Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Scavengers / Cert: 15 / Director: Travis Zariwny / Screenplay: Travis Zariwny / Starring: Sean Patrick Flannery, Roark Critchlow, Jeremy London, John Lee Ames / Release Date: January 27th

In space, so Hollywood tells us, no one can hear you scream. Or yawn. Or see you scratch yourself or catch you looking at your watch to see how much is left of this tedious film. With proper good old-fashioned spaceship sci-fi films thin on the ground these days, it’s a shame that Scavengers, even by straight-to-DVD standards, is scrappy, shonky, rubbishy old twaddle.

It’s not just the painfully low budget, the 1980s computer game-level CGI, the indifferent acting, the rotten script, the boring storyline… oh, hang on, it actually is all of the above but it’s also quite a bit more. Sometimes a film is just bad whichever angle you come at it from and there’s really very little to recommend in Scavengers (originally titled Space Soldiers). Even the most hardened sci-fi aficionados will find themselves fast-forwarding in search of some good stuff only to find that, sadly, there isn‘t any.

The crew of the starship Revelator try to keep a low profile but can’t resist breaking cover when they stumble across a powerful super-weapon known as the ‘Chaos Generator’. But a group of rival mercenaries are on the machine’s trail and when the Revelator’s crew realise its awesome destructive power, they take it upon themselves to try to keep it out of the wrong hands. You’re right, sounds like quite an exciting synopsis, but in reality all the film delivers is ninety minutes of people sitting around in cheap spaceship sets decorated by ancient keyboards spray-painted black, cheesy CGI spaceships and laser fights and, just for good measure, a bit of gratuitous gore. It looks suspiciously as if director/writer Zariwny was taking Joss Whedon’s much-missed Firefly as his inspiration with his ragbag collection of space misfits and their clanking, rickety spaceship. But sadly no one here has a fraction of the charisma of any of the Firefly crew; the characters are little more than cyphers and the acting’s completely uninspiring, apart from Sean Patrick Flannery who provides much unintentional amusement as he channels his inner Christian Bale for his portrayal of the psychotic Captain Jekel.

Dated, dreary and with effects which make Babylon 5 look cutting edge, Scavengers is a dispiriting and entirely unengaging experience; like the salvage its characters pick up on their travels, it’s just a load of worthless rubbish.

Extras: None

Review: An Adventure in Space and Time / Cert: PG / Director: Terry McDonagh / Screenplay: Mark Gatiss / Starring: David Bradley, Jessica Raine, Sacha Dhawan, Brian Cox, Lesley Manville / Release Date: December 2nd

Mark Gatiss’ love letter to the creation of Doctor Who is a beautiful, evocative period piece which effortlessly bottles that special alchemy which caused the world’s longest-lasting sci-fi series to arrive on screen at a time when the BBC was still the domain of “a sea of fag-soaked tweed and sweaty men.” But history records that Doctor Who wasn’t the work of one person, there was no ‘light bulb’ moment where the idea popped, fully-formed, into Sydney Newman’s head allowing a team of BBC worker drones to bring his vision to the screen. Fans familiar with the finer points of the creation of Doctor Who in 1963 will watch An Adventure in Space and Time and wonder why there’s no mention of C.E. ‘Bunny’ Webber, Anthony Coburn and Ron Grainer, and why the vital contributions of Delia Derbyshire and Terry Nation are sidelined. Faced with the difficult task of pruning the story of the origins of Doctor Who into an easily digestible ninety minutes, Gatiss sensibly opted to focus his narrative on the core dramatis personae fundamental to the show’s birth; William Hartnell, the testy actor chosen to play the Doctor, Verity Lambert, the show’s ground-breaking young female producer, Waris Hussein, the inexperienced young director; and the ebullient Newman himself. Gatiss has done what the Doctor can never do – he’s rewritten history – but in doing so he’s crafted a heart-warming tribute to Doctor Who and its legacy, a warm and engrossing drama which touches all the real cornerstones of the origins of the series whilst sidestepping some of the less essential detail and, perhaps, some of the less memorable individuals involved in the creative process.

