Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Cambodia isn’t the first place that springs to mind when thinking about classic martial arts movies, but Italian ex-patriot director Jimmy Henderson’s Jailbreak might make you think again. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, cracking good fun.

Playboy (Phillip) is the only male member of the otherwise all female Butterfly Gang, and when he’s arrested he offers to give up the identity of Madame Butterfly (Tran) for a more lenient sentence. She isn’t going to stand for this though, so calls in a favour from inmate Bolo (Siriwudd) at the Prei Klaa prison Playboy is being escorted to, to clip the canary’s wings before he can sing. Meanwhile Jean-Paul (Ly) puts together a small task-force comprising Dara (Our), Tharoth (Sam) and Sucheat (Phang) to chaperone Playboy safely into Prei Klaa, but they’re not long inside the jail when, well, we’re sure you can guess.

The action kicks in at around the half-hour mark, apparently a Cambodian technique combining kickboxing with hand weapons called bokator, and while aficionados of this kind of thing will have pretty much seen it all before, Henderson’s fluid camerawork and extensive choreography manage to keep things fresh. There are several quite extended sequences involving almost unbroken shots, with the camera darting this way and that as the four police officers fend off sometimes dozens of assailants at a time; it’s quite thrilling – and tremendously entertaining. Henderson’s script, co-written with Michael Hodgson, never forgets to include a healthy dose of humour and the director balances the comedy and action supremely well.

Part of the reason for this is his casting of the main characters, all of whom – including the bad guys – are extremely likeable and quite distinct from one another. Thus when, for example, Jean-Paul indulges in a little daydream about Tharoth, you’ll find yourself first rooting for and then laughing at him, and much more involved than if Jailbreak had been all action at the expense of character and humour.

It seems the budget for this film was a mere $260,000, the tight use of mostly just the one location evidently accounting for the low overheads. But the liberal use of plenty of well-trained extras and some judiciously edited in outside filming help to maintain the impression of a film that cost ten times that amount, Henderson having done a terrific job of putting every last cent up on the screen. This is a no frills and no extras Australian DVD release (from the redoubtable Umbrella Entertainment), but the picture looks nice and sharp and this is well worth seeking out no matter where in the world you are. A genuine surprise and delight, and not just for martial arts fans.

JAILBREAK / CERT: MA (Australia) / DIRECTOR: JIMMY HENDERSON / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL HODGSON, JIMMY HENDERSON / STARRING: JEAN-PAUL LY, DARA OUR, THAROTH SAM, SIRIWUDD SISOWATH, DARA PHANG, CELINE TRAN, SAVIN PHILLIP / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Shin Sang-Ok’s The Ghost Lovers is rather more of an audio-visual poem than a standard horror flick; anyone expecting to find an antecedent to modern Asian films will likely be left unsatisfied. Indeed in some ways Yan Nu Huan Hun predicts what was about to happen in the prolific ‘Prince of South Korean Cinema’s’ own life, because four years later he was kidnapped on the orders of Kim Jong-Il with the intention of creating a film industry north of the Korean border.

Filmed largely on rather cheap but lushly dressed sets that in a big way help to give the film its lyrical quality, this tells the story of twenty-year-old Mr Han, who has been engaged to Sung Lianha since childhood having never met her, his father owing hers a great debt and being too proud to come home to their village until the money was found. Piecing together the required amount, Han returns only to discover en route, after being robbed of the entire fortune, that Lianha is dying. Falling in with a local innkeeper, Han is told he is due to inherit Lianha’s fortune, but being unable to repay the debt is reluctant to make contact. So Lianha, who unbeknown to Han has died already, decides to reach out to him instead.

As you’ve probably gathered, this is a love story of sorts, although the supernatural aspect is never too far from the forefront. But it takes a much less intense approach to the hauntings than any modern film would probably do, and the scenes in which the locals encounter the surprisingly corporeal ghosts of Lianha and her ‘wet nurse’ are played as much for comedy as for frights. It’s also a little laissez-faire in fully sketching in any of the main characters, so that in the end the poetry in this is more greetings card – albeit the upper end of that spectrum – than it is Shakespeare.

