Abnormal Acts

David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon, has clearly inherited his father’s penchant for body horror as his impressive debut Antiviral, a sneaky, low budget, high concept scifi flick positively glistens with creepy, twisted fleshiness. Working as a vendor of celebrity infections, our protagonist decides to scoop the competition and takes drastic measures to secure the mysterious affliction that’s struck down a beautiful young starlet. Cronenberg sketches out a nicely jaded dystopia where science has become a slave to the pernicious cult of celebrity and the quiet pacing and performances underpin it’s increasingly unsettling atmosphere. As Pops Cronenberg drifts more and more into mainstream features it’s a relief someone in the family is keeping up the tradition of squirming squeamishness.

 

Although Absentia doesn’t manage it’s budget quite as well as Antiviral it’s still manages a mouldering atmosphere of weirdness that lifts it above the average horror/thriller. After 7 years, a young wife is about to declare her missing husband dead and enlists her wayward sister to help tie up things only for the husband to crawl through the front door rambling incoherently about a close to home kidnapper. The script is a little thin at times and the production a bit low fi but the plot’s menace and weirdness are developed nicely as the character’s emotional churning soon blossoms into a sticky miasma of dread and confusion. A solid, interesting little chiller that’s worth a look and shows that Kickstarter funding might be a viable option for cash starved film makers.

Scifi Scenery

Twisted horror/comedy John Dies At the End gets butchered down into a reasonably successful 90mins by  Don “Phantasm” Coscarelli.Two slackers get drawn into some fantastical hijinks after ingesting an other-worldly drug called Soy Sauce and fumble about dodging death and some unsavoury and unusual characters. The dark, deadpan wit of the novel is mostly intact and there’s a lovely grubby sheen to the production but the sfx occasionally betray its low budget and the plot’s over simplification is at times baffling with some of the funnier, weirder scenes omitted, still a pleasantly offbeat slice of nonsense.
There’s more juice in the recent adaptation of Dredd with plenty of eye popping action decorating it’s deliberately straightforward plot. Karl Urban stars as the titular antihero who, whilst indoctrinating a rookie into the world of instant justice in a degenerate, over populated future, gets trapped in a drug lord’s tower block and a brutal slaughtering ensues. The unabashed action and perfunctory script keep things ticking along nicely and the modest introduction of the comic’s key elements nicely set up a sequel or two. It’s a shame then that despite it’s charms it bombed at the box office.

British '78s

Richard Burton stars in the curious British paranormal chilller The Medusa Touch from 1978. The chronologically jumbled narrative follows a detective’s investigation into the attempted murder of a man who’s witnessed a few too many tragedies but perhaps unsurprisingly a far darker truth is slowly revealed. This is a low budget curio which, despite some of it’s frippery, musters an effective brooding atmosphere that ticks along nicely towards a suitably grim finale and of course It does help to have Burton in the centre of the piece exuding a smouldering menace that far outweighs his screen time. Understated & underrated.

Shape shifting aliens, cannibalism & lesbians feature in Prey, another British horror from ‘78 that, although quite ridiculous, has a potent, dreamlike atmosphere that masks most of it’s shortcomings. On arrival to Earth the alien adopts human form and infiltrates a nearby mansion only to loaf about for days winding up the squabbling lovers that live there – so far so idiotic and though the script  is half baked and the acting, er, shit it somehow kind of works. There’s some nice directorial touches but I guess it was the sheer weight of all that strangeness that kept me watching to it’s baffling denouement. Probably just for aficionados of cult crap but there’s enough here to justify a remake,

Drivelling Low Lights

Sometimes even I am surprised by the lazy, craptaculars that get churned out by Hollywood machine these days but Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter was quite astonishing in it’s vacant, soulless idiocy. Retelling the story of an American hero with some fang action thrown in probably seemed a good idea on paper but it’s a pitiful, by the numbers plotted pile of steaming dung that has literally no redeeming merits and will no doubt be an endless source of embarrassment for the director Bekmambetov, producer Burton and the talented cast including Brits Sewell and Cooper. Avoid.

