Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Molly (Millie Perkins) is a bar waitress who believes that life is only real when you watch it on TV, but when the muscular objects of her violent erotic fantasies begin turning up dead and mutilated she begins to wonder if her fantasies haven’t crept disturbingly into reality. Because Molly is concealing a terrible secret, refusing to accept that she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by the sea-captain father she claims to idolise, and now her unconscious is out for revenge. As Molly’s madness, fuelled by drugs and alcohol, begins to consume her she cuts a bloody swathe through the horny male population of her beachside town. The police are closing in, but maybe the only person who can stop Molly is Molly herself…

If you ever find yourself arguing that the idiots behind the ‘video nasties’ list didn’t have a clue what they were doing, The Witch Who Came from the Sea should be your Exhibit A. This film doesn’t deserve its schlocky reputation and it certainly has nothing to do with the evocative but incredibly misleading poster that probably put it on the list in the first place – there are no witches here, and certainly no warrior women brandishing decapitated heads. Instead, The Witch Who Came from the Sea is an intriguing and occasionally moving study of an abused young woman spiralling into insanity. True, it has the low-budget look of most ’70s exploitation movies, but Perkins’ extraordinarily nuanced performance, the psychologically incisive screenplay by her soon-to-be-ex-husband Robert Thom (Death Race 2000) and the classy cinematography by DOP Dean Cundey, who would later lens John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Fog and The Thing, elevates this controversial little psycho-shocker into the echelons of art. This isn’t some grubby video nasty designed to shock and titillate, this is a chillingly effective character study that occupies the shadowy middle-ground somewhere between Polanski’s Repulsion and Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave.

Although the 2K restored print occasionally shows its age, this is yet another good-looking, special features-packed package from Arrow Academy. The extras are great, the newly-commissioned cover art by The Twins of Evil is light years ahead of the lurid poster design that got the Director of Public Prosecution’s knickers in a twist, and the film itself is a revelation.

Special Features: Audio commentary / Introduction to the film / Making-of documentary / Two featurettes

THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MATT CLIMBER / SCREENPLAY: ROBERT THOM / STARRING: MILLIE PERKINS, LONNY CHAPMAN, VANESSA BROWN, RICK JASON / RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 4TH

James Wan’s The Conjuring didn’t exactly break any cinematic boundaries, but by favouring old school camera techniques and setting itself in the 1970s, its harkening back to the likes of The Amityville Horror and The Exorcist made a welcome break for audiences tiring of blood baths and found footage films. It was a huge success, and David F. Sandberg’s Annabelle: Creation (two spooky early shorts by Sandberg are tucked away on the disc) is now the fourth film in a franchise that refuses to die.

For some, ever since the demonic doll first turned up in cameo in Wan’s original, this would be the instalment they’ve waited for. It begins with Annabelle’s creation in a cold open introducing us to Anthony LaPaglia’s dollmaker and his wife, living an idyllic rural existence with their seven-year-old daughter Bee – until she’s killed in a freak car accident. Twelve years later, the Mullins are finally attempting to put their grief behind them, opening their home to six young orphan girls under the charge of Sister Charlotte (Sigman). But the recovering polio victim Janice (Bateman) is very soon the target for a soul-seeking spirit living in a locked room that isn’t quite as inaccessible as Samuel Mullins had thought.

There’s not much here that’s original, but Annabelle: Creation succeeds by very carefully developing tension the old-fashioned way. The apprehension Sandberg builds across numerous languorous long lens shots with vital elements distinct but out of focus in the background is palpable. The other area in which he and script-writer Gary Dauberman (making up for Wolves at the Door) do well, is in the development of character, an area the original film also took its time with. Not that either movie is really character driven, nor indeed do we really get a great deal of empathy with the victims before the scary stuff kicks off, but by introducing us slowly and carefully to both the principals and their environment, we at least get a sense of who everybody is and what’s at stake before the phantasmagorics take over. It’s a lesson in making us care that low budget film-makers could learn from, with the series now passing box office takings of over $1b against budgets of less than a tenth of that.

If you’re an aficionado of this sort of thing, there will be nothing here to surprise you, but the mechanics of the movie will certainly entertain. And if you’re a casual horror film-goer this would, in spite of a tie-in sequence towards the end, be a great place to introduce yourself to the franchise. A lot of care and skill has gone into the making of this, and it’s all up there on the screen.

