Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

DVD REVIEW: THE CABIN / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: MATT THOMPSON / SCREENPLAY: MATT THOMPSON / STARRING: MATT THOMPSON, KIMBERLY ALEXANDER, GINA COMPARETTO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Cabin (AKA Bloodline) – written, directed by and starring Matt Thompson – offers up a smarmy pseudo-intellectual script, reaching far above its station. The film goes for a folkloric spin somewhat like the Swedish flick Wither. Opening in 1779 with a clash between American settlers and a shaman following the death of his tribesman, Thompson peddles a tired view of Native Americans; vengeful and supernatural. The curse, in this case, haunts the surviving settlers’ bloodline.

Brett (Thompson) is on his way to becoming an ordained deacon but is – no surprise – riddled with doubts. Against his better judgement, he tags along with his friends and ex-girlfriend to his families’ (up-until-then) forgotten cabin, where the curse is at its strongest and most malign.

Brett’s friends are a thoroughly unlikeable bunch and the acting is about as wooden as the cabin itself. Kev (Jesse Kristofferson) is the kind of tired male stereotype who has been killed, maimed and tortured a thousand times over in horror movies, and Davy (Christopher Fontiero) is two-dimensional despite his girth. Chelsi (Comparetto) and Katie (Alexander) are little better than cardboard cut-outs; forgettable and throwaway.

The film is intellectually bankrupt, with little comment on racial politics or America’s bloody history. The narrative butter is spread very thin, and ultimately the plot is just another tenuous reason to visit a cabin in the woods and knock-off spoilt young adults. Yet despite the plot discrepancies, predictable ending and being about as scary as corduroy trousers, it’s largely well shot. Thompson may be one worth watching, but The Cabin certainly isn’t.

Extras: None

 

DVD REVIEW: THE BOY FROM SPACE / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: MADDALENA FAGANDINI / SCREENPLAY: RICHARD CARPENTER / STARRING: STEPHEN GARLICK, SYLVESTRE LE TOUZEL, ANTHONY WOODRUFF, GABRIEL WOOLF, JOHN WOODNUTT / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 25TH

With today’s British daytime television dominated by cheap quizzes, endlessly repeated home makeover and antiques auction shows and, worst of all, the horrors of Jeremy Kyle, it’s sobering to recall a time when those hours were the domain of schools programming. The BBC in particular took the ‘to educate’ part of its ‘entertain, educate and inform’ remit incredibly seriously and from 1957 to 1983 transmitted a wide range of programming aimed at children aged from 5 to 16, designed to complement school timetables and curricula.

One of the most enduring productions from this era was the Look and Read strand, a series which presented imaginative serialised stories supported by reading materials and pamphlets distributed to participating schools. The nippers would watch the TV broadcast – each instalment would be split into two segments – and the class could base discussions and activities around elements of the story and its themes. The BFI have exhumed one of the best remembered serials, 1971’s The Boy From Space, and buffed it up for a generous new 2-DVD release. It is, by any reasonable standards, quite a curious thing.

Written by Richard (Catweazle, Robin of Sherwood) Carpenter, who was given a vocabulary of just 386 separate words to work with, The Boy From Space tells of the adventures of Helen and Dan, a pair of ‘golly-gosh’ young astronomers who spot a mysterious light falling through the sky during the night. On investigation they discover an alien boy who, not unreasonably, they name Peep-Peep (because of his incomprehensible electronic burbling speech). The boy is being hunted by a stiff-walking, ray-gun wielding alien referred to as ‘the Thin Space Man’ and, together with their kindly astronomer friend Mr Bunting, the children set about protecting Peep-Peep and, eventually, reuniting him with his father in their spaceship hidden in a nearby lake.

The Boy From Space was originally broadcast in 1971 in black-and-white but was actually filmed in colour. Look and Read was much given to regurgitating its material and in 1980 the serial was exhumed, re-edited, given funky new music by the Radiophonic Workshop’s Paddy Kingsland, and dropped into the series’ new format. The serial’s segments were now introduced by smug space-puppet Wordy from his Wordlab space station. Assisted by his chum Cosmo, Wordy introduced the serial and together the pair discussed the story, its characters and its language and phraseology, supported by short informative films and crude animations. The Boy From Space series runs to ten twenty-minute episodes, comprising footage from the serial and interjections and contributions from Wordy and Cosmo – although if it’s just the serial you’re after, disc two contains a handy seventy-minute version of the story itself.

