CREEPY

Kiyoshi Kurosawa, director of cult horror Pulse, writes and directs the psychopath thriller Creepy adapted from the novel by Yutaka Maekawa.

After the capture and interrogation of a psychopath goes disastrously wrong detective Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) leaves the police force and becomes a lecturer on criminology at a university. Takakura and his wife Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi) have moved house to a neighbourhood where it turns out their neighbours keep to themselves. One of their neighbours Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) appears to be the same until he suddenly becomes overly friendly. Meanwhile Takakura is lured back into detecting after his colleague tells him about the unsolved disappearance of a family from six years ago.

Creepy is a statement of intent as well as a comment upon its characters. Kurosawa favours the slow burn and subtle building of tension in Creepy, like with Pulse, rather than the bang and shock of blockbuster horrors which makes it all the more effective. The film builds up a feeling that everything is off and that Takakura and his wife are wandering into something they should avoid. Neighbour Nishino is a slippery and untrustworthy character, played by Teruyuki Kagawa with his wide eyes and frog-like face, who flips from indifferent and rude to overly friendly. Something definitely seems off with him but his sudden willingness to make friends and his normal and bright-eyed daughter makes you feel like maybe he’s just a product of a hostile and alienating street.

The psychopath antagonist in Creepy is a skilled manipulator, getting innocent victims to commit the crimes for him while keeping his hands (relatively) clean. Kurosawa, no relation to the one you’re thinking of, is a skilled manipulator himself, subtly playing with light and depth to create a style that makes Creepy all the more effective. One scene, involving a potential witness being prodded into remembering forgotten details, sucks you in with its clever staging and finely crafted direction and it’s only after the scene ends that you notice what Kurosawa has done and how he has played you.

Unfortunately, the plotting isn’t quite as well handled. Once we head towards the denouement you will question a couple of the choices of the characters and the plot does hinge on a huge coincidence. However, it still builds to a tense and brutal ending.

Creepy earns its title. With an effective and unsettling atmosphere, Creepy is an entertaining and captivating dark thriller with some nice stylistic touches from Kurosawa.

CREEPY / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: KIYOSHI KUROSAWA / SCREENPLAY: CHIHIRO IKEDA, KIYOSHI KUROSAWA / STARRING: HIDETOSHI NISHIJIMA, YÛKO TAKEUCHI, TORU BABA, RYÔKO FUJINO / RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 23RD

 

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976)

Assault on Precinct 13 is one of the crown jewels of the career of the truly iconic and legendary John Carpenter. Following his 1974 debut with Dark Star, Carpenter gave audiences this thrilling adrenaline rush of a movie just two years later. Often cited by some as an all-time classic of film history, the big question here is whether JC’s 1976 effort holds up to this day.

To give a brief summary of the film itself, Assault on Precinct 13 sees a deadly LA gang swearing a blood oath to take out a nearby police station in retaliation for the cops having killed some of their members. Unfortunately for the boys in blue, the station itself – which is actually Precinct 9, Division 13 – is in the process of being shut down and so only has skeleton staff working. The silencers on the gang’s guns mean that nobody will be hearing the attack, and the in-the-process-of-being-shut-down nature of the station means nobody will be visiting any time soon. In order to help stem the ferocious attack that looms large from this gang, Austin Stoker’s Lieutenant Bishop only has Henry Brandon’s Sergeant and Nancy Loomis and Laurie Zimmer’s secretaries to support him, and so he has to seek help from some no-good convicts who have had to take temporary refuge in the Precinct during a transportation gig that’s been halted due to an ill prisoner. Will Bishop and his crew have enough to keep their attackers at bay, and just how much can they trust the criminals who they’re forced to work alongside?

As a story, as a thriller, and as a classic of its time, Assault on Precinct 13 is as good as it’s ever been. Full of tension, desolation, desperation, and some performances that still snap as much as they did the first time around, upon a rewatch the film will still rank up there as one of John Carpenter’s finest. Halloween proved just why Carpenter is known as ‘The Master of Horror’, The Fog showed he could craft a delicate classic ghost story, The Thing was a sci-fi horror masterclass, and movies like Escape from New York and They Live were drenched in social commentary and dripping with insta-cool lead characters, but with Assault on Precinct 13, we get to see just how well Carpenter does with an action movie. And quite frankly, the end result here is a film that is unrelenting, grabbing you by the scruff of your neck and dragging you through its 90-minute run time as you watch its central characters doing their best to handle what appears to be inevitable carnage whilst a classic Carpenter score only adds further to the nail-biting as you move ever-closer to the edge of your seat.

