Darkweasel Reviews

Howl (I) (2015)

Delay due to lycanthropes on track.

[8/10 · 19 October 2015]

Warning: Sean Pertwee Spoilers.

There are three things certain in life: death, taxes, and if Sean Pertwee's name appears in a film's credits, his character will die in a horrible, horrible way. Yes, like a Poundland Sean Bean, poor old Perts never seems to make it out alive. Dog Soldiers - dead. Event Horizon - dead. Soldier - dead. Doomsday - dead. And unlike Pertwee, that list could go on forever.

This time, the man who should really have letters after his name (RIP, that is) plays a train driver. Does he make it out alive this time? Surely, he must. He's just a train driver. What could possibly go wrong? All he needs to do is get out and see what his high speed locomotive has run over on its way through the English countryside. At night. Under a full moon. Oh. Bye, Sean.

The stationary train's remaining passengers and staff are left stranded on the edge of a forest while a particularly persistent hairy thing tries to claw its way into the train. And that's all there is to it, really. A fight for survival set on a broken train.

However, what makes Howl work so well are the characters. The story focuses on a young train guard recently turned down for promotion. As he walks through each narrow, claustrophobic compartment filled with the common sight of passengers ignoring - or at least trying to ignore - each other amid the smell of urine and take-away, he checks tickets and meets with abuse, apathy and disdain. After the initial attack, he's easily pushed aside and manipulated, but as the film goes on, his confidence grows and he begins to assert himself. Soon, other characters begin to develop properly and before you know it, you like/dislike everyone enough to know who you want to survive and who you can't wait to see get eaten.

It's pretty well acted (there are a few wobbly lines here and there, but nothing too terrible), director Paul Hyett (The Seasoning House - another film, coincidentally, where Sean Pertwee shuffles off his mortal coil) handles the action well, delivering scares, suspense and laughs at the right times, and the creature effects are pretty decent too. Not the best you'll ever see - certainly no American Werewolf in London - but certainly good enough for a film like this. The mythology of the beasts is kept nicely to a minimum too. You're never too sure what can kill them or if they even adhere to the usual were-rules or not. Some of the CGI is quite amateurish (most notably the moving train), but perfectly excusable for a low budget British horror flick.

Probably the best "proper" werewolf film since Dog Soldiers. Starring... well, you know.

7.5/10

Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014 Video)

So, they're up to number six now.

[14 October 2014]

Those pesky inbreds, Three Finger, One Eye and Sawtooth are back to kill even more bad actors with sharp, pointy things. Is it a prequel? Is it a sequel? Does any of it actually make sense? Probably not. The rules of this entry are simple. Kill as many people as you can while leaving the most important characters for last and make sure you leave it open for another one next year.

Job done.

So what makes this one worth watching? Not a lot really. There's something about bloodlines and relatives, a whole family of inbreds, and some fairly uninventive murders. We get poorly CGI'd arrows to the face and mouth, barbed wire in the eyes, throat slashings, stabbings and general butchery. Oh, and a fire hose up the arse. We do get boobs though. Lots of lovely boobs. The loveliest of them all belonging to former Emmerdale actress, Roxanne Pallett, who even with a quite stunningly abysmal American accent, is very nearly worth sitting through 90 minutes of painfully average splatter and appalling acting for.

Boobs/10

Werewolves on Wheels (1971)

Happiest Biker Gang Ever.

[6/10 · 13 October 2014]

A biker gang stumble across a satanic cult holed up in an EVIL CHURCH. Using drugged wine and bread shaped like giant biscuits, the cult send the gang to sleep and possess one of the female members, turning her into a werewolf.

If I learned anything from Werewolves on Wheels (surely a contender for the best film title ever) is that being a biker in the early '70s was clearly HILARIOUS. When the gang aren't beating up rednecks, stealing gas, or shagging each other, laughing at absolutely everything everywhere definitely seems to be the best pastime. Look! A gas pump! HA HA HA!! Hey, a tree! HAAAAAA!!! Beer!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! SATANISTS IN ROBES!!! WOOOOO!! HAHAHAH! And so on and so forth.

The laughter stops briefly when, after waking up, the gang walk into the EVIL CHURCH and beat up all the satanists. They're quickly giggling and guffawing like children again though, stopping only the next morning when they discover two of their friends have been savaged by something bitey. Soon enough, as expected, everyone's laughing again. Well, everyone with the exception of their hippiest member, Tarot. See, Tarot's figured out something's not quite right and in his best hippy language tries to warn their leader, Adam, about it - "that was no accident. It was heavy. Somebody's controlling the vibes".

Adam's having none of it though and the laughter quickly turns to fisticuffs. Fisticuffs turn into a serious kicking, and then a serious kicking quickly escalates into a fireside werewolf battle before the remaining gang members decide to go back to the EVIL CHURCH and kill the cultists. ONLY THE CULTISTS ARE ACTUALLY THEMSELVES. Yeah, it was the '70s, people. Hallucinogenic drugs were in plentiful supply and endings to Bikersploitaiton films didn't have to make any sense.

Not that you'd believe it by reading this, but Werewolves on Wheels actually has an awful lot going for it. It's fun, it moves along at a nice pace, and it's even pretty well acted in places. Not to mention the werewolves, tits, and sexy naked snake dancing. It also has quite possibly the funniest Satanic ritual ever filmed. After killing a cat (cue funny death screech) and doodling something in blood while saying a load of evil-sounding mumbo jumbo, cult leader "One" (Severn Darden from the final two original Planet of the Apes movies), ad-libs like a boss, mumbling something along the lines of "rabadabadabadadamabarambarambararararabbabadada" and hoping for the best. The thing is, being the early '70s, he probably got away with it.