Ultimately what Lianha requires of Han is to marry and subsequently consummate that marriage to her, in order that she might move on from the mortal world without the heavenly embarrassment of having died a maiden. And this part of the film, like much of the rest, is sensitively and intelligently handled. Thus frankly The Ghost Lovers will have less appeal to fans of J-horror than to those more enquiring about how the oriental genre developed, or simply those looking for something absorbing and different, and in its own way quite fulfilling.

There are no extras here to speak of (bar a small booklet by Calum Waddell), but this is a lovely transfer making the film look almost – but for the pacing and effects – like it might have been shot yesterday.

THE GHOST LOVERS (YAN NU HUAN HUN) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: SANG-OK SHIN / SCREENPLAY: YI-LU KUO / STARRING: LI CHING, WEI TU LIN, SHAO-HUNG CHAN, FENG CHEN CHEN, MEI HUA CHEN, HAN CHIANG / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Koch Media’s latest two-disc DVD compilation of archive Doctor Who interview material, culled from the popular Reeltime Pictures Myth Makers series which thrived in the dark days when there was no Doctor Who on the telly, is a rather sweet and charming cap-doff towards some of the show’s hardest working unsung heroes. Sweating under hot studio lights and sheathed in figure-hugging rubber costumes or covered in unyielding prosthetics, a little reparatory group of actors, their names unknown to all but the most determined credits-scouring fans, gave life to Doctor Who’s menageries of lumbering lizards, rattling robots and antagonistic androids across the classic show’s twenty-six year run. Where Koch’s previous collections have focussed on the front-of-camera talent from the original series, this new release is a fitfully interesting and sometimes poignant look behind the latex that allows fans to finally put faces to names they may have learned by heart over the years, many of who have sadly passed away in the decades since the interviews were originally conducted. Monsters! is a valuable time capsule, then, a celebration of an elite group of performers who all helped to contribute to the magic of Doctor Who.

There’s a wonderful enthusiastic naivety to these interviews and if some of the anecdotes its contributors wheel out seem familiar now, it’s important to remember than many of the performers had, at the time, never been afforded the opportunity to talk about their time on the show. Disc one contains I Was a Doctor Who Monster, a sixty-minute documentary from 1996 hosted by Sylvester McCoy (on the cusp of reprising the role for the ill-fated Fox TV movie) and features a host of Doctor Who’s monster men – the likes of Nick Evans, Sonny Caldinez, Gregory de Polnay, John Scott Martin, Rick Newby, Stephen Thorne and celebrated stunt performer Stuart Fell – warmly sharing their memories of their time playing Daleks, Ice Warriors, Robots of Death and even the cumbersome Krynoid from 1976’s Seeds of Doom. Nice as it is to see many of these hard-working individuals (all justifiably proud of their contributions to the series) the point is quickly (and repeatedly) made that their costumes were hot, uncomfortable, afforded restricted vision, made going to the loo a Herculean task and were occasionally dangerous. As if to offer some visual variety (and to make up for their fact that licensing actual clips from the series was a no-no), the feature is dotted with clunky ‘reconstructions’ which battle manfully to evoke the spirit of the early days of the series but now just come across as a little embarrassing. More interesting are the other individual interviews bundled into the package where the current show’s go-to monster-voicer Nicholas Briggs, quickly established as Reeltime’s interviewer of choice, speaks to Dalek designer Raymond Cusick (famously bitter about the lack of recognition he received for his work in creating the ‘look’ of the Daleks, Cusick  is chatty enough but he never cracks a smile), 1980s Cyberleader actor David Banks (complete with mullet and trendy 1980s fashion sensibilities) and the late Michael Wisher who portrayed the original Davros in 1975’s Genesis of the Daleks. Most fascinating, however, is disc two’s chat with Jack Pitt who performed frequently during the William Hartnell era, becoming great friends with the notoriously-curmudgeonly actor; his tales of his experiences with Hartnell (they shared a house during their time working together) are a terrific insight into the private life of the actor whose crotchety charisma on and off screen has fascinated fans for over five decades.

