Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

There is nothing quite like Pieces.

And yet a hard-earned cult following built through years of all-night horror marathons, general word of mouth, and the empassioned cries of its many doe-eyed fans has seen it surpass expectations. Pieces doesn’t’ fit in with the slasher boom, but niether does it come from the world of Italian Giallo films. It’s painted in lurid shades of Americana, but feels oh-so-distinctly Euro-trash. The gore is as brutal as you could find in any of the “Nasties” and as cinematically sadistic as Argento’s Deep Red.

So Pieces is a Frankenstein’s monster of refrence, so what? Plenty ace ’80s slasher’s fuck around with tropes and play winking games with the audience. Why has Pieces stood the test of time? Like so many great horror films it’s a perfect storm. All those genre touches and visual nods amount to an intense 90-minute course in the trends of the early ’80s, seemignly written by soemone who hates horror, and directed by soemone who loves it.

The dialogue in Pieces is a silly as you might expect for a teen Slasher, but it has got the bonus of arguably the most preposterous English dub ever put to tape. The original Spanish version is a comparatively sensible and straight-laced thriller, and thus not worth much of your time. The dub feels like it was put together by a group of people who were given the dialogue totoally out of context. The result is a film with the single largest bank of quotables in exploitation history. Moments of overwrought mismatched and downright stupid delivery make the film what it is. When Lynda Day George screams ‘BAAAASTAAAAAARRRRRD’ not once, not twice, but three solid screeching times, there is little else to do but laugh at the dedication. Just when you settle into thinking this might be the stupidest film you’ve seen, clearly cobbled together by a bunch of nutless amatuers, something happens. Whether it be a gruesome but exquisite moment of dismemberment (Pieces has many), a beautifully composed image, or some Argento-inspired splash of colour. Simón is a talented filmmaker and through a series of unforseeable flops, put together a graphic ode to horror and a boldly individual take on a formula ravaged throughout the ’80s with varying degrees of bombastic reinvention and stale thrill.

In the end, Pieces pulls a double-barelled shock ending which never fails to illicit audience reaction. It’s the glorious cherry on top of a well-humoured slice of camp, one which is a step closer to the type of recognition it deserves thanks to another stunning presentation from Arrow.

PIECES (1982) / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: JUAN PIQUER SIMÓN / SCREENPLAY: DICK RANDALL, JOHN W. SHADOW / STARRING: CHRISTOPHER GEORGE, PAUL SMITH, EDMUND PURDOM / RELEASE DATE: 27TH MARCH
 

Though Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, is often regarded as a masterpiece of science fiction cinema, western audiences may be more familiar with the George Clooney remake from 2002. This new Blu-ray release from the Criterion Collection is a good opportunity to feast your eyes on the original.

 

Cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris to investigate strange transmissions coming from its three remaining crew. When he gets there, he finds one crew member has killed himself, and the other two are… well, they insist that, however it looks, they’re not going mad, and that, in fact, some alien intelligence in the planet’s ocean really is making simulacra of their memories appear.

 

This strange phenomenon soon hits Kelvin hard, as he’s visited by a being who appears to be his wife Hari – who died ten years ago. Terrified, he tricks her into a space capsule and launches her out into space. But then, that evening, she comes back. This time, Kelvin allows ‘Hari’ into his life, and they’re soon inseparable.

 

At once an epic and a very insular movie, a combination that much sci-fi aspires to but falls short of, Solaris cuts between sweeping shots of the mysterious planet and deep psychological exploration of how these ‘guests’ affect the crew. It’s a film that’s been discussed at length with regards to what it has to say about faith and memory, but which at heart seems to be about the need for human connection. Humanity isn’t ready to explore new worlds, says one of the crew, because we’re more interested in looking at ourselves, a statement reflected in Kelvin’s growing love for the being as if she is really Hari and in the themes in which Tarkovsky seems interested.

 

At times, it’s a captivatingly beautiful film, with this thought-provoking drama taking place against the backdrop of an impressive but worn-down space station, which seems to fall apart alongside the protagonist’s mind – proof that the dilapidated style of sci-fi didn’t originate with Star Wars five years later, as is often claimed. At other times, the movie’s lingering nature can irritate; one particular shot of a car travelling down a road before we’ve even gone to space lasts uncomfortably long.

 

Nevertheless, the whole film looks stunning in this new restoration, Criterion having done an excellent job transferring the movie to Blu-ray. The special features – an audio essay from Tarkovsky scholars Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie, deleted scenes, some interviews, an excerpt from a Stanislaw Lem documentary, and a booklet with essays from Phillip Lopate and Akira Kurosawa – are interesting but ultimately too slight to make this a real collector’s must-have.