With this new release from Second Sight, fans of John Carpenter will be delighted with the overflowing special features that are included on this Blu-ray. Some of the extras may have been seen on previous releases, but there’s enough added bonuses here to make this a must-have for fans of one of cinema’s greatest ever directors. As with any similar chat tracks from JC, the commentary from Carpenter himself here will be the highlight for many, and the entire array of special features included make this feel like the comprehensive edition of a film that often gets overlooked for the likes of Halloween, The Thing and Escape from New York when certain quarters herald the career of John Carpenter. The importance of Assault on Precinct 13, both to Carpenter’s career and the moviegoing landscape of its time, shouldn’t be overlooked, and here Second Sight have put together a phenomenal remastered release that makes Assault on Precinct 13 feels as fresh and engaging as it’s ever been.

Special Features: Audio commentary with John Carpenter / Audio commentary with Tommy Lee Wallace / New interviews with Austin Stoker, Joseph Kaufman, and Tommy Lee Wallace / Interview with John Carpenter and Austin Stoker / ‘The Sassy One’ with Nancy Loomis / ‘Do You Remember Laurie Zimmer?’ documentary / ‘Captain Voyeur’ John Carpenter student short / Radio spots / Trailer / 5 art cards / Bonus CD soundtrack

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: JOHN CARPENTER / STARRING: AUSTIN STOKER, DARWIN JOSTON, NANCY LOOMINS, LAURIE ZIMMER, MARTIN WEST / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 28TH, 2016 (SPECIAL EDITION), DECEMBER 9TH, 2017 (STANDARD EDITION)

 

WORM

It’s the near future, and mankind has lost the ability to dream. But all is not lost, for a company called Fantasites has produced a solution to the problem: a small worm that you can insert through your ear and which will, on a nightly basis, give you that facility back. So far so icky, but from a premise that might have given any other filmmaker the wherewithal to explore the speculative possibilities of such a scenario, Doug Mallette (in his debut feature, an expansion of his short of the same name) has actually fashioned something that is mostly rather sweet – and that concentrates on its characters as much if not more than it does the situation.

John Ferguson plays Charles, a “socially awkward” maintenance man at a small, out of the way and somewhat rundown apartment block in Tennessee, and who considers Shane O’Brien’s Reed (who works in the news department at the local TV station, a sub-plot which brings the various strands of the story together) his best friend, despite the fact that the two of them barely speak beyond the bare necessities; Reed can’t stand him. But Reed has begun a program of Fantasites, which not only bring back the ability to dream but as a knock-on effect also promote virility. When Charles accidentally stumbles on Reed’s girlfriend June (Jes Mercer) dressed in nothing more than a towel, he determines to start taking the Fantasites he can’t afford, just as the worms’ less appealing side issues begin to be reported on the news…

There’s no writers’ credit on Worm, because the cast improvised the entire film without a script – albeit obviously not without a very good idea of what they were doing. Using news report cutaways to illustrate the situation as it affects the three protagonists, Mallette’s film actually focusses far more on its canine-enabled love triangle than it does the consequences of using Fantasites, although as it moves into its latter half that storyline does begin to increasingly influence our principals, and there are some sequences thereafter which are much more traditionally genre-inspired.

The upside of Mallette’s approach is that his characters are much more believable, well-performed and “real” than they generally are in films of a similarly limited budget. Ferguson in particular is never less than thoroughly convincing as the inept but enthusiastic Charles, although all three of the main stars are remarkably accomplished. The downside is that although Worm maintains a coherency throughout, it might have done with a little more authorial focus and a touch more humour among its satire, pathos and tragedy.

Nevertheless, Mallette’s film comes slightly cautiously but mostly highly recommended, to anyone with a strong stomach and a warm heart.

Special Features: Audio commentary / Original short film / Deleted scenes / Trailers

WORM / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DOUG MALLETTE / SCREENPLAY: / STARRING: JOHN FERGUSON, SHANE O’BRIEN, JES MERCER / RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 16TH
 

HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE

Amidst the abundance of comic book movies, nestled behind earnest Oscar-baiting fare, there lies a small niche reserved for films that very quietly, in their own way, are brilliant. Commonly small, independent productions, these films arrive without pomp, ceremony or expectation, and often rise straight to the top of annual Top 10 lists as their popularity spreads largely through word of mouth. Hunt For The Wilderpeople is one such film.