The serial is quaint and naïve stuff but, considering the limitations Carpenter was working under, it’s remarkably imaginative and endearingly innocent. Children of a certain vintage might well remember the creepy ‘Thin Space Man’ (Woodnutt) and with its cheerful Radiophonic score there’s a pleasing mid-period Doctor Who vibe about the whole thing, from its homespun special effects through to its earnest, rather mannered acting performances.

Wordy and Cosmo notwithstanding, The Boy From Space itself is a marvellous little period piece, a reminder of the days before Google became every kid’s fingertip teacher and before daytime TV became a sensationalist vulgar stew of shouting and cooking. Ah, happy days… I can remember when this was all fields…

Extras: Booklet / Feature-length edit / Audio version / Film version combining 1972 audio and 1980 footage / Wordy’s ‘think-up‘ animations / PDFs

DVD REVIEW: SURVIVOR / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JOHN LYDE / SCREENPLAY: JOHN LYDE / STARRING: DANIELLE CHUCHRAN, KEVIN SORBO, ROCKY MYERS / RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 8TH

Churning out a reasonably competent horror film on a tiny budget is relatively easy: turn out the lights, go down the ‘found footage’ route, knock up a claw or a drooling mouth for the long shots and you’re away. Low-budget science fiction, however, is a different proposition. Futuristic fantasy demands decent special effects and competent production design if it’s to stand a chance of interesting a blockbuster-savvy audience used to high-end CGI and casts of thousands. Survivor, entirely Kickstarter-funded, hasn’t got an original idea in its eighty-odd minute head and yet, through a combination of determination and enthusiasm, it’s a damned sight better and more unashamedly entertaining B-Movie than many bigger-budgeted efforts which take up multiplex residence every summer. You know what we mean, Mr Bay…

Much of the fun in Survivor is derived from spotting which classic sci-fi movie it’s ripping off next. Your favourite will almost certainly be here, from Planet of the Apes via The Time Machine and with a touch of last year’s Will Smith howler After Earth thrown in for good measure. The last survivors (hence the title) of the human race are holed up in a giant spacecraft, and an investigation team sent to explore a nearby potentially habitable world are brought down by a meteorite storm. Most of the cast… sorry,crew… are killed in the crash but feisty kickass Kate (Chuchran) must navigate traitorous, unfamiliar terrain, hordes of savage underground-dwelling creatures and various other mutations and beasts which roam the planet’s surface. And a horse. Meanwhile, the ship’s Commander, Captain Hunter (grizzled ex-TV Hercules Sorbo) is lying injured in a cave Will Smith style.

Survivor gets a STARBURST pass just for being so full of itself. It’s clearly been made with such passion and gusto it’s easy to overlook the unadulterated derivativeness of the script and plot and to just enjoy the surprisingly good photography (the planetscape locations are stunning and gorgeously colourful), the breezy, occasionally slo-mo action sequences and the halfway decent special effects and prosthetics. There’s even a convincing CGI monster for Kate to tussle with at one point. The revelation of the true nature of the alien planet won’t surprise anyone (go on, have a guess) but the whole film’s too good-natured and clearly such a labour of love for its director/writer and his team that, just this once, we’ll overlook the fact that we’ve seen all this before in dozens of films with bigger budgets and better effects.

Extras: None

DVD REVIEW: BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: TED V. MIKELS / SCREENPLAY: TED V. MIKELS / STARRING: LILA ZABORIN, LESLIE MCRAY, TOM PACE, VICTOR IZAY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Don’t get too excited, this cheapo effort from exploitation director Ted V. Mikels doesn’t really live up to its title. There’s a bit of go-go dancing by acolytes in designer swimwear, but it’s not what you’d call an orgy. As for the She-Devils, they’re basically your typical California girls circa 1973, in miniskirts and knee boots, except that they happen to attend the seances of a certain Mara (Zaborin), a medium with a beehive hairdo.

