80s Fear

The Prowler (1981) (a.k.a. Rosemary’s Killer; The Graduation)

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 20:30:47 +0000

Directed by: Joseph Zito

Written by: Neal Barbera & Glenn Leopold

Starring: Vicky Dawson, Christopher Goutman, Lawrence Tierney, Farley Granger, Cindy Weintraub, Lisa Dunsheath, David Sederholm

Special makeup effects by: Tom Savini

Music by: Richard Einhorn

Taglines: “It will freeze your blood.”

“The human exterminator.”

“if you think you’re safe… you’re DEAD wrong!”

“the film that shocked America!”

STORY

A solider fighting in World War 2 receives a “Dear John” letter from Rosemary, his long-time girlfriend, saying that she cannot wait for him any longer and needs the end the relationship. At a college dance in 1945, Rosemary and her new boyfriend are murdered by a masked killer with a pitchfork.

Since that event, all graduation celebrations have been banned, however the college feels it’s time to move on and resume celebrations. However, a masked killer is still stalking the grounds and resumes murdering students.

OPINION

The Prowler was one of my nice surprise movies of the last decade, not having seen it until a few years ago. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of it until I started reading about it in a few UK horror magazines in the late ’90s, and only then under it’s alternative title Rosemary’s Killer (the title I personally prefer, for what it’s worth). On the face of it, this is just another one of the many imitators that followed in the wake of the original Friday the 13th. There are two things that really set it apart, however. One is the fact that the effects are performed by none other than Tom Savini, who has cited this as his best work – strong words from such a legend! The second is that Joseph Zito knows what he’s doing – so much so that he was invited to direct Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter on the strength of this film alone.

After a short introduction where we see the Dear John letter, we start the movie in an impressively mounted sequence set in 1945, culminating with the double murder of Rosemary and her lover. This sequence is convincingly set up, with the actions and look of the cast keeping in touch with the setting. In fact, this helps make the ultimate death sequence even more shocking.

From there we flash forward to the present day (i.e. the early 80s), where a new prom is taking place. As the female students run back and forth to their dorm room, they start to become victims of a mysterious killer dress in visually striking army fatigues, and largely armed with a pitchfork that looks rather similar to the weapon in the opening sequence.

Under control of a lesser hand, this could actually be a problem. Plot-wise, there’s not much to chew on, but Zito keeps things moving and never lets things get bogged down or boring. Even though the bulk of the movie happens over a single night, we manage to get shower scenes, pool scenes and various different stalk and slash sequences, along with decent levels of gore. While the central conceit is a little thin, it’s great to see some well-realised period detail in the opening sequence, as well as a plot that doesn’t revolve around a group of kids on a camping trip or any of the other over-used tropes of the genre at the time.

It’s no surprise that Zito was picked for what was then supposed to be the finale of the Friday The 13th on the strength of this, but unfortunately he never returned to the genre afterwards. His credits since then consist of a handful of cheesy 80s action movies made for Cannon (including guilty pleasure Chuck Norris vehicle Invasion U.S.A.) and a couple of direct-to-DVD movies made a little more recently. A shame, as he’s a talented guy and should have done more, but I’ll have to check out his previous slasher movie Bloodrage at some point to complete my Zito slasher knowledge.

CENSORSHIP

The Prowler was released in the UK under the alternative title of Rosemary’s Killer and suffered various cuts including “a pitchfork into the stomach, a carving knife plunged through the top of a man’s head and then slowly withdrawn, and a woman’s throat being sawn with a knife in a swimming pool”.

I haven’t been able to find a great deal of information about the exact reason why, but the movie was not available officially on UK VHS and only surfaced in 2007 on DVD. I don’t believe that it was officially banned nor part of the infamous “video nasty” list. However, it’s quite likely that nobody bothered submitting it to the BBFC during that age of moral panic, especially considering that its main selling point was Savini’s gore effects – which would definitely have been cut out in that era. I have seen evidence of a pre-cert tape, but no further info – please let me know in the comments if I’m wrong about anything here!

There are 2 main versions available – the UK DVD under the Rosemary’s Killer title, and the US Blue Underground release. This is a region 0 release, so is preferred as it contains a commentary track from Zito and Savini.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

TRAILER

Snuff (1976) (a.k.a. Slaughter; American Cannibale)

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:27:44 +0000

Written & directed by: Michael & Roberta Findlay
Starring: Margarita Amuchástegui, Ana Carro, Liliana Fernández Blanco, Alfredo Iglesias, Enrique Larratelli, Mirtha Massa, Aldo Mayo, Clao Villanueva

Taglines: “A film that could only be made in South America, where life is CHEAP!”

“The picture they said could NEVER be shown”

“The Bloodiest thing that ever happened in front of a camera!!!”

SYNOPSIS

A satanic cult in Chile set their sites on people they want to murder, including a famous American actress who has just arrived in the country for her latest film.

REVIEW

Urban legends are funny things. They spread like wildfire, and thanks to their “friend of a friend” style of telling, they often persist for many years after they’ve been proven 100% fictional. From hypodermic needles in coin slots to that guy with the hook who always terrorises teens on lonely roads, they often not only make for good camp-fire stories, they can also make good movies.

The urban legend that’s relevant for this review is, as the titles might suggest, the snuff movie. These are movies where a real-life murder has been committed purely for the purpose of capturing it on camera. The resulting movies are then passed around group or in underground black markets, for the sick pleasure of whoever wants to watch such a thing. It’s a scary thought, but thankfully one that’s not true.

The story starts with the Manson family, who supposedly captured some of their killings on 8mm film. None of these films have ever been located, but it’s a strong idea that sparked the imagination of a few people. One of these people, apparently, was producer Allan Shackleton. He obtained this 1971 movie, originally entitled Slaughter, shortly after a short run in Argentinian cinemas. The American directors, Michael and Roberta Findlay, had been inspired by the Manson murders to produce, like many before and after them, a horror movie featuring a satanic hippy cult with a Manson-like leader. It was sleazy and exploitative but not the stuff of major financial success.

