiasco declared it banned, they instead only managed to give it publicity and a resurrection, pretty much like every movie on that list which for the hardcore horrorhounds of the day was like a shopping list of “must-sees”.

Since then there has been the occasional decent or half-decent attempt to make a film with snuff as a subject, like Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979) which touches on it briefly or Mute Witness (1994), which despite a few silly contrivances manages to be a neat little thriller. But more often than not it’s the idea behind low budget sleazefests which simply use it as a quick gimmick for exploitation purposes, like Fatal Frames (1996) or Snuff 102 (2007). This approach has even been perpetuated (alongside the most spurious aspects of the snuff myth) by big budget garbage like Joel Schumacher’s shameful 8MM (1999) which clunks terribly and betrays jaw-dropping lack of complexity or depth, deliberately churning out every possible stereotype and exploitation trick it can so that it plays to a wider audience out for a little titillation and to tut afterwards, including the same uninformed, conservative audience who would likely have supported the “Video Nasties” censorship based on this kind of trite misinformation.

This is why, for horror fans, “snuff” is a perpetually hot topic for a very good reason: at the heart of it are the same arguments that are generally levelled at the horror genre by those on the outside, those who see it as a corrupting influence, but also by fans themselves who are willing to probe their own feelings as horror continues to evolve. It’s about the relationship between horrific images and the viewer, of sex and violence, of the perverse desire innate in all of us to break boundaries and witness the taboo. Many come to horror and seek to test their limits, to push outwards and perhaps beyond previously drawn boundaries, and that goes both for fans and filmmakers alike. Is there a line, should there be one? When does testing limits of acceptance go from rebellion and experimentation to prurience? They’re questions which have been asked of horror probably since the beginning, and the idea of “snuff”, of someone going from watching faked violence to real may have seemed remote at one time but now with the possibilities offered by the internet, and with even mainstream horror films like Captivity (2007) courting this idea, baiting the critics with the new wave of (erroneously named) “torture porn” flicks or perhaps even closer to the bone of this issue movies like the execrable August Underground series, which are basically faux-snuff, make the issue all the more relevant.

All of which, by way of being a woefully brief and incomplete history of “snuff” and yet a very long-winded preamble to a review, is necessary, because it must be understood outright how complex and thorny an issue this is and how easy any film dealing with it can immediately fall at the first hurdle. What makes Alejandro Amenábar’s Tesis (Thesis) all the more impressive is that it not only navigates these pitfalls with ease but for a low-budget picture it doesn’t resort to mining the cheaper tricks of its competitors (though nor does it become preachy or pretend to have all the answers), whilst remaining throughout a taught and intelligent thriller. The plot revolves around Ángela (Ana Torrent), a film student who is writing her thesis on violence in movies. She enlists the help of fellow student Chema (Fele Martínez) who, being a collector of horror, exploitation and porn films is the class black sheep. The two make an unlikely pairing – Ángela comes from a well-to-do middle class family and has a squeamish aversion to violence and viscera, but is also secretly drawn to it through morbid curiosity. Chema, by contrast, is a loner at school and at home and has an appetite for pushing the boundaries and watching with relish the most bloody and horrific images he can obtain, something he is proud of. The duo’s lives and perceptions are shaken to their foundations, however, when Ángela, through the course of her investigation, accidentally stumbles upon a VHS cassette which shows a young woman who is bound and being brutally tortured and mutilated by an unknown tormentor, until she is finally murdered and her body dismembered, all for the benefit of the electric eye of the rolling camera, and the voyeur who will ultimately buy the tape. The worst is yet to come, though, as Chema realises that he knew the girl in question, she was one of their fellow students who disappeared some time ago, the ex-girlfriend of the popular, handsome Bosco (Eduardo Noriega, who genre fans may recognise from his menacing turn as Jacinto in Guillermo del Toro’s ghost story The Devil’s Backbone). It means that the tape was filmed somewhere locally, possibly by someone they know, and distributed by someone within their college…and that person may know them and want the tape back.