Convening at her large and gloomy house (actually Mikels’ own Moroccan-style castle in Glendale), they are suitably impressed when Mara channels a Native American spirit guide (“You no cross water on big shiny bird,” she advises one lady who’s thinking of flying to Europe). But there’s much more to Mara than that – she also has a nifty way with a voodoo doll. She’s hired by some shifty foreigners to murder an ambassador to the United Nations, but then her employers make the mistake of double-crossing her and it’s time to dip deeper into her spellbook.

Otherwise, Blood Orgy of the She-Devils is virtually plotless. Curious about the goings on in the house, seance attendee Lorraine (McRay) and her boyfriend Mark (Pace) consult a tame professor (Izay), and they spend ages sitting around on sunloungers discussing the history of witchcraft. Mikels apparently devoted two years to researching the film, and it’s rammed with arcane lore. The mood is slow, deliberate, earnest, and most of the time it seems to take itself so very, very seriously it feels like it’s been made by people who genuinely buy into all this stuff.

There are other times, though, when it seems like a leg-pull – especially during the naff flashback sequences (one of the services Mara offers is regression hypnosis to an earlier life). There’s a witch burning in which you can see that the flames are about 20 feet in front of the actress, and in another sequence 17th century peasants drag a woman across a 20th century patio on her way to be stoned. (Mikels could afford to live in a castle but he wouldn’t stump up for a few decent flashbacks?) Meanwhile, it’s growing late and the professor, Lorraine and Mark are still chatting, now over dinner, and you start to wonder if they might be engaged in some kind of ménage a trois…

Yet for all its ropeyness, there’s something haunting and weighty about this little film. The very fact that it seems more interested in providing an instruction manual on black magic than delivering thrills and spills adds to its sneaking sense of authenticity, and Lila Zaborin, in particular, seems to believe every word she’s saying. This DVD transfer is pillarboxed and murky, but it comes with an enjoyable audio commentary by the very folksy-sounding Mikels.

Extras: Audio commentary / Trailer / Notes and gallery

  

BLU-RAY REVIEW: THE TOXIC AVENGER – UNCUT NUCLEAR EDITION / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: LLOYD KAUFMAN, MICHAEL HERZ / SCREENPLAY: JOE RITTER / STARRING: MITCH COHEN, JENNIFER BAPTIST, CINDY MANION / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Thirty years after he first jumped into view to a blast of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bare Mountain”, Toxie is back, on Blu-ray. This simple tale of a weedy mopboy who falls headfirst into a vat of bubbling green goo and is transformed into an unlikely champion for justice put Troma on the map and is still a byword for bad taste and irreverence.

It’s a film that does all sort of things that shouldn’t work but that somehow do. The mixture of knockabout humour and bloody violence, of gross-out FX and skits that can trace their origins all the way back to vaudeville. The “Troma style” of acting, with the cast of crazed meatballs and spitefully vindictive bimbos – Bozo, Slug, Wanda, Julie – leering and gurning like gargoyles. It ought to be a hopeless mess, but instead it’s like a Robert Crumb cartoon come to life, and it all adds up to a vivid, if warped, view of ’80s America, with its fitness freaks buffing up their own bodies while the world around them disappears under toxic waste.

It has scrubbed up exceedingly nicely on this HD transfer, which is generally very clean, with a little fine grain in some of the two-shots and just a couple of scratches. Most of the early scenes have natural-looking colours, but the real surprise is how rich and deep the night-time scenes are, especially the notorious hit and run of the kid on the bike and the Shinbone Alley sequence.

The disc comes with an alternative, longer (92 minutes) cut of the film, in standard definition only. Much of the additional material involves the sleazy mayor, but there’s also some extra heavy petting between Slug and Wanda, an extended “Is This Love?” montage and a bit where Toxie’s blind girlfriend makes him an oven cleaner sandwich. Nothing essential, but interesting enough. There’s a mixed bag of facetious Troma-produced extras, the only one that really stands out being a 5-minute chat with Mark Torgl, who played Melvin the mopboy. He reveals that the sheep he was supposed to kiss was unappetisingly infested with ticks and lice, and that during the location filming of the Shinbone Alley sequence the cast were accosted by a homeless person irked at having his bedtime interrupted.