Ironically, writer and director Taika Waititi’s next project will be the completion of a certain Norse God’s trilogy, but if he can balance his delicate, infectious humour with the needs of a mega-budget blockbuster then Thor: Ragnarok could well be the best Marvel movie yet.


The premise behind Wilderpeople is initially familiar, and latterly bizarrely original. Troubled kid goes to live with his caring “Auntie” and objectional “Uncle”. When the matriarch dies, kid and uncle must find some middle ground, and a tight bond is eventually formed when they embark upon an accidental adventure that leads to them having to evade a national manhunt. The brilliance in Wilderpeople lies in the effortless way Waititi handles his subject matter. Nothing ever feels contrived or forced as the tone switches between subtle humour you may miss first time round, to dark echoes of reality that ground the melodrama. Through crafted scenes of normality that feel more like ad-libbed sketches, to ingenious moments of surreal surprise, this is a film always perfectly balanced, with the audience being part of the drama rather than simply watching it from the comfort of a sofa.


You react to the characters as if part of your own family; tutting and sighing when obstinate or ignorant, and smiling with pride when they do or say just the right thing at just the right time.

Much of this inherent warmth comes from the performances that are faultless without exception. Whether it is Sam Neill as the crotchety Uncle Hec, Rima Te Wiata as the fateful Bella or Julian Dennison as young anti-hero Ricky, there is naturality to the characters you rarely see.


Witty, warming and wonderful, Hunt For The Wilderpeople is a film that, should you have even an ounce of sentiment or feeling, will charm you from the opening moments to the enjoyably predictable finale. This film is the best chocolate you’ve ever tasted with a delicate kick of chilli, a fine red wine that may carry a hint of hangover – it is one unashamedly sentimental for all the right reasons, and one that carries a subtle touch of reality. Watch it as soon as possible; we guarantee you’ll not be disappointed.


HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TAIKA WAITITI / STARRING: SAM NEILL, JULIAN DENNISON,  RACHEL HOUSE / RELEASE DATE:  JANUARY 16TH

THE BLOB (1988)

Nowadays, we’re bombarded with remakes and reboots, but back in the halcyon days of the eighties, they were still fairly rare. So when Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont updated the fifties classic The Blob and put wannabe Brat Packer Kevin Dillon in the Steve McQueen hero role, it became a minor video hit. With the film now re-released on Blu-ray (albeit in Australia from Umbrella Entertainment), we find out if it still stands up or is just a gloopy mess.

Dillon is bad boy Brian Flagg, who comes across a poor old vagrant who has just got the sticky end of a fallen meteor. His hand is completely engulfed with gunk, Flagg tries to help him but he runs off – right into the path of a car driven by clean-cut jock Paul (Leitch), out on a date with chaste Meg (Smith). So far so ‘50s-style. As they attempt to get the old man some treatment at the hospital, they are horrified to find the blob substance has eaten away his entire lower body. And here we have the major difference in the remake – rather than implying the effects of the sticky stuff, we see it all in gruesome and bloody detail. And it’s wonderful.

Like the two other great ‘80s do-overs – The Thing (1982) and The Fly (1986) – The Blob ‘88-style is a glorious cornucopia of icky practical effects that repulse but, more importantly, are bloody fun! There are some that show their age – particularly in the rear-projection composites – but this allows the film to keep (and almost emulate) the charm of the fifties version. We even get an updated (and horrific) version of the now-legendary sequence in which the jelly takes over the cinema – with a suitably more shocking outcome! However, one important change is the reversal of the character stereotypes. Mullet-sporting rebel without a clue Dillon is transformed into a caring hero, scream queen in waiting Shawnee Smith grows some major balls and gets to fire a machine gun and presentable ‘good guy’ Leitch is dispatched in a spectacularly sticky way early on.

The pace positively motors along, and thanks to director Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont’s script, is a delightfully witty and enjoyable update of the sci-fi classic. Fans of Darabont’s tenure on The Walking Dead will be happy to see Jeffrey DeMunn (Dale in the first few seasons) as the friendly Sherriff (another surprising early demise) and will no doubt appreciate the writer’s subtle humour and style. Another genre veteran, Candy Clark (The Man Who Fell to Earth) also has a spectacularly effective death scene.