However, one of Shackleton’s staff supposedly saw the film and mistook one scene for real-life violence. I’m not sure what that scene could possible have been from the evidence left in this version of the film, but the seed was planted. Shackleton started rumours and sent fake notifications about a “real” snuff film that had been uncovered. The press took off with it, and one the headlines were all screaming about snuff movies, Shackleton released advertisements for his new movie, now entitled Snuff, with the tagline “a film that could only be made in South America where life is CHEAP!”. To complete the package, he also shot a new ending for the movie, where the camera switches to a set and an actress gets murdered “for real”.

Of, course, no such thing actually happened. Nevertheless, the movie was a big success based on its marketing, while rumours persisted for many years about “real” snuff movies having been found. Some of those rumours were amusingly and quite obviously repeats of the very same rumours put out by Shackleton to promote this movie. Other famous examples include Cannibal Holocaust, which actually had director Ruggero Deodato in front of an American court and forced to summon his cast members to prove he didn’t actually kill them on screen, and Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood, over which Charlie Sheen called the FBI because he thought it was real.

Snuff movies continue to inspire modern works (such as 8MM and Snuff Movie) and rumours continue to persist. However, no such film has ever been found.

So, there’s the background to this movie, what about the movie itself? Unfortunately, it’s not particularly good. The “snuff” portion only occurs in around the last 3-4 minutes of the film so we have 80 minutes to get through before then. Of course, this is the actual film that was meant to be shown, but the hype can’t help but make it seem like filler. We follow around 2 sets of characters. One is the cult led by Satahn, the only male member of the group. The women in the group spend their time torturing each other and attacking each other over drugs. The second group of people consists of the actress Terry London and her affairs with both her director and a younger man living nearby whom she met recently in the US.

Sadly, none of this is particularly interesting. First of all, there’s a lot of padding. At one point the characters go to the local carnival, and we’re “treated” to interminable stock footage of the carnival, inter-cut with footage of our characters “enjoying” it there (although they’re clearly nowhere near the stock footage). The movie is also dubbed, and dubbed atrociously. It’s not always bad, but between the echo chamber voice used for Satahn and the way that the lips don’t match up even remotely with the dubbed voices, it’s distracting at best. During one rape sequence, I actually found myself rather inappropriately giggling because the dubbed voice was so bad.

The editing and direction are also fairly inept, but for my money not any worse than hundreds of similar movies during the 70s. This all, of course, leads to the ending, which is unsatisfying for numerous reasons.

First of all, it’s abrupt and nonsensical, almost inevitably by its design. The camera literally cuts during a murder sequence to a “set” (clearly not the same place as the previous shot). The director then seduces the actress in front of the camera, only to start attacking her with a knife when she notices that the cameras are still rolling. Inevitably, it actually goes way too far to be a real snuff film. The actress is first tortured, with the arm being almost severed, one of her fingers cut off and finally her guts being pulled out. Whereas a simple stabbing or something similar may have been made to look realistic, the effects for these more elaborate sequences are simply not up to the task. The illusion is further spoiled by a few continuity errors that make it rather unconvincing. It may have been rather shocking to less attentive audiences who hadn’t been exposed to such things in 1971, but modern audiences will not be convinced.

The other problem is that it doesn’t really end the movie. I have no idea how Slaughter would have ended, but it was clearly leading up to something, be it a vengeance against the cult or a simple “yeah, the bad guys won this time” revelation 30 seconds later. But, here we have an entire movie leading up to an ending that has nothing to do with it. As ineptly written and directed as much of the movie is, it’s extremely frustrating to get no kind of wrapping up of the movie we’ve invested 75 minutes into before the footage we paid to see!

So, as far as we can tell from the remaining footage, the original movie Slaughter would have been a vaguely passable but extremely forgettable time-waster, with enough blood and boobs to keep you awake even as the film-making left you cold. With the footage added, it becomes something else, and it ain’t pretty.

CENSORSHIP

Almost inevitably, given its history and the snuff legend, Snuff found its way onto the video nasties list. As with so many of the old “video nasties”, Snuff has now been passed uncut by the BBFC in 2003, though at present no official UK DVD seems to have been released.

TRAILER

Frightfest 2010 preview

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:06:33 +0000

OK, so I’ve had some time to digest the line-up for this year’s Frightfest in London this August and I’ve managed to secure my weekend ticket! As ever, it’s an interesting line-up consisting of a wide range of movies from those I’ve been looking forward to based on their notoriety (A Serbian Movie) to interesting-sounding movies I’ve never heard of before (Burning Bright, Bedevilled) and everything in between.

The usual Frightfest routine seems to be here. First, we have a première to open the weekend (actually 3 as all the movies on the Thursday are world premières!) and a première to close. We also have weird and wonderful Asian and Aussie movies for the midnight screenings and a few special surprises including the return of the movie quiz.

The discovery screen returns again from last year, providing some movies that would not otherwise have been shown. I like the line-up here a little more than last year, although I’ve already seen 2 of the movies listed (Amer and Fanboys) but the scheduling looks a bit more in line with the main screen so I won’t have to miss too much if I decide to go in.

We also see the return of a feature from last year – a classic movie on the big screen. Actually, this time it’s a bigger event than last year’s An American Werewolf In London screening with a full 7 hours (including breaks) dedicated to Tobe Hooper. Star of the show, of course, is the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre but we also get a screening of his ultra rare debut Eggshells and a 45 minute Q&A session with the man himself. I expect lots of questions about why he’s not made anything particularly good since Texas Chainsaw 2 as well as lots of probing about his actual role in Poltergeist (which he is credited with, but most people think Spielberg really directed).

Standout movies from the main screen line-up, for me, would include: Primal (an Aussie movie with an intriguing screenshot on the Frightfest site), Dead Cert (which from the cast – including Danny Dyer and Dexter Fletcher – sounds like a horror version of a Guy Ritchie movie), F (another premiere with an intriguing screenshot), The Loved Ones and Monsters (both of which have had very good buzz).

There doesn’t seem to be any 100% Hollywood filler like in previous years, but there’s the unnecessary remake of I Spit On You Grave and the bland looking The Tortured that might fill that description. There’s nothing on the main screen that I feel I really want to miss, but I would like to see Burning Bright, Wound or Finale on the Discovery screen if I can!