The highlight, though, is the audio commentary by Lloyd Kaufman, which is much less flippant, and much more detailed and revealing than one might have expected. He talks about his love of the ’40s screwball comedy director Preston Sturges (you can see it in the deleted scenes with the mayor) and is always ready with interesting nuggets of information about the cast, special effects and so forth – apparently Slug and Wanda got married and are now “running a theatre group in New York”.

Extras: Audio commentary with Lloyd Kaufman / Alternative Japanese cut / Intros / Featurettes

 

BLU-RAY REVIEW: THE WOMAN / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: LUCKY MCKEE / SCREENPLAY: JACK KETCHUM, LUCKY MCKEE / STARRING: POLLYANNA MCINTOSH, LAUREN ASHLEY CARTER, SEAN BRIDGERS, ANGELA BETTIS, ZACH RAND / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW (STEELBOOK FROM ZAVVI.COM), DVD/BLU-RAY AUGUST 25TH

Re-released as the first physical venture by VOD company THE HORRORSHOW.TV, The Woman was a smash on the horror festival circuit, but perhaps didn’t reach its potential with the mainstream, so now is the perfect chance to take another look at the film and put that right.

The film opens as an almost direct continuation of Offspring (2009) – also based on Jack Ketchum’s novel – with wild, feral ‘woman’ (McIntosh – reprising her Offspring character), injured but still living rough in a cave in the woods. We then meet a well-to-do, typical, wholesome, all-American family: well-groomed parents, two daughters, and a son. The son, Brian (Rand) is encouraged to practise his basketball skills, while the daughters appear largely ignored, with the eldest, Peggy (Carter) is becoming more isolated at school, leading her teacher to think she’s pregnant. The wife, Belle (Bettis) keeps a clean house but is reticent to entertain the family friends. Father, Chris (Bridgers) is a successful lawyer, whose main hobby is hunting.

During one of his hunting trips, he discovers the feral woman bathing in a stream. Voyeuristically watching her through his gun sight, this wild woman fascinates him. After getting the family to pitch in to clean and sort the storm basement, he heads back and captures the woman. Chaining her to the wall, he learns the hard way that she is not friendly, as she bites the top off one of his fingers. Introducing the family to their new ‘pet’, he tells them he will tame her and domesticate her. When Belle questions the ethics of keeping the woman like that, Chris slaps her face in an unflinchingly violent manner. This one act is as, if not more, shocking than anything else in the film is and underlines the fact that the monster here is not ‘the woman’. In his controlling ways and misogyny, he is pure evil and before too long, we are praying for him to get his just deserts. The tragedy, and reality as is often the case in these circumstances, is that his son is a chip off the old block. When the violence and gore begin – and there’s plenty of it – it is so sickening and brutal that it’s almost unbearable.

This is the type family drama played out in many households all over the world that no one ever hears about. Only they don’t have a wild woman in the cellar waiting to rip your insides out and eat them. This is one of the most provocative, shocking, unrelenting, but pro-feminist films made in recent years. It’s perhaps just a shame the viewers need a strong stomach to get through it. The whole cast are brilliant, Carter proving to be a star in the making (which she demonstrated again in Jugface/The Pit), McIntosh is terrifying as the unfortunate captive, and Bridgers even more so as the patriarch hiding a secret side.

This re-release is all the sweeter by the addition of a pair of audio commentaries. These tracks are often only interesting to avid film fans, but in actuality, both of the ones presented here provide a fascinating and entertaining accompaniment to the main course. The first, from director McKee is a brilliant insight behind the scenes. His is an amiable raconteur, and is as absorbing as the film is. Critic and former FearNet writer Scott Weinberg provides the second. Clearly a fan of both McKee and The Woman, Weinberg’s commentary perhaps provides a little more understanding for the layman. It compliments McKee’s track well, by adding that external perspective. Also on the disc are several of the extras found on the earlier release, with an excellent ‘Making of’ being a standout.

