Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Buster Keaton is famous for being a tall,
stone-faced comedy actor of the silent movie era. This set of four Blu-ray
DVDs, contains 32 of his films that shows how he progressed as a co-star in
baby-faced, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’s two-reel comedies to become a star and
filmmaker in his own right.

Keaton was an accomplished vaudeville
entertainer, and almost by chance he was given the opportunity to appear in
Arbuckle’s The Butcher in 1917. After that Keaton was hooked on
filmmaking. He admits that as soon as he went to the studio, he wanted to
understand how everything worked, from the cameras, the projector and how film
is all matched and put together in the cutting room. His enthusiasm and ability
was rewarded by Arbuckle who casually gave him the role of assistant director
after making only three films together.

Much of the comedy comes with the clever use of
situations and locations, where the actors, run, jump, bounce, roll, fall and
trip like athletic cartoon characters. Keaton is expert at telling the
narrative using the camera and editing to fully involve the audience in the
action. This is backed-up by his meticulous attention to detail, his characters
might be cartoon-like but the world they inhabit is real. Using a skilled team
of craftsmen his technical director, Fred Gabourie, organised the construction
of sets and planned all the special effects and stunts that were required by
the script. Behind the lenses he employed ex-Max Sennet veteran,
cinematographer Elgin Lesley, and scripts were put together by Keaton and a
team of gag-men.

When talkies came, Keaton felt stifled by the
need to prioritise dialogue over action, and that the process of making films
with the Big Studios was so mechanical that you were unable to ab lib or
improvise. The loss of interest in silent movies meant that these early Keaton
films were neglected and lost, and it has taken literally decades to track them
down and digitally restore and reconstruct them to something like their
original glory.

For any fan of Buster Keaton, or the silent era
in general, this collection provides a wonderful assortment of treats. The
films are newly restored and in some cases have alternative musical scores to
go with them and in the case of The ‘High Sign’, One Week, Convict 13, The Playhouse,
The Boat and Cops, film scholar Joseph McBride supplies an audio commentary.
Alternative endings are supplied for Coney Island, and My Wife’s Relations and
a newly discovered version of The Blacksmith is included. Actor Pierre Etaix
discusses Keaton’s style in a segment titled, The Art of Buster Keaton, film
critic and filmmaker David Cairns contributes a video essay That’s Some Buster
and film preservationist Serge Bromberg contributes an introduction to Keaton’s
work. There is even a clip of Keaton reenacting the Salome Dance performed by
Fatty Arbuckle in The Cook. Besides all the DVD extras, there is also a 184
page book that contains detailed notes on each film by Jeffrey Vance, and
essays by Brad Stevens, Jean-Pierre Coursodon and Serge Bromberg.

It is great to see this collection and appreciate
the true genius of Keaton, who in the past century has inspired the likes of
Lucille Ball, Mel Brooks, Pixar Animation Studios and George Lucas. With this
restoration project by the Lobster Films team based in Paris, lets hope his
legacy will continue to live-on for future film lovers and filmmakers.

BUSTER KEATON / CERT: PG / DIRECTORS: BUSTER
KEATON, ROSCOE ‘FATTY’ ARBUCKLE, MAL ST.CLAIRE, 
EDWARD CLINE  / STARRING: BUSTER
KEATON, FATTY ARBUCKLE   / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
 

Avery Taggart (Zoe Bell) is an award-winning New Zealand photo journalist. When her US editor (Kevin Pollak) presses a plane ticket into her hand and sends her off to photograph some missionaries in the Colombian jungle, the assignment doesn’t go quite as expected. The missionaries are actually more akin to a rebel militia, and their charismatic leader Guillermo (Nacho Vigalondo) is quickly revealed to be a ruthless psychopath when he murders a child who witnessed him making a drug deal. Unfortunately for Avery, she’s the only one who saw it happen, and now Guillermo and his ragtag band of soldiers are pursuing her through the jungle with Avery’s murder on their minds.