Special Features: Short films: Attic Panic and Coffer / The Conjuring Universe / Deleted scenes / Director’s commentary

ANNABELLE: CREATION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DAVID F. SANDBERG / SCREENPLAY: GARY DAUBERMAN / STARRING: TALITHA BATEMAN, LULU WILSON, STEPHANIE SIGMAN, ANTHONY LaPAGLIA, SAMARA LEE, MIRANDA OTTO / RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 4TH

The pop culture renaissance of the late 1950s and 1960s was really all about the struggle between deep-rooted conservatism and the new liberal values of the post-war, post-welfare state generation, and Bryan Forbes’ follow-up to Whistle Down the Wind, an adaptation of Lynne Reid Banks’ debut novel, places this battle at front and centre – and rather fudges the issue of which should prevail. Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating depiction of London at the turn of the 1960s, just before The Beatles arrived to turn the country on its head, and well worth a revisit in this glorious 4k restoration – which cleans the picture up nicely without washing out its natural grain.

Leslie Caron is Jane Fosset, a 27-year-old single French woman looking for a cheap, no-questions-asked sort of place to live in Notting Hill. Eventually she settles on the boarding house of Pat Phoenix, settling into an l-shaped attic room next to young black jazz trumpeter Johnny (Peters) and upstairs from a variety of characters she and we will soon come to know and love. Elsewhere in the house we meet Mavis (Courtneidge), an aging music hall star whose glory days are all behind her, and Toby (Bell), as aspiring writer with whom Jane begins a love affair. The narrative then struggles between maintaining its free-thinking sensibilities and telling a more orthodox kind of story, and it’s the gender divide wherein this tension lies; it seems the women of the middle twentieth century are much more progressive in embracing their freedoms, both in their own lives and in their understanding of Jane’s, than the men.

This is a story about faded glamour, dashed hopes and – you guessed it – hearts of gold. If there’s a problem with the film, it’s only that by comparison with the rest of the New Wave, both home and abroad, its depiction of the seedier side of life, the city’s less glamorous underbelly, is rather tame. There’s little sense of threat, particularly towards the single woman’s decisions concerning her impending motherhood, and the film touches upon but fails to really explore the limits of her options.

Neither is The L-Shaped Room quite as liberal in its techniques as some of its contemporaries, possessing fewer jump-cuts and oblique angles than the likes of À Bout de Souffle; again it can’t quite seem to come to terms with its own content, much as Jane struggles throughout with hers. In the end it’s the acting that carries the day; there isn’t a single performance that isn’t sublime and suffused with compassion, and the final act is heart-breaking.

This is however a terrific set celebrating a fifty-odd-year-old film, that despite its minor issues still raises questions that are relevant even today.

Special Features: Interviews: Leslie Caron and Lynne Reid Banks / The L-Shaped Room and the British New Wave featurette / Stills gallery

THE L-SHAPED ROOM / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BRYAN FORBES / SCREENPLAY: BRYAN FORBES / STARRING: LESLIE CARON, TOM BELL, BROCK PETERS, CICELY COURTNEIDGE, BERNARD LEE, PATRICIA PHOENIX / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Artificial Eye has released a box set of seventeen movies and a collection of short films by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki. Ranging from an update of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment from 1983 to his latest movie, this year’s The Other Side of Hope, this is the most complete collection of his movies yet.

Kaurismäki has a distinctive and cine-literate style, and the films are threaded with cinematic references not least to Kaurismäki’s primary inspiration French director Robert Bresson. Kaurismäki‘s approach to filmmaking is essentially an extended homage to his cinematic hero and he shares Bresson’s preoccupation with detail and physical movement. Also like Bresson, Kaurismäki’s narrative and visual style is economical and basic, unadorned by melodrama. His films tend to have a bone-dry thread of comedy, an ironic, cynical view of the world that somehow manages to be simultaneously alienating and intimately familiar. Despite his emulation of Bresson, Kaurismäki is undeniably an original and brave director; his films are not easily digested but are always rewarding.