Monsters! hails largely from the late 1980s so allowances need to be made for variable picture quality, some dodgy creative choices and the general air of enthusiastic amateurism which pervades much of its content.  But Monsters! is not only a snapshot of a very particular time in Doctor Who’s history when its fans had to make their own entertainment to keep the name alive and an essential purchase for anyone with an enduring interest in a very specialised behind-the-scenes area of the classic series but a chance to hear horse’s mouth stories from too many talented individuals who just aren’t  around today to share their unique memories.

Special Feature: Introduction by Keith Barnfather and Nick Briggs

THE DOCTORS – MONSTERS! / CERT: E / DIRECTOR: KEITH BARNFATHER / STARRING: SYLVESTER MCCOY, RAYMOND CUSICK,MICHAEL WISHER, DAVID BANKS, JACK PITT, CY TOWN, NICHOLAS BRIGGS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The surprise return of any archive television – especially presumed-gone-forever episodes of cult TV favourites from the 1950s and 1960s – is always a cause for celebration. Doctor Who fans rejoiced and danced a merry jig (probably) back in 2013 when nine previously-lost episodes were found in Africa and subsequently made available to a salivating public. Fans of The Avengers, the classic espionage/adventure series starring Patrick Macnee, long frustrated by the fact that only two full episodes existed from their show’s first twenty-six episode season, were equally jubilant when, against all reasonable odds, a season one episode came to light in a private film collection in 2016. Recovered by the British television preservation group Kaleidoscope the episode – ‘Tunnel of Fear’ – is now available on DVD at last supported by a host of bonus content.

‘Tunnel of Fear’ is a fascinating flashback to British television production in the very early 1960s and a handy reminder that The Avengers in its embryonic form was a very different series to the fast-paced, high concept and often surreal adventure series it would become as the decade wore on. In this first series Ian Hendry plays Dr David Keel (Hendry had played a vaguely similar role in the short-lived series Police Surgeon which finished its run just a month before The Avengers debuted) whose fiancée is murdered in opening episode ‘Hot Snow’ and whose death is ‘avenged’ by Keel alongside mysterious Government agent John Steed (Macnee). The two form an occasional and often uneasy partnership throughout the series but while Hendry was the nominal star of the show, it gradually became apparent that Macnee’s flashy, witty Steed was the more interesting character with more dramatic potential than the dour and rather straight-laced Keel. ‘Tunnel of Fear’ demonstrates this beautifully. Wounded escaped convict Harry Black (Bate) bursts into Keel’s surgery, claiming he’s been framed for a crime he didn’t commit and begging not to be handed over to the Police. Steed is quickly on the scene and establishes a connection between Black and an espionage case concerning the leaking of top secret Government information which has unlikely links to, of all places, Southend-on-Sea. Black escapes their clutches and heads to Southend and a reunion with his estranged Mum who’s working at the funfair but Keel and Steed aren’t far behind. Steed somehow manages to nab himself a job at a belly-dancing show – cue much racy bottom-slapping and Macnee’s nails-down-a-chalkboard turn as a carnival barker – and the ill-matched pair eventually discover the sinister secrets of the fair’s ghost train.

‘Tunnel of Fear’ is terrific fun and while it’s tonally worlds away from the style of the more outrageous series it would become later in the decade, the seeds of its future are self-evident in Macnee’s lively turn as Steed. Here he’s not the familiar urbane umbrella-and-bowler figure generally associated with The Avengers; here’s he’s depicted as a bit of a wide boy, a chancer and a wheeler-dealer good with a quip and handy with a double bluff. The story itself is mundane espionage stuff, ambitious beyond its resources (the Southend funfair where the action takes place is realised on a handful of cramped studio sets with just one quick filmed London location insert earlier in the episode) and, recorded on videotape, is directed with none of the panache of the later glossier filmed episodes. Stagey and talky, ‘Tunnel of Fear’ is obviously a product of its time, the era when British television was just starting to flex its post-War muscles at the beginning of a decade which would see an explosion of creativity and imagination with The Avengers itself still recognised as one of the trailblazers of the medium. This episode, entirely uncharacteristic of what was to come, is an important and exciting find and fans of The Avengers and cult TV in general are unlikely to be disappointed by the opportunity to dip back into the earliest days of a genuine television legend.

