Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Possession / Cert: 18 / Director: Andrzej Zulawski / Screenplay: Andrzej Zulawski / Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent, Margit Carstensen / Release Date: July 29th

Set in Berlin, Possession is not for the weak-hearted. Whilst most definitely a film of its time in terms of appearance, Possession is a visceral, violent, erratic and piercing effort that pokes and prods its audience any chance it gets. Helping this along are astonishing performances from some of the key players involved.

Possession begins by introducing us to Anna (Adjani) and Mark (Neill), a couple whose marriage is in severe trouble. Both on the verge of insanity at times, the two spend the first third of the film just screaming at each other. Things only worsen when Mark suspects Anna of various affairs, as her mental state starts to go from odd to outright insane. With Mark struggling to get a handle on where his marriage is, his wife is worshipping a bizarre tentacled creature and killing anyone that poses a threat to her bizarre new love interest.

The tone and feel of the film are expertly steered by Zulawski. Often using spacious wide shots, the director creates a sense of anguish, isolation and fear, whilst quick-cuts and erratic camera movements show the lead characters’ descent into madness. Central to all of this is the performances of said lead characters. To say that the talent on show are a little over the top would be an understatement of massive proportions. Some, such as Bennent’s Heinrich, are too much. Playing a potential suitor of Anna, Bennent’s performance makes Jack Nicholson’s bat-shit crazy Jack Torrance seem as excitable as Mumford & Sons. In comparison, Neill’s performance is just about perfect in its moments of madness. Often on the edge of being laughable, Neill manages to bring it in enough at the right times in order to make the performance credible. It’s a perfect balance on his part. That said, the star of the show here is clearly Adjani’s crazed performance as Anna. Watching her spend most of the film shrieking in a high-pitched voice, you really find yourself worrying about Adjani the actor rather than just the character she is playing. Not only did she win a César award for her performance, she was also typecast as ‘that crazy French lady’ for years to come. She is a literal force of nature in this film, for better or for worse.

Adding to the film’s feel, the effects work by Carlo Rambaldi is fantastic. He delivers a gruesome, raw beast of a monster, never so more disgusting than when it enjoys an ‘adult hug’ with Anna. If that’s not enough, the Blu-ray consists of the full uncut version of the film and a slew of fantastic extras, making this an essential addition for genre fans.

Extras: Audio Commentaries / The Making of Possession / Repossessed – the film’s UK and US reception / Featurette on the Berlin locations / Interview with the director / The Sounds of Possession / 6 Featurettes / Trailer

Review: Static / Cert: 15 / Director: Todd Levin / Screenplay: Gabriel Cowan / Starring: Milo Ventimiglia, Sarah Shahi, Sara Paxton / Release Date: July 15th

A new horror film from first-time director Todd Levin provoking chills in all the right places, Static is a tense and emotional experience. It centres around a grieving couple, Jonathan (Heroes’ Milo Ventimiglia) and Addie (Person of Interest’s Sarah Shahi,) after the drowning of their 3-year-old son. Jonathan is trying to bring their lives back to normality, but this is complicated by the arrival of a young woman, Rachel (The Innkeepers’ Sara Paxton). She claims that people are chasing her but when strange things continue to happen in her presence, Addie becomes immediately suspicious. Then, when Rachel is taken from their home, the threat begins to extend to them. The film is slow paced at the beginning, but as soon as Rachel gets snatched from the house, the action begins to speed up, with the masked invaders attacking their home and Jonathan and Addie forced to run and fight for their lives.

The leading cast are very engaging. Shahi and Ventimiglia are both authentic in their grief-stricken roles providing some very sincere and emotional moments as they struggle to communicate with each other and deal with their grief. Ventimiglia, once again, shows that he has leading man potential whilst Sara Paxton’s role offers just the right amount of mystery. Levin plays on the conventions of the genre as the house and grounds become a prison, and the tension is heightened by the use of an eerie ssoundtrack and the setting of the spacious countryside where nobody is around to hear them scream. For most of its duration, Static is tense and suspenseful, the end is far from expected and, all and all, this is a most promising directorial debut.

Extras: None

Review: Horrors of the Black Museum / Cert: 15 / Director: Arthur Crabtree / Screenplay: Herman Cohen, Aben Kandel / Starring: Michael Gough, June Cunningham, Graham Curnow, Shirley Ann Field, Geoffrey Keen / Release Date: Out Now

Hats off to the folks at Network DVD, their recent release schedule of late has been magnificent for fans of obscure cult British films, the latest being this fabulous forgotten horror from the end of the ’50s.