As ever, reviews will be forthcoming following the event, and I’ll expect special guests and surprises that we haven’t been warned about beforehand! So, on to the final countdown and get my flights booked…

Blood Diner (1987)

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:19:18 +0000

Director: Jackie Kong
Writer: Michael Sonye
Starring: Rick Burks, Carl Crew, Roger Dauer, LaNette La France, Lisa Elaina, Max Morris
Music by: Don Preston

Taglines: “First they greet you, then they eat you.”"Food So Good, It Tastes Just Like Mom Used To”

STORY

Two brothers were indoctrinated by their crazed uncle into a cult worshipping an ancient goddess named Sheetar, shortly before getting gunned down by police. When they grow up, the pair dig up their uncle’s body and uses his reanimated brain to help them collect the body parts needed to resurrect Shita. Meanwhile, they secretly feed human flesh to the unsuspecting customers at their “vegetarian” diner.

OPINION

Blood Diner is another one of those movies that’s OK at face value but gains a lot on interest when you learn its history. In this case, Blood Diner was originally intended as a direct sequel to Herschel Gordon Lewis’ infamous gore movie Blood Feast, which followed Fuad Ramses’ attempts to create a similar feast for a similar ancient goddess. Unfortunately, Lewis could not direct a movie to save his life. His movies are all very boring, atrociously acted and poorly staged. the gore – their main selling point – may have been shocking at the time, but generally consist of waving offal taken from a butchers’ shop in front of the camera. It’s not even a case of working with 60s sensibilities or being a pioneer in his field – the 2002 official follow-up Blood Feast 2 – All U Can Eat is just as bad. He has his fans, but I’m not really one of them.

Luckily, Lewis did not direct this one. Taking over is Jackie Kong, a female director who had an unfortunately brief career in exploitation and horror movies including The Being and Night Patrol (in fact, Blood Diner was her last feature). I’ve not seen her earlier work, but I would like to track them down after this, where she shows a real flair for direction that was totally missing from Lewis’ work. The script has the same kind of goofy humour and strange sensibility (the cops investigating the murders are as quirky and useless as in its fore-bearers).

There are 2 things that really stand out here. First is the acting. While not particularly great, it’s about average quality for an 80s low budget movie, and positively Shakespearean compared to Blood Feast. The other great thing is the gore and the imagination behind the effects. Aided by 80s effects technology and a good eye, Kong manages to create a lot of amusingly disgusting sequences. From the woman who has her head coated in batter (before getting it deep friend and then knocked clean off) to the people puking over each other in the diner, there’s a lot on display here that proves that in the right hands, this kind of gore comedy can work quite well.

There’s downsides, of course. The script is not particularly good, and the film walks a very thin line between campy fun and boringly self-aware. There’s a sequence toward the end of the movie during Sheetar’s resurrection (come on, that’s not a spoiler, surely!) which takes a left turn into zombie movie territory and while Sheetar’s resurrected form is amusingly disgusting, you can’t help but notice she’s rooted to the spot. There’s some truly weird sequences that reflect some of Lewis’ more bizarre decisions (for example, there’s a strange recurring gag about a rival diner whose owner talks to a dummy) that work equally badly.

The music sequences are also strange in a way that was obviously meant to be camp but grated on me a little bit. The first such sequence (an aerobics studio full of topless cheerleaders) was just long enough to drive the joke into the ground, but when action moves to several club sequences it gets a bit much. For some reason, the bands on stage are playing a weird 80s version of 50s rock and 60s soul. During the final club scene, some of the band are dressed as Hitler. Maybe I’m missing something, but it was all just filler that annoyed me more than entertained me.

All in all, these are fairly minor quibbles. If the phrase “an 80s version of Blood Feast” piques your interest then go for it. Otherwise, it’s a passable time-waster but nowhere near the quality of other similar movies that were made at the same time.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

CENSORSHIP

Blood Diner was mildly controversial on release, being banned in several Canadian provinces. It was also cut by nearly 4 minutes for its UK VHS release. I see no reason why it would be cut if resubmitted today, given that the likes of and even Caligula are now uncut, but thus far nobody has.

AVAILABILITY

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be an official UK or US release of this movie on DVD although there are some European discs available (linked below).

Frightfest 2010

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:16:56 +0000

OK, so there’s been an early announcement about this year’s Frightfest and it’s a good one! The opening and closing films have been announced as:

Hatchet 2 – Adam Green is a long-time Frightfest contributor, and it’s the successful screening of the original Hatchet that really got his career under way. After not being able to attend February’s Frightfest screening of Frozen (due, ironically, to snow and ice preventing the plane from taking off successfully), it’s great that Green has chosen the festival for his new movie’s world première!

The Last Exorcism – I’ve not heard too much about this film apart from the fact it’s filmed in a documentary style and produced by Cabin Fever, but it sounds promising. According to IMDB, the director Daniel Stamm has directed another documentary style movie called A Necessary Death, I’ll have to check it out before the festival though it doesn’t seem to be on DVD. This will be the European première.

So there we have it. It’s slightly disappointing that no British movies have been chosen but I’m not entirely sure what’s on the horizon and the new movies from festival stalwarts Neil Marshall and Christopher Smith have already been released. Can’t wait till July 2nd, when the rest of the line-up is announced, and then July 3rd when I get to be able to buy the actual tickets!

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:07:53 +0000

Director: Wes Craven

Starring: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Johnny Depp, John Saxon, Amanda Weiss, Nick Corri, Ronee Blakely, Charles Fleischer

Music by: Charles Bernstein

Taglines: “She is the only one who can stop it… if she fails, no one survives.”

“If Nancy Doesn’t Wake Up Screaming She Won’t Wake Up At All…”

“Sleep Kills”

“A scream that wakes you up, might be your own…”

“Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep…or you’ll meet the terrifying Freddy.”

STORY

A group of high school friends are all experiencing the same strange dream where a man with a horribly burned face and a razor-sharp knifed glove is trying to kill them. One of them is horribly murdered in her sleep, and they learn the horrifying truth behind their town’s history and the child murderer in their dreams.