Special Features: Archive TV interviews with Hendry and Macnee / Interview with Big Finish writer John Dorney / Reconstructions/Surviving scripts

THE AVENGERS – TUNNEL OF FEAR / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: DON LEAVER / SCREENPLAY: JOHN KRUSE / STARRING: IAN HENDRY, PATRICK MACNEE, INGRID HAFNER,ANTHONY BATE, JOHN SALEW / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 9TH

This wretched, sleazy and thoroughly grubby little film marked the debut (and, indeed, only) feature film appearance by Tiny Tim, a curious ukulele player/singer (possessed of an extraordinary if not especially aesthetically pleasing falsetto/vibrato vocal style which delivered him a chart hit with ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ in 1968) who enjoyed a brief period of freak show popularity in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. His career was well into its inevitable decline by the time Bill Lehane approached him in 1986 and offered him a leading role in his upcoming micro-budget horror film. Blood Harvest surfaced in 1987 on the back of the craze for vile and often misogynistic slasher movies and it remains an ugly, clumsy, voyeuristic example of a genre which often struggled for critical acclaim and appreciation.

The IMDb entry for this mess of a movie describes Blood Harvest with a perfunctory “In a small town, people are being murdered by having their throats cut” which probably tells you all you need to know – possibly more – about this shoddy train-wreck. In broader terms, Jill (Salcheck, appalling) returns to her rural homestead to find that the house is defaced with graffiti and her parents are missing, her bank supervisor father having invoked the ire of the local farming community whose properties he’s foreclosed upon. Jill’s not exactly made to feel welcome and her only admirer appears to be “Marvellous Mervo” (Tiny Tim), the local simpleton who spends his time wearing a shabby clown outfit and who has a habit of appearing in windows and fixing his rictus grin on the unwary and undeserving. As Jill starts to rekindle her relationship with ex-boyfriend Scott (Krause, later of TV’s Six Feet Under), her friends start to disappear, dragged into a nearby barn, hung upside down, their throats sliced open.

Blood Harvest is as uncomfortably close to unwatchable as we’re prepared to get and apart from its mercifully brief running time (it’s over and done with in under ninety minutes which is still roughly ninety minutes too long) we’re hard pressed to think of one redeeming feature to justify the ordeal of watching it. The acting is uniformly pitiful and Tiny Tim’s performance is almost painfully, cruelly inept. Rebane’s direction is shambolically flat and unimaginative (would that his script was as accomplished) and his camera only seems to come alive (in a predatory sense) in the grim and tacky sequences in which Jill’s clothes fall off and in one scene where the mysterious murderer (Who can it be? Who gives a damn?) drugs her, straps her to a bed and takes photographs of her near-naked body.

88 Films have done their best to make a silk purse out of this dead sow’s ear and lavished more care and attention on the disc’s presentation than the feature itself could ever deserve. The picture is bright and colourful but shot through with grain and flicker so while Blood Harvest itself might never have looked better it’s still the same shameful, artless crock it was when it sank without trace on its original release. No good can come of taking a chance on this one; avoid like a Tiny Tim Anthology CD boxset.

Special Features: Tiny Tim in Niagara Falls 1987 / Behind the scenes material / On set interview footage / Wrap Party performance footage / Alternative opening sequence / Reverse sleeve

BLOOD HARVEST / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: BILL REBANE / STARRING: TINY TIM, ITONIA SALCHECK, DEAN WEST, PETER KRAUSE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Attack on Titan series proves the point that you can make even the most ridiculous idea and make it all dark and serious. The Attack on Titan series is a pseudo flintlock fantasy world which takes place in a vaguely German like country. Mankind is under siege and lives in a massive walled city, with the upper classes living in the thickest wall in the centre, with thinner walled bits of the city protecting the peasants. The Roar of Awakening is the third ‘movie’ instalment of the series.