The Umbrella Entertainment release only includes a short interview with Chuck Russell as an extra, which is a shame but is certainly better than nothing.

THE BLOB (1988) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: CHUCK RUSSELL / SCREENPLAY: CHUCK RUSSELL, FRANK DARABONT / STARRING: KEVIN DILLON, SHAWNEE SMITH, JEFFREY DEMUNN, CANDY CLARK, PAUL MCCRANE, DONOVAN LEITCH, JR. / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

A NIGHT OF HORROR: VOLUME 1

A Night of Horror is a Sydney-based film festival featuring independent horror from around the world that recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. A Night of Horror Volume 1 is their first full length film, a horror anthology. Bianca Bradley (of Wyrmwood) stars in the wrap-around Life Imitates as a woman who wakes up in a strange building. Going through the building, each room she encounters introduces a new short.

Things kick off with Hum, a not particularly inspiring start as a humming noise threatens to drive the occupant of a flat insane. However, that quickly changes with Point of View, a superbly creepy morgue-set riff on the weeping angels of Doctor Who.

I Am Undone presents us with a gory unwinding of one woman’s various beauty treatments and surgery. An unfaithful woman finds her journey home to her unknowing family interrupted by a disturbing look into a possible future for her in The Priest. Ravenous follows a young girl and her grandmother, who has a taste for raw meat of the kind you don’t usually get at the butcher shop.

Scission gives us the tale of a family tearing itself apart and a father’s descent into murderous madness. Dark Origins leads us into psychological territory as a doctor discovers her patient’s delusions might be the result of something very dark and real from her past. Finally, Flash takes us on a group of friends’ countryside break which inevitably turns grimly sour.

We get a mix of the graphic, the grisly, the psychological and the occasionally darkly humorous. There’s a lot of attention paid to bodies and blood throughout. If being generally resolutely old school can be considered refreshing, then the focus here on creating mood and a sense of unease is mostly just that. Although never reluctant to be gory where needed, it’s never for gore’s sake. Many of the segments eschew cheap jump scares and laboured scare tactics and instead work hard to be actually horrific, as opposed to simply disgusting or obvious.

When the segments hit, as in Point of View or The Priest it can really build a proper shiver or two. Not every segment does work, but at under 10 minutes each there’s no outstaying of welcomes. One thing true of all of them is the shorts are beautifully shot.

Overall it’s a commendable go at the anthology format, taking influences from the earliest days of horror to the present, Night Gallery and more. Though there’s nothing really new here, and nothing really tops that early grim doctor’s shift in the morgue, there’s certainly enough talent on show we can happily recommend giving it a try with the hope Volume 2 isn’t too far away.

A NIGHT OF HORROR: VOLUME 1 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: BIANCA BRADLEY, EMILY WHEATON, JESSICA GOWER, KAYLEA CAULFIELD / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
 

MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1979)

American Graffiti was one of the most profitable films ever made, so it’s unsurprising that six years later a sequel was produced. What is surprising is that the sequel manages to maintain the tone and themes of the original, while moving the story forward via an innovative approach that makes More American Graffiti worthwhile – if not wholly successful – in its own right.

Set across four consecutive New Year’s Eves, we concentrate in turn on each of four returning characters from the first film, with the returning cast sharing only one scene together at the start. Although the four stories barely impact upon one another, rather than showing them successively, they are instead intercut sequentially with short visits to each of the characters’ developing tales. Each of the four uses an appropriately differing filmmaking technique; 4:3 for Vietnam, Woodstock-style split screens throughout the 1966 sequences, and so on.

The 1964 segment, two years after the original, sees John Milner (Le Mat) – still drag racing and hoping unsuccessfully to turn professional – involved in a problematic love story that mirrors his experience in the first film. A year on, and Terry “the Toad” Fields (Smith) has been several months in Vietnam and will do anything to get out. In the 1966 sequences, Debbie Dunham (Clark) falls in with a counter-culture rock band in an attempt to get her wayward boyfriend a position as their guitarist, while finally in 1967 Laurie Henderson (Williams) leaves her husband Steve (Howard, returning for basically an extended cameo) after an argument over whether she should be allowed to get a job, and ends up getting accidentally involved in a student protest.