Let’s start with the good news. Zoe Bell makes a terrific action star and, unlike most action stars, she’s not a bad actress either. And that’s the end of the good news. Director Josh C. Waller admitted in an interview that Daniel Noah wrote Camino’s script in two days, and it shows. Badly. From a derivative beginning that presents Taggart as the stereotypically troubled journalist (but aren’t all photojournalists just trying to run away from themselves in the movies?) we’re quickly pitched into illogical seen-it-all-before action territory.

Within the barest handful of scenes, Vigalondo has the rug pulled out from under him by Noah’s screenplay – all promise that he could be a truly memorable messianic villain is lost very early on, and he’s reduced to spouting some truly dull ‘007 badguy’-type rhetoric while Bell messily dismantles his followers all around him. And how is Avery suddenly so adept at killing people anyway? Sure, she takes some brutal punishment (especially during the first battle) but unless they’ve started teaching close quarter combat at journalism school, we’re not given any good reason why she should be surviving this. Yes of course there’s a twist and, yes, of course, it’s as flat as the rest of the film, which is easily twenty minutes too long. You know you’re in trouble when the best, longest, and nastiest fight scene takes place at the midpoint of the movie, and when you can’t remember the title of the movie even while you’re watching it, it’s time to switch off the DVD player and reassess your life choices.

Zoe Bell’s performance deserves much better than this, and anyone thinking about entering a 48-hour write-a-screenplay challenge should take Camino as a stern warning and think again.

CAMINO / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JOSH C. WALLER / SCREENPLAY: DANIEL NOAH / STARRING: ZOE BELL, NACHO VIGALONDO, KEVIN POLLAK, FRANCISCO BARREIRO, SHEILA VAND, TENOCH HUERTA / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 5TH

As Greek myth would have it, Hercules, the half mortal son of Zeus, was driven mad by the queen of the gods, Hera, and murdered his wife and children. Upon regaining his sanity, Hercules was understandably distraught and in penance for his crime undertook 12 labours for the King Eurystheus.  These labours included fighting and defeating immense, dangerous creatures and completing impossible tasks. We mention this because we think Hercules would probably still have chosen any of those tasks, even capturing Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades guarding the gates of the underworld, than try and find something positive to say about Cowboy Zombies. But if our mother told us anything growing up, it was “Son, you’re a better man than that Hercules”, so here goes…

The history of cinema is full with tales of enterprising filmmakers, light on resources and funds, turning out movies that run the whole gamut from the offensive to the inept to miraculously good and even game changing (Roger Corman being an industry covering all of those himself). Cowboy Zombies is not game changing. It’s not miraculously good. In fairness, it’s not offensive (for reasons we’ll mention later). It is inept. We appreciate the context this movie was probably made in, family and friends getting together to make a zombie-western flick on the weekends, having a great time acting out their fantasies of wild west and horror movie clichés. Still, when a film is released to the wider world it becomes open to a critical assessment that need only really consider the finished product.

The acting is, charitably, game but often toe-curling and no one’s going to be troubling Mark Rylance for the lead in Spielberg’s next movie any time soon. Clunky writing abounds. It’s a walking dead film but the gore-free make-up here is more like the ‘zombies’ lost a flour and ketchup fight. It’s cumbersome, unwieldy, poorly paced. The editing is off, sometimes by seconds that drag by like hours. It’s an over-scored, messy, incoherent shambling corpse of a film. To part with money for it, perhaps hoping for an entertaining evening of scares and thrills, would be cruel disappointment.

Nobody likes to be cruel though (well, Simon Cowell does, and Sir Alan Sugar, Katie Hopkins… actually plenty of people enjoying being cruel come to think of it) so let’s discuss why, despite everything, Cowboy Zombies isn’t offensive. It’s awkward and ungainly, but often absolutely hilariously so. We LOL’d (as the kids would have it these days) more during this film than we do during something that’s meant to be funny. We don’t think anyone involved in this film is taking it or themselves too seriously, at least we hope not. They probably had a cracking time making it, and that’s great for them. For you? Not so much. Unless this sort of so-bad-it’s-good thing is your bag, in which case, have at it.