It’s not a film that could be recommended as enjoyable viewing, but it’s incredibly well made, and the fact it doesn’t just go for the easy cliché of ‘family in jeopardy from wild beast’ is refreshing.

DVD REVIEW: THE CHANGES / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: JOHN PROWSE / SCREENPLAY: ANNA HOME / STARRING: VICTORIA WILLIAMS, KEITH ASHTON, RAFIQ ANWAR, DAVID GARFIELD / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 25TH

Children’s dramas from decades ago are frequently being rediscovered by more mature audiences on DVD, and with The Changes the BFI are hoping to add another to a list that includes Children of the Stones (1977) and The Owl Service (1969/70).

Broadcast on the BBC early in 1975 in ten episodes adapted from the acclaimed trilogy by Peter Dickinson (actually published in the late 1960s in reverse chronological order), with surprisingly adult themes and ultra-modish camerawork and picture composition, this is perhaps the missing link between the cult 1970 film No Blade of Grass and the 1981 version of The Day of the Triffids. In spite of a spare script and equally sparing characterisation, The Changes nevertheless makes for wholly absorbing viewing.

The story begins immediately with the titular “Changes”, a strange noise forcing people to turn violently against “wicked” machinery. Television sets are destroyed, kitchen appliances battered and cars overturned, and when Nicky Gore (Williams) and her family attempt to flee the chaos they are separated; we then follow Nicky’s story as she first falls in with a family of Sikhs and thereafter with Jonathan (Ashton), perhaps the most sympathetically played character in the serial, as gradually she undertakes a journey that will ultimately reveal the source of all that has happened.

The first of the three stories incorporated here is an allegory about the influx of Asians into British society and the adoption of a free European economic market, hot political potatoes when the books were written and remaining so when The Changes was produced, while the middle section is told against a harsh religious backdrop harking back to Michael Reeves’ then-recent film Witchfinder General, and in the concluding segment we encounter the kind of then-prevalent New Age themes pre-empting Terry Nation’s Survivors, transmitted later the same year. It’s quite a heady brew and unlikely to be replicated in modern television, children’s or otherwise.

What’s most remarkable about The Changes isn’t so much Anna Home’s sparse scriptwriting as John Prowse’s lucid direction, getting the most out of a roll call of unassuming but classy British character actors (including Bernard Horsfall, Edward Brayshaw, Jack Watson and Tom Chadbon), and a clean transfer from the film source reveals the considerable influence of 1970s cinema on the production. With a slightly more compelling screenplay this could easily have passed muster on the silver screen, rather than as deceptively fast-moving television.

Thoughtful yet energetic, evocative and challenging, The Changes is another great release from the BFI, and it’s sure to find a place on the shelves of anyone with even a passing interest in stylish post-apocalyptic fiction, be it ostensibly for children or not.

Extras: Booklet /At Home in Britain, a short educational film about Asians living in the UK

DVD REVIEW: LIZZIE BORDEN TOOK AN AXE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NICK GOMEZ / SCREENPLAY: STEPHEN KAY / STARRING: CHRISTINA RICCI. GREGG HENRY, CLEA DUVALL / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 18TH

Christina Ricci’s acting career is made up of hits and misses. Lizzie Borden Took an Axe – a TV movie telling the true-life story of the infamous Lizzie, who was tried and acquitted of her parents’ murders in 1892 – is one of the misses.

Helmed by veteran TV director Nick Gomez and penned by Stephen (Bogeyman) Kay, it plays like a dramatization on a crime special, padded out to 83 minutes, with clear breaks for adverts. Among a decent supporting cast, Stephen McHattie does a fair job of drawling through the role of Lizzie’s unfortunate father and Clea DuVall isn’t half bad either, but Helix’s Billy Campbell blandly phones in a performance as Lizzie’s lawyer.

The music (provided by prolific composer Tree Adams) is pretty good, but inappropriate for the period setting, and while Tarantino uses modern music in an Old West or WW2 setting, he has enough arrogance to pull it off.