Resident Evil: Retribution is a similarly crummy action flick with Jovovich and Anderson seemingly deluded into thinking that there’s mileage left in this weary franchise. Seguing directly from the 4th the action starts with Alice rescued/kidnapped from the wreckage of aircraft carrier by the Umbrella Corp and her subsequent monster stomping escape. Paper thin characters stumble through predictable set pieces with the usual fan favourite critters making intermittent appearances and though I’ve nothing against the games or some of the earlier film efforts this is a complete waste of celluloid that’s neither scary, thrilling, inventive nor even that grisly

Superfluous Reduxes

It's been a while since I've dipped into anime, mainly due to it's preoccupation with giant robots and panty shots, but the recent OVA reworking Berserk: Golden Age is showing in a local cinema so I'd thought I'd give it a go. Set in a medieval-ish era, Berserk follows the career of a single minded mercenary called Guts and his bloody travails in search of vengeance. The animation is a distinct improvement on it's 80's predecessor and surprisingly it’s retained it’s commitment to violence and viscera however the story, squashed as it is, lacks much of the finesse of the original leaving me to wonder what viewers unfamiliar with the story will make of it.

Alucard is under the kosh at the start of Hellsing Ultimate Ep. 9, the latest in the reworking of the vampiric anime/manga but it's not long before he dusts himself off and scrapes the streets of London with his enemies entrails. This OVA retelling doesn't quite seem to tickle me like the original series did maybe it's the feverish animation, the thinned out, hyperbolic characters or the Nazi-Vamp Zeppelin invasion storyline I dunno, it does have some merits however with a rich smorgasbord of gore and a bucketful of attitude.

Scant Cinematics

The Day is a gloomy lump of Canadian post apocalyptica that attempts to blend the bleakness of The Road with the action of Book of Eli but with little success. A gaggle of survivors drift aimlessly across a ravaged America trying to avoid strangers but after resting up in an abandoned farmhouse they become prey for a cannibal horde and a desperate siege ensues. The plot and script are uninspired and though there's a fair bit of action it's filmed in such a blurry, poorly lit way you can barely tell what's happening. Bog standard B-movie stuff.
Barry Levinson tries his hand at found footage horror with The Bay. A survivor recounts her experiences about a small town's 4th July celebrations that are somewhat dampened by a flesh eating parasite from the local estuary which cuts a bloody, grisly swathe through the inhabitants. Rather than focus on a single camera source the framing narrative allows Levinson to mix things up with cctv, mobile and police car footage and though it's admirably modest in it's ambitions it isn't scary and some of the key performances are unconvincing. Better than Day but not by much.

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.

Frightfully Eighties

Scott’s smoky vampire flick The Hunger with Bowie & sapphism.

Mann’s spooky castle The Keep sports a Tangerine Dream soundtrack.

Cushing, Price & Lee unite for a horror spoof The House of Long Shadows.

Terminating Teens

A deserted, overgrown town situated near the meltdown site provides a suitably creepy background to the by-the-numbers chiller Chernobyl Diaries. A bunch of yank tourists take an ill-advised tour of the ramshackle settlement and quickly become prey to it’s current, rather murderous mutated inhabitants. There’s a few nerve jangling moments hidden among the cheap jumpy scares but the acting and script are so humdrum that it all slumps rapidly into mediocrity. Not terrible but hardly terrifying.

High school kids are getting killed off by a movie inspired psychopath in the frenetic, po-mo Detention. After the first couple of corpses turn up a disparate group of students take it on themselves to unravel the mystery and find themselves neck deep in a genre/mind bending escapade. Though the acting is so-so this comedy/horror has a quite exhilarating hing pace, driven relentlessly forward by a flashbang, music video editing and a script rammed tight with gags and a plethora of pop culture references a la “Community”. Shallow, fast paced fun but with a style that’s bound to be divisive.

Horror Throng

Brit horror/comedy Cockneys vs Zombies is as basic as the title suggest and it’s best bits are crammed into it’s trailer sbut it sill managed to raise a chuckle or two. Builders pop a sealed tomb and inadvertently unleash a zombie outbreak on the East End sending a bunch of bungling bank robbers battling across town to rescue their Grandad who's holed up in a scheduled-for-demolition old folks home. There’s a few nice chompy bits but the stronger, better acted and funnier OAP's segments are secondary to a predictable and cliched main story that has little imagination or charm. Half decent.