COWBOY ZOMBIES / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: PAUL WINTERS / SCREENPLAY: GAHAN WILSON, PAUL WINTERS / STARRING: JAROD ANDERSON, GREG BRONSON, KIERA CROUCH, MATT E. DERDIVANIS, ERFAIN ESCUDERO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

As
this 1969 film version of the celebrated DH Lawrence novel approaches its half
century, the BFI’s new blu-ray release is a timely reminder of why this is
considered to be one of greatest literary adaptations of all time.

In post WW1 Midlands, middle class sisters
Gudrun and Ursula (Glenda Jackson and Jennie Linden) embark on affairs with
upper class friends Gerald and Rupert (Oliver Reed and Alan Bates).  Following their courtships, during which the
couples talk about and explore the nature of love and sex, they all go on
holiday to the Swiss Alps where things for all four people take dramatic turns.

The plot is played out against a backdrop in which class distinctions and the
male dominated basis of society are on the verge of forever changing. The
relationships between these people reveal what it is to need love, to seek it,
to lose it, to confuse it with lust, showing what it’s like to be women in love
in a world where men seem to have all of the power. But do they?

Women In Love is a remarkable film on so
many levels. Directed by Ken Russell, it may be one of his earliest features
and least excessive but it remains one of his finest achievements. Alongside
the likes of The Devils and Altered States, it cements him as one of our
greatest and most distinctive film makers. Visually, the film stuns with images
of absolute beauty, sublime editing and sequences like Jackson’s dance amongst
the cows, the hilarious performance ‘in the style of the Russian ballet’
(Eleanor Bron stealing every scene she’s in), and the infamous nude wrestling
scene between Bates and Reed which you watch trance-fixed. It seduces utterly
in its sensuality.

The performances are exemplary throughout.
It’s Glenda Jackson who won an Oscar for her role as Gudrun, a woman whose self
discovery proves her to be the most dominant of the four, but she’s more than
matched by Linden, Bates and a quite amazingly controlled Oliver Reed who gives
perhaps the finest performances of his career. Gerald’s seemingly controlled
and confident life masks a muddy lake of repression and Reed excels at
portraying Gerald’s inner turmoil.

It was a ground breaking film, pushing the
boundaries of what censors would allow. For many, Alan Bates wandering naked
and beautiful through a forest would have been the first time they’d seen
frontal male nudity on screen and, in the aforementioned wrestling scene, where
Bates and Reed strip in front of a roaring fire and wrestle in ever
increasingly sweaty and violent shots, the notions of male love and
homosexuality are dealt with both erotically and sensitively, their bout
followed by a conversation about male love being as pure as that between a man
and a woman.

Sensual, emotional, challenging and intellectually stimulating, it remains one
of the most powerful scenes in cinema. You still watch it agape, completely
unable to imagine any major film stars today embarking on such a scene.

Such is the obvious commitment to the project
from its stars, its director and as shown in the remarkable adaptation by Larry
Kramer, that not only is Women In Love one of cinema’s truly great films, it’s
one which elevates its celebrated source novel.

An absolutely ravishing masterpiece and
essential viewing for anyone who loves cinema.

WOMEN IN LOVE /  CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: KEN RUSSELL / SCREENPLAY: LARRY KRAMER / STARRING: ALAN BATES, OLIVIER REED, GLENDA JACKSON, JENNIE LINDEN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
 

Filmed in 1943, when the outcome of the
Second World War was still very much in doubt, Hangmen Also Die! is based loosely upon the assassination of a
high-ranking German officer called Reinhard Heyrich, an event that took place
only months before the movie was made. It concentrates on the Gestapo’s hunt
for the assassin, Dr. Franticek Svoboda (Brian Donlevy), a physician working
for the Czech resistance. Svoboda is on the run, and with the Nazis closing in
fast he turns to Mascha Novtony (Anna Lee) for help, hiding out with her family
until the evening’s curfew is over. But the Nazis will stop at nothing to find Heyrich’s
killer, rounding up hundreds of Czech citizens including Mascha’s own father
(Walter Brennan), and threatening to execute them if the assassin isn’t handed
over. Meanwhile, the resistance have discovered that one of their members, the
brewer Emil Czaka (Gene Lockhart), is covertly working with the Gestapo. With
Svoboda racked by guilt as the Czech hostages begin to die, and Masha desperate
to save her father, even if that means betraying Svoboda to the Gestapo, the
resistance set about framing Czaka for the assassination.