OPINION

(Warning, there are many spoilers here, but a movie this classic deserves some spoiler-ish discussion IMHO. If you haven’t seen it, do so now!)

By 1984, the slasher craze that had been in full swing since the release of Friday the 13th in 1980 was dying down. The problem with the genre was that the films were too repetitive and cheap – anybody with a camera could make them, and often did. Even the flagship franchises were starting to die down – the fourth Friday The 13th film promised Jason Voorhees’ permanent demise, while Halloween’s 3rd instalment avoided Michael Myers completely. The genre desperately needed fresh blood.

It came in the form of Wes Craven. Not a newcomer himself, Craven had been languishing among some pretty poor projects since the double-whammy release of The Last House On The Left and The Hills Have Eyes in the 1970s. Since deciding to leave his tenure as an English professor in order to pursue movie-making full time, Craven hadn’t really found a project to match these earlier successes. He’d made a few TV movies (Summer Of Fear, Invitation To Hell), a fairly bad comic book adaptation (Swamp Thing) and a mediocre rural cult thriller (Deadly Blessing). None of these movies are particularly great, although they were unspectacularly profitable.

During this period, Craven was trying to sell the script for Elm Street, but found it very difficult to get funding. Apart from the fact that studios were trying to distance themselves from the slasher craze amid accusations of misogyny and exploitation, the script demanded far more than the standard slasher script. Rather than a simply maniac with a knife, elaborate effects sequences were called for thus making the budgetary requirements somewhat higher than average. In what would prove to be the best decision since Parlophone signed the struggling Beatles, producer Robert Shaye approved the rejected script despite his company New Line edging perilously close to bankruptcy.

The result is one of the most perfect horror movies of the 80s. The movie starts off with an intriguing credit sequence showing Freddy constructing his now-iconic razor-fingered glove.This is followed by the film’s first dream sequence which has a teenager by the name of Tina running from Freddy in an also-iconic boiler room. She manages to wake up before Freddy gets to her, but is shocked to notice a number of cuts on her nightdress in the same configuration as Freddy’s glove. From here, we’re introduced to the main characters and another of the movie’s strengths – the characters. In many other slasher movies, the teenagers are merely ciphers – the jock, the slut, etc., along with an innocent who will turn out to the the “final girl” who fends off the killer in the final reel. Any characterisation is left for the killer, and even that’s usually paper-thin.

Here, however, all of the characters are given some form of depth. Tina doesn’t get much screen time, but she’s intriguingly teased as being a possible lead and comes across as a normal teenager. Her boyfriend starts off as a stereotypical hoodlum, but shows a nice degree of sympathetic depth after she dies. Nancy is also pretty well-rounded, and reacts to the situations with a degree of believability, while her boyfriend Glen is less shaded but never rings false. This characterisation extends to the adult characters – initially set up as unsympathetic adults and pretty poor people, their actions and mannerisms become very believable when you find out why they are that way.

Which brings us to Freddy’s back-story. A far cry from the wisecracking stand-up comic he became in later sequels, Freddy Krueger is a truly despicable character. A child molester and child murderer, Freddy had managed to escape justice on a technicality. In response, the townsfolk gang together, trap Freddy in his boiler room and burn him alive.It’s an interesting cycle of revenge with more layers than the average prank-gone-wrong kind of story behind many slashers, and it works extremely well.

This brings up on to the other real star of the show – the dream sequences. Later sequels had a habit of sticking to an annoying rut. They would introduce a character trait or phobia early in the movie, which Freddy would then exploit later on – for example the bug-hating girl in part 4 who gets turned into a cockroach. None of that by-the-numbers writing is present here. Craven creates a truly nightmarish dream world where literally anything is possibly, and you can’t tell what will happen next. It’s truly surreal, and while a few effects don’t work very well, the ideas present are flawless. The appearance of Tina’s body being dragged inside a body bag along a school corridor, and later with bugs coming out of her mouth are the things that nightmares are truly made of, while elements like Glen’s geyser-like death and Freddy’s mouth on the phone are surrealism at its finest. Meanwhile, Freddy does have a macabre sense of humour – displayed here by the aforementioned telephone scene and his chopping off his own fingers to freak people out – but it’s very unstated here.

The final piece of the puzzle is the cast. As well as a very young Johnny Depp, we have a great mix of genre stalwarts as the adults (John Saxon and Ronnee Blakely) and newcomers as the teens. The real human star of the show is Englund. His performance – often the only thing worth watching in the sequels – is fantastic with the menacing, sadistic Krueger laced with humanity and even pathetic cowardice when the moment call for it. There’s a very good reason why (unlike other slasher franchises), nobody else has played the villain in this series until Jackie Earle Haley from this year’s reboot.

There are a few problems, but none of them major. A few effects have always been a little ropey – for example, you can see where the pools of liquid are on the stairs before Nancy steps in them during the climax – but that’s forgiveable. The endings are the real problem, first the “demise” of Freddy through non-belief seems to contradict the “let’s bring him into the real world so we can kill him” thrust of the whole movie. meanwhile the end shot of Nancy’s mother being pull through the door is laughable. Otherwise, a near-flawless masterpiece.

If you’d have asked me as a kid which was the best of the Elm Street movies,I would probably have said part 3. While that film is still excellent, some of it hasn’t dated particularly well, whereas this original is still fantastic for most of its running time.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

TRAILER

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) (a.k.a. Hollywood Hookers)

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 18:08:30 +0000

Director: Fred Olen Ray

Written by: Fred Olen Ray & T.L. Lankford

Starring: Jay Richardson, Gunnar Hansen, Linnea Quigley, Dawn Wildsmith, Michelle Bauer, Esther Elise, Tricia Burns

Music by: Michael Perilstein

Taglines: “They charge an arm and a leg!”

STORY

Following some bizarre chainsaw murders, a private detective is hired to track down a missing girl. He finds her as part of a cult of chainsaw-wielding hookers who sacrifice their victims to an ancient Egyptian god.