 

SOLARIS (1972) / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: ANDREI TARKOVSKY / SCREENPLAY: ANDREI TARKOVSKY, FRIDRIKH GORENSHTEYN / STARRING: DONATOS BANIONIS, JÜRI JÄRVET, NATALYA BONDARCHUK, ANATOLIY SOLONITSYN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

At this stage Martin Scorsese has directed around 25 films, almost all of them highly regarded classics in cinema, from Taxi Driver via Raging Bull to the inarguably magnificent masterpiece Goodfellas. He has also been heavily involved with a longstanding devotion to preserving and restoring films that would otherwise have been lost. Scorsese is undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the history of filmmaking. That status was reflected earlier this year when the BFI hosted a celebration of his films, as well as the man himself who also curated a programme of restored classics. As part of that celebration comes two new releases of early films by Scorsese, starting here with his feature debut as both writer and director, Who’s That Knocking at My Door.

 

JR (Keitel) is a young Italian-American man, and Catholic, who has grown up in New York and still hangs around the same areas with the same wannabe tough guy friends he has always known. After he meets a young woman (Bethune) on the Staten Island Ferry one evening, it begins a slow change in priorities for him. As their relationship grows and JR finds himself falling in love, he realises this could be the woman he wants to marry and settle down with. But The Girl (the character is never named) has a secret in her past that once revealed might prove too much for JR to be able to handle. As he struggles with guilt, confusion and rage JR seems set to destroy his new found happiness.

 

You can gather from that synopsis that many of the themes that have run through his subsequent pictures were already being explored. JR is the focus of Scorsese’s very personal meditation on Catholicism and guilt, filtered through the American male perspective. There’s no real mobsters or violence in this film but it certainly shows that even at the beginning of his career, Scorsese was fascinated by the emotional brutality we inflict upon ourselves, as well as the way where we grow up and how we are raised (religion, community) informs how we live our lives.

 

It’s also evident throughout this film that Scorsese’s unique style was beginning to develop at this early stage. The way he manages to ground his films, making characters and situations feel authentic, whilst taking his influences to make them excitingly cinematic in execution is here. For fans, as an example of his nascent talent it’s required viewing. The story is admittedly slight and the result of Scorsese’s experimenting on occasion borders dangerously near to affected but overall the use of structure, music, technique and strong performances (Keitel most of all) all helps make this slice of JR’s life compelling, recommended stuff.

 

WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR (1967) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MARTIN SCORSESE / STARRING: HARVEY KEITEL, ZINA BETHUNE, LENNARD KURAS / RELEASE DATE: 27TH MARCH

The Jon Pertwee years are justly and fondly remembered as the period during which Doctor Who made perhaps its most indelible impression upon the consciousness of the nation. No longer a simple case of ‘escape the monster and run around in a variety of interchangeable locations’, the programme now took place in a recognisable universe, and these were the years when the cliché about aliens invading the Home Counties was born. Three decades later, Russell T Davies would understandably look to this period for inspiration when reviving the series after a fifteen-year interregnum.

Roughly midway between the two, Keith Barnfather’s Reeltime Pictures started up a little cottage industry, interviewing Doctor Who alumni for a series of VHS releases they called the Myth Makers. Presented and conducted by a then-hirsute, occasionally distracting Nicholas Briggs, the tapes ran to around half an hour and would generally be recorded in a location the interviewee was in some way associated with. Later, the interviews doubled in length and relocated to their subjects’ living rooms, and Barnfather and Briggs would go back to some of their early encounters to record new material and offset the original deficit. As a primer for fans new to the Myth Makers, or maybe a collection for those who might have baulked at buying discs of old interviews absent of “feature material”, The Jon Pertwee Years collects together half a dozen of these conversations, repackaging them across a six-hour, double-disc set and vastly improving the value for money ratio.

The six subjects of this first collection, are all actors associated with the third Doctor’s tenure. Disc 2 comprises a trio of UNIT staffers – the super-enthused John Levene, the dubiously-reputed Richard Franklin, and best of all the affable and always captivating Nicholas Courtney – but the first disc is where the real treasure lies. Alongside his companions Caroline John and Katy Manning, there’s an hour-long conversation (or rather, two half-hour conversations) with the third Doctor himself, Jon Pertwee, conducted in the relaxing surroundings of his own home.

What marks out the Myth Makers interviews as a valuable and unique resource is the lack of affectation and sometimes specificity that you might get with interviews conducted at conventions, or for particular story releases. Here instead, you get a series of fairly informal and wide-ranging conversations with six of the people who contributed in no small manner to the evolution of the series into what we know it as today. The production is so low-key (with occasional exceptions in the early outdoor segments), it’s almost like sitting down to pass the time with Pertwee et al. yourself.