The sets and costume design are pretty solid and go some way towards dressing up a lacklustre script. The flashbacks, on the other hand, get very tedious and repetitive, and serve only as padding.

Lizzie Borden Took an Axe tries hard but somehow comes off as unconvincing. For a period study of an infamous American figure, stick to Andrew Dominik’s masterful The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Extras: None

REVIEW: MINDSCAPE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JORGE DORADO / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: TAISSA FARMIGA, MARK STRONG, BRIAN COX / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 25TH

The titular Mindscape is a company that deals in “memory detectives”, those with a talent for entering someone else’s memories and carrying out “remote viewing” to solve crimes. One of the best at this is John (Strong), who suffered a stroke during a remote viewing session that went critically wrong. Now he’s broke and needs the work, so is assigned to investigate the case of Anna (a powerful performance from American Horror Story regular Taissa Farmiga), a deeply troubled teen who has gone on a hunger strike.

While the job seems simple and an easy payday for John, the deeper he delves into Anna’s memories, the darker and more twisted the plot becomes, because Anna might be far more traumatised than was originally thought – either that, or she’s the most manipulative sociopath John has ever met.

The film (co-produced by Jaume Collet-Serra of Orphan fame) cleverly starts out in the vein of a typical ’80s slasher film, with a teenage girl about to step into a bath suddenly becoming suspicious of a noise in the house, while being observed by someone who is invisible to her. But it settles down to being a tense psychological thriller, albeit a little on the talky side. We’re used to seeing thrillers adopt a slow and deliberate pace as a device to heighten the tension, but there are parts of Mindscape where the audience may well feel the urge to get out and push.

Overall, it’s not a bad film but perhaps the concept of someone solving crimes by entering their memories might better be served as the pilot for a TV series.

Extras: None

DVD REVIEW: 13 SINS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: DANIEL STAMM / SCREENPLAY: DAVID BIRKE, DANIEL STAMM / STARRING: MARK WEBBER, RON PERLMAN, PRUITT TAYLOR VINCE, RUTINA WESLEY, TOM BOWER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Can committing thirteen sins turn a man into a monster? When down on his luck salesman Elliot Brindle (Webber) is told by a mysterious voice on the phone that he could win serious cash prizes for completing thirteen tasks, he leaps at the chance. But from swatting a fly to decapitating a person, the challenges get increasingly twisted as the game continues.

A remake of the Thai film, 13: Game of Death, 13 Sins has the potential to be a darkly comic nightmare from start to finish. Opening with an attention-grabbing scene of a former game player who tells dirty limericks to an assembled audience before cutting a woman’s finger off, it certainly gets off to a promising start. Elliot is a good-hearted sap, not cut out for sales and quickly fired from his job. To add to his money worries, he has a pregnant fiancée, an autistic brother and a miserable father all depending on him.

The promise of quick cash is too tempting for Elliot and the games begin. But, like a jollier version of Saw’s serial killer Jigsaw, the voice at the end of the phone is not going to make it easy for him. The tasks turn from the straightforward to the sadistic to the ridiculous and Elliot soon finds himself completely frazzled and in serious danger.

As the challenges become more sensational, 13 Sins detours into Saw-like territory and Elliot finds he has a detective (Perlman) hot on his heels. Pruitt Taylor Vince pops up as a man determined to probe the mystery of the puppeteers behind the game but the scenes between Perlman’s detective and Vince’s conspiracy nut detract from the fun of watching Elliot jump through hoops while mentally unravelling.

Helmed by Daniel Stamm, the director of effective found footage horror The Last Exorcism, 13 Sins unfortunately takes it exciting premise and wastes it, with an unsatisfactory lack of real tension or humour. Despite the best efforts of Mark Webber, who is excellent as Elliot, the big moments lack the pizzazz to truly shock, horrify or make you laugh out loud. Add to that the fact that Perlman is criminally wasted and 13 Sins ends up being something of a disappointment. Still, there is plenty of enjoyment to be had from watching Elliot find out just how far he is willing to go to earn some much needed money. 13 Sins is a frustrating missed opportunity but entertaining enough to suck you into its wicked game.

Extras: Behind the Scenes