OPINION

Fred Olen Ray is one of the quintessential crap merchants in the early VHS era, along with Charles Band Charles Band[/cbc] and other contemporaries. Working largely out of Florida, Ray churned out large numbers of low grade, very cheap movies with just enough violence and nudity to regain their meagre budgets. A couple of his movies became iconic titles of the era, with Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers probably being the one everybody remembers. It’s not hard to see why – interesting artwork, a cameo appearance by the original Leatherface, Gunnar Hansen (in only his 2nd movie since that classic), scream queen legend Linnea Quigley and a catchy title made sure that it made more than its mere $96,000 budget.

Now before watching this movie for the review, I admit that I had only seen 2 of Ray’s movies despite being very familiar with his name. Despite having 113 credits on IMDB to date, I’ve tended to avoid his movies purely because of their low-grade crapness. The two I had seen were Evil Toons (no truth in advertising there – it only has one toon and delivers none of the adult Roger Rabbit escapades promised by its title and box art) and The Alien Dead (absolutely atrocious and amateurish, albeit his début to be fair).

So, I had few hopes for this movie. What I got was a fairly enjoyable, supremely cheesy and stilted movie that’s a worthy time-waster. The film is set up as a kind of hard-boiled detective pastiche with Richardson playing private detective Jack Chandler. He’s hired to find Samantha (Quigley), and goes through the usual motions of a low-budget detective story – that is, all the clues are fairly obvious and Chandler stumbles across things mostly by chance.

Of course, we’ve already seen what’s happening to the bodies that have been found – hookers pick them up in a bar, take them back, tie them up and dismember them with chainsaws. Don’t get too hopeful over the gore aspect though – most of the effects here consist of the chainsaws being pointed just off-camera, while blood is throw from somewhere off-screen. There’s a cheesy charm about it, though. Oh, and of course every female member of the cast gets to take their tops off and wiggle a bit while these scenes are happening!

Overall, it’s a silly romp probably best enjoyed by a group of men after a few beers. It’s not classic, but reasonable for what it is. As a movie, though, it’s terrible – very stilted acting and dialogue, dumb plotting and it does drag in places despite only being 75 minutes long. Oh, and if you want a real taste of how cheesy and silly this movie can be, check out the opening title card, a “heartfelt warning” from Olen Ray himself:

“The CHAINSAWS used in this Motion Picture are REAL and DANGEROUS! They are handled here by seasoned PROFESSIONALS. The makers of this Motion Picture advise strongly against anyone attempting to perform these stunts at home. Especially if you are naked and about to engage in strenuous SEX.
My conscience is clear, (signed) Fred Olen Ray.”

CENSORSHIP

This was a rather contentious movie in its day for a couple of reasons. First of all, the idiocy of 80s BBFC thinking really shone through as the cover art was not allowed to have the word “chainsaw” displayed (although a silhouette of a chainsaw was OK in its place for some reason). So, the UK version was known as Hollywood hookers for some time. According to the BBFC website, 1 minute 6 seconds was cut from its original VHS release, but I haven’t been able to track down information on exactly what. Given that movies like Body Double were routinely censored for the sight of blood on breasts in fear that such imagery was a trigger for rapists, I’d imagine that the murder scenes involving topless women & chainsaws were cut rather than the softcore nudity itself.

The current UK DVD is uncut.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

TRAILER

Frightfest Glasgow 2010 – review

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:00:53 +0000

So, another Frightfest is over, all too soon. This was my first Glasgow event, and although it did seem very truncated compared to the London event (2 days instead of 5), I had a great time. there were plenty of friendly people, freebie (mostly leftovers from the London event last year, though I managed to get free DVDs of Death Note Death Note[/cbc] and Fragile), and some decent movies. I even had time to check out The Wolfman, which I’ll review after the jump along with all the Frightfest movies.

There were also some nice guest Q&As and special previews. Sadly, previously announced guests Christa Campbell, Vincenzo Natali and Adam Green couldn’t make it (the latter ironically prevented from promoting Frozen by snow & ice). However, some other guests made it. As well as the directors of Amer & 2001 Maniacs, there were a few previews from Frightfest regulars. Chris Smith showed a scene from his upcoming Black Death, which looked OK but not particularly spectacular. Neil Marshall showed the opening of his Roman actioner Centurion, while Jake West premiered the deleted footage from Doghouse. Both of these were pretty good, hope that there’s a director’s cut of Doghouse in the near future and Marshall may have a hit on his hands…

The atmosphere, as ever, was incredible and mostly enjoyable. There was a strange moment during Stag Night, where fight broke out (apparently due to an armrest dispute!), but other than that it was no different to the London event apart from the size of the cinema itself.

THE WOLFMAN

This Benicio Del Toro vehicle was a long time coming to the screen. There were many reshoots – never a good sign (Marshall noted that the reshoots for this movie took longer than the entire shoot for Centurion) – as well as last minute changed of director and even the composer. That the finished product is not only coherent but fairly entertaining is almost a miracle, though the movie does fall well short of its potential.

Del Toro takes up the role of Laurence Talbot, the doomed hero originally played by Lon Chaney Jr. Estranged from his father and brother, he had grown up in America following the violent death of their mother. He arrives at the family estate just too late to help his brother, who was apparently killed by a wild beast. He vows to help investigate the death, but is attacked by a werewolf while looking into a gypsy camp. Now cursed, he ends up on the run from the police and has to confront a stange family history while facing the fact that death may be the only way out.

The story itself is jaded and cliched, but the performances do help carry the movie through. Anthony Hopkins hams it up something rotten, but Hugo Weaving is excellent as Aberline, the detective who had investigated the Ripper murders a few years before and wants to solve this case to regain his reputation. Del Toro is fine as the doomed hero, and the direction is rather solid considering the production troubles. Sadly, the weak point is the effects. Gore is taken to ridiculous extremes, and the atmospheric visuals seen on the trailer only occasionally surface. The transformation sequences are well done, if inevitably CGI heavy, but the classic wolfman makeup style does look silly and dated, even coming from the hands of Rick Baker.

