Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

REVIEW: MONSTER MADNESS – THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE HORROR FILM / DIRECTOR: JEFF HERBERGER / SCREENPLAY: A. SUSAN SVEHLA / STARRING: TOM PROVEAUX, CARLA LAEMMLE, BELA LUGOSI JR., ROBERT CLARKE, SARA KARLOFF, PEGGY MORAN, ROBERT WISE, TERRY MOORE, ELENA VERDUGO, JANE ADAMS, / RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 12TH (R1 ONLY)

So you want to know about the Golden Age of horror movies? Well, a good start might be going and watching them. Ah, you don’t know where to begin? Fair enough, there’s a lot of them. You could go and get some books on the subject or do some Googling. You haven’t got time? You want a good all-round knowledge and you want it in 90 minutes? OK then, in that case you either purchase a documentary DVD like this one, or you take this writer down the pub and buy him beer all night.

Monster Madness: The Golden Age of the Horror Film is 79 minutes (oh, they’ve included the trailer extras in that 90 minutes; cheeky) of low rent but informative clips and chat on the horror movies of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. Actually the Golden Age was probably over by the ’40s but hey-ho. It’s pretty extensive: they don’t just give you a bit of Drac, Frankie and Wolfie and be done with it; we get quite a few of the lesser known ones here too, including early Karloff flick The Bells (1926). But, of course, you always get that sneaking suspicion that the availability of the footage has decided the content; there are some odd omissions and quite how they got sci-fi musical Just Imagine (1930) in there is anyone’s guess. Rather too many old movie trailers are employed and the quality of the prints varies tremendously; some look OK but a lot of these classics are not being shown in their best light. But there are plenty of interviews with survivors of the era, even if they all seem to be filmed at some horror convention with the subjects addressing the hall. It looks a bit amateurish but it’s no less interesting for that. It’d be fascinating to know when these were filmed because most of the interviewees look younger than they should and, in at least two cases, more alive than they currently are. But there’s some good talking head experts on parade and it’s nice to see them expressing some genuine opinions about the movies rather than allowing the whole thing to turn into a “wasn’t it great?” nostalgia-fest as these things often do.

So all in all, it does what it says on the tin. The constraints of the budget show (by God, we’ve typed that a lot lately) and it does have the habit of lurching all over the place in terms of narrative (always a danger when you try to cover everything) but it’s got considerably more meat than anything you’ll ever see on Channel 5. Now, who’s up for a beer?

Extras: Trailers for some interesting looking low-budget movies and some terrible looking “UFOs are all around us” documentaries.

REVIEW: THE STRANGE COLOUR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: HELENE CATTET, BRUNO FORZANI / SCREENPLAY: HELENE CATTET, BRUNO FORZANI / STARRING: KLAUS TANGE, URSULA BEDENA, JOE KOENER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, a film of dazzling psychedelic sequences, begins with a swirling, droning noise that provokes a sense of immediate disorientation and unease. The very first shot is of a man sleeping aboard a plane. The camera closes in, focusing on his gently fluttering eyelids. He is dreaming.

The second feature by Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani is as febrile a reverie as they come; a hall of mirrors blasted into a thousand shards. ‘Sometimes he saw his real face and sometimes a stranger in his place,’ intoned Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter, on their classic 1977 track, The Hall of Mirrors. Interestingly, the lyrics do have an uncanny thematic bearing on the film. And thanks to an armoury of cinematic techniques, the film can go way beyond dreams. Like a peacock spreading its plumage, the kaleidoscopic majesty is something to savour. Some will argue that the delirium teeters on wilful confusion. Play the game or don’t, with its surrealist imagery, nightmarish tone, visual puns and riddles and staccato editing, The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is a cinematic marvel of the highest wonderment.

As in their debut feature, Amer, the directors present a challenging and fragmented narrative but the themes are clear: the exploration of a person’s sexual life related to a conflation of pleasure, pain and death via a childhood experience.