The soundtrack is excellent, some moody guitar based country for the title theme with a couple of other similar tracks along the way. And whether it's a recommendation or not, Rob Zombie clearly loves the film as he used a line of dialogue at the start of his song, Sick Bubblegum.

"Hey, we all know how we're gonna die, baby. We're gonna crash and burn".

Don't Go in the House (1979)

Flamethrowers and Disco.

[6/10 · 1 October 2014]

Donald Kohler is having one of those days. First he sees one of his workmates seriously burned by an exploding aerosol can in an incinerator, then his boss calls him a faggot for standing there and not helping, and then he gets home to find his mother dead. Unlucky.

Donald is far from downhearted though. After crying for a while, he starts hearing voices. Voices which tell him he can do things he wasn't able to before. He can stay up late, he can play his music loud, he can turn his basement into a fireproof death chamber and burn girls alive with a flamethrower. You know? Guy stuff.

One of many '80s horror films with the word "Don't" in the title, DGITH looks at things from the loony's point of view, even making you feel a little sorry for Donald when you see what a vile old harridan his mother was. Of course, when he's onto horribly burning his third victim alive, your sympathy towards him does tend to wobble a bit.

Nowhere near as shocking as it would want you to believe, DGITH is actually a very sombre, low key affair with a pretty good central performance from Dan Grimaldi (Patsy Parisi from The Sopranos), and a surprisingly effective first death scene. Although Psycho is a massive influence, it also looks as if in turn, DGITH managed to influence William Lustig's Maniac (also set in New York), most notably during the dream/paranoia sequences.

A lot better than I expected. 6/10

Mad Foxes (1981)

Nazi Bikers, Sex, Moustaches, Willies, and Revenge

[10/10 · 26 September 2014]

Firstly, no matter how completely rubbish I might make this sound, Mad Foxes is actually AWESOME.

A Spanish film with American dubbing, it begins with a man called Hal and his girlfriend being challenged to a race by a Nazi biker gang. One of the bikers is killed so the gang plan their revenge.

Hal takes his just about legal girlfriend to a pub that resembles The Nag's Head from Only Fools & Horses and proceeds to order their "finest champagne". Yeah, that's going to be some really high quality stuff right there.

Taking her into a back room and saying in a not-creepy-at-all way, "so here's to you, darling, and your marvellous eighteen years", the film is suddenly interrupted by a two minute dance interlude where it looks like the participants are actually dancing to a different song than the one on the soundtrack. After the dancing, Hal decides it's time to take his lovely girlfriend back to his place. Unfortunately for both of them, the biker gang is waiting and they beat Hal up and rape his girlfriend with as much flesh and fur thrust into the camera as possible, one of the bikers even taking the time to check whether she's still a virgin or not. Yup. She is.

Clearly annoyed by this turn of events, Hal 'phones his friend at a local karate school (everyone should have a friend who works at a local karate school) and in the most disinterested way possible, says that he wants some revenge. His friend agrees equally as disinterestedly and during the middle of a funeral service for their fallen biker comrade we get lots of men in white gowns and belts kicking arse. Suddenly THERE'S KARATE EVERYWHERE. Really bad karate too. You know, like the type of karate you think is karate when you're twelve but quickly realise isn't karate at all, and looks like you spent most of your time trying to practice "The Crane" from The Karate Kid? This is worse. There are hilarious high kicks, kicks which make no contact at all, punches which miss the target but people fall down anyway, lots of jumping up and down, and eventually a castration. I f**king love karate.

The five remaining members of the biker gang don't take too kindly to this outrage so they take revenge on karate. After a particularly manly scene with sweaty manly men lifting weights and punching things, the gang roll a hand grenade into the karate school ("LOOK OUT! IT'S A GRENADE!"), machine gunning everybody down, and all the karate dies. The bikers go after Hal (who in the meantime has miraculously healed and has already had sex with someone else), but he escapes to the country in his lovely sports car. But not after the gang kill a parking attendant and the biker with the biggest moustache suddenly turns into the loudest man alive, yelling at the one who killed him, "HAAA!! HAAAA!! YOU'RE A FINE SHOT!! CONGRATULATIONS!" Actually, the escape is worth mentioning too as Hal's lovely, expensive, and extremely speedy Chevrolet Corvette Stingray (which is apparently impervious to any kind of damage whatsoever - it doesn't even attract dust) bombs off down the road at a million miles an hour but is somehow caught in less than a minute by three 125cc bikes and a knackered old taxi.

Anyway, after finally outrunning them, Hal picks up a girl who had been frolicking stark naked on the beach with her boyfriend as recently as ten minutes ago ("There's no need for me to stay with him. I've only known him for a couple of days") but who climbs in and starts kissing him straight away. Lucky git. He takes her off into the countryside to meet his parents, and after a meal, gives her a good old fashioned seeing-to in the bath ("You don't know how long I have waited for this moment"). Er, it's all of about three hours by my reckoning, Hal.

The next day, after spending ten minutes trying to figure out what the F**K kind of accent the maid has been speaking with, the two of them go horseback riding followed by some bareback riding, only to arrive back at the house to find that Hal's parents have been unexpectedly killed. Daddy has been machine gunned in the stomach and mummy dearest had been comically blown out of her wheelchair and across the room. The help also suddenly become oxygen deprived, either being shot or receiving a pair of garden shears to the face.

Swearing revenge on the biker gang, Hal sets about tracking them down Mad Max style, blowing one up on the toilet, shooting one, stabbing another, and then shooting the last one as he entertains a Nazi S&M girl in PVC. Content with his revenge, he goes back home only to find another Nazi biker waiting for him with the girl he left behind at his parents house, and a bomb (eh, what?). And then they explode.

So there you have it. A film about Nazi bikers, sex, karate, and revenge that turns into revenge that turns into revenge that turns into revenge. With tits. And willies. Lots of willies, actually.