Overall, not a complete waste of time, but a disappointment when you consider the potential this project should have had.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

FROZEN

The first movie of the festival is a strange one to review, since there are many elements that seem directed solely at Frightfest regulars. There are many mentions of things that are personal to director Adam Green, but well known to Frightfesters, such as Paul Solet and Green’s love of E.T. One character is even named after Green’s regular Frightfest sidekick Joe Lynch!

The story is quite simple. Three college students are enjoying a skiing trip, but try to save money by bribing the ski lift attendant to let them up at a much lower price than they’d spend on a ticket. This backfires when due to a series of unfortunate incidents, the lift is shut down while they are suspended 50 feet in the air. This particular resort shuts down during the week, so the trio have to find a way to escape before they freeze to death – a task made much harder by the wolves that take a liking to the smell of human blood.

Frozen is a real achievement, and I enjoyed it much more than Green’s début Hatchet. There’s a real sense of tension throughout, no mean feat considering that most of the movie follows three people in a seat. I had been a little concerned by the trailer we saw at the August Frightfest, as this showed a character jumping to the ground (with predictably disastrous consequences) rather than trying to climb across the cable, which I thought rather dumb. Fortunately, this decision is vindicated in the movie itself, and not the tension killer I had feared. The best way to describe this movie is as a more polished version of Open Water, with wolves, snow and ice instead of water and sharks. It’s a very tense movie, and a great achievement considering the necessarily low body count and gore factor.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

2001 MANIACS: FIELD OF SCREAMS

While the first 2001 Maniacs was no masterpiece, it was a fun retelling of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1964 film about a town of ghostly rednecks avenging their death at the hands of Yankee soldiers in the American Civil War. Word had it that while this movie had a much lower budget, it was closer to director Tim Sullivan’s original vision. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to have been a good choice, although both movies are still better than any movie Lewis ever directed.

The town of Pleasant Valley is in turmoil after the local police chief decides to stop helping them gather their victims. They are forced on the road, just in time to catch a group of film-makers who decide that the travelling rednecks would make a great backdrop to their movie. Of course, they’re going to end up as more fodder for the maniacs, but not until they’ve had some fun first…

The biggest problems with this sequel are the budget and the anachronistic approach to the story. First off is the silly road trip plotline, which generally makes no sense although it enables director Tim Sullivan from having to pretend that his handful of cast members represent the entire town population of 2001. However, from the moment this thread is introduced, it destroys the conceit of the original story. In the first movie, Pleasant Valley was a town that only appeared once per year on the anniversary of its destruction by Northern troops in order to trap and kill Northern travellers and avenge their deaths. In this sequel, the townsfolk are apparently around permanently. Not only that, but they seem to have gained a lot of knowledge of the modern world from driving cars to doing a Flashdance parody in one sequence. It’s a strange change of direction, and doesn’t really work.

The good news is that apart from Robert Englund (replaced here by Bill Moseley and joined by his Repo: The Genetic Opera co-star Ogre as a new character), all the main original cast members have returned. The film also doesn’t skimp on the gore, though the kills are nowhere near as imaginative. On the victim side, the cast are essentially dumb meat with a Paris Hilton-like bimbo as one of the primary stars. The humour is also much broader this time, with a lot of gay and race jokes that entire characters hang around for the sole purpose of providing. It’s not as offensive as it wants to be, but some jokes are fairly amusing.

Overall, it’s not a terrible sequel but it’s a long way down from the original.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

STAG NIGHT

A group of New York guys out on a stag night get kicked out a strip club and decide to head across the city by subway. One of them gets a little too pushy when trying to pick up a girl, and gets maced for his troubles. Unfortunately, one of them decides to get off the train while it’s stopped at a red light, and the train leaves while the group are arguing outside. They soon realise that they are stuck at a long-abandoned station and the only way out is along the tracks where a group of cannibal killers are roaming.

During the Q&A, director Peter A. Dowling seemed annoyed at comparisons to Chris Smith’s debut Creep, as well as Death Line (a.ka. Raw Meat). However, the comparison is really unavoidable. There’s only so much that can be done with the idea of killers on a subway, and sadly it’s all been done better before. Dowling attempts to hide his low budget by using a lot of unnecessary shaky cam movements, which while not confusing was rather annoying. Maybe this will look better on the small screen, but here’s a hint for directors: there’s 100 years of great low budget movies that didn’t have to depend on this tactic. Characterisation is also rather slim, apart from the groom’s pining for his fiancée which gets cloying and overly sentimental.

It’s not all bad, though. Despite being hugely unoriginal, the story is fine. There’s a few tense sequences and a couple of moments of gore (one of which, involving a head crushing, got big applause from the audience). It’s not a bad time-waster, but it’s ultimately hampered by echoes of everything from Creep to Wrong Turn

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

A LIZARD IN A WOMAN’S SKIN

Carol Hammond is the daughter of a prominent British politician, who is having recurring nightmares about sex and death. She often dreams about lesbian sexual encounters with a noisy neighbour, who hosts wild parties in her flat. One night, she dreams of that neighbour being murdered and is shocked when she finds that the murder has indeed taken place in exactly the same method she dreamed. Did she commit the murder, or is she being set up?

A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin is a well regarded giallo from Lucio Fulci, who would go on to later infamy as a director of gore movies. Here, he depends a little less on gore and more on story but the result is a fine, if not spectacular, early entry into the genre. The version screened for us was essentially a workprint of an upcoming new release that combines all of the footage that has ever been assembled into one print. This mean that some scenes were a little rough-looking, and some jumped into subtitled Italian instead of the English dub present on most of the movie, but it didn’t really detract from the movie. I wasn’t distracted too much, especially since I’d never seen this particular movie before.

Sadly, this is one movie that hasn’t dated particularly well. Some of the plot lines are rather silly (especially the one involving a hippie couple), and the movie ends in a slightly annoying way that invalidates much of what went before, or at least made it rather pointless. Fulci has a decent visual style, but there are very few particularly striking images, to my mind at least.