The threat everyone is hiding from are giant man-baby monsters with grotesque heads that walk like toddlers and eat people whole. These are the titular ‘Titans’. It’s utterly daft and the animated TV show and accompanying comic books are hugely popular across the world, especially in their native Japan.

The main protagonist is a chap called Eren, who shouts a lot and hates Titans. He works with a team of scouts who swing around on gas-powered grappling hooks smacking the monsters in their weak spots with huge swords. The show concentrates on the slow collapse of civilisation and the hidden mystery of the titan’s origins. Roar ramps up the conspiracy and paranoia, but it’s mostly lots of characters jabbering on at each other about nothing until another fight scene happens.

This is because Attack on Titan: The Roar of Awakening is a compressed and re-edited version of season two of the TV series. The editing makes for some interesting scenes; dramatic freeze frame with some dialogue over the top is used quite a bit in order to stitch the narrative into something vaguely understandable. The result is action scene after action scene, with lots of dramatic music, shouting, violence and the more shouting. The animation really shines at these points, with some great cinematic scenes of huge monsters punching normal sized people. Then eating them.

The problem is that if you didn’t know any about the series going in, well this is part three in an ongoing series; this is going to make no sense. It’s hard to really understand what this is for. Fans of Attack on Titan will want to five the full series a watch, rather than this butchered shorthand. At two-hours, it’s a heck of a long recap.

Silly, stupid, shouty stuff for hardcore fans.

ATTACK ON TITAN THE ROAR OF AWAKENING / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: MASASHI KOIZUKA / SCREENPLAY: HAJIME ISAYAMA, YASUKO KOBAYASHI / STARRING: YÛKI KAJI, YUI ISHIKAWA, MARINA INOUE / RELEASE DATE: TBC

This might have been inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street, dealing as it does with a ghost who haunts a young man’s dreams, but actually what Slaughterhouse Rock desperately wants to be is An American Werewolf in London; it even has a scene in which the rather worse-for-wear recently-departed harangue our hero so that they can all move on into the next life.

Released in the UK as Hell Island, this is also notable for giving a 45-year-old Toni ‘Hey Mickey!’ Basil a late-period acting role, as well as including Playboy Playmate Hope Marie Carlton among its cast (yes, for obvious reasons); they both acquit themselves perfectly reasonably, if not distinctively, in a film which starts well enough but rather loses its way once it reaches its destination.

That destination being Alcatraz; Nicholas Celozzi’s college student Alex is having a series of terrible nightmares – including one which at one point levitates him above his bed in an effect which can only be described as “1988 in a nutshell” – which seem to centre around the ex-prison. When teacher Carolyn Harding (Denton), who already harbours an obsession with the occult, turns up at his shared house during an incident, she decides the only solution is to confront his demon then and there and Alex, along with his brother, two mates and a couple of girlfriends, borrow a fishing boat and make their way to the infamous island.

The first half-hour is actually rather good in a sub-Porky’s kind of way; the repartee between the students is mostly believable and Dimitri Logothetis even throws in some interesting directorial choices, showing a willingness to produce something half-decent on a trifling b-movie budget. We can only assume that time on the island was at a premium, because the latter hour sadly squanders a lot of the goodwill built up by this point.

That said, there are all sorts of pleasures still to be had, such as the sight of Ms Basil giving her best shape-throwing non-dancing during a rock-spell designed to separate Alex’s spirit from his body, and the soundtrack by Devo – while hardly enhancing any creepiness that might be found among the cheap prosthetics and dingy photography, is certainly one for ‘80s fans to savour. This might not be scary, and might not add up to a great deal of sense, but at least it’s entertaining.

It also comes in a brand new 4k transfer straight from the negative, so what thrills there are to be had now look better than they probably ever have. This set is a little extras light, but it’s a commendable Blu-ray issue that will have great appeal to fans of a certain kind of kitsch horror fun.