10/10 (But not for the willies)

Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)

Peach Shirts and Some Kind of Imbalance.

[7/10 · 15 September 2014]

Sexy '70s William Shatner wears a sexy peach coloured shirt and tight sexy trousers while taking on some not so sexy killer tarantulas.

Shatner plays Rack, a horse riding, lasso throwing, heartbreakin' desert veterinarian. After a local farmer's livestock and family pets start dropping unexpectedly, a hot blonde lady scientist comes to town and decides the culprits are a highly venomous strain of tarantula. Shatner, spending most of his time trying to get her into bed by being the most manly of manly men (in a peach shirt, remember) doesn't really believe such nonsense. Well, not until the farmer says "well, they could be coming from that big spider hill I noticed this morning" anyway.

The spider hill is summarily burnt, but quite carelessly they miss the other thirty spider hills a little way over yonder... Cue several angry spider attacks and a spider invasion of the local town using real tarantulas at every turn. No CGI here, no siree. Even Shatner (in a blue shirt now so thankfully not ruining his peach one) is covered by twenty or thirty of the little blighters at one point. The strange thing, and the thing I love about this film, is the sudden shift in tone during the last twenty minutes. What, for the most part is your average '70s killer bug matinée movie suddenly gets quite dark and ends on a note so bleak that John Carpenter obviously took notes for The Thing.

Yes, it's dated. Yes, it's ridiculously camp and badly scripted ("Look, its not just a few spiders! It's a migration due to some sort of imbalance!") but due to some interesting camera angles, spooky music and use of actual spiders, it's also highly effective.

Prisoners of the Lost Universe (1983)

Post-Battlestar Blues

[5/10 · 15 September 2014]

The year is 1983. Battlestar Galactica has finished and Richard Hatch is out of work...

"I'll take anything", says Richard, running nervous fingers through his famously luxuriant dark hair, trying to remain in control of his emotions but exuding more than the merest whiff of desperation from his once proud figure. His agent smiles apologetically before stammering his way through the sentence which will ultimately cost him his job. "I, er... have this for you, Richard". He stops for a moment to dab at his forehead with a handkerchief already damp from nervous sweat. "It's called 'Prisoners of the Last, sorry... Lost Universe'. What do you think"? The haggard looking former TV star looks sorrowfully at the script, remembering the good old days of brown uniforms, Dirk Benedict, kissing Jane Seymour, and evading Cylon Centurions blasting him with lasers. Then, after recollecting the state of his dwindling finances, he swallows, closes his eyes and says, "I'll do it. God help me, I'll do it".

And that is how Prisoners of the Lost Universe came to pass (with John Saxon having virtually the same conversation with his soon-to-be- fired agent as well). Probably.

Hatch and cheap Farrah Fawcett-alike Kay Lenz disappear through a mad scientist's inter-dimensional gate into a parallel universe (which isn't all that parallel really) inhabited by mute giants, a green native American (sorry, native Vanyan) a cheery Irish/Scottish/English (depending on whichever line he's speaking at the time) thief, giant gold warriors, megalomaniacal overlords who laugh evilly at everything, and some small, but very angry, stripy pygmies wearing owl masks with flashing red eyes.

Bad actors act badly, bad lines are spoken badly, bad visual effects are used badly (and have not aged at all well), comedy sound effects are employed with completely non-hilarious results and awful bad guys get their painfully convoluted come-uppances. The music score demands special attention, being part Superman, part Shaft. Quite the combination, I can tell you.

A truly terrible film with only one question hanging over it. Why, if it was so utterly awful, did I want to watch it all over again the moment it ended?

If there was a way to vote 0/10 & 10/10 at the same time, I'd do that. Instead, I'll split the difference and give it 5.

Texas Chainsaw (2013)

The letter, Heather. Read it.

[3/10 · 15 September 2014]

The story goes that on August 18th 1973 a group of teenagers were killed by a family of four cannibalistic psychopaths. The last surviving member of the group, a screamy little creature called Sally Hardesty, made one last, desperate bid for freedom through a closed window the following morning, and after being chased by one of the family wielding a chainsaw, finally made her escape in the back of a pick-up truck.

And that's where The Texas Chain Saw Massacre ended.

Now, completely ignoring the three existing sequels (and it's two recent prequels), we open with the local Sheriff rushing to the farmhouse from where Sally had escaped, to confront and arrest the family of people-eating nutters. Except that now, the family has suddenly and inexplicably increased in size by another four members. And includes a baby.

Er... what?

So, while the local townsfolk (who seem to be aware of the mental health of the family but were happy to let them go about their business until they killed a handful of complete strangers) shoot the psychos and burn down the farmhouse, two of them kidnap the baby, kill its mother, and run off to play happy families.

Okay, so that's at least a little more believable. Sort of.

The film then cuts to to the present day. Now remember - it's 2012 and the farmhouse was burnt to the ground in 1973. That's a space of 39 years for those of you who can't be bothered to work it out. And I include the film-makers in that. Why? Because our leading lady, the baby from 1973, is now apparently only in her mid-twenties. A raven-haired, tightly toned lovely called Heather, with nary a grey hair nor hint of a wrinkle in sight. Upon hearing she has inherited a mansion from her grandmother, her "parents" tell her that she was actually "adopted" and she runs off crying to South Texas to claim her big house, taking her best friend and her boyfriend with her.

After completely and not at all predictably picking up a hitchhiker along the way, Heather meets the family lawyer at the entrance to her new estate who hands her the keys and a letter. He then very carefully proceeds to tell her (twice in fact) to READ. THE. LETTER. Remember, Heather. READ THE LETTER.

She doesn't read the letter.

