Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: Knightriders / Cert: 15 / Director: George A. Romero / Screenplay: George A. Romero / Starring: Ed Harris, Tom Savini, Patricia Tallman / Release Date: April 22nd

Ed Harris, Ken Foree and Tom Savini play a travelling medieval re-enactment group in this little-heard of George A. Romero movie. No, there aren’t any zombies.

Despite its fantastic cast and iconic director, Knightriders is not a horror film. It’s a complete change of pace for Romero, and a chance to see Foree and Savini play nice guys in a heartfelt drama about men dressed as knights in armour riding around on motorcycles. Given its director, I had expected these men to be catapulted back in time to fight real knights in armour or medieval zombies (in an Army of Darkness type affair) but this wasn’t to be either – Knightriders really is just a drama about a troupe of men who like dressing up as medieval knights and riding around on their bikes. And yes, that is Stephen King in the audience.

As a follow-up to Dawn of the Dead, it’s an admirable move on Romero’s part to avoid typecasting. It’s a shame that the resulting film has largely wallowed in obscurity since the 1980s, but it’s not difficult to see the reason for that either. At two and a half hours, it’s simply far too long. For all it’s more entertaining moments, 141 minutes is a long time for a movie about modern day jousters on motorbikes. Bear with it though, and there’s much to enjoy.

Following the enormous contribution Mr Romero has delivered to cinema over the years, it’s hard to begrudge the man this more personal project. And likewise, we’re getting Tom Savini in a rare leading role as a good guy, speeding around on his motorbike, swinging at a fellow warrior with his trusty mace. There’s Ken Foree too, as cool as ever. As King Billy, Ed Harris anchors the film. It’s a shame Romero never called on him to fight the undead, as he seems to work well with the director here. Amidst the film’s dramatic beats, there are also some excellent fight sequences and vehicular carnage. It seems odd to see Tom Savini riding about with a mace and not splitting anyone’s head open with it, but Knightriders just isn’t that film, no matter how much we might want it to be. On the evidence of this film, it’s shocking and unfair that Romero didn’t achieve much more mainstream success than he has. The Blu-ray transfer looks incredible – once more Arrow Video have come up trumps with the re-release of an old, overlooked gem. The disc also features interviews with the always engaging Tom Savini and Ed Harris.

Knightriders is an unfairly obscure cult favourite, starring some of genre cinema’s finest supporting actors. Ultimately, whether audiences at the time realised it or not, it also proves the point that the great George A. Romero is good for more than just zombies.

Extras: Audio commentary with George Romero, Tom Savini, John Amplas and Christine Romero / Interviews with Ed Harris, Tom Savini and Patricia Tallman / Trailer and TV spots / Collector’s booklet

Review: Repeaters / Cert: 18 / Director: Carl Bessai / Screenplay: Arne Olsen / Starring: Dustin Milligan, Amanda Crew, Richard de Klerk / Release Date: Out Now

Destined to re-live the same day over and over again, a gang of delinquent youths play out their own version of Groundhog Day, only with more guns and less wit. What would you do with yourself, if your every action had no consequence? Bill Murray already answered that question in typical Bill Murray style, but Repeaters has a much more cynical response in mind.

Where the worst thing Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day is to punch poor Ned Ryerson in the face, it doesn’t take long for Repeaters‘ antagonist to run out and rape a 15-year-old girl. By day two, the gang have already committed their first armed robbery. By day three, they’re kidnapping a drug dealer and forcing him to eat cow droppings. Very soon the youths are beating up, murdering and kidnapping one another willy nilly. Thankfully two of the trio manage to develop a conscience within a relatively short amount of time. Where Kyle and Sonia take their peculiar circumstances as an avenue to right past wrongs, chum Weeks sees it as an excuse to turn into a complete, utter psychopath. Can Kyle and Sonia put a stop to their friend’s increasingly horrible behaviour? Perhaps, but what about tomorrow? And the day after that?

You have to admire the movie’s balls in not even acknowledging Groundhog Day even exists. Repeaters takes its own path and runs with it, being a high-octane action thriller that doesn’t skimp on the gore or violence. It has a lot more in common with The Butterfly Effect than Groundhog Day, with its low-budget attitude to sci-fi and its pretty young cast. None of them are particularly memorable, although they’re all preferable to Ashton Kutcher. While the central romance between Kyle and Sonia is dull and predictable, the battle between them and Weeks is interesting. How do you stop a villain that literally cannot be stopped? Sure, you can lock him up, or even kill him, but the relentless bastard will be back within 24 hours, more pissed off than ever. Weeks isn’t a great villain, but his actions are awful enough that you’ll hate him nevertheless.