The film opens with one of the most memorable setpieces in vintage horror cinema, as a beautiful young woman receives a pair of binoculars as a gift. Obviously thrilled (flowers and chocolate are so passé), she tries them, only to have two spring-loaded spikes pierce her through the eyes. It turns out this is the third murder carried out utilising a style from Scotland Yard’s infamous Black Museum. Crime writer Edmund Bancroft (Gough) mocks their attempts at finding the culprit, while his doctor thinks his health is suffering through his morbid interest. Now obviously, not everything is as it seems with Bancroft, not least because he possesses a black museum of his own, one which he prides himself as being better than the Yard’s (chiefly due to the large computer which fills one wall).

This tawdry contemporary horror has often been overshadowed by the Gothic fare Hammer had started producing at the same time, but it certainly delivers some fabulous shocks. Gloriously filmed in colourful CinemaScope, the crimes may take place just off-screen, but the impact is certainly felt.

There’s a standout scene with Howard Greene (father of TV’s Sarah Greene) as a psychotic but harmless chap who confesses to the murders (“You know what I’ll use next? A death ray!”) and Keen (Minister of Defence in several Roger Moore Bond films) is solid as Scotland Yard’s Superintendent. However, it’s Gough who steals the show, as always; effortlessly portraying Bancroft’s arrogance and malevolence. The only weak link is Field, whose stilted acting is almost as pointed as her sweater.  

As well as some great shocks, there’s a definite sense of humour, with several intentionally funny moments to complement the camp delights. 

Extras: Trailers / Image gallery/ Oiginal US HypnoVista introduction (almost 12 minutes of a hypnotist explaining and demonstrating his art)

Review: The Dyatlov Pass Incident / Cert: 15 / Director: Renny Harlin / Screenplay: Vikram Weet / Starring: Gemma Atkinson, Richard Reid, Matt Stokoe / Release Date: August 26th

The mystery surrounding the deaths of a team of ski hikers at the base of the Kholat Syakhi Mountain in Russia is one of the relatively unexplored incidents in modern genre cinema. Nine people were found dead outside their tents, with shattered rib cages, missing tongues and smashed skulls. Well, now Deep Blue Sea director Renny Harlin is here to redress the balance.  

It’s a bit of a muddle at the start as the film decides whether it’s going to be a faux documentary or a found footage movie and eventually settles on the latter. So a group of film students of a kind familiar to anyone who watches this sort of thing sets off to follow in the footsteps of the group to see if they can find any evidence of the strange events that led to the unexplained deaths. Along the way the students encounter some ominous warnings from the locals, a couple of mysterious footprints and hear some weird sounds in the night. The evidence mounts that there is something out there, and to make matters worse their compasses and satellite positioning equipment fail, leaving then to contend with the harsh environment alone.  

With found footage films, one of two things tends to happen. Either the acting, location work and subject matter are of a suitably high standard but the mystery doesn’t pay off, or everything about the film doesn’t work but the mystery is suitably compelling. The Dyatlov Pass Incident bucks the trend by being pretty strong on both counts. Harlin actually filmed this in Russia, and so the desolate landscapes and chilly -30 temperatures really come off the screen. The performances are also good across the board, even though the film features former cast members of Hollyoaks and Holby City.  

What will make people sit up and take notice or reject the film outright is where the final act reveals the existence of an underground bunker and takes a turn into Donnie Darko/The Philadelphia Experiment territory. As far as we know there hasn’t been a found footage film that has dealt with this sort of subject matter before, so bravo to them for trying something different. Sadly it’s almost as if they get too excited trying to cram too many ideas into a short amount of time, so the film ends in something of a muddle similar to how it began.  

Still, The Dyatlov Pass Incident is a fascinating and gripping film that despite being fundamentally flawed, is well worth your time.  

Extras: None

Review: Extraction / Cert: 18 / Director: Nir Paniry / Screenplay: Nir Paniry / Starring: Sasha Roiz, Dominic Bogart, Jenny Mollen / Release Date: August 26^th

In literature, big ideas are what propel science fiction, and every now and then this is true of cinema as well. In amongst the giant robots and mega violence, occasionally a film with a fascinating, thought-provoking central proposition will get through and have people talking and proclaiming it a classic. Extraction could have been such a film at one point, but it sadly lacks the polish and execution that might have pushed it to the top.