In truth the genesis of Doctor Who really wasn’t anything all that dramatic. The creation of most TV series are surely fraught with similar personality clashes, charm offensives, doubts and insecurities, and whilst Doctor Who was undoubtedly a revolutionary type of series in and of itself – and, thankfully, still is fifty years later – its journey to the screen wasn’t really beset with any extraordinarily unique difficulties. Sydney Newman had the idea, others developed and scripted it, a producer and directors were appointed, actors cast, sets built, episodes recorded and screened. Pretty much the life of every TV show ever made. Fan history tells us of producer Verity Lambert’s struggle to become accepted in the traditionally man’s world of the BBC in the early 1960s, William Hartnell’s notoriously spiky and petulant nature (and casual racism and homophobia, airbrushed out of history for the purposes of Space and Time), but, historical importance aside, there wasn’t in any real sense much of a ‘story’ to be told here. Typically of many biodramas there’s no developing narrative as the script is required just to present a series of memorable moments, stepping-stones, and the viewer is left to sketch in the missing fine detail. Gatiss knows the history of Doctor Who intimately and he knows the bullet points fans will be expecting to see dramatised; Newman creating the series to fill a gap between the football results and Juke Box Jury, Lambert’s controversial appointment and her struggle to make a name for herself in the stuffy BBC of the early 1960s, Waris Hussein’s insecurities as a freshman gay Indian TV director, Hartnell’s unpredictable, irascible nature and the illness which precipitated his ‘removal’ from the series which had become his life. Gatiss gleefully remounts the pilot episode and its original broadcast production, and there are nods to Daleks on Westminster Bridge, the historical opulence of ‘Marco Polo’, the butterfly-men of 1965’s ‘Web Planet’ and the revolving-door succession of companions who replaced the original triumvirate of Ian, Barbara and Susan. Lambert herself moves on to greater glories, leaving Hartnell stuck with a less perfectionist production team and a sense that the series was drifting away from him.

An Adventure in Space and Time oozes ‘labour of love’ from its opening credits. As the last drama to be filmed at the BBC’s now scandalously decommissioned Television Centre, it’s a tribute to the building itself and its heyday as a thrusting, innovative powerhouse of creativity in broadcasting. The film may play fast and loose with recorded Doctor Who history but it never drops the ball in its depictions of its key players. David Bradley is almost unnaturally good as the unpredictable Hartnell and his performance gets right under the skin of a frustrated legitimate actor whose career never attained the heights it deserved and who seized this opportunity to create an iconic character and to reach out to a whole new audience. Brian Cox virtually becomes Newman, the larger-than-life Canadian showman who brought a dash of showbiz colour to the cold grey of the Corporation, and whilst the script treats the resistance Lambert met as more of an inconvenience than a genuine problem, Jessica Raine imbues her portrayal with the fire and determination Lambert was famous for throughout her life. With Lambert and Hussein (Dhawan) bowing out of the drama – Lambert as the second season of Doctor Who came to an end and Hussein once he’d completed work on his second serial, ‘Marco Polo’ – the film’s balance inevitably skews towards Hartnell as his ill-health undermines both his confidence and his ability. The actor clearly feels that the role of a lifetime is slipping away from him as the show’s constant format and cast changes take their toll. Hartnell’s ‘little chat’ with Newman, ostensibly a request to lessen his workload, turns into the beginning of his exit – surely a simplification of the real chain of events which led to the show’s first change of lead actor – and Hartnell returns home to tell his concerned wife Heather (Manville) that he’s given up the role he’d come to love. Gatiss can be forgiven for creating the sequence where Hartnell breaks down and sobs, “I don’t want to go…” Now where have we heard that before?

An Adventure in Space and Time is a project Gatiss had been trying to get commissioned for over a decade and only now, in this 50th anniversary year, does it seem entirely fitting and appropriate that it should finally reach the screen. Purists will baulk at the liberties taken with history, the airbrushing, the comic inventions (clumsy cavemen in the first serial) and, perhaps, the over-sentimentality of current Doctor Matt Smith smiling benignly across fifty years of television history as Hartnell prepares to take his final bow. But, with the help of some handy rose-tinted spectacles, this is a gorgeously mounted, sympathetically directed production which is, in so many ways, the icing on an already rich 50th anniversary birthday cake.

Extras: William Hartnell tribute / 10-minute behind-the-scenes featuring Carole Ann Ford / Two brief deleted scenes / Pilot reconstruction sequences – and Mark Gatiss as Jon Pertwee!