Business manager Dan Christensen (a reference to the pioneering American abstract painter?) arrives home from a trip abroad and finds his wife, Edwige, is missing. The art nouveau apartment in which the couple live is full of strange folk who may or may not know her whereabouts. Dan spends the entire running time wandering around playing detective and bearing witness to all sorts of kinky and murderous visions.

As well as the gory works of Dario Argento and Sergio Martino, the film is influenced by 1940s Freudian psychological thrillers such as Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944). In fact, one of the characters is named in its honour and ultimately she becomes the focal point. Another Hollywood flick that may have provided an influence is Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door (1948). Even the title appears to invoke the third act of Strange Colour.

In Lang’s Gothic noir, Michael Redgrave plays an aloof architect who remarries and may want to snuff out his new bride on their wedding night. Although it delivers a cop-out happy ending, the use of the haunted past, fetishes and perversion, secret chambers and rooms, where anxiety reigns supreme, are near-identical to elements found in The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. Interestingly, the films both reach something of a shared denouement. The primal experiences of youth often served gialli thrillers as motive for murder, but in Lang’s drama and Strange Colour, older sisters are directly involved and the root cause of the angst.

Extras: None

REVIEW: DELIVERY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: BRIAN NETTO / SCREENPLAY: BRIAN NETTO, ADAM SCHINDLER / STARRING: LAUREL VAIL, DANNY BARCLAY, ROB COBUZIO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Expecting the birth of their first child, pretty young couple Rachel and Kyle Massey agree to appear on cutesy daytime television programme Delivery. With cameras installed in their home, cameramen following them everywhere and gifted handheld camcorders of their very own, the stage is just begging for a little Paranormal Activity.

Sure enough, as the credits roll on the first episode, signs begin to present themselves that all is not right with Rachel and her joyous bundle. The cameras go haywire, mysterious screaming sounds off on the audio track and the dog won’t stop barking at Rachel and her baby belly. As the mood in the house darkens and the film’s horror element awakes, it becomes apparent that something is seriously wrong with baby.

It’s a shame that Delivery comes at the tail-end of the likes of Devil’s Due and Paranormal Activity, since it does a lot with the format that bears seeing. For once, the found footage gimmick is well-utilised, with sensible and believable behaviour (for the most part) from the characters throughout. The opening is effective – an episode of the TV show Delivery, complete with cheesy music and talking heads – before switching to a more familiar motif. While the story and scares aren’t particularly original, it nevertheless holds onto its audience through its atmosphere and impressive sense of foreboding horror. And then there’s the ending, which puts its peers to utter shame with its traumatic audaciousness.

It’s a funny thing, horror. You can watch cinematic, straight-to-DVD and television terror for years, and not feel a thing; completely numbed. And then something apparently innocuous like Delivery will come along to scare the surprised snot out of you. This won’t be the case for all, but it hit just the right spot for this particular horror nut. A well-told, impressively creepy found footage film, it’s proof that, sometimes, the kids are alright.

Extras: None

REVIEW: CAPTAIN CLEGG  / CERT: 12 / DIRECTOR: PETER GRAHAM SCOTT / SCREENPLAY: ANTHONY HINDS / STARRING: PETER CUSHING, YVONNE ROMAIN, PATRICK ALLEN, OLIVER REED / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

While not as revered as their horror output, there was some interesting and exciting romps among Hammer’s action films. Captain Clegg was one such film, and can now be enjoyed in all its glory after years of obscurity, thanks to this newly restored edition.