For any classic series fans unacquainted with the Myth Makers, this introductory package is a genuine pleasure, almost revelatory in its simple intimacy.

Special Features: Introduction by Barnfather and Briggs

THE DOCTORS: THE JON PERTWEE YEARS / CERT: E (EXEMPT) / DIRECTOR: KEITH BARNFATHER / WITH: NICHOLAS BRIGGS, JON PERTWEE, KATY MANNING, CAROLINE JOHN, NICHOLAS COURTNEY, RICHARD FRANKLIN, JOHN LEVENE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

It has only taken nearly 120 years but finally, finally someone has filled that too-obvious space where a feature-length documentary about moulds and the various people fascinated with them has been throughout the history of cinema. For that is what The Creeping Garden is, introducing us to the world of plasmodial slime, moulds and the scientists, artists and other observers that have an interest in the moulds, because of what they can inform us about design, engineering and various other areas where you wouldn’t necessarily connect the two. The artist filmmaker Tim Grabham and the author and critic Jasper Sharp, who co-direct here, have conspired to create a visually arresting film that utilises a number of techniques to put an audience at the centre of this world that so occupies these diverse groups.

 

Actually, according to archive footage in the documentary, filmmakers and amateur scientists have been experimenting with time lapse shooting and slime moulds nearly since the beginning of the moving image. And yet, mycology and the wider study of these organisms that were thought to be fungi at one time and an animal at another remains a fringe area of study. The people that populate this film have their own individual reasons for being interested in the moulds, from simple amateur enthusiasm to a fascination with the patterns nature can provide. Realising that for those who do not share this fascination it is a niche of a particularly narrow kind, Grabham and Sharp have assembled a film that uses time lapse, computer animations, archive footage and interviews to bring the viewer into this unknown world.

 

Alas, for this reviewer it was not a success and no amount of flashy visuals or excited commentary on the shapes and apparently intelligent behaviour of the mould could convince to engage. The much vaunted soundtrack didn’t help either, feeling like the composer, Jim O’Rourke, had fallen asleep at his desk and the result of his somnambulant noodling had simply been set to the images. It was a stultifying and sadly deeply dull affair that seemed to drag on significantly more than the running time.

 

However, it really is about whether you click with the film, its subject and the way it is presented. If you do, there’s no doubt fascinating diversions into how the moulds are being considered in bio-mechanical engineering and used in the production of art. You might enjoy it, and with something so selective it really is about whether it appeals to you. For those that do ‘get it’ or if you already know you’re picking this up, it’s a typically high standard Arrow release. On that basis, we’ll split the difference on the rating below.

 

Special Features: Featurettes / Short Films / Audio Commentary / Animated Moulds / Gallery / US Trailer / Included Artwork / Booklet (First Pressing Only) / Soundtrack CD (Excusive to Amazon)

 

THE CREEPING GARDEN / CERT: E / DIRECTORS: TIM GRABHAM, JASPER SHARP / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

A vicious serial killer is terrorising Victorian London. So far all the victims have been prostitutes and they have all been nastily dissected, which has earned the murderer the nickname “Jack the Ripper”. But as the body count increases, and people from all walks of society fear the police are not doing enough to catch the maniac, an anarchist uprising threatens to boil over onto the streets. Inspector Aberline (Michael Caine) is put in charge of the Ripper investigation, but it’s a poisoned chalice. Aberline is a man with his own demons, and as his pursuit of the Ripper descends into a terrifying and very personal game of cat and mouse, Aberline’s superiors plan to make him the ultimate scapegoat.

It’s weird, trying to write a compelling synopsis about Jack the Ripper as if we haven’t all read the books and watched the movies and documentaries so many times before. But don’t let familiarity fool you – this version of the story is well worth checking out and looks tremendous in this new blu-ray edition. Despite being a television drama, the production values are excellent, the writing is strong, and the core cast (which includes Lewis Collins (an underrated actor, who really shines in his role as Aberline’s sidekick), Jane Seymour, Armand Assante and Susan George) are at the top of their game. In fact, Michael Caine won a Golden Globe for his performance.

At the time it originally aired as a two-part mini-series, director/co-writer David Wickes promised to reveal the identity of the Ripper once and for all, a flamboyant claim that Ripperologists quickly shot down. Anyone who’s seen 1979’s Murder by Decree or the 2001 snoozefest From Hell won’t be surprised by the final revelation, but this version is far better than either of those and Wickes and his team imbue the whole affair with the kind of panache that almost tricks us into forgetting we are watching a made-for-TV presentation. It’s only the frequent slightly annoying cliffhangers, placed where the ad-breaks would have been, that still betray Jack the Ripper’s small-screen roots.