Review: 2 Guns / Cert: 15 / Director: Baltasar Kormakur / Screenplay: Blake Masters / Starring: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Bill Paxton, Paula Patton, James Marsden, Edward James Olmos / Release Date: December 9th

Based on Steve Grant’s graphic novel of the same name, 2 Guns is a modern day buddy cop film, with a twist. Here we have two partners, Trench (Washington) and Stigman (Wahlberg), trying to make a big score from a narcotics syndicate. When things go belly-up, the two end up on the run from a Mexican drug cartel, the CIA, the Navy, and more. The twist: Trench is an undercover DEA, Stigman is an undercover Naval intelligence officer, and neither knows of the other’s deception.

Yes, 2 Guns sounds cheesy and clichéd, and, to some extent, it is, but that gives it a certain charm. Whilst it may not be for everyone, particularly if you’re of the more deep, meaningful and serious variety of film fan, 2 Guns does have a lot to offer. First up, the relationship between the two lead characters is fantastic to watch play out. The chemistry between Washington and Wahlberg grabs you from the word go and has you doing your best to keep up with the lightning-quick dialogue that they exchange on a whim. Regularly bashed by the critics though he might be, Wahlberg excels in roles such as these. Like a cross between Boogie Nights’ coked-up Dirk Diggler and Ted’s John Bennett, Wahlberg’s Stigman reels off genuinely funny quips and put-downs as he moves his way from diner breakfasts to drug cartel shoot-outs. As for Denzel Washington, he’s definitely in effortlessly cool and breezy Denzel mode here, although it’s Marky Mark that steals the show.

As mentioned, the dialogue in 2 Guns is set to rapid fire, almost as if it were something from the mind of Quentin Tarantino. Joining Washington and Wahlberg, we get some great scenery-chewing from Bill Paxton, some mischievously dynamic dealings from Edward James Olmos, James Marsden being James Marsden (if not looking a lot buffer than usual), and Paula Patton coming across as a bit of a lame wheel. She’s not too horrendous (and I’m not going to moan about her baring some flesh), but her scenes just seem a little bland and slack in comparison to the zingers that are going on around her.

2 Guns is a lot better than we were expecting. It actually feels like a Michael Bay movie done right! Big action, some truly stunning visuals, snappy, witty dialogue, and charisma pouring from the screen – 2 Guns works in ways where a lot of similar films fail. It may not be for everyone, particularly certain genre fans, but there’s no arguing that 2 Guns isn’t an entertaining way to kill some time. You’re not going to get anything Earth-shattering or a classic cinematic masterpiece, but you will have some fun, and that’s surely a good thing, right?

Extras: Audio Commentary / 4 Featurettes / Deleted Scenes

Review: Insidious – Chapter 2 / Cert: 15 / Director: James Wan / Screenplay: Leigh Whannell / Starring: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey, Steve Coulter, Leigh Whannell / Release Date: January 6th

James Wan was unofficially crowned king of low-budget horror this year before suddenly shifting gears (and genres) in order to speed off into the sunset of the big budget Fast and Furious franchise. While Insidious Chapter 2 scared up more box office dollars than its predecessor, it paled in comparison to Wan’s other big horror hit of 2013, The Conjuring. Wan and writer Leigh Whannell have had their run of success since working together on their debut Saw but perhaps now the relationship has run its course. Wan seems to be growing as a director while Whannell falls back on old tricks and over-explanation, failing to give the second chapter the same shiver-inducing spark that Insidious had.

Chapter 2 starts with a flashback to the Lambert Residence in 1986. The younger version of Patrick Wilson’s Josh is the one being haunted, ominously followed by something dark and shadowy in all the photos of him. Even the young psychic investigators (the same characters from Insidious only played by younger actors) are scared witless, leading to an early game of ‘hot and cold’ that draws some typical suspense out of the scenario. Then we pick up exactly where we left off with the Lamberts under suspicion from the police for the death of Elise (Lin Shaye), the psychic last seen being strangled to death by Josh at the end of the first film.

The Lambert family move in with Josh’s mother Lorraine (Hershey) while the cops treat their old home as a crime scene. Before long, pianos are mysteriously playing, doors are creaking open, Josh is definitely not himself since coming back from the spirit realm and poor old Rose Byrne is forced to walk around a different house looking terrified all over again. It is at this point that familiarity settles in, not for the last time in the film.