1792, and in the area of Dymchurch on the Romney Marshes, overlooking the seas to France, smugglers bring their bounty of wine and brandy to out-wit the hefty taxation laws. Rather like nipping over to Dover on the weekend ferries, then. There is something more to fear in this area as stories spread of the Marsh Phantoms, who strike fear into those unfortunate enough to see them. Dymchurch is also the last resting place of the notorious pirate Captain Clegg, whose grave is in the village churchyard. Their preacher, Reverend Dr Blyss (Cushing) is a noble, generous, and well-liked man, and is shocked when the men of the Royal Crown march into town amid reports of smuggling. Led by Captain Collier (Allen, who voiced many UKTV adverts), they set about searching the local tavern ran by Mr Rash (Martin Benson) and the workshop of the ever busy coffin maker, Jeremiah Mipps (the ever-reliable Michael Ripper, in perhaps his biggest role for Hammer). They fail to find any trace of illicit booze, despite using their prototype sniffer dog: the Mulatto (Milton Reid, a distinctive character actor who would appear in several horror films before resorting to sex comedies), a character seen left to die by Clegg in the pre-credits sequence. It seems Collier and his men rescued him as they were on Clegg’s trail, and used him as a way of finding hidden wine since then. After coming up empty on the search, Mulatto loses control when he comes face to face with the genial Blyss, attempting to kill him.

Although not technically a horror film, it’s a lot of fun, and the acting is first class all round. Oliver Reed had yet to turn into the caricature of his later life and is an imposing presence, and the subplot involving his romantic entanglement with the innkeeper’s ward, Imogene (Romain) doesn’t slow the action down. Cushing is at his best as the Vicar hiding a secret, which most will have seen coming a mile off. The film is a brilliant, rip-roaring adventure, bolstered by some spooky and atmospheric moments involving the phantoms on the marsh and the creepy scarecrow and certainly better than the Disney version (Dr. Syn alias the Scarecrow, 1963).

This new HD transfer is stunning. The picture practically jumps from the screen, bursting with colour and detail, although it does highlight some focus issues when the camera zooms in for close-ups.

For supplementary material, we have an informative, albeit a little dry, 30-minute documentary on the making of the film and a short look at the various horse-drawn carriages used over the years by Hammer. Not particularly earth shattering extras, but they are definitely worth a look. 

Extras: as above

  

REVIEW: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES – BEST OF LEONARDO/DONATELLO/RAPHAEL/MICHELANGELO / CERT: U / DIRECTOR: VARIOUS / SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: CAM CLARKE, TOWNSEND COLEMAN, BARRY GORDON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

2014 should be a great year for Turtles fans. It’s 30 years since they first burst onto the comic book page, which is cause for celebration. So how will we be celebrating? Well, there’s the new movie, which is splitting fan opinion at best. Then there’s the documentary film Turtle Power, which is something to get genuinely excited about. But what of the original 1987 animated series?

Well, for the 25th Anniversary we got the Season 1 & 2 box set, which was great, but then there was nothing after that. None of the other seasons got released. Perhaps they were waiting for this year to give us the last eight seasons, or maybe even a UK edition of that awesome Party Wagon Box Set that came out in the US a couple of years back. Sadly we don’t get any of that.

Instead what we get are four lacklustre “best of” volumes, each containing 3 episodes offering up the “best” of each of the four main Turtles. The episodes range from seasons 1-7 and mostly serve as fine standalone stories (the ones from Season 1 generally refer to the events of the previous – not part of this set – episodes).

While these four volumes are disappointing in what they give you for your money, the episodes themselves are fun, albeit forgettable stuff. The animation hasn’t really aged that well, with some episodes feeling a little flat at times, but what they do have (particularly in the later seasons) is a nice streak of self-referential humour that plays much better to an adult viewer than it does to a child.

At the end of the day, it’s always nice to get a piece of your childhood back (and it does come flooding back when that Chuck Lorre theme tune kicks in), it’s just a shame it’s such a small piece, given that there are still eight complete seasons out there waiting to be released.

Ah well, there’s always the 35th anniversary…

Extras: None

REVIEW: THE BATTERY / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JEREMY GARDNER / SCREENPLAY: JEREMY GARDNER / STARRING: JEREMY GARDNER, ADAM CRONHEIM, NIELS BOLLE / RELEASE DATE: JULY 21ST

Shot for $6000 over 15 days, Jeremy Gardner’s The Battery is to the zombie sub-genre what Gareth Edwards’ Monsters is to alien invasion. Both films were dismissed by some as boring, but to say that is to miss the point entirely. The Battery is a study of character and country that happens to be set amidst an undead epidemic.