Network have done an excellent job here, presenting the series in its original aspect ratio with a phenomenal high-definition restoration that really does make the film look as if it was produced yesterday. If you’re already a fan you’ll notice details you’ve never seen before, and if you’re a newbie you’ve definitely got a treat coming. Very highly recommended.

JACK THE RIPPER (1988) / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DAVID WICKES / SCREENPLAY: DAVID WICKES, DEREK MARLOWE / STARRING: MICHAEL CAINE, LEWIS COLLINS, JANE SEYMOUR / RELEASE DATE: 27TH MARCH

Film is often described as a collaborative medium, but if there ever was one movie that could be described as authored – the work of one artistic mind – it’s Endless Poetry. Not only does it show off Alejandro Jodorowsky’s style at its most bizarre, but it’s also about the surrealist filmmaker’s own life, following 2013’s The Dance of Reality as the second part of an autobiographical trilogy. Not to mention the fact that both the young Alejandro and his father are played by Jodorowsky’s sons, and that the octogenarian director himself shows up from time to time to give advice to his younger self.

Endless Poetry actually begins with the teenage Alejandro, played by Jeremias Herskovits (another relative of the director – his grandson), reprising his role from the first film. After a moment of sexual revelation, Alejandro matures overnight into the Adan Jodorowsky incarnation, and soon leaves his family behind to join a bohemian community of artists in Santiago, Chile’s capital. Across the 1940s and ‘50s, this eclectic bunch frequent bars way into the early hours, improvise poetry at each other, and have a raucous time being abrasively avant-garde. Alejandro has a fling with Stella Diaz Varin and befriends Enrique Lin, who were both real-life poets, but don’t feel you need to know anything about them before watching the film.

The astonishingly weird story isn’t afraid to depict its characters in unusual ways – Alejandro’s mother sings all of her dialogue in an operatic style – or to go off on narrative tangents – at one point, he decides almost spontaneously to become a clown. But all of this is carefully composed to capture both the vivid and extraordinary life of this cultural scene and this important period in Alejandro’s life, with the overall tone being that of a director looking back fondly but analytically on his past. It’s anchored by an enjoyable performance from Adan Jodorowsky, who conveys the passion of his father’s artistic exploits but also constantly seems somewhat baffled, allowing us into this insane world through a character who doesn’t quite know what’s going on either.

Yes, the concept has potential to become indulgent or patronising, but instead Jodorowsky presents it with a sense of humour and a deftness of touch. Later in the film, the younger Alejandro is feeling down and wondering just what the point of it all is. His older self offers the advice that “life does not have meaning, you have to live it”. Take that ethos into the film – don’t try to work out why everything is the way it is, just live this offbeat, electrifying experience.

ENDLESS POETRY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY / STARRING: ADAN JODOROWSKY, BRONTIS JODORWSKY, LEANDRO TAUB, PAMELA FLORES / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Lazy critics have already dubbed Ibiza Undead ‘a cross between Shaun of the Dead and The Inbetweeners Movie’ and whilst we’re not lazy critics here at STARBURST (far from it – sometimes we get up before lunchtime), we’re going to do much the same because, try as we might, it’s hard not to reach the same conclusion. Ibiza Undead tries hard to recapture the magic of Edgar Wright’s iconic British rom-zom-com and one of the most successful British comedy movies of the last twenty years but Andy Edwards’ often gutter-level script and unsophisticated plotting leave the movie shivering in two very large and much more accomplished shadows.

But that’s not to suggest that Ibiza Undead is an undead loss. Although it struggles under the weight of its lowbrow ambition, tiny budget, and deeply unsympathetic characters it’s oddly watchable and manages, against the odds, to raise a smile or two and provide a couple of smart moments of gore, at least one of which demands that you look away or at least wave your hand over the screen shouting “Nooo, don’t do that!” as some reviewers must surely have done. Ahem.

The set-up is brisk enough. An uprising of the undead has been contained (more or less) but life goes on even in times of direst crisis. For horny British teens, of course, this means jetting off to Ibiza with a pocketful of condoms and an unshakable thirst for cheap booze. A trio of likely (but not especially likeable) lads arrives on the island in search of sun, sea and…other stuff. They’re promised that the island is zombie-free but an unscrupulous club owner (Peep Show’s Matt King) has been importing the undead to act as attractions at his nightspots. Unfortunately, his unreliable supplier has dumped his latest delivery into the ocean – and no-one’s reckoned on the zombies managing to wade ashore at (un)dead of night.