Where it rises above its brethren is in the mature, intelligent treatment of the subject matter and avoids the lurid, easy routes that it could easily have taken, with a definite less-is-more sensibility in some cases that make it more effective, never more capably demonstrated than in one scene where Ángela is torn between her desire to see what’s on the tape and her fear of it, and as a test turns off her TV screen and plays just the sound, and so the viewer too only hears what’s going on – a blank screen, the static hiss of dead air suddenly filled with a variety of very realistic and bloodcurdling screams of pain that leave everything to our imagination, which also cleverly puts the audience in Ángela’s shoes. This is also the kind of contradictory, complex duality that’s at work in all of the characters and becomes more apparent as the film wears on, shades of grey where at first glance they may appear black and white (and of course representing the murky debates that surround the themes of the movie). Take the meeting of Ángela and Chema, for example, where Amenábar cleverly juxtaposes a point-of-view shot from each of the characters studying the other, each is listening to music on their Walkmans (Walkmen? Well, probably moot since they’d be iPods these days), both in total contrast to the other, with Chema looking every inch the prototypical horror fanboy outsider and listening to heavy metal whilst Ángela is pert and middle-class, pretty but “ordinary” and she’s listening to something classical. Even the way their notes are arranged is meant to show the difference. But as the film continues the stereotypes are broken down – Ángela is morbidly drawn to the violence that society says are taboo, that outwardly she abhors but cannot help but be curious about and even find perversely erotic; Chema, who openly embraces this from the outset, and seems to enjoy his role as the outsider secretly wants to be accepted, it can be seen in his attraction to Ángela but more poignantly in how we find that he secretly follows her and films her, observes the way she is at home, not necessarily in a “Peeping Tom” way but because it’s the type of life to which he feels excluded and thinks he can maybe find the answer through the method of intake he finds information most readily digestible – through the camera lens and the screen.

Amenábar even uses the film school set-up to address the state of Spanish cinema at the time through the two different professors – the “old school” Figueroa and the younger Castro who fiercely argues the more commercial and competitive side of cinema, believing it should be run as a business and not as art if it’s to survive (and whether deliberate or not, he aptly looks a lot like James Cameron). This isn’t gratuitous or unnecessary, as it’s both integral to the plot thematically but it’s also related to the film we’re watching and how Amenábar straddles the line between commercial and independent, and yet it doesn’t preach one way or the other and presents them evenly with room for interpretation and thought, like most of the issues Tesis raises and ultimately is to its credit.

Just in terms of the film itself, Amenábar’s movie is a success, as it’s a great thriller, with a plot that runs like a Swiss pocket watch in the way it deals out its set pieces and revelatory twists and turns, the pacing is pretty much perfect and works all in the favour of continually building suspense that will have the viewer on tenterhooks. It’s helped too by the fact that the actors’ performances are also uniformly superb and really sell their characters, with very little being said about them through exposition they still appear largely three-dimensional and believable, which goes a long way to making you care for their fates and therefore making any scene where they may be in peril all the more tense for the emotional investment. Even at such a young age (he was in his early twenties), Amenábar’s direction is confident and assured, striking a delicate but satisfying balance between a Hollywood-style big budget picture and its independent roots, which allow it to take chances and not dumb anything down. The one time the balance is lost is in the closing moments of the epilogue which, unlike the rest of the film, feels a little heavy-handed, like its making sure those slow on the uptake will have got the message. In the end though, that is more than forgiveable and somewhat nitpicking.

All-in-all Tesis is an excellent, must-see film for any fan of the genre, it remains leagues ahead of any other film that has trodden similar waters, working perfectly well as a great example of a suspense movie that will leave you breathless but with plenty of food for thought afterwards, should you fancy a nibble.

The importance of the brief history lesson and titbit of information becomes evident as such a letter then appears on the screen, the impetus for what’s to come. Signed “Rosemary” (hence the alternate title this is known by; Rosemary’s Killer), colour finally seeps into the black and white we’ve seen thus far, with the little flourish with which she signs her name – a red rose – becoming bloodily vivid, seguing into the prologue proper which is set in 1945, a graduation ball for the elite in the small New Jersey town of Avalon Bay. Everything seems idyllic, until a young couple are brutally murdered at the hands of a masked killer. Fast forward to Avalon Bay 1980, where the dream of the first graduation ball in 30 odd years turns to a nightmare as a masked killer, dressed in WWII combat fatigues and armed with an army issue bayonet and a pitchfork (yeah, that’s something I wasn’t sure about either) infiltrates the grounds and begins brutally slaughtering anyone he happens upon, leaving their dead bodies with the gift of a single red rose. It’s up to the local deputy and the girl he’s interested in (who happens to be one of the event’s organisers) to try and find out who the killer is and what his connection is to the old double murder, if any, before the body count rises any further.

As slashers go, The Prowler isn’t the greatest but it has two things going for it. The first and foremost attraction seems to be its entire raison d’être – to showcase the setpiece FX on the kills by master in the field Tom Savini. Gorehounds will not be disappointed, they’re simple in their own way (nothing as lavish as, for example, Savini’s FX in Day of the Dead, like the guy being ripped to pieces by a horde of zombies, screaming even as they carry off his head), but they are bloody, brutal, realistic and effective, they can genuinely hit that part of you that makes you wince a little, even if you’re also smiling with bloodlust at the same time. One setpiece in particular (which I won’t spoil for you) involving an unsuspecting young man as he prepares to join his girlfriend in the shower is especially memorable and nasty – in the best possible way, of course.