Tom Jacobs (Roiz) is an idealistic inventor who has rustled up some technology that will allow users to record and re-live their most treasured memories. Tom’s financial backers want him to take a lucrative deal from the justice department which will enable them to view suspects’ memories in order to get a conviction. Although this goes against everything he set out to do, Tom agrees to this in order to support his young family. The first test subject for this is murder suspect and former heroin addict Anthony (Bogart) who claims he is innocent of killing his girlfriend. Due to a technical mishap, Tom becomes trapped in this man’s memories whilst his body remains in a coma in the real world. Over a period of four years, Tom eventually makes contact with Anthony through his subconscious and inserts himself into the memories of the most pivotal moments of his life. They have to work together in order to get Tom back to the real world and for Anthony to prove his innocence.

The problem with Extraction is that the central idea completely falls apart under close scrutiny. Think about anything in this film beyond the surface and it doesn’t add up. Writer and director Nir Paniry has some big ideas about memory, existence and the nature of brainwashing, but the problem is he can’t really focus these ideas into a coherent script. Roiz (best known as a villain in any recent TV show you care to mention) and Dominic Bogart do a pretty good job here but aren’t backed up by the rest of the production. Paniry’s direction lacks a certain urgency and the race against time aspect never really comes across the way it should. It’s sadly another case of a film being content to coast on the strength of its initial premise without any real thought of making a lasting impression. Extraction is a film with a lot on its mind and so it gets a pass for that but you can’t help thinking it should have been much more.

Extras: None

Review: The Curse of Frankenstein / Cert: 12 / Director: Terence Fisher / Screenplay: Jimmy Sangster / Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Robert Urqhart, Hazel Court / Release Date: Out Now

It’s perhaps hard to imagine now, but this movie was a revelation when it first hit the cinema screens of drab ’50s Britain. A combination of charnel house Gothic and gaslight costume drama, it wowed audiences with opulent colour cinematography and James Bernard’s pant-wettingly ominous score. As a result, it established the Hammer look and set that studio fair for a decade of success, ushering in the most important cycle of horror films since Universal’s back in the ’30s.

Jimmy Sangster’s script draws on only the barest bones of the original source novel. Working with Paul, his erstwhile tutor, Frankenstein (Cushing) goes from reviving a dead dog to a mad scheme to build his own person from scratch. “A man with a perfect physique, the hands of an artist and the matured brain of a genius!” You can just tell it’s going to go horribly wrong. Understandably, Paul (Urquhart) gets cold feet, especially when Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth (Court) comes to stay, but the driven scientist presses on, eventually creating a snaggle-toothed, wall-eyed and putty-faced monster played by Christopher Lee.

Sturdily dramatic though the script and Terence Fisher’s direction are, it’s Peter Cushing’s performance that elevates the film into something out of the ordinary. His Frankenstein is no doomed romantic; rather he’s a sociopath with ice-water in his veins, whose strange obsession with cobbling his own creature together can be read as an outward manifestation of his contempt for everything and everyone. (And you can see why he might feel that way. After all, his best friend, Paul, is a sponger on the Frankenstein fortune, as is Elizabeth, who has been living on handouts her entire life.) When Elizabeth asks if she can help with his experiments, he gives a nasty little smile and replies, “Who knows, my dear, perhaps you will… one day?”

This dual-format release offers both fullscreen and pillar box versions of the film. The picture quality isn’t quite as sharp as on some other recent Hammer HD transfers, but check out that mixed bag of extras. There’s a lengthy “making of”; a melancholy piece about Cushing’s later years; and a whole other movie, Four Sided Triangle (1953), an early Terence Fisher-helmed SF flick from the days before Hammer hit their winning formula – it’s a bit quaint and stiff, but hey it’s a freebie. Pick of the bunch, though, is Tales of Frankenstein, a super creepy short from 1958. Mist swirls and retorts bubble. Frankenstein brings the monster to life, then threatens him with a really tiny gun. “Don’t destroy everything now because of a hideous face and grotesque body that aren’t yours!” the widow of the man whose brain now resides in his head begs the monster. Frankenawesome.