British 80's cult horror, Xtro, is just as flawed but at least has the decency to be quite, quite bonkers. When a UFO buzzes a remote cottage and abducts a middle class dad his traumatised son grows up with his mum and her yank boyfriend. When hubby strolls back into their lives a few years later, seemingly sans memories but with extra odd, his presence seems to unlock strange abilities in the kid and a merry, icky rampage is excreted. This is low budget stuff that's badly shot and poorly scripted/acted but it does mine a thick vein of gooey, quite repugnant body horror that's interspersed with some genuinely barmy deaths.

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.

Tepid Telly Terrors

Spectre is a hoary TV movie of psychic intrigue and satanic worship from the bonce of Gene Roddenberry and starring Robert Culp and John Hurt. A pair of criminologists join forces to investigate a case involving demons and black magic rituals after being contacted by a damsel in distress but even before their flight to London and they find themselves beset by dark forces. The made for tv budget is stretched beyond breaking point by some crummy effects and the plodding script leaves the actors floundering, relying on meaningful (but idiotic) expressions to carry the plot forward. The whole thing is as scary as a cheese sandwich and a complete waste of time.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow manages it's modest TV budget a little better despite it's plot being just as hackneyed. When a local girl is mauled by a dog, the town 'tard gets blamed and a posse of enraged rednecks, finding him hiding as a scarecrow, mercilessly riddle him with bullets only to find themselves hunted by an apparition after their acquittal. Charles Durning dominates the film as the creepy posse mouthpiece mainly because the rest of the cast snooze their way through their lines and although it's a fairly tame tale of revenge it manages a few wisps of atmosphere along the way.

Harrowed Souls

Robert Altman's 1972 film Images, is a twisted little chiller about madness and sanity that has more atmosphere than a dozen contemporary features. A children's author, plagued by mysterious phone calls, flees with her hubby to their country cottage only for her troubles to deepen and as she scrabbles about furiously for her missing marbles she decides to conquer her visions violently. There's a nebulous ambiguity to the film with momentary doppelgangers, missing time and jumbled identities all confidently sewn together by a stunning performance from Susannah York whose descent into madness throbs incessantly at the centre of the film.

Madness and paranoia plague another beautiful woman, Lena Hedley, in low budget chiller The Broken. After spotting her doppelganger in the streets of London our protagonist is involved in a car accident and finds herself questioning her own her sanity when other family members begin to seem a little 'different'. Though it lacks the subtlety and ambiguity of Images this is a nice little horror whose effectiveness lies on the measured yet tremulous central performance from Hedley rather than it's script which stumbles in the final third, over exerting itself explaining away it's mysteries.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies

Tales from the Hood is a horror anthology which, although lacking in decent scares, has a nice line in social commentary and gangsta posturing. The frame story sees three thugs turn up at a funeral parlour to collect some 'product' but the owner, played with plenty of crazy by Clarence Williams, decides to entertain his guests with some grisly stories first. Although the segments are fairly typical fare they're given an added socio-political flavour with the inclusion of police brutality, child abuse, and racist politicians peppering the tropes. It won't raise a single goosepimple and the sfx are a pretty ropey but there's enough chuckles along the way to keep you moderately entertained. Good fun for fans of black culture but not for horror aficionados.

V/H/S on the other hand has a plethora of creepy moments and some deliciously grisly murders all filmed lovingly in that found footage style that I'm so fond of (but most seem to hate). The framing narrative sees a bunch of reprobates break into some old codger's house looking for a specific video cassette but when they're faced with dozens of candidates they decide to watch a few to help narrow it down. Amongst their better finds are a clubbing succubus, an unusual woodland slasher and a Skype haunting which are given fresh twists and turns that kept me glued to the screen. As always with these portmanteaus there some variance in the quality of acting and some of the 'artefacts' of the footage got a bit dull but they're all nicely scripted, cleverly shot (exploiting the found footage motif with more imagination than most) and there's enough blood and viscera to satisfy the gorehounds.