Overall, not a bad movie but far from the classic it’s touted as in some circles, although I admit that my giallo knowledge is not flawless. Maybe I’ll enjoy this more on a second viewing, but I’m not in too much of a rush to do so.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

AMER

The French have recently been giving us their own unique takes on most major horror themes, from zombies (The Horde) and “torture porn” (Martyrs) to home invasion Ils) and hillbilly cannibal killers (Frontieres). So, it’s hardly surprising that they now give us their take on the giallo, although calling this a giallo is a little misleading.

The story follows Ana at three major points during her life – as a child, a teenager and a young woman. At each stage, she encounters strange ghostly creatures and a killer wearing black gloves.

…and that’s it really, plotwise. There’s very little dialogue and no driving narrative, so I was initially rather disappointed at this movie’s categorisation as a giallo. There’s little real mystery driving the film as a whole, and there’s no driving force between the sections of the movie. However, the movie is really just an excuse to pay homage to the visual and audio style of the 70s genre, which it does with style and flair.

There are many homages to note for fans of the genre, from the Tarantino-like use of music from old movies to specific shots and sequences borrowed from earlier movies. For example, when things start to get strange during the first sequence, there are many shots that seem to be aping the visual style of Suspiria. There are also a lot of close-ups of parts of Ana’s body, and a strong feeling of repressed sexuality throughout.

This is one movie I will need to revisit again soon. I was fairly disappointed through the first third of the movie because I couldn’t see what the story was that was being told. Once the second sequence began and I knew that this was not going to be a straight narrative, I soon settled into it, so I’d love to watch it again with prior knowledge of its structure. Apart from that, this might have been the movie of the festival, but for now it’s just above average and a great showcase for a potential new talent.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

[REC] 2

Taking place immediately after the end of the first movie, a SWAT team is sent into the infected building to take care of remaining survivors and extract a blood sample that may help create an antidote. Unfortunately, the head of the mission is not giving them the whole story, and new victims are becoming possessed by the disease/demon that has caused the outbreak.

I absolutely loved the first [REC], being as it was an almost flawless “found footage” movie that deftly side-stepped most of the common problems associated with the genre. The camera operator had a real reason for keeping the camera on for the length of the movie – he was working with a bottom rung reporter, both of them were bored and this outbreak represented a unique career opportunity. The script allowed a great deal of momentum, and the enclosed space and sealed location provided reasons why they could not simply outrun or hide from the antagonists.

So, when [REC] 2 was announced, I was slightly concerned that this could not be repeated. Would this be another outbreak somewhere else, stretching credibility? Why would a person be keeping the camera on this time? Luckily, directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza were well ahead of me. Their central conceit this time revolves around cameras attached to the SWAT teams’ helmets, so they are recording all the time without impairing their job. They can even access each others’ cameras, achieved for the audience via picture-in-picture. It’s a great conceit and works very well. They also have a very good reason to stay in the building, even after members of the team start dying off – the potential for a cure outweighs any

Interestingly, the movie also makes a direct remake as a follow-up to Quarantine (the remake of the original [REC]) completely impossible. Whereas the original [REC] hinted at a supernatural cause for the outbreak and the direct involvement of the Vatican, Quarantine jettisoned all of this in favour of a more standard mutant flu virus explanation. However, many of the later plot twists, and the clever twist ending, revolve completely around demonic possession, thus making it very difficult to adapt to the Quarantine universe. I don’t know if this was deliberate or not, but I did find this amusing!

[REC] 2 does fall short of the original, however, for a few reasons. The demonic aspect takes the story into a more unrealistic realm, and the film suffers slightly for it. There’s also a long sequence involving a group of kids who have managed to sneak into the building, and they happen to be filming with a camcorder. The section where we follow them around is a little disappointing and feels like padding, although there are a few amusing moments in there. That’s not a terrible sequence, but it does feel somewhat unnecessary.

Apart from that, this was the most enjoyable movie of the festival along with Frozen, and I’m glad I got to saw it on the big screen. I’ve already pre-ordered my DVD!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

SPLICE

A pair of genetic researchers have managed to create a new organism by splicing together DNA from numerous other plants and creatures. The result is a creature capable of producing substances that can revolutionise farming. However, they have a much broader ambition. If they splice in human DNA, the result could be breakthroughs in the treatment of all major diseases. After their request to do this officially is denied, they decide to do it anyway. Initially the project seems to be a failure, but after success they can’t bring themselves to kill the resulting creature as originally planned.

Vincenzo Natali is a very interesting director who makes sci-fi movies on low budgets with unique twists on the genre (Cube, Cypher, Nothing). While the basic concept of Splice is a little more obvious than his other work, his work here surpasses any film he’s done before on both a technical and visual way. The main characters are played admirably by Adrien Brody (here making amends for his atrocious turns in Giallo last year) and Sarah Polley. Essentially a three-hander between them and their creation, their performances truly carry the film.

However, the real star of the show is Dren, the creature they have created. Initially a fully CGI creature, and later an actress with CGI features and limbs, Dren is a totally convincing creation and one of the few instances of a CGI character being engaging. You really feel for her as she struggles to find her place in life and to understand what is happening to her.

Unfortunately, it starts to fall apart a little by the end of the movie, ending with a fairly predictable fight to the death and a “twist” ending that I saw coming a mile away. Even so, it’s a very enjoyable for most of its length and a fairly unique movie that makes a change from the dumber scripts that get forced on to our screens under the sci-fi banner.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

HARPOON: REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE

…and a nice, cheesy movie to finish the festival! The story is quite simple – a group of tourists go on a whale watching trip off the coast of Iceland. Out at sea, the captain befalls a fatal accident and the skipper takes the lifeboat to save his own skin. They contact a nearby vessel to help, but they’re soon taken hostage by a family of inbred killers who blame the tourist industry for taking away their whale hunting livelihood.

As you can tell from the title, this isn’t a movie to be taken seriously. Director Julius Kemp is obviously a fan of horror movies, and pulls out a lot of decent twists on well-worn cliches in this, Iceland’s apparent first exploitation movie. The gore is decent, if a little CGI-heavy and the plot twists are often amusing. However, where the film scores is in the characters and dialogue. The dialogue switches between English and Icelandic (Gunnar Hansen does his best Icelandic in his brief cameo), and both languages get a few decent jokes. The characters – including a drunk Frenchman, a Japanese group and a couple of Americans and Germans – are also fairly unusual, although the drunkard is a little overplayed.