Specs (writer Whannell) and Tucker are still on the case but hopeless comedy sidekicks that they are, they have to get in contact with the now deceased Elise. Flashbacks and further investigations illuminate a deepening mythology and add a neat twist, but with its determination to get serious with its story, Insidious: Chapter 2 grows a bit stale. It loses much of the irresistible and unrelenting thrill ride of the first and replaces it with something less satisfying.

A mysterious woman in white makes for a creepy apparition, but the more we get to see of her, the less intriguing (and, crucially, the less scary) she becomes. Wan makes everything imposing, with looming houses and creepy children’s toys in abundance, but unfortunately the more things get explained, the less you’ll be biting your nails and jumping out of your seat.

Producer Oren Peli, it seems, has convinced Wan to go for some handycam scares in one scene, but other than that Insidious: Chapter 2 is classically shot, and even when it descends into a cat and mouse house-chase towards the end, Wan helms the action with wicked gusto. It is an admirable attempt to tell a deeper story and reward fans of the first film but by the end it’s sadly lacking in the scare department.

Extras: Peripheral Vision – Behind the scenes / Ghostly Transformations – creating the look of the ghosts / Leigh Whannell’s Insidious Journal / The Haunting of Insidious / Work in Progress – On Set Q&A / 3 Spectral Sightings Webisodes

Review: Julia X / Cert: 18 / Director: P.J. Pettiette / Screenplay: Matt Cunningham / Starring: Kevin Sorbo, Ving Rhames, Joel David Moore / Release Date: January 27th 2014

Erstwhile TV Hercules Kevin Sorbo takes the lead as a creepy serial killer in Julia X, a distinctly odd torture thriller with a twist. It’s something of a cliché that Internet dates in horror films usually end up with someone being tied up and tortured – something the eponymous Julia quickly finds out for herself when Sorbo’s Stranger throws her in the back of his van, chains her up and brands her with his signature ‘X’.

The first twenty minutes or so of Julia X reside firmly in hackneyed city, with both characters behaving almost exactly as you would expect them to. Only the fact that Sorbo listens to The Carpenters’ “They Long To Be (Close to You)” on his iPod as he kills saves it from complete mundanity. Forever associated with Homer and Marge’s wedding dance in The Simpsons, it’s an amusingly weird (and suitably creepy) piece to be playing in a low-budget torture film. Beyond that, however, it seems as though we’re in for a depressingly predictable ride.

And then, somewhere around the half an hour mark, Julia X kicks into gear. Not only does Julia herself begin fighting back, but Sorbo starts having fun too. By the time Joel David Moore shows up, you’ll find yourself beginning to actually enjoy Julia X. “Julie Andrews is a national treasure!” a furious Kevin Sorbo snarls, in the heat of battle. Unpredictable, surprisingly witty and enjoyably violent, it becomes a great little game of cat and mouse between Sorbo and the film’s surprise antagonists. Sorbo gives a fantastic performance as The Stranger, obviously having fun with this subversion of his usual smooth, nice guy persona. The script gives him some great lines, most notably the wonderful Julie Andrews bit. It’s a career best for an actor usually typecast in cheap sci-fi and fantasy television movies. The female characters fare slightly less well, but they’re still a cut above the usual damsel in distress archetypes they could have been. Tied to a chair for most of the film, Joel David Moore isn’t given much to do, but he still oozes charisma and sympathy. We’re not sure why Ving Rhames (!) is here, but we’re glad he is.

A funny, smart horror farce, Julia X is a delightful surprise, sidestepping cliché with wit, style and snark. It may be cheap and occasionally too silly for its own good, but it most definitely has the X-factor.

Extras: None

Review: Odd Thomas / Cert: TBC / Director: Stephen Sommers / Screenplay: Stephen Sommers / Starring: Anton Yelchin, Willem Dafoe, Ashley Sommers / Release Date: February 3rd, 2014

Young Chekov from the Star Trek reboot stars as the titular character in this Dean Koontz adaptation. Like Thomas himself and so many of Koontz’s unconventional thrillers, it’s a little, well… odd.

Koontz’s signature character (Frankenstein doesn’t count) is cheerier than most horror protagonists, in spite of his no-doubt stress-inducing ability to converse with the dead and investigate the circumstances surrounding their demise. “I see dead people,” Thomas merrily proclaims in his opening narration, but he’s more well-adjusted than most. Very little of that John Constantine angst and misery for this young lad – no need for a dead therapist, a la The Sixth Sense‘s Bruce Willis. That’s not to say that the stakes aren’t high – Thomas wages a constant war against dark forces which threaten to consume him and those he loves at any moment.