Extras: Frankenstein Reborn – the Making of a Hammer Classic / Life with Sir / Four Sided Triangle / Tales of Frankenstein / World of Hammer featurette / Stills

Review: The Man Who Haunted Himself / Director: Basil Dearden / Screenplay: Basil Dearden, Michael Relph / Starring: Roger Moore, Hildegard Heil, Anton Rodgers, Olga Georges-Picot / Released: June 24th

Famously, on its release, the critics didn’t like The Wicker Man (1973). Of course we now know they were way off the mark and the reasons why they got it quite so wrong are worthy of a feature in themselves. But you can’t rule out them just having a downer on odd British movies of the early ’70s. You see, they didn’t like The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) either. They were wildly wrong about that one too.

TMWHH is a cracking lowish-budget film based on Anthony Armstrong’s The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham, the story of a man who, as the film’s title suggests, haunts himself. Pelham is a very dull business and family man who uncharacteristically decides to burn some rubber on the M4 and inevitably crashes. While on the operating table, the doctors briefly witness two heartbeats. After Pelham recovers, people say they’ve seen him in places he couldn’t possibly have been. Most of these incidents are also rather embarrassing because the Pelham they’ve encountered isn’t much like our hero; he’s a fun-loving and womanising cad. Yep, it’s Jekyll and Hyde with a twist.

While the film starts as a slow-burner, it’s actually rather brilliantly paced with the action accelerating as Pelham gradually realises that something’s up before it builds to its horrifying climax. In fact, it has to be said, this is a rather dark film and very reminiscent of the classic Star Trek story, The Enemy Within, but without the Shaternian acting and total lack of subtlety.

Actually, we have to mention the acting. While the film’s script is a little dated in places, the acting by everyone involved is top-notch. You might think that would be par for the course with a serious Brit-flick but you might raise a strangely appropriate eyebrow when you realise that, despite the minuscule budget, they managed to get Roger Moore to star. We’re not going say too much about Moore’s track record, but while crueller observers have been known to use the word “wooden”, here he is simply brilliant. Who knew? The neurosis-ridden wreck he plays towards the end of the film is almost unrecognisable as the Roger you know and love. It’s also very clever casting. The playboy version of Pelham is barely seen, leaving Moore brilliantly playing against type as his impotent (no, really) counterpart. The genius of casting Moore is that it’s just so easy to imagine his alter ego carousing around London. This means we get to see the story unfold through Pelham’s eyes and the villain’s misdemeanours are largely kept, where they belong, in our mind’s eye. No wonder Roger Moore has said this was his favourite role.

If you’ve not seen this then you need to. If nothing else, you’ll get to see Roger making a joke about James Bond three years before Live and Let Die (1973).

Extras: Audio commentary / Music only audio / Trailer / Gallery / Promotional material PDFs

Review: Entity / Cert: 15 / Director: Steve Stone / Screenplay: Steve Stone / Starring: Dervla Kirwan, Charlotte Riley, Branko Tomovic, Rupert Hill / Release Date: June 24th

Entity is set up as a creepy, chilling supernatural thriller. With the action set in a Siberian forest, the hook is that 34 unidentified bodies were found in shallow graves, with the case being unsolved and brushed under the carpet by Russian authorities. In the present day, a TV crew visit the site to try and get some answers. The crew work on a show that specialises in visiting areas that were the location of unsolved horrors, with a psychic in tow as part of their group. On location and looking to solve the riddle that is in front of them, the team soon encounter more than they bargained for.

Whilst the film starts off with a great little haunting score, it’s not long before it becomes a chore to watch the ‘action’ unfold. Like the bastard hybrid of Most Haunted, Ballykissangel and a Slipknot record, the film soon falls into a ball of shock cuts, loud shouting and plenty of other things that you find yourself caring less and less about as the run-time progresses. In fairness, the Ballykissangel reference may be a little harsh, as that’s merely by association with Dervla Kirwan. If the TV show in the film channels Most Haunted, Charlotte Riley takes on the Yvette Fielding role, whilst Kirwan does her best to embody her inner Derek Acorah, just a little less camp, false or Scouse.