Hangmen
Also Die! is an impressive movie, made especially
powerful because it was directed, produced and co-written by Fritz Lang, a
filmmaker who fled Nazi Germany mere hours after Hitler’s propaganda minister
Joseph Goebbels offered him the job of heading up German film studio UFA. He
eventually arrived in Hollywood in 1936 and would work there for the next
twenty-one years, and although none of his American films would ever be as
critically acclaimed as his earlier German movies, certain of his projects –
especially Hangmen Also Die! and the 1945 noir ‘Scarlet Street’ – are cinematic
gems that owe much to Lang’s foundations as an expressionist filmmaker. For
example, there are many moments during Hangmen Also Die! which recall the
greatness of ‘M’ (Lang’s use of shadow and montage – especially during a
beautifully edited group interrogation sequence – and the brilliantly paranoid conspiracy
that frames Czaka) and there is a dark humour to Alexander Granach’s (Granach
played Knock – aka Renfield – in Murnau’s ‘Nosferatu’) and Reinhold Schunzel’s
Gestapo Inspectors that is very reminiscent of Lang’s 1928 thriller ‘Spione’. There
is also a theatricality to Hangmen Also Die! that works exceptionally well in
the context of the story, and is probably largely due to Lang’s co-writer Bert
(Bertolt) Brecht, another German exile whose work has massively influenced
world culture.

As far as presentation goes, this is an
almost flawless print. The picture and sound are both perfect. Special features
are few but this is definitely a case of quality rather than quantity – there’s
an engrossing audio commentary from film historian Richard Pena and an
intriguing interview with biographer Robert Gerwarth about the real-life
Reinhard Heyrich.

A fantastic package, very highly
recommended.

HANGMEN ALSO DIE! / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: FRITZ LANG / SCREENPLAY: JOHN WEXLEY / STARRING: HAND HEINRICH VON TWARDOWSKI, BRIAN DONLEVY, WALTER BRENNAN, ARNO FREY, ANNA LEE / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 29TH
 

As 1948 thriller Cry of the City begins, career criminal Martin Rome (Richard Conte) is being held in police custody in hospital, with four bullet holes in him and little expectation he’s going to make it through surgery.  Rome’s shot a cop dead, he claims in self defence, and if he survives it’s almost certain he’s heading for the electric chair.  He’s got other problems too: a childhood friend, Candella, (Victor Mature) is now the police lieutenant out to get him and there’s a shady lawyer trying to frame Rome for a jewellery robbery which ended in murder that someone else committed.  If that wasn’t enough, his secret fiancee Teena (Debra Paget) isn’t so secret anymore, and both the lawyer and the cops think she’s the key to getting Rome.  Desperate to get to Teena before Candella or anyone else, Rome conspires to break out from the prison ward and beat everyone to her.  Not only that but he needs money for his escape from the city and along the way he just might end up solving the robbery case for the police. 

Both film noir and director Richard Siodmak were arguably at their peak in the late 40s.  Siodmak’s ‘The Killers’ from 1946 is now considered one of the preeminent examples of the genre.  Cry of the City contains many of the hallmarks of the style – a flawed, doomed anti-hero in Rome, the obsessive detective in Candella, the crisp black and white photography, the lean and economical storytelling and the shady ethical centre.  Rome is an admitted cop killer but there’s no attempt by the script to paint him as an out and out villain and Conte portrays him with sympathy as a not-very-good man driven to worse crimes by his circumstances.  Victor Mature (star of the brilliantly titled ‘I Wake Up Screaming’) was a popular actor considered by his contemporary critics to be of a limited range.  Indeed he once joked himself that he was not an actor and he had ‘sixty-four films to prove it!’.  Self-deprecation aside, he gives a layered, nuanced performance as the moral, dogged detective determined to get his man because he has to.  Conte and Mature are surrounded by a great supporting cast and there’s a good amount of atmospheric location shooting in NYC.