As he did in Star Trek and the Fright Night remake, Anton Yelchin exudes an easy charm. He’s ably backed up by Willem Dafoe (not playing the bad guy, surprisingly) and Addison Timlin as love interest Stormy. The love story between Thomas and Stormy is sweetly realised, although it may be a little too saccharine for some. All pet names and doe-eyes, it’s as big a part of the story as the central mystery and its many ghosts. Like The Dead Zone‘s John Smith, Thomas can foresee something big and bad happening to his little hometown. With its Men in Black-meets-Supernatural vibe, it’s less apocalyptic and grim than The Dead Zone, but it still has its fair share of scares.

There are some changes to the source material (Elvis plays a much smaller role, for one thing), but newcomers and fans of the book should both enjoy it about the same. It’s fun, funny and bolstered with several great performances. It’s particularly nice to see Dafoe play the good guy, as Thomas’ police chief best pal. With a plot that whips along quite nicely, clever action sequences and a few nifty special effects, it makes for easy viewing. In spite of the lack of buzz surrounding it, it’s director Stephen Sommers’ best film since The Mummy. In fact, it’s his best film yet (not hard when your CV consists of the likes of Van Helsing and G.I. Joe).

There’s no shaking the fact that it all feels a bit television (it’d make for a great TV series) but otherwise, it’s a delightful oddity.

Extras: TBC

Review: Robotrix / Cert: 18 / Director: Jamie Luk / Screenplay: Jamie Luk, Siu Man Sing / Starring: Amy Yip, Chikako Aoyama, David Wu, Hiu-Dan Hui, Billy Chow, Chung Lin / Release Date: November 25th

This notorious Hong Kong sci-fi comedy, which blends RoboCop with a Kung fu soft-core skin-flick, hits DVD in the UK in its longest form so far.

Evil scientist Sakamoto (Lin) has transferred his mind into a hi-tech human-looking android (Chow), and kidnapped a Sheik’s son. So the Hong Kong police respond by giving a recently killed top cop, Selina (Aoyama), a new, almost indestructible cyber-body, created in her own image. With the help of the doctor in charge of the android operations (Hui), her robot assistant (Yip) and a group of clumsy, inept HK cops, they attempt to rescue the Prince and stop Sakamoto, who has also taken to killing prostitutes (a lame plot device used just to get the women to go undercover and expose plenty of flesh) and doing away with members of his own gang.

Despite being good fun for the most part, Robotrix is, unfortunately, let down by its rather schizophrenic nature. It doesn’t seem to know whether it’s a comedy, cop film, sci-fi or porn film (the many sex scenes actually slow the film down). The violence is mostly played for laughs (an ingenious decapitation, for example) but still fairly brutal, albeit not as gory as some later films, but when it’s sexualised it doesn’t sit well. The action scenes are as one would expect: brilliantly choreographed and suitably OTT. The slapstick violence gives it a playful feel, with the buffoonish policemen mugging their way throughout, but the casual sexism is actually more cringe-worthy than amusing, sadly. There’s plenty to enjoy, on a very low-brow level, it’s just a shame there’s that massive lull in the action mid-way.

Mediumrare’s DVD is still missing over two minutes of footage (a particularly gratuitous rape scene, which is certainly not missed, and an infamous male full frontal – the first of its kind in a mainstream HK film). Although, on the plus side, they have reinstated over a minute of previously cut footage. They do offer an option to view in either the original language or a dubbed version, which is nice.

Extras: A trailer, in Cantonese with no subtitles

Review: The Wind in the Willows / Cert: U / Director: Mark Hall, Chris Taylor / Screenplay: Rosemary Ann Sisson / Starring: David Jason, Sir Michael Hordern, Ian Carmichael / Release Date: Out Now

There are some books – many of them children’s – which are as quintessentially ‘English’ as a cup of tea and messing about on the river (both of which feature heavily in this film). Kenneth Grahame’s classic story The Wind in the Willows is one such case.