Slumping Scares

Nailbiter is a low budget horror about a mother and her daughters getting caught in a hurricane mid roadtrip and their unfortunate decision to retreat to a nearby basement for shelter only to find it's already got a toothy, quite peckish inhabitant. There's a smidge of tension, a little gore and I quite liked the set up but it's soured by some shonky acting and a rapid descent into predictability. I suppose it deserves some merits for having a mostly female cast but their characters are thumbnails and the plot keeps them on well trod paths.

The Sender is strange little horror film about a suicidal amnesiac admitted to a mental ward who apparently can, quite vigorously, project his consciousness into the minds of those around him. It's decidedly 80's with ropey acting, comic sfx and a cheesy script but there's plenty of chuckles to be had as John Doe's power wreaks some er 'unusual' havoc among patients and staff alike. Still the premise is at least somewhat original and it's kind of carried along by it's misplaced confidence so much so I ended up quite liking it. Out of the two I'd say Sender's worth a watch, at least it has the decency to be so bad it's good.

Spooks Vs Skeptics

Rebecca Hall stars as a sceptical paranormal investigator in the classical ghost story The Awakening. Fresh from debunking a conniving spirit medium she's approached by a stammering Dominic West to visit a boys boarding school that's a touch haunted but her confidence in reason is soon shaken by the peculiar happenings. The strong cast and still, clean cinematography somehow offset the desperately unoriginal plot and it musters a reasonable amount of creepy but that's sadly mostly dissipated by the too obvious finale and the fumbled attempt at ambiguity in the final scenes. A decent film, just too derivative to be particularly effective.

A more modern bunch of ghostbusters set up shop in a family home in Apartment 143 another addition to the found footage subgenre. Already traumatised by death, the family are besieged by a poltergeist and seem to be on the verge of mental collapse when the cool headed boffins roll up with a truck full of equipment. As their investigation proceeds they're witness to a number of anomalous phenomena but they cling to rational explanations almost to the very end. It's quite a modest little film with some reasonable performances but like Awakening it's achingly predictable and any atmosphere is squandered by the clunky denouement.

Hairless Homicides and a Hoary Haunt

Zalman King stars in the cult horror/thriller Blue Sunshine. Turning bald and then foamingly homicidal appears to be the fate of people who took the eponymous acid back in the day and our protagonist rumbles around the city trying to trace the other trippers while evading the police who suspect him of the murders. This is mostly ridiculous nonsense but there's some enjoyment to be had what with the comically overwrought acting, 70's era cheese and acid fuelled rampages. It's certainly not worth searching for but if you stumble across it, don't dismiss it out of hand.


Oliver Reed heads a cast including Burgess Meredith, Karen Black and Bette Davis in a fairly standard 70's haunted house flick called Burnt Offerings. Renting a house for the summer Reed drags his family into a bit of a pickle when the mansion slowly exerts an unnatural influence over his wife and they find it harder and harder to leave. Despite it's 70's cheese, maybe because of the quality of the actors, it builds quite the creepy atmosphere and at it's crescendo the secret behind the mysterious house is finally revealed. An odd little film that's been unfairly neglected.

Three Threats Within

Slight Spectralisations

Returning to the family home after the death of her mother, a young woman becomes unsettled by supernatural shenanigans while tidying up the old biddy's affairs. The Pact is an admirably modest little film with a tiny cast and a reliance mostly on it's atmosphere than any gore or sfx for the scares and it's reasonably successful. The script is quite strong with a maturity to the characters that's not often associated with horror movies, mind you it helps to have an excellent central performance, from Caity Lotz, that ties things together. I'm not sure about the ending but it's one of the creepier films I've seen in a while.

Ti West's previous film was much lauded but did little for me so I wasn't sure about his latest, The Innkeepers, a fairly generic sounding haunted house pic. Two slacker hotel workers are working the last few shifts before the aging, supposedly haunted hotel gets closed down and tired of never seeing any spooks they finally provoke some action once an actress turned psychic checks in. Though The Pact was equally as bog standard in it's set up at least there was some acting chops on display, the main duo in this don't do the already cliched script any favours and only Kelly McGillis puts in a decent turn. Still there's a few scares and it has a certain charming 80's atmosphere to it but I still don't understand the hype about West.

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.