Cry of the City isn’t up there with the best of the genre (either of the previously mentioned films are better examples if you want to start to explore) but it’s above average.  On the downside, it’s a slight main story with an ending that’s not unexpected, even though it’s still powerful. It’s also filled with a vivid collection of characters, from the crooked lawyer Niles to Rose, the murderous masseuse, and they’re sometimes more interesting than Rome’s own story.  Possibly more for completists than anyone else, overall it’s a commendable example of the noir genre that tells its tale well.

CRY OF THE CITY / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: ROBERT SIODMAK / SCREENPLAY: RICHARD MURPHY, BEN HECHT / STARRING:  VICTOR MATURE, RICHARD CONTE, FRED CLAK, SHELLEY WINTERS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Ah, the life of a 1970s Italian giallo director. Wake up,
add some fiendish twists to your script, fire the writer when he objects, cast
some beautiful women, cast some beautiful men, stylishly film them killing each
other, get drunk with Ennio Morricone, argue with the cameraman, argue with the
producer, cut some tracks with Goblin, smoke, bed, repeat.  And don’t worry about paying any tax.

1971 was a very good year for that strain of noblesse. With
the previous year’s The Bird with the
Crystal Plumage delivering the genre a blood-spattered kick up the jacksy, a flurry of similarly styled gialli (the plural, don’t you know) exploded
from Cinecittà like blood from freshly
cleaved arm. Over 20 were produced in ‘71 alone, most of them name-checking
animals, Argento-style (somewhere in Italy there is a celebrity zoo full of retired
cats, flies, iguanas, lizards, ducklings and scorpions). Duccio Tessari’s The Bloodstained Butterfly doesn’t waste
any time getting stuck into the sandpit: a mysterious handsome lead, a bevy of
stylish ladies, artfully filmed murders, restless camerawork and more than one good
twist all serve to deliver a medium-strength dose of giallo viewing pleasure.

Seasoned TV sportscaster and ace toupee-wearer Alessandro
Marchi (Giancarlo Sbragia), husband to a beautiful wife, father to a beautiful daughter,
is accused of murdering a (beautiful) French girl while sporting the standard issue
long coat, pork pie hat and switchblade. Dead giveaway that. All the evidence –
including some nicely filmed forensic procedurals – points Alessandro’s way and
soon enough he’s in the big house looking at a lengthy stretch.  But of course all is not what it seems. Meanwhile,
on the other side of town, the world of tortured Giorgio (Helmut Berger) is
falling apart as he struggles to come to terms with his own tragic secret…

Director Tessari (Death
Occurred Last Night), working from an elegantly linear, co-written script, does
a decent job of bringing these character orbits together, juggling our sympathies
all the way through to a suitably operatic conclusion. The great Helmut Berger doesn’t
have a great deal to do apart from walking moodily around the delightfully
picturesque city of Bergamo but does get to deliver one of the most intense love
scenes ever committed to celluloid. Better still, he consented to be
interviewed for this very nicely appointed Arrow release, wherein he radiates majestic
distain for his director (“not an artist.
Slowly…the hammer on the wall”) and
those rather languorous walking scenes while
acknowledging the film itself came out pretty well in the end.  It’s a great, spiky encounter with a
fascinatingly actor that could have easily been two or three times as long.

What’s missing is much in the way of actual blood –
surprising given the importance of visual excess to the post-Crystal Plumage Giallo boom. If that’s a
deal-breaker, there’s always Deep Red.
While never in any danger of matching those dizzy heights of mayhem and
suspense, The Bloodstained Butterfly
remains a classy evening’s viewing.