The story of four animals – Mole, Ratty, Badger and the accident-prone Mr Toad – who live in decayed glory in an idyllic rural England which seldom exists outside of the imagination of the most vivid of writers, has enchanted children and adults alike since it was first published in 1908. Their adventures – mainly involving Toad being rescued by the other three from one mishap after another, as well as the friends avoiding the machinations of a band of weasels who inhabit the dark and dangerous Wild Wood – make for enchanting escapism in an engrossing and totally believable world where animals rule, and any human characters are mere subsidiaries, simply there to fill in the background.

In the years since Grahame wrote his book, there have been countless adaptations ,with everything from stage plays to live action screen versions. However the story, centring on walking, talking animals, using puppets, as this BAFTA award winning version does, captures a sense of reality and believability that real actors never could. Here the viewer seldom considers Mole and his comrades as anything other than proper flesh and blood characters, as opposed to real people dressed (usually pretty unconvincingly) as animals.

Produced for Thames Television by the legendary British animation studio Cosgrove Hall Films (creators of such iconic kid’s TV as Danger Mouse and Postman Pat), this retelling of Grahame’s fantasy, which spawned several spin-offs, is as enchanting now as it was when first released thirty years ago. Its secret is that, by the sheer nature of its story, it inhabits a world which, save for the odd vintage car and steam train, is unaffected by the passing of time and the outside world. This is a pastoral vision of an England where good always triumphs and bad gets its comeuppance, and where everything moves at a more leisurely pace – including the story itself which never seems in a rush to finish. The production’s air of ‘Britishness’ is continued with a cast of stalwart thespians who provide the voices for the characters, including Sir Michael Hordern, David Jason and Beryl Reid.

In the modern world where everyone, including children, are constantly rushing from one thing to the next, we could all learn a lesson from the world of Mole and his friends where everything just ambles along, and is none the worse for that.

Review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers / Cert: 18 / Director: Philip Kaufman / Screenplay: W.D. Richter / Starring: Brooke Adams, Donald Sutherland, Leonard Nimoy / Release Date: Out Now

The movie that is to xenophobes what Jaws is to aquaphobes, Philip Kaufman’s superb retelling of Don Siegel’s classic 1950s, cold-war paranoia head-trip takes the supposition that people are strange and, via a standard alien invasion plot device, makes you see how ugly they really are when you’re alone.

For those not already familiar with the story, Invasion of the Body Snatchers tells the tale of an extraterrestrial invasion carried out by an organism that can replicate humans perfectly, in the physical sense at least. When Elizabeth Driscoll (Adams) notices that her partner seems to have changed on some fundamental level, she looks to a work colleague at the San Francisco Health Department, Matthew Bennell (Sutherland), for help. Soon they discover that he’s changed more drastically that Elizabeth imagined and, along with Matthew’s friends Jack and Nancy (Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright), they seek to alert the authorities to the nightmare that is soon unfolding.

One of the most compelling aspects of Kaufman’s film (and an area where it improves upon Siegel’s equally riveting original) is the way in which he imbues almost every frame with a palpable sense of paranoia and dread. A scene that illustrates this brilliantly comes mid-way through the story when Matthew and Elizabeth, stood on a bustling New York street, begin to suspect the huge scale of the invasion. Kaufman cuts to shots of everyday city folk, staring out of bus windows, standing at street corners and moving en masse at pedestrian crossings. In itself there’s nothing unusual about any of it but within this context it becomes something that is deeply unsettling. This juxtaposition of the protagonists’ mounting panic and the dead-eyed expressions of normal people going about their business, something that all of us witness every day, is enough to make you lock the door and phone your boss to tell her you’re not coming in. Permanently.

Whereas Siegel’s original was informed by America’s fear of post-war communism, concealing and feeding that fear within the pods from which untrustworthy and dangerous doppelgangers emerged, Kaufman’s film turns its gaze inwards to American society itself. Having just emerged from the Vietnam war and still nursing its bruises over the Watergate scandal that brought a President down, the US was suddenly confronted with a vision of itself that did not necessarily conform to the white stetsoned good guy it had long believed itself to be. Mix into this an examination of consumerism, isolationism and selfishness and you have a cocktail that screams ‘the enemy is within!’

But if you’d rather not be doing with political or sociological subtext then hey, that’s cool, because what you also have here is a terrific chase movie, one that is thrilling and unpredictable for the entirety of its two hours’ running time as Bennell and his associates evade the alien interlopers while trying to find someone in a position of power who can help. Ah, but who to trust? The Government? The police? Leonard Nimoy? The dog with the man’s head? Arggghhhhhh!! And is that bland reassurance and patient indifference displayed by authority figures merely the placatory fobbing-off we’ve all experienced or is it something else, something that conceals a far darker truth? (To be fair you’ve probably guessed which of these it is by now.)