Special Features: Jim Harper interview / Trailer

SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK (aka HELL ISLAND, 1988) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: DIMITRI LOGOTHETIS / SCREENPLAY: SANDRA WILLARD, NORA GOODMAN / STARRING: TONI BASIL, NICHOLAS CELOZZI, TOM REILLY, DONNA DENTON, HOPE MARIE CARLTON, TAMMY HYLER, STEVEN BRIAN SMITH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

The Suicide Squad are pretty edgy, right? How do you make a crack team of professional criminals, murderers and bastards even edgier? You slap on a Grindhouse aesthetic and kill someone off every five minutes, if Hell to Pay is anything to go by.

Sent by Amanda Waller to retrieve a mystic card once held by Doctor Fate, the Suicide Squad face off against a rival team of supervillains who are after the card for their own purposes. Team mainstays Deadshot, Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang are all present and correct, the squad rounded off with newcomers Bronze Tiger, Killer Frost and Copperhead. If you get Slipknot (you know, the rope guy from 2016’s Suicide Squad) vibes from a few of them, that’s because Hell to Pay goes all in on the B-list cannon fodder. Boomerang should be glad he has tenure.

As with most Suicide Squad stories, there’s a childishness to its excesses, even (especially) as heads explode and the competing criminals inflict all manner of violence upon one another. Thankfully, the breakneck pace of the storytelling prevents this from being too tiresome, leaping from set piece to set piece. Rather the comic book silliness of this than the faux-grittiness of the live-action movie or the squad’s last animated outing, Escape From Arkham. Even Harley Quinn isn’t too annoying, surprisingly underutilised in a story which has nothing for her to really do.

Christian Slater’s Deadshot gets the meat of the story, and the action, gamely playing out an arc which Will Smith already worked to the full. After the far superior Gotham by Gaslight and Batman vs Two-Face, this is something of a return to bad form for DC’s animated division, but it’s not a complete waste either. There’s a good variation of villains, the animation is functionally decent, and the finale is amusingly horrible, making the most of the criminals’ duplicitousness in a way that Ayer’s movie somehow never did. But if you thought the infamous ‘this is Katana’ bit was dumb… hoo boy, wait until you get a load of the maguffin behind this one.

Hell to Pay is slapdash trash with a last-minute Grindhouse sheen, splattered with gore and barely adolescent attitude. At least this one is trying to have fun with it though. After two overtly ‘gritty’ and ‘realistic’ outings, it’s nice to see the Suicide Squad get to embrace their comic-book origins. Even if they have slathered it in cinematic Grindhouse affectations.

SUICIDE SQUAD: HELL TO PAY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: SAM LIU / SCREENPLAY: ALAN BURNETT / STARRING: CHRISTIAN SLATER, TARA STRONG, LIAM MCINTYRE, VANESSA WILLIAMS, BILLY BROWN, GREG GRUNBERG / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 27TH (US), APRIL 16TH (UK)

Films involving dogs can be especially memorable and to a certain generation of children, the climax of Martin Rosen’s Watership Down (1978) to this day remains one of the most shocking, alongside many adults’ memories first seeing the graveyard attack on Gregory Peck and David Warner by German Shepherds in The Omen (1976).

Dogs, originally released in 1976 and then subsequently on VHS under the alternate title of Slaughter, is a movie that emerged to capitalise on the immense success of the first modern blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975).

It’s a man-vs-nature affair which belongs alongside the likes of Joe Dante’s Piranha (1978) and John Bud Cardos’ Kingdom Of The Spiders (1977), a precursor of Arachnophobia (1990) and one of William Shatner’s best non-Kirk movies.

David McCallum plays Harlan Thompson, the head of the Biology Department at a Southern California University, who is informed of local attacks on cattle in the countryside nearby by a local rancher. Upon examination of the carcasses, Thompson senses that the attackers could be a pack of dogs, as the bites on the bodies are of various sizes.