Harrison Ford and Mackenzie Phillips (Milner’s “love interest” Carol from the original) each return for a single scene in which we discover how their characters have moved on, and Bo Hopkins returns as the leader of the Pharaohs, now in Vietnam and sharing a mindset with the Toad. The characters have developed and matured into young adulthood, but are still beset by the same preoccupations and flaws that they earlier exhibited. It’s an intelligent development, albeit one that sorely misses the presence of Richard Dreyfuss’ Curt Henderson, although the voice of Wolfman Jack is still all across the soundtrack – which is as expected filled with wall-to-wall classic songs from the era.

Fans of American Graffiti will not be as disappointed by the sequel as George Lucas reportedly was (albeit largely because of the modest box office, it seems), as the approach is familiar and assured and the follow-up certainly feels of a piece with its precursor. But a slightly cleverer script might have made of it something as special as the original, and it isn’t quite that.

Special Features: None

MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: B.L. NORTON / STARRING: PAUL LE MAT, CINDY WILLIAMS, CANDY CLARK, CHARLES MARTIN SMITH, MACKENZIE PHILLIPS, BO HOPKINS, RON HOWARD / RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 9TH

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1990)

With the sheer abundance of reboots, remakes and re-imaginings these days it might seem to odd to remember the derision originally aimed at the idea of remaking George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. You can totally understand why Romero needed to, with the threat someone was going to remake it anyway if he didn’t, after the bruising fight for some profit following the rights debacle surrounding his B&W classic.

Tom Savini, make-up maestro of both Dawn and Day of the Dead, took on the challenge of directing this version. Do we have a decent attempt at a somewhat grislier colour updating of the classic story, or a Gus Van Sant-style Psycho folly?

The beginnings of the story are at least initially the same. When visiting their mother’s grave, Barbara and Johnnie are interrupted by what seems to them like a madman but which soon becomes clear is only the first in a seemingly never ending onslaught of the reanimated dead. Barbara makes it to a farmhouse with a few other survivors, including Tony Todd’s Ben, who start barricading themselves in as one zombie after another surrounds the house.

Savini has said that only 40 percent of what he intended ended up on screen. As well as Romero, Steiner and Russo, Menahem Golan (of the Cannon Group) was producing and so it unsurprisingly became a battle of artistic approach versus commercial expectations. This conflict behind the scenes resulted in a product that’s neither simple straight ahead remake or entirely new thing, and this means some good and some not so good for the audience.

By being a remake of the start of Romero’s flesh-eating flicks it misses out on the expansiveness and detail he later brought in with Dawn and Day. The urge Savini and Co. had to be respectful to the original means the gore is kept quite restrained and in that it misses those jaw-dropping set-pieces that inevitable comparison with the earlier films invites. The characters are thinly sketched and not particularly memorable or sympathetic. In some important respects it just feels like too much of a throwback.

On the good side, there’s a switch from the race focus of the earlier picture towards gender here and Patricia Tallman gets a much meatier Barbara to play than Judith O’Dea. Savini shows skill with mood as director and it’s a shame he hasn’t directed a lot more. Todd is ever reliable as Ben and the supporting cast do their best. The suggestion that during a zombie apocalypse people will have more to fear from each other than the undead foreshadows modern hits like The Walking Dead.

It’s certainly much more worthwhile than Van Sant’s perplexing experiment and has more to recommend than early reputation would have promised, and for zombie enthusiasts you’ll find much to enjoy. Umbrella Entertainment’s release comes with a reasonable print and a mix of old and new extras that provide context and benefit from Savini’s involvement.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: TOM SAVINI / SCREENPLAY: GEORGE A. ROMERO / STARRING: PATRICIA TALLMAN, TONY TODD, TOM TOWLES, MCKEE ANDERSON, WILLIAM BUTLER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

FIRSTBORN

Ah, another day, another month, another year, and yet here we are, with yet another “creepy child could prove to be the end of the world as we know it” effort. The question is, is this just another film that’s hoping to achieve some modicum of success in a subgenre that’s often full of also-rans and poor knock-offs, or is FirstBorn actually bringing something new and fresh to a formula that has seemingly ran dry many moons ago?