The highlights of this collection are a trilogy of movies from the late 1980s and early 1990s that include the classics Ariel and The Match Factory Girl, films focussing with uncomfortable intimacy on working class lives in Helsinki that are part-Mike Leigh, part-Coen brothers with a strange mixture of social realism and blackly ironic comedy. Recently, Kaurismäki has had a renaissance, specifically with the award winning Le Harve from 2011 and the highly regarded The Other Side of Hope. These films move away from the local issues of the director’s earlier films and instead access the preoccupations of the 2000s, most notably immigration, although in the brilliant Le Harve, this is imbedded in a beautifully parochial story about a poor elderly couple in a French coastal town.

These films aren’t for everyone. They aren’t a laugh-a-minute but instead have a deeply black, and frequently unsettling, line of humour. Unlike the movies of Jim Jarmusch, perhaps the closest relative to Kaurismäki, the films lack whimsy and charm, instead substituting social realism and a strong punch of moral humanism. They’re best watched with some preparation, both cinematic (I’d suggest Bresson’s 1967 Mouchette) and psychological. You need to be prepared for pain before you can see the comedy underneath.

The collection is a mixture of Blu-ray and DVD and the films, whilst not remastered are solid transfers. Kaurismäki’s films are decidedly lo-fi anyway, so a clean and sharp image isn’t vital. This collection does lack special features, however, although the comprehensive range of movies makes up for this.

If you’re already a fan of the Finnish director or of his brand of darkly ironic realism then this is a must. If not, then you might need to do some homework.

THE AKI KAURISMAKI COLLECTION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMAKI / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: VARIOUS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It’s not actually a war film, of course, although it does start with a battle reminiscent of a Vietnam military manoeuvre and finish with another that effectively forms a self-genocide. In between, what we have is really the Journey to the Planet of the Apes that completes what has now become abundantly apparent as a prequel trilogy. Indeed, if the modern sequence of Apes films should end here, all anyone need do is go back and watch the Charlton Heston original. But having more than trebled its budget in box office takings, this ain’t going to end here.

War for the Planet of the Apes manages a deft balance between allusion, esotericism, and obviousness that in part explains the runaway success of the series. This is thoughtful Science Fiction that also achieves mass appeal simply by the clarity and accessibility of its ideas. That we don’t bat an eyelid while spending the entire film seeing the battle for control of our own planet through the eyes of the species that would wrest it away from us, is genius. Not just of the animators who’ve taken the performances of Andy Serkis and Steve Zahn and turned them into entirely computer-generated characters we never once question the authenticity of, but also in scripting those characters as wholly and believably sympathetic. We really do care about Caesar and his kind.

His nemesis is not entirely unfathomable either. Woody Harrelson plays Marlon Brando as Colonel Herod with a determination that’s not inappropriate to his situation. He’s not quite Kurtz, but the film-makers throw in an “Ape-pocalypse Now!” reference anyway, for anyone who missed the hint. Rather, this appropriately unnamed Colonel’s Massacre of the Innocents is a doomed attempt to protect a kingdom we already know is lost, and it’s the unwittingly but eminently suitably named Nova (a superb performance by newcomer Amiah Miller) who provides his undoing. The script bleeds intelligence out of its every sinew, even if the director has gone out of his way to make sure even the most Friday night of audiences don’t miss anything.

So essentially this boils down to Caesar leading his people into the Promised Land, and we all know what happens to him then. It’s a beautifully realised end to a saga that’s managed variety, intelligence and entertainment in equal measures. At its heart, it’s been a story about fathers and sons.

Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes director) and Matt Reeves’ trilogy has styled itself around titles that suggest the coming of the Planet of the Apes, and fortunately they’ve been more than successful enough to allow for that eventuality. This might be the end of the prologue, but it’s almost certainly not the end of the road. Roll on the next one.

Special Features: All About Caesar /  Director’s commentary / Concept art gallery

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: MATT REEVES / SCREENPLAY: MARK BOMBACK, MATT REEVES / STARRING: ANDY SERKIS, WOODY HARRELSON, STEVE ZAHN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Ratings might be down for the third season of Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul, but the quality remains high. Season 3 explores similar themes to the first two – namely Jimmy McGill’s (Bob Odenkirk) fragile relationship with his brother Chuck (Michael McKean). Both men face the consequences of trying to outsmart each other previously, affecting their careers and mental states. This has a knock-on effect for Jimmy’s personal and business relationship with Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and his bank balance.