As for the image, there is some pronounced grain in the darker portions but for a film of this vintage it’s looking and sounding as good as we could reasonably hope for. The extras package is superb and of all the versions released so far, this Arrow release is probably the one to go for, with Kaufman’s commentary and a round table discussion featuring Kim Newman, Ben Wheatley and Norman J. Warren being particular highlights.

Full of chillingly effective little moments (“Amazing Grace” playing over loud speakers at a dock where pods are being loaded for shipping abroad, the line of school children being marshalled into a conversion centre unaware of their fate, and the memorable final scene that stays with you long after the credits have rolled), Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a film that any self-respecting fan of ’70s or science fiction cinema should own. It is one of those rare instances of a remake that matches and in some ways improves upon the source, added to which it features, thanks to appearances from Robert Duvall and the original version’s Kevin McCarthy, two of the most enjoyable film cameos ever.

Extras: Audio Commentary with Philip Kaufman /Round table discussion / Interviews / Documentaries / Trailer / Collector’s booklet

Review: Pin / Cert: 15 / Director: Sandor Stern / Screenplay: Sandor Stern / Starring: David Hewlett, Cynthia Preston, Terry O’Quinn, Bronwen Mantel, John Pyper-Ferguson / Release Date: Out Now

Based on a novel of the same name by Devil’s Advocate author Andrew Neiderman, Pin is a cult Canadian horror from the late ’80s, set for a remake to be released some time next year.

Pin is a life-size anatomically correct dummy that Dr Linden uses to explain human bodily functions to his children Leon and Ursula, using ventriloquism to make the doll seem like it’s talking to them. However, Leon’s schizophrenia, undiagnosed due to Linden’s focus on his work and his wife’s obsessive compulsion for cleanliness, leads him to believe Pin is alive. The closest thing he has to a friend, he’ll do whatever it takes to prevent anyone from taking him away.

Living dolls are a rich vein for horror filmmakers to mine. While often not producing works of especially high quality, they still often result in wonderfully inventive and entertainingly depraved sagas such the Demonic Toys or Puppet Master series. Pin, however, is a different beast entirely. Its slow-burning plot has very little in the way of outright action; much of the unease instead comes from rising apprehension courtesy of Leon’s fragmenting sanity and his increasingly vehement insistence that Pin is talking to him. Unlike similarly themed efforts like Child’s Play and the little-seen Pinocchio’s Revenge, there is never any implication that anything occurring is genuinely the work of Pin, but Leon’s utter conviction in the dummy being alive does occasionally makes you wonder, even if just for a few moments.

Although the film does contain a number of deaths, far more unsettling is Leon’s fixation on Pin and his quest to make him as lifelike as possible, first dressing the doll in his father’s clothes and then attaching artificial skin and a wig. The extremes he goes to in order to prevent anyone from taking Pin or separating him from Ursula veer into more standard horror territory, but it’s in the fanatical obsession behind them that the true terror lies.

As well as madness and death, the film also has disquieting psychosexual overtones, from young Leon witnessing his father’s nurse using Pin as a life-size sex toy, to later on where he reads out a poem he’s composed whose protagonist openly talks about wanting to rape his sister. His fear that Ursula will eventually abandon him, thus no longer belonging to him, pushes him further into his dissociative delusion, eventually reaching the point where he can no longer tell the difference between Pin’s “thoughts” and his own. While Leon’s psychological breakdown is genuinely creepy to observe, you also can’t help but pity him, as he is as much a victim of his own mental illness as anyone else is of his actions.

Perhaps best known as narcissistic astrophysicist Rodney McKay in Stargate: Atlantis, David Hewlett has been a staple of genre cinema for years, from cult favourite Cube and the underrated Cypher, to spin-offs Scanners II and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Released in 1988, Pin was his first major role and despite only being about 19, he exudes Leon’s encroaching madness with a terrifying subtlety that could have been overstated all too easily.

A low-key psychological horror produced at a time when the genre was swamped with interminable sagas of invincible otherworldly serial killers, Pin is subtle, disturbing, and brilliant.

Extras: Trailer