Extras:
audio commentary, visual essay on the film, interviews with Helmut Berger and
Evelyn Stewart, retrospective on Duccio Tessari, dual language soundtracks,
trailers, booklet
 

THE BLOODSTAINED
BUTTERFLY / CERT 18 / DIRECTOR: DUCCIO TESSARI / SCREENPLAY: GIANFRANCO CLERICI  , DUCCIO TESSARI / STARRING: HELMUT BERGER, GIANCARLO
SBRAGIA, IDA GALLI (AS EVELYN STEWART), SILVANO TRANQUILLI / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 22ND
 

Tone can often be the biggest challenge to
a director in assembling their film. An odd tone can be even more difficult to
balance. While walking on the tightrope of “odd” you have to be careful not to
fall into wacky but then you also don’t want to be so weird that you alienate
people. You don’t want to be weird for weirdness sake and you certainly don’t
want to be trying too hard. Men and
Chicken really is best described as odd. Does it walk this thin tightrope
carefully? Just about.

After the death of their father, two
brothers, Elias (Mads Mikkelson) and Gabriel (David Dencik) find out that he
was not their father. They go looking for their biological father, tracking him
down to an old asylum, filled with cheese and animals. There they find they
have three other brothers and they discover that all of their parentage might
not be traditional.

It’s rare to see Mads Mikkelson flexing his
comedic muscles. Now most well known as the classy serial killer Hannibal
Lector in the fantastic Hannibal TV
series, it is a pleasure to see him playing a comedic character. Elias is a
blunt and selfish character, a serial masturbator who is dependent on his
brother Gabriel. Gabriel is the intelligent and more social brother who happens
to have a pronounced gag reflex. Their brothers, Gregor (Nikolaj Lie Kass) the
most childlike of the three who wants female companionship, Josef (Nicolas Bro)
who is highly articulate and literary minded and Franz (Søren Malling) the head
of the three with a predilection to hitting people with stuffed birds are all
suitably weird and entertaining. With only a little bit of plot in the film,
the truth about the brothers’ true parentage providing a small if easily
guessable mystery, most of the film is taken up with a family drama as the five
brothers discover each other and come to terms with being related. Luckily, the
characters are fun to watch and prove enough entertainment to keep your
interest for a lot of the film.

Men
and Chicken is dark but its dark humour lies in a
vein of absurdity and it never forgets that it is also trying to be
entertaining so it doesn’t let a dour tone fall over proceedings. The film has
some ideas about God and human genetic meddling which are slightly touched upon
but not fully padded out. Its denouement also wraps itself up quite quickly
with a dose of sentimentality which doesn’t quite come off but it’s only a
slight duff note at the end of a largely enjoyable film.

Men
and Chicken is an enjoyably odd film. It has a
slightly taxing running time and is a little formless in plot but it is
enjoyably strange and surprisingly dark with a cast of entertaining characters
from a game cast.

MEN AND CHICKEN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: ANDERS THOMAS JENSON / STARRING: DAVID DENCIK, MADS MIKKELSEN, NIKOLAJ LIE KAAS, SOREN MALLIN, NICOLAS BRO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW 
 

British drama has form for telling stories about people with super powers without breaking the budget. Sky One’s latest contribution, called Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, is a case in point.

James Nesbitt plays Detective Harry Clayton, a hard-boiled London based police detective with a failing marriage and a gambling problem. After one particularly epic bender, he wakes up next to a mysterious lady who has attached a magical bracelet on his wrist. This piece of occult jewellery apparently grants the wearer the power of incredible luck, though karma will always seek a balance. Of course, this is mostly done through extended co-incidence rather than too many special effects, which is not only neat, but also clever.

As you may be able to tell from the title, the premise for the show came from comic book legend Stan Lee, but don’t get too excited, this isn’t a Marvel-esque show. It’s basically a British cop drama with the special twiddle being that Clayton can pull off some of the most amazing stunts and feats of coincidence. The cast is excellent; Eve Best is the ex-wife, Omid Djalili the shady underworld contact and Amara Karan as his cleverer and more competent partner DS Chohan. The other star of this show is the city of London itself, which is shot in a loving yet gritty style throughout the series.