Repeaters is not a particularly original movie but nor is it so derivative that it can’t be enjoyed for what it is. It may not bear repeating, but it’s so fast paced that it’ll be over before you know it anyway.

Extras: None

Review: Spartacus – War of the Damned / Cert: 18 / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Liam McIntyre, Manu Bennett, Dustin Clare, Simon Merrells, Todd Lasance, Anna Hutchison / Release Date: April 29th

So it’s official. This, the third season of Spartacus, is also the last. No more lethal back-swings. No more cries of “raaagh!” No more explosions of CGI gore from gaping throat-wounds. No more orgies. No more baths. Devastating news for suppliers of wigs and merkins and, of course, for us, the fans. Still, at least we have the box set to enjoy before it’s time to say ave atque vale.

And it’s a beauty. There were a couple of problems with Spartacus: Vengeance. Away from the ludus, the gladiators lost much of their fun factor, and a degree of sameyness crept into the scenes of skulking rebels and backstabbing Romans. This time round, most of this has been fixed. For starters, the events and backdrops are more varied in scope, with Spartacus (McIntyre, finally finding his feet after taking over from the late Andy Whitfield) leading strategic ninja-style attacks, then hatching a plan to seize a seaside town which he thinks will be a cosy place to hole up for the winter. If the purse strings were tight on this third season, it certainly doesn’t show, because it’s a sumptuous spectacle. 

Next, a decent baddie has at last been found to fill Batiatus’ wine-stained sandals. Yes, has Spartacus finally met his match in the wealthy and brilliant Crassus (Merrells), who has trained his body and his mind for just such a call to arms? Especially as Crassus has teamed up with cash-strapped but posh Julius Caesar (an impressively beefy and sneering Lasance from Home and Away), who slips incognito into the rebel ranks to foment trouble.

The revolting slaves are much more lively too. They throw wild parties, colourful characters such as Saxa (Hollman) – a foul-mouthed Heidi Klum look- and soundalike – are brought front and centre, and Spartacus has trouble with the hard-liners in their midst who are all for the wholesale slaughter of their Roman captives. One such prisoner is Lita, sweetly played by Anna Hutchison of Cabin in the Woods fame. Luckily (but unsurprisingly), Spartacus takes a keen personal interest in her…

Otherwise, the show sticks to what it does best – violence, full frontal nudity and portentous dialogue – but turns the dial up to XI. It must have by far the largest body count of any series in recent memory (there are three decapitations in the first episode alone). And by the way, anyone for crucifixion? Because yes, there’s one of those too. Combine that with the acres of skin on display, and you have a work of stunning sensuality. This final season doesn’t quite tie up all of the loose ends of the Spartacus story, but it bows out in dazzling style.  

Extras: None

Review: Doctor Who – The Visitation (Special Edition)  / Cert: TBC / Director: Peter Moffatt / Screenplay: Eric Saward / Starring: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Matthew Waterhouse, Michael Robbins, Michael Melia / Release Date: May 6th 2013

1982‘s ‘The Visitation’, Peter Davison’s fourth televised serial (but one of his first recorded to allow him to bed into his new role at the Doctor before taping his debut),  plays to the BBC’s traditional strengths in producing atmospheric, authentic period drama. The period in question here is the seventeenth century as the TARDIS pitches up in the English countryside as the Great Plague is spreading fear and terror across the land. The Doctor and his chums – mouthy Aussie air stewardess Tegan (Fielding) and bland teens Nyssa (Sutton) and Adric (Waterhouse) – team-up with colourful highwayman Richard Mace (a fruity performance from On the Buses star Robbins) to investigate a nearby mysteriously abandoned manor house and some strange alien artefacts. Eric Saward’s script isn’t hugely sophisticated or well-populated; the dialogue is frequently clunky and laboured,  Mace is the only real supporting character and he’s drawn in simplistic broad strokes with none of the flashes of wit and extravagance a writer like Robert Holmes might have brought to the character. But it’s colourful and fast-moving, enlivened by lots of atmospheric location footage and in the Terileptils (creaky man-sized reptiles based on tropical fish) the show is at least trying to create an iconic new Doctor Who monster even though they’re probably best remembered these days as a very early example of the show dabbling with  primitive animatronic effects techniques. Davison is in fine testy form (and looks suitably aghast when the legendary sonic screwdriver is blown up) and when the action shifts in the final episode to a bakery in Pudding Lane it turns out that the Doctor is, yet again, fundamentally responsible for triggering a momentous and well-documented historical event. 