Given its budget and guerrilla -style approach, it’s little surprise that The Battery is informed more by indie cinema than straight-up horror. While there are certainly nods to the nasty, including zombie maestro George A. Romero’s early anarchic works, it’s more Jim Jarmusch than Lucio Fulci.

The CD Walkman not only provides comfort for Mickey (Cronheim), but also for the audience – after all the MP3 doesn’t exist physically and after a zombie outbreak there’d have to be a return to more basic technologies. The eponymous battery doesn’t simply refer to the two former baseball players (completed by Gardner’s grizzled Ben), but rather a symbol of humanity as it was.

Both the soundtrack and Ryan Winford’s score, made up of moody, evocative and uplifting Americana, help tell the story, set the tone and offer respite. The film, in part, is simply an ode to the therapeutic power of music.

There’s a lot in common with Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later with the characters’ singular goal and interaction with the normal, whether that be Mickey winning on a scratch card or Boyle’s motley crew ‘shopping’. The Battery defines the line between simply surviving and living in a radically changed world, especially in a funny and poignant scene where Mickey and Ben brush their teeth with salvaged toothpaste and brushes.

Baseball is the linchpin of the film, a thread of American culture running though the narrative, and indeed baseball is both a source of release and enjoyment and a mode of defence. It’s a way to explore the differences and similarities between the two characters, both compelling and easy to warm to, and by the end of the film, baseball is well and truly deconstructed.

It’s reminiscent of Ben Wheatley’s work, especially his 2012 caravan-holiday-from-hell, Sightseers. One of the things the road movie does best is making the landscape a character and not just a set-piece. The locations are reminiscent of True Detective and Winter’s Bone in exploiting the Gothic sublime of rural America. Christian Stella’s cinematography is especially effective and the exterior shots are all pretty much faultless, though some of the interior sequences are grainier and amateurish.

Gardner has written a decent script that sets a steady pace. Characterisation never feels forced, though a lot of Ben and Mickey’s interaction was ad-libbed. It really gets to the heart of disassociation, tackling men away from women in a bold way. It’s an exploration of American life and values through zombies; like Romero, the zombie is a tool to subvert, satirise and explore.

The Battery is one of the most refreshing and candid zombie films to come along in a good while. It has oodles of charm, which is more than can be said for a lot of living dead flicks. Just don’t go looking for a straight-up zombie film; you won’t find one. Instead you’ll find something better; something existential, engaging and moving.

Extras: None

DVD REVIEW: DARKNESS DESCENDS / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MARC CLEBANOFF / SCREENPLAY: FRANK KRUEGER / STARRING: DANNY TREJO, KINGA PHILIPPS, FRANK KRUEGER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A rare 101 Films release that comes without a heavily Photoshopped picture of a house or a reference to The Cabin in the Woods on the cover. Front and centre is cult movie and Old El Paso advert icon, The Wrong Mexican himself, Danny Trejo.

The Trej does a passable Bane impression in Darkness Descends, a low-budget thriller that sets the big man up as some sort of cult revolutionary – and then proceeds to have him appear only occasionally in the film. Will horror fans ever learn? Since Machete and its sequel, Trejo has been steadily making a living from his brief appearances in trashy, cheap genre films, from The Cloth (Trejo as a Catholic Priest) through Zombie Hunter (Trejo as Jesus), Haunted High (a janitor, locked in a cupboard) and Old El Paso (creepy uncle). Worse, when he does take the lead, we end up with nonsense such as Machete Kills or, even worse, Bad Ass and its sequel. While Trejo has always been a bit-part actor, his recent fame has given certain distribution companies to promote the man as star, like his fellow B-Movie heroes Lance Henriksen and Eric Roberts.

Still, at least the film has some cause to slap Trejo’s massive pocked-marked face all over the cover. Although his actual screen time may be sparse, the character is given enough importance (in a semi-mythological Colonel Kurtz kind of way) that his presence looms heavy even when he’s not around. Which is quite a lot.