She does, however, read a newspaper detailing the events of the 18th/19th of August 1973. But somehow the newspaper is also (and very clearly) dated the 19th. That's quite some local paper they have there. They must also have the fountain of youth there because, apart from having no hair, the sheriff looks identical to how he did in 1973, as does the chap who instigates the burning of the farmhouse, and, well, everybody who was involved with the story back then. That's not even mentioning Leatherface himself, who at the time was presumably in his late teens/early twenties, making him around 60 years old now, yet still fully capable of chasing kids and camper vans while waving a chainsaw about.

So, anyway, the hitchhiker turns out to be a thief, the boyfriend turns out to be a cheat, and the best friend turns out to be the girl with whom her boyfriend cheated. Can anybody spell DEAD?

After a friendly game of hide, seek, and chainsaw, and a couple of chases (one of which features a bizarre sort of passing of the torch from the Saw franchise to this new one as a robed character with a pigs head comes face to face with Leatherface), the film eventually disintegrates into a series of increasingly unlikely events (can someone show me where I can buy one of those brilliant mobile phones that streams live HD footage directly to police computers?), before finally ending with Leatherface somehow becoming some sort of vigilante hero type.

As a film in its own right, and forgetting all of the baggage of the original and its sequels, it's a fairly mundane, but ultimately harmless affair. However, as a direct sequel to one of the most influential horror films of the 20th Century, it's nothing short of an abomination. Yet it somehow still manages to be better than the one with Renée Zellweger.

Why didn't you just read the f**king letter, Heather?

Absurd (1981)

Bandsaws and Instestines

[5/10 · 15 September 2014]

Recently, I've been trying to catch up on all the "Video Nasties" I never got a chance to see when I was younger. This time out we have the sort of unofficial sequel to Anthropophagous - The Beast. I say unofficial because there's no actual continuation of the story here, it just happens to have been directed by the same guy (one man Italian movie conveyor belt Joe D'Amato), and written by the rather large George Eastman who also plays the hulking great monsters in both films.

So, in Absurd, we start with big George running away from a man in a black coat. Trying to escape over a pointy metal gate, he winds up being impaled on the spikes with his guts dribbling out of his tummy. After being taken to hospital, he undergoes surgery on something that looks like an overcooked sausage, and the doctor notes that the big man can quickly heal himself, effectively making him immortal. Well, that's handy isn't it. Oh, but he can be killed if you destroy/remove his brain. Not quite so handy.

Anyway, after a quicker than average recuperation period for someone recently wearing his insides as a fashion accessory, ungrateful George kills a nurse by drilling a hole into into her head and then, for reasons best known to himself, heads back to the house where his intestines made a bid for freedom, killing anybody that gets in his way. A priest trying to be Donald Pleasence in Halloween tries to track him down, an old cop tries to help but doesn't really do a lot, and the married couple who live in the house are out watching an American football game at a neighbour's place, leaving their curly headed little boy and their invalid daughter alone with the babysitter and a sister with a baffling and intermittent Irish accent.

Although Absurd isn't brilliant, it's gore scenes are better than most low budget horror films (the band saw to the head, and pick axe through the head scenes are quite impressive), and there are some quite suspenseful scenes in the latter half of the film. Unfortunately, a lot of those scenes are ruined by an over-insistent Halloween inspired theme tune obliterating much of the tension, replacing it with a mild irritation and an aversion to keyboard driven soundtracks. It's also quite fun to see, from the film's more than obvious nods to Halloween, how it seems that in turn the makers of Friday the 13th Part IV took their influence from Absurd. The indestructible killer begins his rampage in a hospital, moves to the woods, and then ends up in a house and a final battle with a vulnerable child.

Where I've struggled to see why some of the other films I've watched were banned by the BBFC in the '80s, it's not too difficult to see why they didn't respond well to Absurd. It's not the nastiest thing you'll ever see (although the "acting" by the kid might very well be), but there's enough in it to see why it would have caused the censors back then a bit of concern.

"There's something I have to tell you". "Okay. I'm all ears". "It's about Thelma Gardelli up at the hospital. I'm afraid she was brutally murdered by that man we were operating on this morning".

Toxic Zombies (1980)

"There's Been Some killing"

[3/10 · 15 September 2014]

Some hippies camping in the woods get covered in poisoned LSD (don't ask) and turn into zombies (again, don't ask). Yup, it's another world beater.

Much like the similar "Video Nasty", Don't Go In The Woods, Forest of Fear has a "wilderness" with more people in it than trees, features almost as many moments of inspired stupidity, and contains choice lines of dialogue such as, "There's been some killing", "Even if he's retarded, he's got to learn to get along in this world", and "I've lived in these woods all my life and I've never seen a cannibal".

As you would expect, the "acting" is equally brilliant. While a woman is clawing frantically at a man for help, screaming and trying to get away from a badly made-up zombie, the man simply stands there like a tree and recites his lines like he's memorising a grocery list. There's also the total lack of reaction from a man who finds a severed leg in the woods, the worst attempt at acting like a Downs Syndrome sufferer ever, plus there's some sledgehammer-subtle exposition, and even a smattering of casual racism. George A Romero faithful, John Amplas (Martin, Knightriders, Day of the Dead), turns up in it for a bit of spare cash and somehow manages to act worse than almost everybody else. And that's no easy task. Unlike DGITW, Forest of Fear does actually feature a music score. Just one that sounds like a bad high school music project which steals liberally from Halloween and Jaws, while using sound effects so shrill and annoying that they could only have been created by the worst type of sadist.

Nudity Watch: A girl gets her boobs out in the first two minutes, but after that there's nothing rude at all. In fact, like so many other video nasties, you're left wondering why it was even banned in the first place. Even for the '80s, it's tame stuff.

Rollercoaster (1977)

"If you're trying to kill us, at least let me put on some lip gloss"

[15 September 2014]

When safety inspector Harry Calder (George Segal) realises an accident at a fairground is actually more than it first appears, psychopathic bomber Timothy Bottoms (whose character has no name and is only credited only as "Young Man") threatens to blow up more rollercoasters unless he's paid ONE MILLION DOLLARS and chooses Segal as the man to hand it over. Of course, thanks to the sneakiness of FBI boss Richard Widmark, the money is marked and therefore completely useless. Bottoms isn't exactly happy about this and there just happens to be a brand new roller-coaster opening in California in the next couple of days...

Coming off the back of a run of classic disaster films like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Airport '77, Earthquake, and of course, Jaws, 1977's Roller-coaster doesn't quite manage to reach those same heights, but it is by no means a second rate film. Bottoms is excellent as the intelligent psychopath, and Segal is perfectly cast as the grumpy, reluctant hero type, unhappy at being chosen by the killer, unhappy with the FBI, unhappy with businessmen, and unhappy at having to stop smoking. Richard Widmark is just as grumpy as Segal, Susan Strasberg and Henry Fonda don't get to do much, but the film does see the first big screen appearance of Helen Hunt as Segal's teenage daughter.

The tension in the build up to the first roller-coaster crash is very similar in style to Jaws, and just as effective until the actual crash. As good as that whole scene is, the impact is lessened because you can clearly see the cars are filled with wobbly shop dummies. The ending suffers the same way, the tension being built nicely as Bottoms plants a second bomb on the roller-coaster itself, but the grand denouement is again hampered by another strategically clothed shop dummy. Overall though, a very enjoyable slice of '70s disaster.

Night of the Bloody Apes (1969)

Monkey Suits, Women Wrestlers, and Open Heart surgery.

[5/10 · 15 September 2014]

Around 1981/82, my parents used to take me to Redditch every Saturday morning. No, not as part of some cruel and unusual punishment, but to rent video tapes. We'd recently bought a new VCR (a state of the art, new fangled Akai top loader with orange and red buttons and everything) and we'd go to Rumbelows to borrow two or three video tapes for the week.

Upon entering the shop, the first thing I used to do was disappear around the corner to the horror section and pick up the same three videos week in, week out. Night of the Demon - because of its nasty looking cover and warning stickers, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things - because of the title, and Night of the Bloody Apes - because of the title and it's nasty looking cover (a surgeon covered in blood holding an even bloodier scalpel). Every week I would hope that my parents would finally relent and let me watch one of them. I was ten. Not a chance.

However, if they had ever given in and let me borrow Night of the Bloody Apes, it would have completely shattered my expectations of what the film was actually about. I had a pretty vivid imagination back then, and thanks to the brief synopsis and fairly graphic pictures on the back of the video box, had already filled in all kinds of blanks as to what the film would contain. But not even I could have guessed that it was actually a Mexican film with subtitles which had been released in back 1969. Surprisingly, the video case failed to mention any of that at all.

So, we begin (as all Mexican films should) with two lady wrestlers. One seriously injures the other and has to be taken to hospital. After performing the operation, the surgeon suddenly decides to capture a gorilla to save his son dying of leukaemia. Eh? Yes, the doctor (like the story) is completely f**king mental. He has a limping assistant who calls him master, and apparently he can't tell the difference between an orangutan, a gorilla, and a man in a very unconvincing furry suit.

After transplanting the heart of the fake orangorilla into his son (featuring some real life footage of open heart surgery - one of the main problems the BBFC had with it), the young man turns into a monster with plasticine on his face and fake fangs in his mouth. He then runs off in his pyjama bottoms and kills loads of people in spectacularly unrealistic ways (the toupee removal scene is as bloody as it is hilarious). Anyway, there's some more gore, some nudity, more wrestling, and a bit more gore before the doctor finally admits what he did may have been a bit wrong and it all ends with the son dying and the doctor being led away by two sexy nurses. I'm really glad my parents never let me borrow it now.

"Prepare the gorilla"

The Hunger Games (2012)

Flawed but still reasonably entertaining.

[6/10 · 11 September 2012]

First things first. Firstly, no, I haven't read the books. Secondly, writing this as a 40 year old bloke, I have had to realise that The Hunger Games may not exactly be directed towards my specific demographic. Therefore, looking at it a little differently, like maybe I was writing this as a 15 year old girl who liked good looking boys, fearless heroines and had never seen Big Brother, The Truman Show, Battle Royale, The Running Man, or Logan's Run then I would have to say it was the bestest, most originalest film I've ever seen. LOL.

Er, so anyway... It's the old dystopian future scenario but this time, and as well as featuring some dubious looking wigs, comedy teeth, and daft costumes, the future now has twelve Districts and a Capitol, and each year two teenagers (1 boy and 1 girl) are chosen to fight in something called The Hunger Games. What the Hunger Games are is never fully explained and is all a bit confusing as everybody looks healthy and very well fed indeed.

Trained and mentored by drunk-one-moment-completely-coherent- the-next Woody Harrelson, our good looking hero and ballsy heroine types have to fight 22 other "Tributes" to the death to become the eventual winner. A flimsy reason for this is given and glossed over by a perpetually grumpy Donald Sutherland who plays his character with all the depth of a surly pantomime villain. But, I have to remember, I am a fifteen year old girl so I probably don't notice these kind of things.

So off we go into the woods full of baddies, genetically engineered wasps, the occasional help package, some magic dogs, and out of place love stories. Truth be told though, once the action starts and the pace picks up it's not actually too bad. During some parts, even to someone as weary and over-the-hill as myself it actually became quite enjoyable. Sure, it had to make some sacrifices to get it out to a wider (younger and more impressionable) audience, in that the violence is so toned down that even though over twenty people are killed, only a couple of them show any signs that their bodies actually contained blood in the first place.

Still, as enjoyable as some of it is, the lack of explanation to certain things (what's that three fingered salute all about?) and the glossing over of major plot points make the film something far less that great. And without trying to give the ending away, are we really expected to believe that in 74 years of the Hunger Games, and with seemingly every base covered with evil strategies and aided by some seriously superfangled technology, the situation we're faced with at movie's climax has never once arisen before and has absolutely no contingency plan in place to nullify it?

Apparently, there are one or two more films still to come so I can only hope they serve to shed more light on an enjoyable, if very flawed first film.

6.5/10

Philosophy of a Knife (2008 Video)

Brutal but uneven.

[6/10 · 9 June 2010]

A four hour pseudo documentary about the atrocities carried out at Japanese chemical and bacterial research facility Unit 731, based in China during World War II.

Desperately uneven, it veers erratically from an interesting and informative documentary to a black and white art-house movie and then to a (still black and white) extreme gorefest. The recreations of the experiments carried out by Unit 731 are brutal and horrific but it's ultimately the real stock footage that has the most impact. You can recreate death as many times and as accurately as you like but it fades into insignificance when compared with reality.

A major problem with the film is the acting of the victims. None of them struggle, scream, cry or show any emotion whatsoever as they are strapped onto operating tables and chairs, led out naked into the freezing snow or hooked up with electrodes and wires. In fact, the expression on one female victim, as her unborn baby is ripped piece by piece from her (all in the utmost graphic detail) seems to suggest that she's actually enjoying the experience. This happens a few times throughout the torture scenes and it completely undermines them.

Another problem is the amount of time that you stay with each victim/experiment. There is far more shock value in watching somebody having three or four teeth removed without anaesthetic than twenty of them. This kind of real life horror is far more effective when described with words and occasional flashes of gore, rather than lingering on every drop of blood spilt in extreme close up.

It's a gruelling experience and maybe that's what the director wanted - to have you sit through every uncomfortable, nauseating moment. But the problem there is every second you watch it is another second you realise it's just make-up effects and it lessens the very impact it's trying to make. Yet one thirty second sequence of real bodies piled up in a laboratory has a hundred times the desired effect.

It also doesn't help that most of the victims portrayed are westerners. Although hundreds of westerners were killed for sure within the facility, the vast majority of Maruta (another word for prisoners, which translates as "logs") were Chinese. One can only assume the reason for this was a combination of the Japanese pretending the occupation of China and the human experiments carried out in Harbin never actually happened, and the Chinese not wanting any part in such an exploitative film, no matter how well it wrapped itself up in it's documentary style, humanitarian message. Therefore most of the actors are Russian, and again, more impact is taken away.

As I've previously mentioned, every torture scene would have been more effective with less gore. However, of the experiments on display, the most noteworthy were the frostbite experiment (a man walked out naked into the snow, tied to a post and doused with boiling hot and then freezing cold water), the decompression chamber, radiation torture (watching someone's face slowly burn), phosphorous being placed on a man's face and ignited, burning, exploding and re-igniting constantly, the aforementioned foetus extraction (it may be badly acted but it's still brutal as hell) and plague infection (watching someone bleeding their liquefied internal organs from their rectum is never pretty). Also, the scene where an infected cockroach is forced inside a woman's (actual) vagina in close-up is highly uncomfortable viewing.

At absolutely no point can this film ever be called entertaining, although bizarrely, there is one scene near the end which is almost beautiful in it's execution. It still ends in an explosion of blood and brains but in a totally different way than anything before it. It's actually quite moving in it's own violent way.

This film, in my opinion anyway, should only be viewed how I went about it - as an educational aid on the history of war, death and inhumanity. There is no casual amusement to be had here. It is not fun. It is not entertainment, and it is not for the weak of stomach.

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Yet Another Typically Average Remake

[5/10 · 24 March 2009]

WARNING: This film is about brutal rape. Not so much of the female lead but mainly of Wes Craven's original film. Well produced, packaged and acted rape, but rape nonetheless.

Where to begin?

KRUG: In the original he is an ugly, hulking mass of barely masked rage, bitterness and insanity. In this version he's good looking, not physically imposing whatsoever and spends most of the time using the patented Anthony Hopkins "If you don't blink you look scary" approach. It works some of the time but other times it just looks like he's forgotten his lines.

SADIE: In Craven's film she is an out of control, explosively violent, deranged madwoman and Krug is the only person who can keep her in line. Just. She loves to degrade and humiliate her victims as much as, if not more so, than her man. However, in the remake she's basically just a lethargic crack whore who gets a bit angry once or twice.

WEASEL: Now just called Frank, he's got none of the false charm and latent violence of the original character, he basically looks like a creep you wouldn't let into your house in the first place.

JUNIOR: Now renamed Justin, he's the only "bad guy" in the film who bears any resemblance to his original counterpart. Yet the makers still manage to mess that up with a typically modern outcome for his character.

The two girls are pretty much like in the original, although Mari is given a super swimming talent as an obvious plot contrivance. As sympathetic as you are to the parents' situation, they turn into cold blooded homicidal killers far too easily to have any actual resonance. Yes, they would want to hurt the people who raped and nearly killed their daughter. Of course they would. But there's a fine line between a sudden and spontaneous violent lashing out and cold-blooded, calculated and merciless revenge.

As for the film itself, even though it borders on "torture porn" during a couple of scenes, it's still nowhere near as shocking as the original was 37 years ago. Not even close. The mental and physical torture the girls endure in the original ("P**s. Your. Pants") takes much longer and is far worse than in this version. Sure, the rape scene is pretty damn brutal but there was far more to the original than just rape. They also completely bottle out of the best, and still most talked about, death scene featured in Craven's version.

And as for the ending? I honestly don't know what they were thinking. For a film that tried to be so dark in tone, the climax is utterly (and I would assume completely unintentionally) hilarious. Simply the worst ending to a film I've seen in quite some time.

Dance of the Dead (2008)

I think I'm about to spoil the party.

[4/10 · 10 October 2008]

The story: High school kids vs zombies.

I'd never heard of this film before today so after watching it I checked out the reviews section here at the IMDb and had a look what other people thought of it. Well, it was quite surprising to find more gushing in here than the result of any zombie neck munching contained within the film.

Very sorry, but it's not groundbreaking, it's not the best horror film in years and it's definitely not reminiscent of John Carpenter or George Romero. In fact it's not much of anything really other than a fairly standard, low budget horror film with a standard, low budget horror film script with standard, low budget horror film acting.

As much as I respect the amount of work that goes into making movies, I'm afraid I don't actually care about the trials and tribulations of making of the film when I write anything about it. I reserve my judgement purely for what's on the screen. There has obviously been a lot of hard work put into making this film but there's a lot of hard work put into every movie. What you have here is a competent little comedy/horror film that isn't that scary, isn't really laugh out loud funny and just about manages to keep the attention.

Still, this certainly doesn't fall into the dreaded "worst film ever" category that IMDb reviewers seem to love so much. It's just not "Best film ever" material either.

The Strangers (2008)

Nothing Happens. At all. Seriously.

[1/10 · 8 October 2008]

Contradiction in terms that it is, here's the "story": Three intruders terrorise a couple for no apparent reason. Then, at the end, they bugger off for no apparent reason. The End.

There, that's the spoiler out of the way, it'll save you watching it now. One hour twenty minutes wasted on watching nothing. Nothing interesting, nothing scary, nothing creepy and nothing worthwhile whatsoever. Oh, you get the odd "BOO"! scare thrown in once in a while to jerk you out of your boredom but otherwise you may as well watch paint dry. Why did they do it? Who are they? Why wear the masks? Why mess around taking ages to try and kill the couple when it's obvious they could have done it in five minutes flat if they'd wanted to? Why did I bother carrying on watching it after twenty minutes? All of these questions and more will not be answered by watching this film.

Sex and the City (2008)

You'll ignore this review once you see I'm male.

[1/10 · 18 September 2008]

My wife watched the TV series. In other words that means I had to watch the TV series. I didn't hate it. A lot of episodes were good, some were bad, the rest were just average.

This film was an insult to any fan of the show and I'm surprised so many "real fans" were suckered in by it. What happened to the characters? Well, for the most part the couples were needlessly pulled apart merely as a plot device to put them back together again later on in another glaringly obvious saccharine reunion scene. The only story which actually seemed natural was Samantha's, and Charlotte's baby story was a slap in the face to the TV series.

Also, what was with the clothes? Did the makers intentionally try to make the stars of the show look as ridiculous and old as possible. I'm sorry, but Sarah Jessica Parker has the arms of a 60 year old and they should not be highlighted in any way. The ginger one's (2nd?) haircut did her no favours whatsoever unless she actually wanted to look seventy years old.

In short, I may only be a bloke so most/all women on here will immediately shrug their shoulders and say I don't know what I'm talking about. However, I do know enough to realise when a show's creator is manipulating and cheating the very audience who helped make him successful.

Bone Dry (2007)

Idea Runs Dry.

[6/10 · 6 December 2007]

*SPOILER*

The story here is simple. Luke Goss (Blade II, rubbish 80s boy band Bros) is held at gunpoint in the desert, given a compass and map by Lance Henriksen and told to head north. Henriksen turns out to be a very nasty character indeed, torturing Goss with water deprivation, burial in sand, and in one very Saw inspired sequence, a cactus and a pair of handcuffs.

The problem is that the film simply doesn't maintain the suspense long enough. The dialogue is uneven and repetitive (amusingly highlighted by Henriksen's character himself at one point) and the addition of three needless characters do nothing but stretch out an already flimsy premise to breaking point. Very early on there are pieces of dialogue dropped in, leading you far too quickly to arrive at the conclusion that Luke Goss may not actually be a very nice chap himself.

It's not entirely without it's charms though. Lance Henriksen is on top form (very reminiscent of his Near Dark character at some points), Goss himself is pretty decent, and you really do feel the suffocating desert heat, but by the time the conclusion arrives along with it's glaringly obvious "twist" you're just left with the feeling it was merely a padded out episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

The Ten (2007)

Only The One Reason Needed to Avoid The Ten.

[1/10 · 27 November 2007]

It's utter rubbish.

I was under the misapprehension this film was meant to be funny but I honestly don't think I've ever witnessed such a ham-fisted attempt at "comedy" in my entire life. The worst thing about it is that it actually has a decent cast (who have all hit their career lows simultaneously) so there can be no excuse for the unbelievably amateurish execution. I've seen some turkeys in my time but this one really does take some beating. There is nothing of any value whatsoever in this complete waste of time and money. The only reason I gave it one star is because the rating system on here doesn't allow a zero or minus marks.

I feel violated.

Wrong Turn 2: Dead End (2007 Video)

More of the same. But Bloodier.

[6/10 · 30 August 2007]

Mutated hillbillies can be a real pain in the arse. And eye socket. Basically, more of the same from the franchise that wants to be the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This time out, instead of Eliza Dushku, we get the quite gorgeous Erica Leerhsen (from... wait, you'll never guess - The Texas chainsaw Massacre remake) and the less than lithe figure of Henry Rollins as the main characters.

A reality TV show show called The Apocalypse sets up it's cameras in the same mutant-infested forest as the last film and the local residents quickly set about slicing and dicing the interlopers like an enraged Gordon Ramsey. Body parts fly off in every direction and blood gushes, spurts, leaks, drops, squirts and cascades in virtually every scene. If you could define this movie in one word, it would be "wet". There's a gratuitous boob shot and obligatory sex scene to keep the titillation quota up in between the carnage, but there's so little story that you could write it on the back of a matchbox. Not that story actually matters here one little bit.

Rollins is an ex-marine turned TV presenter who, when he realises the hills not only have eyes but bear traps, axes and other assorted blunt and sharp weaponry, turns into Arnold Schwarzenegger faster than you can say "Last twenty minutes of Predator". I'm not giving anything away by saying the bad guys get killed and the prettiest girl survives, but poor old Hank? Well, let's just say he's not likely to feature in another sequel...

All in all, it's your typical teens/twenty-somethings against psychos scenario. All is played out with arse-numbing inevitability, with only the gore and death scenes to keep you wondering what's going to happen next. Basically, if you didn't like the first one, then you'll hate this. Oh, and it contains probably the most unintentionally stupid tagged on twist ending I think I may have ever seen. One of those moments that if you're watching it at the cinema, you'll burst out laughing, feel embarrassed for a second or two before you realising everybody else has done exactly the same.

The Reaping (2007)

The Wicker Files

[4/10 · 27 August 2007]

Ex-priest, now turned professional unbeliever Hilary Swank has a neat line in debunking miracles. Enlisted to travel to the deep south, she and her black (oh, you know that's not going to end well) co-debunkee are asked to investigate apocalyptic warning signs including rivers of blood and a mysterious girl who everyone in town thinks is The Devil.

Cue a by-the-numbers list of biblical plagues (frogs, dead cattle, boils etc), add a back story of how our Hilary's family was killed in Africa and you end up on a road that starts in the small village of X-Files, stops for a bite to eat in Omen country before ending it's overstayed welcome in Wickermansville - only to veer off course right at the very end and come to a grinding halt in the ghost town of Pointless Twists.

With the (pilfered) story out of the way, it's time to move onto the other ingredient that makes this tasty little s**t sandwich complete: The special effects. Basically, this is what happens when you let a YTS student loose with CGI technology. Oh yes, somebody definitely stole George Lucas' "when in doubt - CGI it" manual for this one. As the story grows increasingly weaker and the stupendously daft climax draws ever nearer, the cheap movie maker's favourite toy becomes more and more prevalent, and by the end has virtually made you forget that human actors actually exist among the computer generated jiggery-pokery at all. Skies, rivers, trees, frogs, locusts, people, buildings and cars. If it moves, CGI it. If it doesn't, then CGI it anyway.

Overall, it's a throwaway 90 minutes of regurgitated story, mildly irritating flashbacks, very irritating dream sequences and acting that ranges from the amateurish to the gloriously hammy. You'll have seen worse films but you'll have seen a hell of a lot of better ones.

The Slaughter (2006)

Possibly the most non-committal horror film I've ever seen.

[2/10 · 21 August 2007]

After reading the previous comments, I knew this film was never going to be a classic, it didn't even look good enough to be a b-movie. However, I've always been a sucker for the old "demons run amok in a haunted house" scenario (a la Night of the Demons) so I decided to give it bash. After a fantastic opening scene for breast fans, it started on a very fast decline...

As expected, the script, acting and what passed for storyline were quite dreadful but the worst thing about it was that, quite obviously, the writer/director/teaboy had actually stopped believing in the horror element himself (and you can actually pinpoint the exact moment), gave up and tried to quickly turn it into a "Shaun of the Dead" style zombie comedy. The irony being that one of the worst straight actors in the film (all of them are pretty unlikeable characters) - the anti-establishment rich boy, turned out to have a decent line in comedy acting, both verbally and physically. If the director had noticed this from the start, he could have made an entirely different film. Instead, coupled with some quite amateurish splatter effects, it ended up being possibly the most non-committal horror film I think I've ever seen.

Pathfinder (2007)

Dances with Vikings - In Slow Motion

[4/10 · 2 July 2007]

Plot: Some vikings visit America for reasons best known to themselves. During a lovely bit of pillaging and murderlising, a little viking boy is asked to kill a tiny native American baby. Little viking boy politely declines the offer and is thusly disowned by his slightly peeved father.

Viking boy grows up to be big, strapping Karl Urban and all goes well until the old norse family turn up uninvited to carry on with the plundering and general mayhem.

The entire settlement's populous is summarily destroyed, leaving Karl Urban (named Ghost because of his white skin - a bit racist if you ask me) more than a little vexed.

Ghost changes his name to Rambo, and with the aid of a slightly retarded Indian - sorry, native American - a few other slightly narked native Americans and the rather obvious love interest, hack and slash their way through the entire North American viking community.

It all ends in a rather contrived avalanche of cliché and testosterone, the bad guys killed, the good guy getting the girl and everyone wondering why it all took so damn long.

While not the worst film I've ever seen, this one surely ranks up there as the longest. But not because of the duration (the usual 94 or so minutes), but because of the complete lack of pace and the John Woo-ery of filming absolutely everything but dialogue in slow motion. I'm sure if the film was sped up to normal time, it would only last an hour at most.

However, it's not all mickey-taking and grumbles. The one good thing about it was that the vikings looked the business. The argument of whether they actually wore helmets with horns aside, they just looked like right nasty little beggars.

Open Water 2: Adrift (2006)

Over-Bored

[2/10 · 19 October 2006]

Scenario: Some bad actors and a baby go for fun and frolics on a boat

Result: Said failed thespians stupidly end up overboard and then have the impossible task of getting to grips with their lack of intelligence. For example: After tying together some clothes in order to make a rope, why not try letting the lightest person climb up it to safety instead of the 15 stone beefcake?

So, a series of more stupid decisions, fights, arguments, aquatic bitch-slaps, and stabbings later and the only thing missing (unfortunately) was a shark or ten in need of a snack.

Anyway, some die, some survive and I really couldn't care less who any more. Oh, and taking your life jacket off to jump into a raging storm in the middle of the night is just a brilliant idea isn't it.