The other thing it has going for it is some decent direction by Joseph Zito (who would go on to helm Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the fourth instalment in the franchise, aka “that one with Corey Feldman”). It’s nothing spectacular, but he knows how to keep the tension bubbling and how to film a good death scene. There are some other nice touches – like the letter in the beginning being suffused with colour to indicate the change from historical document to the film starting proper, and there’s the prologue itself, which is something of a period piece and done very well. Small touches like that give it kind of a class that is lacking in other low budget pictures of a similar nature (whether it’s deserving of it or not). Also of note is the cinematography which definitely takes a leaf from Dean Cundy’s amazing work on Halloween (1978), there’s some nice use of the locations, shadows and moonlight.

On the other hand, the storyline and motivation for the events of The Prowler are pretty threadbare and most of the characters, even the main ones, aren’t particular memorable or leave you caring one way or another whether they’re going to make it to the end or end up skewered. It could just be me, but it also suffers from perhaps one of the worst cases of Scooby-Doo syndrome, where the killer’s identity is so painfully obvious as soon as he appears that the movie is just playing catch-up to what the audience already knows right up until the last reel, so all references to the “mystery” are redundant and you wish they’d just skip it and get to more of the red stuff. But those things don’t matter much as they’re not its primary concern. Overall it’s not going to really be full of many surprises, but it’s efficient, rarely dull, looks pretty good and does what it set out to do – showcase Savini’s top class bloody FX.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

No, I’m not talking about Pierce Brosnan’s acting. I’m talking about Pierce Brosnan’s acting AND his French accent. AAAAAAaaaaaarghhh! Seriously, there are times it’s so much like Pepe LePew that it’s painful.

John McTiernan would later helm Predator (1987) and Die Hard (1988) but this, his first film, is overall something of a clunker, the shame of it being that there are some nice touches here and there that suggest there was a good film waiting to burst out but the script (also by McTiernan) could have used some refinement before shooting began (although the fault could be with the source material, a book of the same name by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro).

It opens well, with Lesley-Anne Down playing a doctor who whilst on duty in the ER comes across a bloodied, beaten man, delirious and raving in French. This turns out to be noted anthropologist Jean-Claude Pommier (Brosnan) and with his dying whisper he somehow transfers every memory of the last few weeks of his life into her head. From this point forward, Dr. Flax is living in a kind of waking dream, re-living Pommier’s life through flashback, partly involuntary and partly fuelled by a desire to get to the bottom of what’s happening to her, a mystery at the centre of which is an inner-city gang whose lifestyle so resembles that of the nomadic peoples found in other cultures that Pommier, who had spent his life studying them, could not help but be fascinated and caught up in their strange existence. Along the way, Pommier began to suspect that there’s something otherworldly, perhaps supernatural, about these beings as he learns of an Inuit legend of malevolent nomadic spirits who bring with them madness and death in their wake to any human unfortunate enough to make contact with them…

McTiernan’s movie is at its strongest towards the beginning, when the changes Lesley-Anne Down’s doctor is experiencing are strange, hallucinatory and confusing and the flashbacks to the Pommier storyline are purposely sporadic, but somewhere towards the middle of the film the flashback part takes over and becomes the dominant storyline and it’s at this point it becomes dull, with Brosnan’s character following around the gang for what seems like an interminable time with very little happening. There’s one nicely atmospheric exception to this, when Pommier stumbles upon a sufficiently creepy old house and inside has an encounter with an apparition who reveals to him the possible sinister nature of the nomads via the retelling of the Inuit myth, but as with all the moments where there is some atmosphere or tension, they’re just moments lost in the overall soup of unevenness.

Take this myth for example – it is, in fact, a very good idea and subtly creepy and could have worked as an interesting slant on the vampire mythos, but that’s all it remains from that point on, an idea, there’s never anything done with it to give the gang the air of menace that’s needed to give it teeth and dramatic impact for the viewer. The one time it approaches its potential is towards the movie’s conclusion and is a case of too little, too late. Furthermore, by the same token that the Lesley-Anne Down storyline is sadly sidelined for far too long (and when it re-emerges, again not much happens), when this more action-oriented set piece occurs it seems to come out of nowhere and is totally at odds with the tone set by the rest of the film, and whilst it probably could have worked by being a deliberately contrasting, adrenaline-filled denouement, it just feels tacked-on, ending the film abruptly after meandering about doing very little for far too long. There are times when it tries to blur the line between reality and what could be the supernatural, deliberately obfuscating whether they’re even really happening or whether Pommier is indeed mad, but these are abandoned and underdeveloped. The other main problem the movie cannot overcome is Brosnan, who’s so wooden he goes from teak to mahogany in 5.2 seconds. Even were it not for Brosnan needing a fresh coat of varnish, there’s just far too much time spent on his character and not on the gang (wasting the appearances of Adam Ant and Mary Woronov), so there’s no real feeling of dread from them which is essential to giving the movie the tension it needs, and it also disconnects for too long from the Dr. Flax link in the storyline, making it a plot device to tell the lion’s share of the narrative in flashback, which is clumsy.