This is all vaguely promising in a slightly derivative way but Ibiza Undead stumbles and ultimately falls, despite some enticing visuals, predominantly because it’s really hard to care about any of the characters who find themselves trapped on a holiday island as it starts to go to Hell. They’re a desperately grim bunch, especially the tediously-repulsive Big Jim (Kear) and even ‘nice guy’ Alex (Coulson) is too much of a cold fish for the audience to warm to, especially when he gleefully relishes the killing and carnage that inevitably ensues. Only underdog Az (Todiwala) comes close to earning our sympathy and the girls, including The Inbetweeners’ Emily Atack, are uniformly the type our mothers warned us about. Which isn’t necessarily a criticism…

Ibiza Undead’s low budget means it really can’t fly and exploit its admittedly-novel concept. It says ‘Ibiza’ on the title card but it might as well have been filmed on Barry Island; much of the action takes place in a club, in a bar, or in the gang’s villa. Despite some decent make-up jobs for the zombies themselves, the film isn’t especially scary and, with its cast of irritating self-obsessed (and sex-obsessed) teenagers, it isn’t as funny as it thinks it is either. But there are a couple of worthwhile one-liners, a bit of pace in the narrative and enough goodwill to rise above the movie’s obvious shortcomings and deliver a moderately pleasing, if slightly grubby, ninety-minutes of shambolic zombie mayhem liberally studded with nob gags.

IBIZA UNDEAD / CERT: 15 / DIRECTED & SCREENPLAY: ANDY EDWARDS / STARRING: CARA THEOBOLD, EMILY ATACK, JORDAN COULSON, ED KEAR, MATT KING, HOMER TODIWALA, MARCIA DO VALES / RELEASE DATE: 20TH MARCH
 

For over 250 episodes throughout the 1980s, Belgian cartoonist Peyo’s most famous blue creations ran amok on American TV, in a series produced by Hanna-Barbera and overseen by Peyo himself. With the release of the third modern Smurfs movie imminent, here is a primer collection of four of those adventures.

 

The disc kicks off with I Was a Brainy Weresmurf from late in the run, in which Brainy Smurf is pricked by a magic flower and starts howling at the moon. The other Smurfs have 24 hours to cure him otherwise he’ll go full lycanthrope. Next up is The Pussywillow Pixies, which sees Clumsy Smurf accidentally finding himself on the island of Pussywillow Hollow and along with the native Pussywillow Pixies, at the mercy of the evil Wartmongers. The third story in the set is the only one from Season One, Sir Hefty, in which Hefty Smurf hires the services of a cowardly knight to save the Smurf village from a fire-breathing dragon, and eventually has to step up in his place. Finally Gargamel makes an appearance in Smurfette’s Sweet Tooth, a story about the dangers of eating too much smurfberry candy.

 

The Smurfs have always maintained an odd blend of enchanted fairy magic and recognisable urban manners, and never more so than here. Much of the humour derives from the interplay between Brainy Smurf’s nervous New York smarts and the other Smurfs’ relative simplicity, and the various characters are broadly drawn but finely detailed, such that the relationships between them are at once obvious but subject to subtle development. The result is something that looks modest and easily achieved, but that on closer inspection reveals generous levels of complexity.

 

Better yet is the universe the Smurfs inhabit, a fairytale village in a fairytale forest in a fairytale world, complete with the darkness and dangers lurking in proper fairytales and all the murkier sides of humanity reflected therein. These four episodes are replete with greed, cowardice and cruelty, yet offset by the always ingenuous Smurfs such that the blend is palatable for kids and rewarding for adults. It’s little wonder the series was such a runaway success in the 1980s.

 

Best of all is the evocation of a kind of mythical bygone world that lies somewhere between Bram Stoker and L. Frank Baum. There are evil circus owners and magical potions, goblins, sprites and pixies galore in the forest outside the Smurf village, and along with the errant knight and old Gargamel it’s a rich, diverse and yet lucid and comprehensible place to visit. As an introduction to a three decades old variation on a theme that’s still proving relevant and popular, this is a great place to start.

 

TEAM SMURF / CERT: U / SUPERVISING DIRECTOR: RAY PATTERSON / STORY SUPERVISORS: PEYO AND YVAN DELPORTE / STARRING: DON MESSICK, DANNY GOLDMAN, WILLIAM CALLAWAY, FRANK WELKER, LUCILLE BLISS / RELEASE DATE: 13TH MARCH