On the most basic of levels, FirstBorn is a film centred around young first time parents Charlie (Antonia Thomas) and Jake (Luke Norris). When Charlie’s bun finally makes it out of the proverbial oven, this just so happens to coincide with a splash and dash of supernatural chicanery that all seems to be tied to this new arrival known as Thea. Fortunately for Charlie and Jake, the creepy Elizabeth (Eileen Davies) turns up at the door with the promise of helping them ride out this supernatural storm that’s a-brewing. You see, this initially-eerie older woman has her own experiences and ties to Thea. But can this evil be stopped, just what exactly is at the core of this sinister presence, and can young Thea be saved?

To the credit of director Nirpal Bhogal and co-writer Sean Hogan, the first half of FirstBorn is fantastically crafted, with the building of tension and manipulation of suspense rather masterful to behold. Similarly, the response of the parents, particularly Antonia Thomas (of Misfits fame) as Charlie, is engaging and intriguing to watch unravel. For Charlie, we get to see a new parent battling with her own motherly instincts as she deals with an apparent demon child; but after all, regardless of the demon child moniker or not, this is still her child.

Where the film falls down, however, is in the second half, and in particular in the final third. What begins as a promising, gripping, well-crafted movie soon loses its way and heads towards a bland, cluttered finale that sees some of the key players making choices that seem out of character and against what we’ve seen play out beforehand.

Ultimately, FirstBorn can be chalked up as disappointment and thrown in the ever-increasing basket of ‘what could’ve been’ films. For fans of well constructed tension and suspense centred around interesting characters thrown into a mind-spinning situation, the first half of FirstBorn is fantastic to watch. Sadly, after that Bhogal’s promising picture veers into mediocrity. Make no mistake about it, Nirpal Bhogal, who has also worked on Sket and Misfits, is certainly someone to keep an eye on, and here’s hoping that lessons can be learned from this mixed bag of a movie.

FIRSTBORN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NIRPAL BHOGAL / SCREENPLAY: NIRPAL BHOGAL, SEAN HOGAN / STARRING: ANTONIA THOMAS, LUKE NORRIS, JONATHAN HYDE, LUCY CHAPPELL, EILEEN DAVIES, GEORGIE SMITH / RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 2ND

DEAD EASY (1982)

Georgie (Burgess) is a low-level grifter working as part of a criminal family’s operation. Introduced strutting down the seedy city streets like John Travolta’s younger brother (much of the fashion in the film seems straight outta the ‘70s) he’s the type of guy everyone in the business knows.  Georgie’s got a thing for Alex, a hooker who isn’t sure about him at all. When a rival firm firebombs the brothel Alex works at and Georgie is able to identify him to his bosses, things start to look up for him.

 

Georgie is given the task of reopening a nightclub which he will now manage. At the same time, he runs into a young cop, Armstrong (McKenzie), trying to make his name. When Armstrong tries to ruin Georgie’s opening night it kicks off a wider chain of events that will eventually find Georgie, Alex and Armstrong on the run from both firms seeking to kill them.

If that synopsis suggests a fairly straightforward film ahead it’s only because the opening 20 minutes or so play out as a gritty low-rent gangster film, with influences more along the lines of Mean Streets.  Then it takes the first sharp turn and shifts into a romantic comedy before all of a sudden we’re in junkie-going-cold-turkey territory. If that’s not your thing, don’t worry, it’s not done yet.

We can only assume that when funding was agreed for Dead Easy, director Bert Deling and his crew thought let’s try and cram in as much stuff as possible in the hope we can get as many people in the seats as possible.  Or maybe they figured they might not get the chance to make a movie again so why not tick off every box on their films-we’d-like-to-make list.

It’s a mess, then; shouldn’t possibly work as a film. And in reality, it doesn’t. Georgie and Alex seem like characters from two different films working at odds and their relationship never really convinces. Armstrong goes from bumbling constable to action man in a second. Dead Easy hops from genre to genre in an almost wilfully absurd way. It rarely makes a lick of sense. But there’s something almost hypnotic about it as it does so. For those that enjoy Ozploitation cinema it’s not particularly garish, nor is it gory or anything like that. It’s more that it’s such a strange, odd little film that whilst objectively not very good by most standards is so likeably baffling it’s entertaining for that in and of itself.

DEAD EASY (1982) / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: BERT DELING / STARRING: SCOTT BURGESS, ROSEMARY PAUL, TIM MCKENZIE, MAX PHIPPS / RELEASE DATE: VOD OUT NOW