Before long, however, inexplicable impromptu attacks by the pet canines of the local residents begin to accelerate, prompting an air of terror and dread amongst not only the townspeople but also the college students in the school, heading towards the inevitable confrontation between Mankind and its’ best friend….

Like other horror films released around the time, Dogs certainly would be one that would make for a blood-thirsty remake under the guidance of Alexandre Aja, who has directed two very competent blood-soaked affairs with the likes of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006 and the wonderfully tacky Piranha in 3D in 2010, which prompted a 2012 sequel, Piranha 3DD.

Although its heart and jugular are in the right place, and throughout the film there are sequences and moments that with a little more thought and attention could have turned this into another Jaws, Dogs suffers from sloppy editing and expectation which renders the key moments more silly than shocking.

Part of the problem is that the mix of breeds in the film, rather than the single breed focus of a film like The Omen, makes the dogs seem more playful than pernicious. The packaging also suggests that the film is going to be a bit more gnawing at the hearts and minds of the audience. The tagline ‘Don’t Pet Them, Fear Them’, for example, suggests a greater expectation of dread than what is actually presented here.

There is still a lot of appeal in this release. Fans of Linda Gray will have some joy in watching her brief appearance in this – and she does feature in a memorable scene – made before her success as Sue-Ellen Ewing in Dallas and fans of the original Hills Have Eyes will glimpse Russ Grieve as Homer, who played the head of the Carter Family in the classic 1977 film.

Another motivation for owning this Blu-ray release is not just for the film, but also for the extras on show, which include a mini-documentary on American Cinema Releasing, who were responsible for other key indie films of the period.

Disappointing, but worth a look.

DOGS (1976) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BURT BRINCKERHOFF / SCREENPLAY: O’BRIAN TOMALIN / STARRING: DAVID MCCALLUM, SANDRA MCCABE, GEORGE WYNER, LINDA GRAY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Vampire movies have been done to death so much that even describing them as ‘done to death’ has become a bit of cliché. Redwood is, in theory, a movie about lurking bloodsuckers that don’t do well in sunlight; but it certainly isn’t a boring old vampire movie. 

Musician Josh (Mike Beckingham) is recovering from cancer, and his partner Beth (Medici actress Tatjana Inez Nardone) is doing her best at being a loving and supportive partner.. On the advice of Josh’s sleazy manager, the two are taking a refreshing camping holiday out amongst the redwood trees in an isolated woodland. Nordone and Beckingham pull off a strong performance as a young couple who’ve been through rough times. For the first half of the movie this is a tale of two people who are hiding something from each other going through some progressively more and more spooky woods.

Tom Paton’s previous movie, Pandorica, did a lot with very little; starting slow and then turning in to a helter-skelter race as the protagonists ran to avoid stronger and more powerful forces. Redwood does something similar. This is a vampire flick, but not in the Lost Boys or Twilight vein. Paton’s monsters are screaming wood dwelling cannibals, their mere presence is enough to provide scare after scare. Part Descent, part Wolf Creek, and part stylistic music video, Paton uses camera cunning and practical effects to make this low budget horror feature look unique and striking. The location itself is easily one of the stars; beautiful, brooding and haunted.

Nicholas Brendon puts in a strong turn as a twitchy and almost psychotic forest ranger. Better known to genre fans as ‘the guy who played Xander in Buffy’, the former Scooby Gang member is a clever bit of casting. It’s a short if knowing performance; a nice nod to gentler horror stories. The main cast easily outshine him, however. Beckingham is especially notable and certainly one to watch out for in future movies.

Redwood is a horror movie that has been lurking for a while – enjoying a strong buzz as it’s moved from film festival to festival – but until recently has been a bit too elusive for the average horror fan to find. It’s good to see it unleashed into the wild via DVD, and we suspect this will swiftly become something of a cult classic thanks to the fast pacing, amazing acting and cameo appearance of a faded icon of horror. Certainly one to add to your collection.

REDWOOD / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TOM PATON / STARRING: MIKE BECKINGHAM, TATJANA INEZ NARDONE, NICHOLAS BRENDON / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 26TH