Newly-commissioned special features include ‘Grim Tales’ in which Davison, Sutton and Fielding, along with Mark Strickson who played Turlough in the following season, yomp about Black Park in search of the serial’s filming locations before settling down for a slice of TARDIS cake at the manor house location. Contributions from guest cast and crew are interspersed amongst good-natured chat between the core cast. The topical ‘Television Centre of the Universe – Part One’ sees former Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding (no relation) take Davison, Fielding and Strickson on a down-memory-lane trip of the by-now largely abandoned Televison Centre as they recall (complete with slightly maudlin background music) their time together on Doctor Who. ‘Doctor Forever – The Apocalypse Element’ is a bizarrely-named feature which looks at the history of Doctor Who on audio and how the Big Finish range has thrived despite the return of Doctor Who to TV.

‘The Visitation’ may not be one of the Doctor Who greats but it’s one of the few stories from the troubled 1980s which bears revisiting (yes, I know…) and the crisp remastering of the episodes and the meaty new special features are likely to be enough to encourage Doctor Who devotees to dig deep and double-dip.

Extras: Commentary, Directing Who – Peter Moffatt, Writing a Final Visitation, Scoring the Visitation, Grim Tales, Television Centre of the Universe, Doctor Forever, Gallery, Production subtitles, Trailer.

Review: The Stone Tape / Cert: PG / Director: Peter Sadsy / Screenplay: Nigel Kneale / Starring: Jane Asher, Michael Bryant, Iain Cuthbertson / Release Date: Out Now

Nigel Kneale is of course revered for his Quatermass serials, but aficionados consider his 1972 TV play The Stone Tape to be right up there in the same league. Trouble is, that kind of rep brings expectations of a kind that are tough for a 40-year-old programme to live up to. This new DVD release therefore gives us the opportunity to pose the question: is The Stone Tape really the stone-cold classic it’s made out to be?

It concerns a group of scientists in the employ of an electronics company who set up shop in a crumbling stately mansion abandoned since the war. Their task, to dream up a “completely new recording medium” that will throw the Japanese for a loop. However, they immediately hit a snag when it transpires that the mouldering old store room that has been set aside for a computer hub is in fact haunted – not by a subtle ghost either, but one given to ear-splitting shrieks. Team leader Peter Brock (Bryant, in a pair of cripplingly tight bell-bottoms) decides to investigate. “Analyse a spook?” one of the boffins queries. “Let’s say it’s a mass of data waiting for a correct interpretation.”

Applying cold science to the supernatural has become a standard trope of horror in the days since The Stone Tape was filmed, but where Kneale scores over his legions of imitators is in his clear and plausible presentation of scientific methodology. At the centre of this is Jill (Asher). The lone woman of the group, she’s by far its biggest brain. She’s the one who begins to put their supernatural encounters into some kind of theoretical context by asking questions about heat exchange and the significance of the fact that not everyone experiences the spectre in the same way.

She’s also an interestingly divided character – part quivering wreck, highly sensitive to the store room’s vibes, part human computer who takes shelter behind the notion that the ghost is a “dead mechanism”, with nothing of the living person left within it. Her journey is placed within a thoughtful commentary on gender relations. Peter – more of a manager than a real scientist and a bit of a shit beneath his bonhomie – exploits her brilliance but is apt to denigrate her as an hysterical female. Her other work colleagues, however, are much less patronizing and altogether more appreciative.

It’s a brilliant, once in a lifetime script, full of fiendish yet logical twists and turns. Such a shame it ended up on the desk of Hammer hack Peter Sadsy. His direction is disappointingly crude and unimaginative in the big set-pieces, and he draws the cast into shouty performances that haven’t worn at all well. (The one honourable exception is Iain Cuthbertson, who purrs Kneale’s lines beautifully.) Even Sadsy, though, can’t entirely ruin what is one of the great TV ghost stories.

Extras: Audio commentary with Nigel Kneale and Kim Newman.

Review: Oblivion Island – Haruka and the Magic Mirror / Cert: 12 / Director: Shinsuke Sato / Screenplay: Shinsuke Sato, Hirotaka Adachi / Starring: Christine Marie Cabanos, Cassandra Lee, Patrick Seitz / Release Date: Out Now

It’s rare that, at a time when we are inundated with CGI films, a surprise can still come along. So dominated are CGI films by Pixar, DreamWorks and Sony, it’s seems unlikely that something may rival these animation behemoths. Production I.G. have done just that with Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror.  

The island of the title is a place where forgotten things go. Haruka, a teenage girl, visits it in search of a hand mirror which is a memento of her long-dead mother, only to discover that retrieving it will be far from easy as, in this land, it is an item of priceless value. If she wants the mirror back, she will have to battle subterranean bandits and the evil dictator who rules over the island from his airship. 