It’s been some time coming but Jimmy is edging closer to the amoral, eponymous Saul Goodman. Saul even makes his first ‘appearance’, albeit in a different line of work. On the sideline is the murky world of drug trafficking, becoming insidious in the plot. As a result, we learn more how the paths of Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz), Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) all cross. Breaking Bad fans are rewarded with the origin and expansion of ‘old’ supporting players, while Saul newcomers have the advantage of getting to know them for the first time.

At 10 episodes, it’s a good length. 24 can take an age and six is never enough. As someone who didn’t think a prequel was necessary, it’s become one of this writer’s favourite shows. I even found myself agreeing with other reviews saying the spin-off is as good as Breaking Bad. (Some argue even better.) But it doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of Walt Whitman or Jesse Pinkman. This has become a classic on its own. Better Call Saul probably only has another season or two left in it before it catches up with its predecessor, but the joy is in the journey.

Elsewhere, this release features It’s a Bad, Bad World; a 10-minute behind the scenes look at the larger pool of characters entering Better Call Saul‘s world. There are interviews with the cast and even an appearance by Bryan Cranston. Show creator Vince Gilligan neatly describes it all as a ‘Venn diagram’. Signs of Saul is another exploratory short, with the cast and crew discussing how Jimmy is starting to become Saul. Then there’s In Conversation: Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks and Rhea Seehorn, itself self-explanatory, as is the gag reel which really should have been killed off in the ’90s. Los Pollos Hermanos training videos (all 10 of them) are as cheesy as you expect. But with introductions from Gus Fring on such subjects as ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘cleanliness’, they’re definitely worth a watch – especially if you want to know how to dispose of ‘miscellaneous items’ such as a large, moving bag.

BETTER CALL SAUL: SEASON 3 / CERT: 15 / SHOWRUNNER: VINCE GILLIGAN, PETER GOULD / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: BOB ODENKIRK, RHEA SEEHORN, PATRICK FABIAN, MICHAEL MCKEAN, MICHAEL MANDO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood is a truly odd beast that exists in two separate realities within our own. As such, it’s a film you could feel totally differently about each time you take it in. Indeed, we had both reactions to it at the exact same time, and so in tribute to this rare achievement, we’ll provide a review for both assessments of the film.

In Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, the Norris family (mother, father and daughter Vena) have arrived at a run down, dilapidated carnival presided over by the mysterious Mr. Malatesta and his right-hand man Blood. The family is there to get some much-needed work, or so it initially seems. They’re actually there to try and find out what happened to their son, who has disappeared, with father ready to take bloody vengeance if his suspicions of foul play are proven true. But this description is to credit the film with some semblance of plot or action or events, of which there are none. Instead it’s a tiresome, amateurish collection of would-be dream imagery in place of anything like competence. At only 75 minutes in length, it still drags due to it going nowhere good, very slowly. Acting ranges from barely there to pure ham. It’s a dreadful misfire, alternately laughable and dull and never managing to become more than a cult oddity.

In Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, the Norris family (mother, father and daughter Vena) have arrived at a run down, dilapidated carnival presided over by the mysterious Mr. Malatesta and his right-hand man Blood. The family is there to get some much-needed work, or so it initially seems.  They’re actually there to try and find out what happened to their son, who has disappeared, with father ready to take bloody vengeance if his suspicions of foul play are proven true. What follows is one of cinema’s few genuine screen representations of nightmare imagery that really gets what makes bad dreams so unsettling. By freeing itself from concerns over conventional narrative, Speeth’s ambitious film instead presents us with a missing link between Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy. Dense with remarkable imagery, it’s a powerful and unique film.

Arrow’s solid, recommended release provides a really quite good print for what was a low budget film apparently ‘lost’ for nearly 30 years. Colours are vibrant, and the film’s all-important imagery is well-served. In addition to this, the extras are worthwhile. Following author Stephen Thrower’s introduction, we get 30 minutes of interviews with a frank Speeth, writer Liepold and the film’s art-directors all providing welcome context, with an affectionate, informative commentary from historian Richard Harland Smith.

Special Features: Audio commentary / Introduction to the film / Interviews / Outtakes / Stills gallery / Draft script

MALATESTA’S CARNIVAL OF BLOOD / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: CHRISTOPHER SPEETH / SCREENPLAY: WERNER PIEPOLT / STARRING JANINE CARAZO, JEROME DEMPSEY, DANIEL DIETRICH, LENNY BAKER, HERVE VILLECHAIZE / RELEASE DATE: DECEMBER 4TH