The rest of the film is spent with documentary filmmaker Chelsea (Philipps) as she investigates underground revolutionary Angel (Trejo) and his growing legion of followers, gathering in the abandoned subway tunnels of New York. The influence of Tom Hardy’s Bane and The Dark Knight Rises is felt throughout, in both Angel’s actions and pretentious speechifying. “Once you taste the darkness…” Trejo growls in his inimitable crushed glass tones, “…it seduces you.” Cartoons aside, it’s the closest we’ll ever get to Trejo playing Bane. The low budget inhibits the underground warrior’s behaviour, sparing us Nolan’s stupid ‘every cop in Gotham is trapped in the sewers’ midsection or predictable assault on Wall Street. It’s a step above the angry ‘GamerGate’ (having also taken Bane on as their inspiration), but not by much. His followers are only slightly less annoying; although at least they don’t have access to Twitter.

Like Bane, Anonymous, and angry gamers, Darkness Descends seems convinced that it has something deep and profound to say. Unfortunately, for the most part it just comes across as silly and pretentious. As its acoustic guitar-playing hippies sit around a campfire and Trejo spouts off excerpts from Revolutionaries for Dummies, one can’t help but wish that Batman might swoop on in and beat the lot of them about their collective heads with that very same guitar.

REVIEW: BLOODY BIRTHDAY / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: ED HUNT / SCREENPLAY: ED HUNT, BARRY PEARSON / STARRING: LORI LETHIN, JULIE BROWN, ELIZABETH HOY / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 23RD

Bloody Birthday (1981) takes the sporadically trendy “killer kid” subgenre and crosses it with the slasher movie, which was then in its early ’80s heyday, when any new angle seemed worth a punt. Not that the kids in question stalk their victims with anything as rudimentary as knives – no, their weapons of choice are guns, baseball bats and, er, skipping ropes. Still, you get the picture.

The three killer kids in question are born during a solar eclipse, which messes up their astrological charts and causes them to become little psychos. On the verge of their tenth birthday, they go on a murder spree, gunning down their teacher and tidying up the crime scene like pros (although wouldn’t you be able to tell from the trajectory of the bullet that the shooter was only four feet tall?). Sweet little Timmy (Martel) is an unwitting witness to one of the crimes and becomes their next target, but his elder sister Joyce (Lethin) begins to sense that something is not quite right with his beady-eyed playmates.

It’s all enjoyably cheesy but not too silly, thanks in great measure to writer/director Ed Hunt’s confidently low key, commonsensical handling of the story. There’s a slow, deliberate build to the acts of violence (including one very nifty murder involving a bow and arrow and a peephole) which gives them weight. And those are some scary kids, especially their twinkly, blonde, butter-wouldn’t-melt ringleader, Debbie – an adorably creepy performance from young Elizabeth Hoy that should have turned her into a child star. If ET had landed in this lot’s back yard, they would have sent him home in pieces.

This Blu-ray offers a pretty decent HD transfer – there’s some grain in the close-ups but the wide shots are crisp and nicely atmospheric. It comes with a 9-minute interview with Lori Lethin, who tells a few funny anecdotes about the cast and reveals that there was no child safety regs on the three week shoot in Pasadena. There’s also a Brief History of the Slasher Movies, which does what it says on the tin, offering a sprightly romp through the subgenre all the way from Psycho to the remakes of the mid-Noughties. A decent little ’80s horror nicely presented.

Extras: Don’t Eat That Cake / A Brief History of the Slasher Movies / Trailers

 

REVIEW: THE PIT / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: CHAD CRAWFORD KINKLE / SCREENPLAY: CHAD CRAWFORD KINKLE / STARRING: SEAN BRIDGERS, LAUREN ASHLEY CARTER, LARRY FESSENDEN, SEAN YOUNG, DANIEL  MANCHE / RELEASE  DATE: OUT NOW

Originally titled Jug Face, this intriguing feature début from writer/director Kinkle has an assured style, and a deep mythology which will keep one thinking long after the credits roll.