The arc plot is the usual convoluted cop-show nonsense. Harry’s gambling debts have placed him under suspicion from friends and allies, and as the story unfolds, Harry clearly becomes the super-cop that no one trusts, with both criminal and legal conspiracies arrayed against him. Nesbitt is superb throughout, though he does come close to chewing the scenery on occasion.

Stan Lee’s Lucky Man is pretty much what we expect from a creative team that includes Stan Lee – glossy, silly and with plenty of over-wrought and over-done clichés that somehow still seem to work. Season One is stretched a little thin in places, which makes it sag a little in the middle, but the scenes that involve the incredible coincidences, that Harry’s luck power evokes, really work and really sell the drama. A superior sort of cop show for fans of genre weirdness.

STAN LEE’S LUCKY MAN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTORS: ANDY DE EMMONY, DAVID CAFFREY, BRIAN KELLY, JON EAST / SCREENPLAY: NEIL BISWAS, BEN SCHIFFER, RACHEL ANTHONY, JAMES ALLEN, ALAN WESTAWAY, STEPHEN GALLAGHER,  / STARRING: JAMES NESBITT, EVE BEST, OMID DJALILI, AMARA KARAN, STEPHEN HAGAN, SIENNA GUILLORY / RELEASE DATE: 5TH SEPTEMEBER

David McGillivray’s a bit of a legend in certain circles, having, in the 1970s, gone from film critic to actor and writer in a number of low-budget porn and horror vehicles, most of which are considered quite decent low-rent entertainment by aficionados of these sorts of thing. Including us at STARBURST, of course.

Worst Fears is a compendium of seven shorts written by McGillivray and filmed during a two-year period in the mid-2000s, given a wraparound set of linking segments and basically resembling a modern equivalent of the old Amicus portmanteau movies. It’s a little rough around the edges, with the sound and picture occasionally a touch uneven, but it is on the whole quite a thrilling collection of little vignettes with twists in their tails, that will certainly appeal to fans of the old Hammer House of Horror TV series.

The opening piece, Tincture of Vervain, is perhaps the strongest, the story of a coven of Home Counties witches with pretensions above their station who get the comeuppance they deserve when head Satanist Fenella Fielding pays a rare visit, while After Image maybe feels the most incongruous, it being the work of ex-Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel and featuring McGillivray solely in an acting role. The weakest story is undoubtedly Child Number Four, the only one that’s an adaptation and perhaps doesn’t work quite as well in film; it is still, nevertheless, an interesting and disturbing experiment. In between times, we pay visits to a number of foreign climes while spending time in the company of murderers, demons, and yet more devil worshippers. If there’s a linking theme, it’s that of the lengths that people will go to in order to satisfy their immorality.

All seven shorts are directed by Keith Claxton, who has an eye for interesting compositions and a feel for galvanising his actors into giving arch performances entirely appropriate to the material. In spite of the lack of budget on display, there isn’t a single segment that doesn’t feel accomplished and stylishly achieved, and almost all are darkly humorous in a way that offsets the lack of cash. Another Doctor Who alumni Dominic Glynn provides the music throughout, having tremendous fun with compositions that evoke movies of bygone eras while still feeling consistent with the material at hand, and helping to maintain the congruity of the piece as a whole. Everyone involved is having a ball.

With its absence of nakedness and bad language, Worst Fears might not appeal to fans of graphic modern horror. But with a raft of great bonus features it should easily find a home with those who prefer their scares a little more unfashionable, and a little more invigorating. 

Special Features: David McGillivray interview / bonus thirty-minute feature “Horror Icon”

WORST FEARS / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: KEITH CLAXTON / SCREENPLAY: DAVID McGILLIVRAY, KEITH CLAXTON, ANDREW CARTMEL / STARRING: FENELLA FIELDING, REBECCA SANTOS, HOLLY DE JONG, DAVID McGILLIVRAY / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 5TH