The performances on display are fine for what they are, with Riley and Kirwan the two standouts, but it’s the rest of the film that lets Entity down. The story seems to plod round in circles as if it were some clueless puppy trying to catch its tail. Added to that, there’s the odd twist here and there, but said twists are made irrelevant just as quickly as they are revealed. In a genre where there are so many other films out there, Entity struggles to distance itself from the pack. With a film such as Grave Encounters, you can give it some leeway for not taking itself too seriously at certain points. Entity doesn’t do this. Instead, the film plays it straight all the way through, but the story, the effects and the scares let it down. As mentioned, the score is the best part of the film, although Riley starts to shine as the film comes to a climax. By then, though, it’s too little too late.

Entity is not without its charms, mind. The setting and tone of the film are chilling and desolate, again added to by the score, but you find yourself waiting for something to happen as the film lazily trudges along to a predictable finish.

Extras: None

Review: The Twilight Zone – Season 2 / Cert: PG / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: William Shatner, Agnes Moorehead, Robert Cummings / Release Date: Out Now (Region One)

Made over fifty years ago, The Twilight Zone still stand the test of time. In large part this is due to the role played by the show’s creator Rod Serling, who penned 20 out of the 29 episodes of Season 2. But it also benefited from the contributions of writers such as Richard Mattheson, George Clayton Johnson and Charles Beaumont and the composers Bernard Hermann and Van Cleave.

This 5-disc box set has more than its fair share of highlights. Charles Beaumont’s The Howling Man is a creepy and atmospheric episode in which a lost hiker discovers an innocent man imprisoned in a hidden, mountain monastery who may not seem who he is. In Nick of Time, newlyweds William Shatner and Patrice Breslin allow themselves to be drawn into a web of superstition (or is it fate?) through a fortune-telling machine with a wobbling devil’s head. In King Nine Will Not Return, tormented World War II pilot Robert Cummings finds himself the sole survivor of his B-25 in the African dessert – but is he actually there or is he hallucinating? The Invaders sees Agnes Morehead delivering a tour-de-force performance as she fends off what appears to be tiny aliens from another world. And in The Odyssey of Flight 33, a commercial airliner piloted by John Anderson encounters a freak jet stream that sends the airliner and its passengers back into time. Will they get back to the present before their fuel runs out?

A stunning set with rich sound, this release is a worthy tribute to a great show and to Rod Serling, who throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s was a matchless pioneer of quality TV. 

Extras: None

Review: Frankenstein’s Army / Cert: 18 / Director: Richard Raaphorst / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Karel Roden, Joshua Sasse, Robert Gwilym / Release Date: September (TBC)

For the last ten years or so, filmmakers and producers have tried to transfer the survival horror video game experience to our cinema and TV screens with mixed results. The Resident Evil films are no match for the game but Silent Hill is close. Well, now all of these people can give up, because Richard Raaphorst has made the best survival horror screen experience so far, coming as close as possible to replicating the experience of playing something like BioShock in the dark.

We pick up towards the end of World War 2 as a Russian reconnaissance unit pushes into Germany with someone with a cine-camera (of course) documenting their progress for some kind of propaganda film. As they head further into the countryside they start to discover evidence of Nazi atrocities but also dead soldiers with altered limbs and features. They head into a village and discover an underground network of tunnels with various freaky automatons stumbling around doing the bidding of one Dr Frankenstein, possibly a descendant of THAT Frankenstein. It turns out that Frankenstein is working for the Nazis and the man with the camera may actually be there for other purposes.

Frankenstein’s Army may be a found footage movie and a fairly unbelievable one at that, considering the quality of the period camera footage we see, but it’s done with such imagination and energy that it overcomes this and is more in line with the films rather than a boring Paranormal Activity clone. Every time you think that you are settling in for a conventional ride, the film throws some other weird freak at you, with wonderfully designed creations reminiscent of Del Toro or Clive Barker. Raaphorst doesn’t skimp on the gore effects either and the full horror of Frankenstein’s surgical experiments is witnessed and those automatons with circular saws for hands get to use those deadly limbs too.

Had this film not been found footage then it’s likely it would not have worked. There is a refreshing lack of CGI but the budget limitations on the practical creature work may have become obvious had the camera lingered in terms of a conventional film. One quibble is that we may never really get to know the stock characters that make up the Russian soldiers. The only character who really comes across is the one behind the camera whose point of view we are subjected to throughout the running time. It hardly matters though when the results are this good and such goofy fun. Frankenstein’s Army is the best found footage film for a while and some kind of rabid cult following is definitely in its future.

Extras: None