Couple of Corman’s

Dean Stockwell leads the cast in The Dunwich Horror a Roger Corman adaptation of the famed Lovecraft short. Stockwell turns up at a library hoping for a squiz at the Necronomicon in an effort to continue his ancestor's research but after entrancing one of the librarians it becomes clear his interest is more practical then academic. Despite the low budget and a hokey script this is still a half decent Hammer-ish chiller mainly down to Stockwell's creepy, weird performance which only falters during the climactic, highly amusing, ritual. Goofy fun.

Doug McClure stars as a fisherman-buffoon in another Corman produced horror B, Humanoids from the Deep. A spate of fishy attacks and a couple of corpses eventually lead the dull witted locals to the realisation that they're being invaded by murderous bottom feeders who also appear rather keen to make sexy time with catchable ladies. I suppose there’s some so-bad-it’s-good titters to be had along the way but the dreadful acting, dire script and piss poor production values (bad even for a Corman flick) meant that this was almost switched off more than once. Don’t bother.

Hailing Halloween

Sound engineer Toby Jones arrives in Italy to work on a Giallo in the ambiguous psychological horror, Berberian Sound Studio. Never quite finding his feet nor making friends with his colleagues Jones finds himself a little lost and reality and the disturbing film he’s working on begin to seep together. The juicy audio and murky cinematography churn a deliciously thick atmosphere which is ably magnified by Jones’ marvellously crumbly performance. I was a little disappointed that the drift into a Lynchian weirdness didn’t amount to much but this is still an unnerving, quite brilliant homage to 70’s Euro-horrors.

A little Irish island gets plagued by rapacious squid-ish critters from Outer Space in the modest but entertaining Grabbers. Playing out much like Tremors, the monsters soon start munching the locals with much abandon but, rather fortuitously, the key to the villagers survival is drunkenness and the fight back begins albeit in a slurred, uncoordinated fashion. The reasonable cast have enough laughs in the script to keep things ticking along between the action and though it probably had a tiny budget the sfx are quite good. With a bit more work this might have been great but it’s a strong b-movie effortless and the sort of film our film industry should/could easily bang out a la Hammer or Amicus.

Nazi Nonsense

Undying Nazis are causing some Eastern European mayhem again (tut tut) in the B movie sequel Outpost: Black Sun. The tech behind their resurgence still tempts developed nations and as various soldiers struggle to recover it a couple of journalists find themselves behind enemy lines and in grave goose-stepping danger. As you'd expect no-one has bothered too much with the script or plot for that matter and the acting is as good as it needs to be I guess but the explication of the story dissipates any atmosphere and it's descends deeper into farce. A shame, for a homegrown horror the original was more fun, they really should've tried a little harder.

Moon Nazis plan to take control of the Earth in the trashy Iron Sky which, I'm sad to say, mostly squanders it's brilliant premise. A forgotten splinter of the Reich has spent the post war years slowly been building an invasion force of spacecraft on the dark side of the Moon (and going quite mad in the process) but their privacy and plans are disrupted by a bumbling celebrity astronaut. The bold and barmy set up is let down by a weak script which doesn't have the jokes or confidence to play it straight and a shambling, patchworked plot. Still it looks quite nice at times and I didn't switch it off.