In many ways I was often reminded upon re-watching this of Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil (1992) – lovely big ideas and potential in its own creepy internal mythology which it never quite lives up to, some nice atmospheric moments and imagery, but ultimately the plodding pace and aimless direction take their toll, leaving it with some interesting touches but far, far too dull and pointless overall. Maybe worth a watch if it comes on the box one night, but be prepared to fall asleep before the credits roll.

Rating: 3 out of 10 stars

Personally speaking, I don’t get why this cops so much stick, as of the big bug movies I’ve watched I thought it was one of the more entertaining. Willis O’Brien, whose stop-motion animation preceded Harryhausen’s and is famously associated with his pioneering techniques that breathed life into King Kong (1933), does a great job with the multitude of giant scorpions, really giving them some character. You repeatedly get to see a close-up of these beasts’ faces and they’re sufficiently fierce-looking, with mouths full of rows of teeth, beady black eyes and plenty of goopy saliva dangling from their maws, not unlike the eponymous Alien (1979).

Someone seeing this in 1957 got real bang for his buck – there’s some giant bugs scrapping in there too (which are reputedly set pieces of O’Brien’s that were meant to be in the infamous bug pit sequence in King Kong but were never shot, so were used here instead), one of whom has a bloody, brutal end at the pincers of a scorpion, and a vicious daddy scorpion who dwarfs the others and is quite happy killing them upon a whim, there are no filial loyalties in the arachnid world.

It’s also nice to see the action being taken away from the usual locations, moved here to Mexico which gives it a different flavour and backdrop from all the rest. Richard Denning, the oily Dr. Williams in The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954), is a likeable, stoic lead and the pacing throughout is good, no lags between the set pieces and the final showdown is satisfyingly hard work for the heroes to overcome. What’s not to like?

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars

April Fool’s Day holds a unique place in the slasher pantheon that burgeoned between the 70′s and the mid-to-late 80′s, as it possibly marks the end of the “golden era” of slashers and is in fact an early precursor to the likes of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), with a wit and sophistication to the script that, at the time, regular slasher fans were unprepared for and for those whose palettes had been somewhat dulled by the endless recycling of the template popularised by Friday the 13th (1980), this was completely unacceptable. The recipe for success there was to make the deaths the centrepieces (made possible through Tom Savini’s pioneering FX work) and throw in plenty of gratuitous T&A, a formula refined and regurgitated ad nauseum. April Fool’s Day actually bucks the “gore is more” trend and is more reminiscent of Halloween (1978), which was more about suspense than blood. In fact, you never really see any of the characters being killed, all you see is the aftermath, which is sufficiently gory for the average taste but gorehounds will probably be disappointed. This is deliberate as it not only comes to fruition within the boundaries of the shrewd Ten Little Indians style murder-mystery plot, but is also something that is slyly subverted by the movie itself, pre-empting what Scream would do by a decade and without ever quite relying on the kind of self-referential, in-jokey humour that Scream‘s sequels and tiresome copycats would eventually flog to death. It plays with the genre conventions and audience expectations very cleverly, some of these are subtle enough upon the first viewing that when you re-watch it you can’t help but grin, like watching a magician’s sleight-of-hand trick a second time once you know how it’s done.

Even the characters are both recognisable slasher staples (the joker, the jock, the slut etc.), but at the same time there is the sense that these are being gently pastiched, but given a touch of humanity from with the reasonably able cast (which includes Amy Steel from Friday the 13th: Part II (1982) and a fun, goofy performance from Thomas F. Wilson, better known as Biff Tannen from the Back to the Future series). There’s a sense of humour (often black) throughout which keeps it bubbling along nicely and the production and direction are assuredly sound if nothing mind-blowing, but gives the whole thing a pretty solid finish compared to some of its siblings in the field, and at a lean 89 minutes it never outstays its welcome or becomes too clever for its own good.

Overall it’s one of the better 80′s slashers with a touch of Agatha Christie and some humour. Underrated, but it’s easy to see why audiences with certain expectations were left underwhelmed at the time and perhaps to modern eyes brought up on 90′s slashers the twists and turns may seem a little bit quaint.

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars