Film star Michael takes a much needed break from filming, he and a group of friends/associates go and stay at his mother's large house in the countryside but one by one they become victims of an unknown killer. His sexy mother (the beautiful Anita Strindberg) tells Mike that "A strange bond exists between the two of us". Indeed it does, she doesn't look old enough to be his mother for one thing and when they hug one another her boobs are spilling out. The house is very Gothic, it comes with dodgy electrics, a creepy butler and every night a thunderstorm rages outside. Micheal's girlfriend has a bizarre nightmare, she is running topless around the property and encounters an hilariously fake giant spider, bats on wires and a couple of hideously disfigured Devil worshippers. She is played by the gorgeous Martine Brochard but that doesn't stop Michael cheating on her with what must be the most exotic Beryl (exploitation legend Laura Gemser) in movie history. No sexual equality here, she is stark naked whilst he only takes his top off! There are two very gory kills, a man is axed in his fake head and a woman gets a chainsaw to the neck. This was an early film for special effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti, not his best work for sure but he did go on to great things. I watched this on a recent Blu-ray release, some of the picture and sound quality is very poor but I assume that they had to use what was available and hopefully it is the complete cut. As a fan of Euro horror and Giallo I found plenty to enjoy but ultimately it is too messy to be considered a good movie.
Reviews
1,544 Reviews
The Scrotum
(2019)
A movie about killer testicles - honest!!
10 May 2024
A young couple, Tyler and Lindsay, are out camping in the great outdoors. They are getting very intimate but she won't "finish him off" unless he shaves off his pubic hair. So off to the lake he does trot and starts shaving his fake genitals. Unfortunately for Tyler some toxic waste has been illegally dumped in the water. He returns to unlucky Lindsay but during their resumed sex he experiences extreme pain and castrates his fake privates. His balls mutate into a blood thirsty monster and the rest of the film has numerous people killed in gory fashion. This is a very low budget movie so don't expect good acting or effects, much of the gore looks like offal from a butcher's shop and probably was. The ridiculous plot means that it's way too stupid to be taken as a serious horror movie, likewise it's not funny enough to work as a credible comedy either. Nice lakeside location though. The running time may only be 64 minutes but that was long enough. If you make it to the end credits then stick with it as there is a post credits scene, it really doesn't add much to the story but does last maybe a minute or so. So if you are looking for a silly short gore fix and provided you don't mind micro budgets then Scrotum may be worth a look.
The Conference
(2023)
Whatever the Swedish word for "Meh!" is
9 May 2024
A team building conference in the great Swedish outdoors becomes a nightmare when employees are stalked and slashed by a maniac wearing a large creepy kid mask (which looks suspiciously like the one worn in the Happy Death Day movies). Netflix gives this movie a lot of kudos but then they would. It is meant to be a horror comedy, the horror part - unoriginal as it is - isn't too bad, there are a few good kills and gory scenes, however it is a total failure with the "comedy". I didn't mind the lead female Lina (Katia Winter), though I'd like to have known more about her backstory, but the rest of the characters are an uninteresting lot, the two young guys in particular are just downright annoying. At 100 minutes it felt too slow and often boring. I am a big slasher fan but "Konferensen" (it's original title) did very little for me. I nearly always watch non-English movies in their original language, this being no exception, however the characters spoke so fast I often struggled to keep up.
Mondo Freudo
(1966)
Looks very dated.
8 May 2024
I have seen a few "Mondo" in my time including the likes of "Faces of Death", a great deal of the "real" footage is obviously fake and staged, this being no exception. This starts off with a powerful camera (100mm lens or something) filming people - including families with young children - swimming and sunbathing on a California beach, accompanied with some old rock and roll music. A strange way to start a documentary on worldwide sexual practices. Then it's night time and the camera "secretly" films young couples frolicking in the water and making love on the sand, this was obviously staged and filmed up close. And when I say making love I mean the girls get their tops off and the men keep their pants on! Then it's on to a private club in London where strippers are allowed to bare all but sadly we don't get to see all. This is followed by an interview with two "lesbian" prostitutes with very phoney accents. Next we're back in the US and at a beatnik cafe where a middle aged man rubs body paint over a naked woman, creating prints which he sells for good money. Artist or con-artist? Dirty old man for sure! Then it's over the border into Mexico where our "secret" camera spies on young women being sold as sex slaves, the smiles on their faces suggest that maybe they are happy to be on camera (?). A couple of very dull Mexican strippers are seen before heading to New York to meets a coven of "Satanists". The priestess/witch is pretty hot but the bright red paint that is meant to be sacrificial blood is as fake looking as the coven. In Tokyo we go to a sadomasochist club where the topless girls, big grins on their faces, look more like the whip "striking" them is more ticklish than painful. Finally we see a spot of mud wrestling in Germany. Yuck! If this had been made a decade later it would no doubt be far more explicit but sadly this 1966 offering offers very little in the way of titillation, just endless scenes of middle aged men leering at young topless women.
You Can't Kill Stephen King
(2012)
You won't want to waste your time watching this rubbish
7 May 2024
Horror "comedy" about four friends visiting a lake near Stephen King's (as in the real world famous author's) house in Maine, one of which - a creepy male virgin - is a super-fan. There is also a token black dude (no prizes for guessing who gets killed first), an ex soldier who suffers with PTSD and a mixed bunch of chicks (yes, buxom flirty one included). They are terrorised by an unknown killer. I don't claim to be an expert on Stephen King but I have read a number of his books and have seen most of the film adaptations, I was expecting a lot more "King" in this movie but in fact it plays out more like a poor Friday the 13th/Scream clone. It is meant to be funny but is devoid of laughs, the characters are an unlikable bunch too. One guy gets his throat cut, very gory, and one of the women is bludgeoned to death by a hammer, otherwise there's not much else in the way of gore. The lake location does look very nice, as do the girls in their swimming costumes, but I found this to be a poor movie overall and a definite failure as both a comedy and as a love letter to the great author.
Knife of Ice
(1972)
Slightly disappointing Giallo
6 May 2024
Italian/Spanish Giallo movie about a mute woman Martha (well played by the gorgeous Carroll Baker) living in the picturesque Spanish Pyrenees and a series of unexplained murders taking place in a small town. Sadly the movie starts off at a bull ring and the sight of Matadors killing a bull, absolutely disgusting. I felt quite sick at the sight of this barbaric "sport". The human kill count is low and they are done offscreen, very disappointing for a movie of this sub genre, usually known for explicit kills. On the positive side the cinematography is very good and the we get a couple of strong suspects, a creepy male servant called Marcus and an English hippy Satanist with a drug addiction. The large house where Martha lives is handily situated next to a cemetery, combined with daytime fog and night time thunderstorms it has plenty of horror atmosphere. The traditional killer reveal at the end isn't terribly good. Not a Giallo classic by any means but still a reasonably good entry.
RoboCop
(1987)
RoboCop rocks!
6 May 2024
Detroit in the near future, crime is spiralling out of control and the local police force is run by a powerful corporation. When good cop Murphy (an excellent Peter Weller) is killed in the line of duty he is brought back to life, part man part cyborg. Think Terminator crossed with Dirty Harry (complete with lines such as "Your move creep") and you'll get the picture. Only problem is Murphy's memory has completely been erased and when snippets of his former life come back it gets quite emotional. I can remember when this came out on VHS, it was the cut Theatrical Version but still incredibly violent. Now I have the Director's Cut on blu-ray and it looks fantastic. Science fiction, crime thriller, splatter and even part comedy Robocop for me is one of the best action movies of that wonderful cinematic decade that was the 1980s!
S.I.C.K. Serial Insane Clown Killer
(2003 Video)
Grim Weekend S.U.C.K's
4 May 2024
"5 people, 1 weekend, 12 miles from nowhere. Let the killing begin!" I bought a used copy of Grim Weekend on DVD, a film that I had not heard of before, from CEX back in 2013 (I still have the receipt). I can remember thinking it was a pile of crap back then but 11 years later I thought I'd give it a second chance (and therefore post my review) but it's still a turd of a movie. I love slasher flicks, the good, the bad and the ugly but this one has virtually nothing to recommend it. On DVD it runs 96 minutes but the first attack by the hulking killer clown (how original, not!) takes a slow 46 minutes to materialise. There are only two kills, a woman gets decapitated (very fake looking) and a man gets an axe in his back. There is also a scene of some guy in a shed who is very badly mutilated but still alive. For a slasher movie this falls too short in the kill department. There are a couple of very brief tame sex scenes plus some very strong language (which probably accounts for the BBFC 18 rating) but I have seen far more violent 15 rated movies. The awful musical score is way too dramatic and overbearing plus the picture quality is poor. Lastly the acting, I have seen worse though it is far from good. This is one of those cases of cool DVD artwork but dire movie inside, you have been warned!
Sword of Sherwood Forest
(1960)
Mountains in Nottinghamshire?
1 May 2024
I am a huge fan of Hammer Horror but I do also enjoy watching their non horror output too. This adventure yarn about Robin Hood was directed by the great Terence Fisher but sadly this movie - made during the studio's finest period - just feels lacking. Richard Greene played Robin Hood on TV prior to this but I just found him quite plain and dreary as the famous outlaw, no charisma at all. What does makes this worth watching is the ever reliable Peter Cushing as the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, at times he sounds more like Baron Frankenstein, for example he says "Graves are known to be empty, dig it up!" Sporting a goatee beard he does look quite different than usual. One other thing that I liked was that he comes to blows with a sadly uncredited and badly dubbed (why!?) Oliver Reed. As one would expect from Hammer the costumes, scenery etc all look very nice. However despite being set in the English county of Nottinghamshire the large rugged hills make it obvious that it was not filmed there (shot in Ireland). Maid Marian is wearing lipstick and looks more 1960 than Medieval, there are lots of sexist comments and the fight scenes aren't very good. At 80 minutes the time passes quickly enough but it's far from being a Hammer classic.
A horror and beach party movie staring Kingsley the Lion!
30 April 2024
"Teens" are being brutally killed on a Californian beach, could it be a sea monster, or does workaholic Dr Lindsay (Jon Hall, one of the few proper actors in the cast) have something to do with it? He has a very low opinion of the surfers (even though his own son is one), he tells the sheriff that the boys just loaf about and that the girls are little tramps! He even suggests that they are capable of murder but all the kids (who look 30 or so) just want to surf, do their funny dancing (trust me it's hilarious) and make out on the beach. Opening scene has a girl killed on the beach by an actor wearing a laughable sea monster costume, it claws her face and to the movie's credit this and the other killings are quite gruesome (for the time). Some of the running time consists of surfers in action, apparently in colour though the print that I watched was all in black and white. The film also features a great deal of music, singing and the already mentioned hilarious dancing. A puppet lion called Kingsley is credited as playing himself and he sings a song with the line "You got a monster in the surf" amongst the lyrics. I don't think that this was meant to be taken seriously as a horror film. Indeed I think that it's one of those so bad that it's fun films but it is necessary to be in the right mood for it, I don't think that I was but I'd give it another watch one day. Frank Sinatra jr is credited for providing the music but apparently his involvement was minimal. Memorable for the silly creature make-up and the funny kids dancing but ultimately it's really quite bad.
Repulsion
(1965)
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock..
28 April 2024
Young Belgian sisters Carol and Helen share a London flat but when Helen goes away on holiday with her boyfriend poor Carol (played by the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve) slowly descends into madness, with fatal consequences. At first Carol is kept awake at night by the sound of her clock tick tocking and by Helen having loud sex, as somebody who has suffered with insomnia I could relate to the horrible negative effects that lack of sleep can cause. Once alone taps drip loudly, flies buzz around a decaying rabbit carcass, these and other sounds become more and more magnified. We are treated to a couple of jump scares when she imagines a rapist inside the apartment, also hands emerge from the walls, grabbing her, and deep cracks suddenly appear. The camera work is superb and it looks great in black and white (I would hate to see a colourised version), the jazzy musical score is excellent too. I loved seeing London back in the mid 1960's, the fashions, old (mainly British) vehicles, etc. The relatively small cast of actors do a decent job and the characters are all engaging. I first watched this as a child back in the 1980's on late night TV and yes it did make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up! Having just re-watched it for a second time decades later it sadly no longer had that effect and though it was pretty shocking for 1965 it seems far tamer by modern standards. Two men are killed, both quite nasty, but with a running time of 104 minutes the pace of the movie - the first half in particular - is fairly slow. Director Roman Polanski showcased a lot of talent here and Repulsion is a great psychological horror but in my opinion it's not his best film.
Spell
(2020)
This Spell didn't work on me
26 April 2024
A successful lawyer called Marquis pilots his family back to his home state of rural Kentucky when his father passes away but during a violent storm over a mountainous region the cheap looking CGI aeroplane crashes. With no sign of his wife or kids he appears to be the sole survivor, badly injured he is taken in by an old couple, the wife Eloise is a witch and they have something nasty planned for Marquis. An old photograph dated 1860 suggests that Eloise is incredibly old but nothing is made of this. The acting is a mixed bag, the movie was filmed in South Africa and the cast includes a few non-Americans trying to sound American. There is one good jump scare, the soundtrack is suitably moody and there is one very gory scene featuring a metal stake being removed and reinserted in Marquis's foot. The creepy Hoodoo dolls look great. Sadly there are some very dumb plot decisions and I couldn't make sense of the disappointing ending.
Abigail
(2024)
Popcorn movie
23 April 2024
Went to see "Abigail" (2024) at my local Odeon cinema last night with my mate. Luckily he got me a cheap ticket. Although I found the movie reasonably enjoyable I would not have been happy if I had forked out the normal £14.49. Six would be criminals kidnap the 12 year old daughter of a very rich man, identity unknown but as this is a "reworking" of Universal's "Dracula's Daughter" (1936) it's a no brainer who Daddy is! Starts off as a crime thriller but once Abigail breaks free of her handcuffs the movie becomes criminals (ex cop, ex military, meathead, redneck and little rich girl hacker) versus a vampire ballerina. Trust me, this bears virtually no resemblance to the 1936 film. Once it gets going it's very violent with buckets of blood, despite it being part comedy in the UK the violence resulted in the movie being rated BBFC 18. I found it to be reasonably good fun, there a few good jump scares and plenty of gory action, on the downside it is predictable, sometimes silly, has some annoying characters and at 109 minutes a tad too long. Doubt I'd want to watch it again.
The Return of the Vampire
(1943)
Unofficially "The Return of Dracula"
17 April 2024
The great Bela Lugosi reprises the role of a Romanian vampire but due to legal reasons instead of him once again playing Dracula he is now one Armand Tesla, complete with black cape etc. There are many vampire movies that don't feature a Dracula so in my book that's fine, indeed if anything it makes it just that little bit more interesting. Set in London this starts off in 1918 and Tesla is staked through the heart, he has a werewolf called Andrea as a servant but with the vamp "dead" Andrea's curse is lifted. This monster twosome is really quite enjoyable though the werewolf isn't the type that only changes during a Full Moon and he looks a bit more pet dog than wolf. The transformation effects of man to 'wolf and Dracula's - I mean Tesla's - inevitable demise are pretty good for the time. Move on to 1941 (?) and during a German bombing raid (some real life footage is used) Tesla's coffin is disturbed and a pair of comedy gravediggers/attendants pull the metal stake out of his heart, reviving him - and he wants revenge! I'm a big Lugosi fan and he's great fun to watch here, he is Dracula in all but name. Set in London but shot in the US there are the inevitable Americans trying but failing to sound English, thankfully there are some genuine Brits amongst the cast. I love old classic black and white horror movies and the many cemetery scenes here with swirling mists and crooked gravestones drool atmosphere. The modest 69 minutes pass quickly enough and the finale is rewarding. I have watched this film a few times now and would certainly watch it again, lights out late at night.
Castaway
(1986)
That Ollie Reed was a lucky fella!
14 April 2024
"Our lives may depend on these vegetables." Middle-aged Gerald (Oliver Reed) puts an advert in a London newspaper seeking a young female companion to spend a year with him on a deserted tropical island. Lucy (Amanda Donohoe), an office clerk, responds, after a quick marriage of convenience they head off to a Pacific island near Australia. Based on a true story I can remember all the fuss when this was released, I have always been curious about wanting to watch it and after nearly 40 years I have finally done so. I hate to say it but I wasn't terribly impressed. The story starts off in London, Gerald is teaching young kids how to swim, then he's in his (Reed's) natural environment, the pub. This was great. I also really enjoyed seeing London, the fashions and the vehicles from the mid 1980's. One thing I did pick up on though were a couple of TV news segments, one about the serial killer known as The Yorkshire Ripper, the other the engagement of Prince Charles to Diana, these events took place around 1981 yet some of the motor cars seen are clearly from several years later. Once on the island Lucy strips off and is naked for much of the running time. I had a bit of a teenage crush on Amanda Dononhoe, beautiful as well as being a great actress. Oliver Reed is one of my favourite actors, however his best roles were definitely behind him at this stage in his career. Gerald is crude, chauvinistic and randy, he gets a bit tiresome after a while and I sadly wonder if Reed had to try very hard to play him. The two just aren't very compatible, they are both rather stubborn and selfish, and over the course of nearly two hours the movie loses its initial charm. It was shot in London and The Seychelles, the visual aspect - including that of Lucy's natural charms - are for me the best thing about the movie.
Disappearance
(2002 TV Movie)
Fake Nevada
13 April 2024
A family are travelling through the American desert state of Nevada. They stop at a diner where the locals aren't exactly welcoming and when they ask about an old mining ghost town called Weaver they are told that there's no such place. Good job that it does exist otherwise we'd have no movie. They carry on regardless and sure enough they find Weaver. After a look around they decide to carry on with their journey but guess what, their car won't start! That's just the start of their problems. This is an American made for TV movie so in terms of horror it is quite restrained, but that's fine. However, it was shot in Australia. Unfortunately many of the Aussie actors can't do a convincing American accent, the landscape doesn't look right for Nevada (I have been there), some of the vehicles are right hand drive, and even a large Saguaro cactus looks plastic! The film does have a few creepy moments but the horror is an odd mixture of supernatural and science fiction (Weaver is situated by a former nuclear test site) which don't really gel. I didn't see the twist end coming but it was worth sticking around for. Disappearance is alright for a one time watch but chances are that it will disappear from your memory soon afterwards.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1931)
Quite possibly the best film version of Stevenson's famous novel
7 April 2024
"I'll give you a lover now, his name is Death!" I don't feel a need to outline the plot as I am sure that even people who aren't into horror are familiar with the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story. The film starts with Jekyll talking, we don't see him at first but instead we see what he sees by using some inventive point of view (POV) shots. Indeed the camera work is excellent throughout, as are the atmospheric London Victorian sets and the transformation special effects of Jekyll to Hyde (and back). This relatively early "talky" was also made pre-Code and enabled it to be rather erotic, at least for its time. A very memorable scene has an attractive young bar singer called Ivy slowly peel off her stockings, revealing her bare legs, much to Jekyll's obvious guilty delight. She is then in bed topless.(seen from her side and back) and grabs the kind doctor for a kiss. When he becomes evil Hyde he claims Ivy as his, keeping her captive and lavishing her with gifts in return for implied sex. The movie does start off a bit slow but it all builds to a fantastic finale. This is a superb classic horror movie but the only thing that lets it down slightly are some of the fake British accents. Much of the cast are British but Fredric March as Jekyll/Hyde clearly sounds American and other characters such as Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) fail badly to sound English. The 1930's was arguably the best decade for classic horror movies and this is up there with the likes of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein".
Jailhouse Wardress
(1981)
There's only one reason to watch this...
6 April 2024
"What do we do now?" "Let's get undressed" Jailhouse Wardress is a bit of a mess in terms of story, at the end of World War 2 a high ranking Nazi SS officer flees to South Africa and becomes the cruel governor of a bizarre women's jail, an assassination plot is made to kill him. The bulk of the film looks 1970's/early 80's but our villain hasn't aged a day since 1945, either he has some miracle anti-ageing potion or the makers didn't give a hoot about making the time setting look convincing. There are two directors credited, Alain Deruelle, who specialised in pornography, and Spanish legend Jess Franco, known for his many horror films though he too dabbled in adult movies. I am a fan of Jess, even his bad movies and this falls into that category. He gives his usual cameo appearance , his real life lover Lina Romay is one of the stars in this flick. The prison is an old coastal castle, the location is quite nice but there are only a handful of inmates and the governor's office looks like it was filmed in somebody's lounge! The editing is bad, the dubbing is terrible and it is obvious that the film was put together using footage from other movies, the picture quality varying quite a lot. Yes, it is very flawed but let's be honest there is only one reason to watch this women in prison/Nazisploitation thriller and that is for the sex and nudity, of which there is a great deal. Full frontal female nudity throughout, some of the men get in on the action too but as was so typical back then - with one exception - the guys get to keep their clothes on! Also back then the "natural look" was in which makes the nudity look dated. The Euro musical score is easy on the ears and I did like seeing the exotic plants outside of the prison but the sex novelty soon wore off and gave up with the "plot".
The Demon
(1981)
Not exactly Cameron Mitchell's finest credit
5 April 2024
"He's less than a man but more than a man. Much more". A mysterious masked maniac is stalking, kidnapping and killing his young victims, the parents of a missing 14 year old girl employ psychic detective Col. Bill Carson (Cameron Mitchell) to help find her (and the fiend). Meanwhile two young attractive cousins Mary and Jo are happily loving life until The Demon starts stalking Mary. This South African horror movie is odd because the two story lines don't really intertwine, if feels more like two separate films stuck together. Cameron Mitchell was a very prolific American actor appearing on both the small and big screens, I am a bit of a fan but sadly his performance here is awful and to be honest his part, other than being a big name, is a waste of time. Shame. The other half of the film with the two cousins is the more interesting one, though it borrows heavily from John Carpenter's classic "Halloween" (1978). This is a slasher movie with very little slashing, the killer's main murder method is suffocation by clear plastic bags! At least there is quite a lot of female topless nudity. Predictably one of them is a Final Girl, the Demon breaks into her house but why call the police when she can phone her boyfriend instead!? And then his car doesn't start! That being said the finale is quite suspenseful although the abrupt ending is a let down. Despite the title The Demon does not appear to be supernatural in nature, though amazingly his masks comes and goes and comes back again in the same scene! I have the UK DVD release and the picture quality is awful, it is fuzzy and in dark scenes it is very difficult to see what is happening. If it was restored and put out on blu-ray it would obviously look better but it would still be quite a poor entry in the Golden Era of the Slasher Movie. For die-hard stalk and slash or Cameron Mitchell fans only.
Stardust
(1974)
The dark side of fame
1 April 2024
"I am an artist, not a bloody jukebox!" A fine British musical drama that charts the rise and fall of a fictional rock star called Jim MacLaine (well played by real singer David Essex). It's the mid 1960's and a band called the Stray Cats get signed by a record company, their first single gets to number 1 in the UK and it also charts in the US. Tensions soon split the band apart whilst in the US with front man Jim going solo, becoming a huge global superstar. He returns to England only to be mobbed by fans at his mother's funeral, then he becomes an eccentric recluse living in a castle in Spain. The media and record company won't leave Jim alone but he's had enough. My mum was a David Essex fan so I grew up listening to him. Many years ago we did watch Stardust together though the only bit that I could remember was the saucy scene where Jim has a threesome with two naked blondes! The cast is very impressive as is the film's musical score. The only negative point for me is that it is set in the 1960's, the band look the part but the fashions of everybody else plus many of the motor vehicles seen make it clearly obvious that it was filmed in the 1970's, pity they didn't set it then instead.
Scared Stiff
(1987)
I wasn't scared stiff but I wasn't disappointed either
31 March 2024
In the 19th Century some slaves put a curse on cruel slave trader George Masterson (David Ramsey). Move forward to the mid-1980's and pop singer Kate (Mary Page Keller, complete with mullet) moves into Masterson's Southern mansion, along with young son Jason and boyfriend Dr David Young. Needless to say strange and spooky things start to happen, eventually becoming more and more horrific. Back in the 1980's and 90's I was visiting video shops most weeks and I did have a poster for the UK VHS release of this movie yet strangely I don't think that I had actually watched it until last night. I recently acquired the Arrow blu-ray and a fine release it is too. Scared Stiff is very typical of the B movies that found themselves more or less straight to VHS, and that is certainly no bad thing as that period was awash with such films and it was a great time to be a horror fan. This one reminds me of "House" (1986) but with less humour plus it's not as good. The movie had a low budget but the acting is fine though the practical special effects (so much better than horrible CGI) are the real stars of the show. I have seen better quality but they are good enough. I clearly remember this for its wonderful Graham Humphrey's VHS poster artwork but can find very little mention of it in my horror movie books. Sad really, it's no classic but does deserve to be better known. For a late night movie, lights off and a few beers it's a pretty entertaining watch. And after the end credits have rolled don't be surprised if you have the song "Beat of the Heart" going around and around in your head, ha ha!
Elle
(I) (2016)
Not exactly the rape/revenge movie that I expected
30 March 2024
Michelle is a successful middle-aged French business woman, her mother is dating a toyboy, her father is a mass murderer hoping to be released from prison, her son has become a father to a baby that clearly isn't his, she is having sex with her best friend's husband and she is fantasising over her married neighbour Patrick. In the first scene she is raped in her home by a masked assailant but refuses to go to the police, instead taking matters into her own hands. Only she doesn't really as later on she is attacked again, this time the rapist is unmasked (his identity hardly comes as a surprise, despite there being several suspects) but she just carries on having a fairly regular l relationship with him. Strange, I couldn't really fathom this out. Most of the film focuses on all of the other rather chaotic aspects of her life. The sexual assault scenes are vicious though despite being badly beaten Michelle sports few if any, physical injuries to her face. Furthermore despite the unpleasant backbone of the plot there is also a fair amount of humour, the two don't really go well together. The performances are good but Isabelle Huppert as Michelle is outstanding, for a woman in her early 60's she looks incredible. At 130 minutes this proved to be a bit of a long watch, take away the brutal rape scenes and it's actually quite entertaining.
Bane
(2008)
Plenty of gore, shame about the rest of it.
30 March 2024
"Who are you?" "I don't know who I am.." Four young women wake up in a (very flimsy looking) prison cell and they are all suffering with memory loss, not even knowing their own names. They are subjected to horrific experiments. Until now this had been sat in my DVD pile for years, I finally watched it, was it worth the wait? Sadly not. Looking at the sleeve I wrongly assumed it would be another torture horror movie like "Saw" or "Hostel" but in fact it is a very low budget British film that combines horror with science fiction and prison escape. Young director James Eaves introduces the film, he states that it was made on a tiny budget and shot on digital. The best thing about Bane is it's strong gore and violence. The acting is generally alright and the women look nice in their tight light green T-shirts, however Daniel Jordan as the evil Dr Murdoch is terrible. The ludicrous plot features an evil alien, human in shape but with weird tentacles, behind these human experiments, it is all very unconvincing and confusing. Then there's the 108 minutes running time (DVD), it is WAY too long, It's a shame as I felt that Bane could have been a lot better but as it stands it's only worth seeing for the gore (you may want to hit the FFWD button).
The Outsiders
(1983)
The Averagers
29 March 2024
Coming of age American drama from Francis Ford Coppola, based on a book (or books?) that I admit to never having heard of. Two rival gangs from different class backgrounds, The Greasers and the Socs (pronounced Soches), fight it out in Tulsa. What attracted me to watching this movie (drama isn't really my thing) was the cast of actors who had not yet become Hollywood A-listers. Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Emilio Estevez all went on to become huge stars. In the credits Cruise appears midway and his character was only memorable for performing back-flips off car bonnets. There are several confrontations including a rumble in the rain between the gangs but generally it's a far more talkative movie with action being a bit too thin on the ground for my liking. The musical score is pretty cool featuring the likes of Stevie Wonder and Elvis Presley. No doubt there are people who love this movie, I just found it to be a rather average curiosity.
Deadly Detour
(2011)
Cheap, short, very gory and a lot of fun
25 March 2024
UK title - The Goatman Murders. The British DVD cover is quite misleading as it shows a half human/half goat creature but in fact the Goatman is one ugly looking dude, a bit like a smaller unmasked Jason Vorhees. Mind you he's better looking than one of the kids, a stoner who looks like Ed Sheeran! The opening scene is very gory but then we get 30 minutes of 20 somethings' car breaking down in the backwoods, so they pass the time by drinking beer, smoking weed and having sex, which is all quite entertaining. Then Goatman appears and the rest is a gorefest! This is obviously a very low budget movie, the picture and sound quality is not great and the acting is very amateur (though I have seen far worse). The gore is quite extreme, given the budget the special effects aren't bad at all. No horrible CGI either. There is plenty of bad taste, one scene has a mentally handicapped man eating excrement (surely fake!?) at a service station, there are gay jokes galore and Goaty boards a school bus and slaughters all of the blind passengers. When I first watched this it had me in stitches of laughter, the second viewing didn't have quite the same effect but even so, with a few beers, I still found this to be a silly, bloody and enjoyable fun slasher flick. DVD runtime - 68m.
Tell Your Friends