Overall, a decent enough movie that’s unlikely to make too many waves, but is decently entertaining.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Well, that’s it for now. More reviews of 80s movies coming soon, and I’ll post with details of the Frightfest London event when they’re announced. I already have my hotel room booked!

Necropolis (1987) (a.k.a. Necropolis: City Of The Dead)

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 11:52:06 +0000

Written & Directed By: Bruce Hickey

Starring: LeeAnne Baker, Michael Conte, Jacquie Fitz, George Anthony-Rayza, Andrew Bausili, Vicki Bell

Taglines: “It’s the Ghouls night out.”

“Beneath The Metropolis Is…”

STORY

A witch executed in New Amsterdam is reincarnated in modern day New York. Retrieving an amulet to contact Satan, she sets about capturing the souls of junkies, prostitutes and other low lives in order to resurrect her master. However, a priest, a cop and a young woman – reincarnation of her old enemies – stand in her way.

OPINION

I remember watching a trailer for this movie on an old VHS back in the 80s. Like a lot of trailers at the time, it was cheesy and low grade but I clearly remember seeing one sequence that stood out in my memory – the witch grows 6 breasts to feed her zombie-like servants. It was a striking image but sadly the movie proved disappointing when I eventually saw it on VHS a few years later. Recently, I’ve been rewatching a bunch of movies that I haven’t seen since the 80s, and I thought this was worth a second shot. Sadly, it’s just as bad as I remembered.

First of all, it’s a pretty amateur production. Few of the cast can really act, and the few that can (mainly the pretty good Jacquie Fitz) only have so much chance to carry the film. In fact, of the very few cast members with any other iMDB credits, only LeeAnne Baker (the witch) has anything substantial, and only then a few trashy movies made around the same time (most of which will probably be reviewed here at some point. The script is plodding – even at only 78 minutes, it really drags – and it barely has any story to speak of. We spend most of our time following the witch around as she acquaints herself with the seedier side of pre-Guiliani New York and has random encounters with the locals.

She mainly talks to people and convinces them to kill themselves or have sex with her so that she can steal their souls. Meanwhile, we follow an Italian-American cop and his attempts to woo an English reporter (Fitz) who has gotten on the trail of the case, and a priest whose charges at a drug rehabilitation centre are among the first to go. None of the subplots really go anywhere, but they do help break up the monotony. Apart from the aforementioned suckling scene, there’s not a lot of gore or much else of interest to separate it from much of the direct to video fodder of the age, especially considering that it came from the famously cheap Charles Band’s pre-Full Moon project, Empire Pictures.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

AVAILABILITY

As far as I’m aware, this movie has never been released on DVD. However, if you want to watch it and can’t track down a VHS, it’s linked to download through the Tachyon City blog. This will probably be removed when/if the movie is ever officially released, and I’ll replace this message with a link to purchase the movie…

Frightfest Glasgow 2010 – a quick preview

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:40:13 +0000

So, before normal service is resumed – and since I finally managed to get a ticket & accommodation booked – I thought I’d give my thoughts on the upcoming Frightfest Glasgow event at the end of February. This will be my first Glasgow event, and my first non-August Frightfest as well as my first ever trip to Scotland! So, lots to look forward to, but here’s the movies playing:

Frozen – the new movie from Adam Green, Frightfest regular and director of Hatchet. He’s actually taking a break from filming Hatchet 2 in order to promote this film, which should be fun. The film itself follows a group of people who wind up stranded on a ski lift when the resort shuts down with them still suspended in the air. Looks pretty good, though I have a few doubts about the actions of the characters during the short trailer we saw in August – hopefully it’ll be much better in context.

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams – Tim Sullivan directs this sequel to his remake of H.G. Lewis’ Two Thousands Maniacs!, with Bill Moseley taking over from Robert Englund as the leader of a group of ghostly hicks looking for revenge over the civil war. The original 2001 Maniacs was gory, silly fun so I expect this to be more of the same. Should go down well with a hardcore crowd.

Stag Night – I don’t know too much about this, other than that the plot synopsis (people trapped in a subway being chased by underground killers) sounds a LOT like either Creep or 70s classic Death Line. Hopefully, it’ll be fun.

A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin – For some reason, despite the being a lot of hype surrounding recent DVD restorations, I’ve never gotten around to watching this 1971 Lucio Fulci giallo. It’s well respected and I’ve been watching quite a lot of giallo recently, so it should be good.

Amer – Again, one I’ve not heard too much about other than the fact that it’s supposedly a new French take on the classic 1970s Italian giallo style. I’ve enjoyed most of the major recent French genre movies, so hopefully this will be equally fun.

[REC] 2 – YES! I managed to miss this at the cinema despite living in Spain (I was in the US during its release :S ) so this will be a great watch on the big screen. Not sure what else to say other than I’m still excited about it despite having seen the trailer and the original many times and this should be the best way to see it.

Splice – Another movie I was glad to see announced, this is the new movie from Vincenzo Natali, the director of Cube. We saw a scene back in August that looked pretty good, and the CGI’s really respectable despite the low budget he normally works with. I’m hoping for another intelligent and complex plot surrounding the genetics themed storyline and hopefully a better performance from Adrien Brody than Dario Argento. The second is that it’s the first ever horror movie from Iceland! Should be a laugh if nothing else, and I’m sure we’ll down a few lagers or whatever either way…

80s Fear

The Prowler (1981) (a.k.a. Rosemary’s Killer; The Graduation)

Related posts

Snuff (1976) (a.k.a. Slaughter; American Cannibale)

Related posts

Frightfest 2010 preview

Related posts

Blood Diner (1987)

Related posts

Frightfest 2010

Related posts

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

Related posts

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988) (a.k.a. Hollywood Hookers)

Related posts

Frightfest Glasgow 2010 – review

Related posts

Necropolis (1987) (a.k.a. Necropolis: City Of The Dead)

Related posts

Frightfest Glasgow 2010 – a quick preview

Related posts