An isolated backwoods community is in jeopardy when young Ada (Carter) discovers Dawai (a brilliantly understated Bridgers), a local potter who has fashioned a jug bearing her face. This means she is next to be sacrificed to ‘the Pit’: a hole in the ground worshipped, feared and revered as if it were a God. She hides the jug, but things get worse as she finds out she will be ‘joined’ to a local boy and that she is pregnant – the father being her brother, Jessaby (Manche), something frowned upon even in this hick society. As the Pit has not been satisfied by the chosen sacrifice, it begins taking various locals, who in turn become spirits roaming the forest as ‘the shunned’.

Right from the simple but evocative animation which accompanies the opening credits, we become immersed in the film’s mythology and ideology. The community has a language of its own, part hick-speak, part Olde English, and seems from another time; though this is very much a contemporary tale. Both Carter and Bridgers played key roles in executive producer Lucky McKee’s The Woman, and in a way The Pit shares a similar feel; something off-kilter, infused with warped family values and overbearing parental influence. The matriarch here, played gloriously by Young, is certainly no shrinking violet, vigorously inspecting Ada for both evidence of intercourse and menstruation (“she is dripping”). It is worth noting this is not a mere satire on religion, but it does raise questions about blindly following a belief, regardless of consequence – Ada’s resistance to her sacrifice coming, not from a lack of faith, but rather a wish to live. We are in no doubt that the Pit is a real entity, but wisely Kinkle keeps whatever is in there out of sight, as when special effects do come in to play (as with the shunned) they betray the film’s low budget. It is a pensive film that works well; eerily atmospheric, impressively acted, and with an effective score, a film which is as organic as the forest. Don’t miss it.

Extras: None

REVIEW: MIRAGE MEN / CERT: E / DIRECTOR: JOHN LUNDBERG, ROLAND DENNING, KYPROS KYPRIANOU / SCREENPLAY: MARK PILKINGTON / STARRING: RICK DOTY, GREG BISHOP / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 30TH

Most conspiracy theories surrounding extraterrestrials or unidentified flying objects are intent on convincing you that they exist. This one does exactly the opposite. Kind of.

During a time in America’s history when paranoia was at its height and espionage was an ever-increasing issue for the US government, it would seem that those behind the curtain hatched an ingenious plan: pretend all of their secret government research was of alien origin. To do this, they would need the assistance of Mirage Men, agents who would infiltrate the UFO-believing community, spreading disinformation and ultimately discrediting any and all sightings of otherwise classified projects. After all, who would believe that alien ships kept crashing in the desert or that aliens were mutilating cattle? Nobody, and that’s just what they wanted.

Front and centre of this unique conspiracy theory is Richard Doty, a former Special Agent who, in his day, was sent in to tackle tricky cases where ordinary citizens had stumbled across matters of national security and had sought to bring them to public attention. Swooping in like some kind of Deep Throat ‘yes man’, he would spoon-feed ‘alien intel’ to the point where the last thing on their minds would be a more terrestrial explanation.

To that end, early American tests for drones and stealth aircraft were sold as UFOs and alien visitations, while cattle mutilations (allegedly a US initiative to gauge radioactive fallout effects after an underground nuclear ‘fracking’ incident) were also passed off as an intervention by little green men.

If all is to be believed (and there’s no definitive proof to say that this story is any more genuine than the stories they allegedly faked), it was a genius initiative. As this mind-opening documentary reveals, it had its drawbacks though as UFO enthusiasts are understandably up in arms about it and some of Doty’s victims suffered horrendous mental issues as a result.

As UFO conspiracy films go, this is a breath of fresh air and an insight into both the world of those who seek the truth about aliens and (perhaps more interestingly) the ways in which the government potentially manipulates its populace. And whether you believe the lie, or the lie behind the lie, you won’t be able to ignore the logic behind Mirage Men’s message. “There were about nine crashes in the 1940s,” UFO researcher Peter Gersten explains, perhaps summing it up best. “And that would suggest to me that they were testing something that was crashing.”

Extras: 22 short films / Booklet