It’s the visual style that immediately draws the attention, with its colourful images and detailed backdrops, as well as the combination of 2D and 3D art. While it may seem strange to mix these two styles, here it’s handled with a subtlety rarely seen. Never is it used to show off, as it only enhances the movie. Refreshingly, Haruka herself is modelled in a realistic manner, while the characters she encounters are by and large rendered in a cute, ‘chibi’ style. As for the environments Haruka finds herself in, these are wonderfully varied and brimming with originality. 

What is also impressive is the voice acting, a talent that goes unappreciated far too often. Here the characters are voiced earnestly and with sincerity – as befits a story which mixes scenes of considerable emotional impact with frenetic action set-pieces, usually triggered by the Baron: an interesting villain to say the least who seems like a cross between a pantomime dame and Frollo from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  

This film is recommended for fans of anime, CGI and a well told story. With a variety of characters, an enchanting soundtrack and a unique look, Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror is a breath of fresh air from another world. 

Extras: 4 features / Trailers / TV commercials

Review: Iron Man – Rise of Technovore / Cert: PG / Director: Hiroshi Hamasaki / Screenplay: Kengo Kaji / Starring: Norman Reedus, Clare Grant. Matthew Mercer / Release Date: April 15th

Iron Man and anime would seem to be a perfect fit. After all, anime loves mecha and pilotable robots, and Iron Man is… well, just look at him. Then throw in Madhouse, after Studio Ghibli probably the most renowned of anime studios. You can hear the sound of everything clicking into place.

Unfortunately, there’s something just a little bit wonky and creaky about Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. It kicks off with Stark Industries unveiling a controversial high-tech satellite that will be an almighty eye in the sky for the forces of good. However, launch day ends up as a flaming mess thanks to an unstoppable villain in a liquid metal jumpsuit that is the latest word in techno-organic body armour. As if that wasn’t enough, S.H.I.E.L.D. treats Stark as a prime suspect for this debacle, for no particular reason other than that it pads out the plot and justifies a number of first and second act ruckuses.

Fugitive from the law though he might be, Iron Man isn’t to be deterred and he pursues his mysterious nemesis. But is he really a match for that techno-organic stuff? See the way it infests his suit, seizing up his joints and making his paint job go blotchy? Looks like he could be heading for the scrapyard! 

It’s all reasonably enjoyable, but also somewhat nonsensical (S.H.I.E.L.D., in particular, is made to look like a complete waste of tax payers’ dollars), not to mention tainted with pretension (the baddie is given to pronouncements such as, “Even with talent you need chaos to give birth to a falling star” – would’ve loved to get Sir Patrick Moore’s thoughts on that one –) and generally heavy-handed. An attempt is made to follow the lead of the live action movies in characterising Tony Stark as a wisecracking charmer, but it’s piled on too thick and he ends up coming across as a sneering fratboy. He’s also quite grabby with Pepper Potts, who does a bit of fan service in a bikini.

The Black Widow, Hawkeye and War Machine make lively cameos, as does the Punisher, who practically steals the show with his deadpan humour and military issue coffee. Another positive is the animation, which is dynamic, with impressive photo-realistic environments, and makes great use of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and its associated weaponry. And last but not least there’s a big, slashy, gooey Akira-style showdown as that techo-organic stuff grows to monster size and tries to swallow a whole city. So it has its moments – probably enough to keep Marvel fans happy. Anime aficionados, on the other hand, might not be quite so galvanized. The disc comes with two short, gushy but actually quite informative featurettes.

Extras: Tale of Technovore / S.H.I.E.L.D.: Protecting the Marvel universe

Review: Scanners 3 – The Takeover / Cert: 18 / Director: Christian Duguay / Screenplay: B.J. Nelson, Julie Richard, David Preston / Starring: Liliana Komorowska, Steve Parrish, Valerie Valois / Release Date: April 8th

Now that’s more like it. Following the dour, dull rehash of earlier events that was Scanners II, the Scanners franchise finally begins to realise some of its potential. Compared to the work of David Cronenberg, it’s a pretty bad film, but then everything seems pretty bad when you compare it to the work of David Cronenberg. At last, we get a film in which the Scanners use their telekinetic abilities for entertainingly nefarious means, exploding a finger (it’s no head explosion, but it’ll do) and making a man’s eyeballs pop out of his face like Arnie in Total Recall. 

Scanners III is a movie which opens with a man in a Santa outfit being thrown out of a skyscraper window. This may not be the best Scanners movie, but it is the most entertaining one. Yes, even more so than Cronenberg’s. It’s the movie in which the series finally lets itself have some fun.

Christian Duguay is back in the director’s chair (filming back to back with Scanners II, he never really left it) working from a script which is far less derivative of the first movie than its predecessor was. Affected by the painful side effects of her powers, a young Scanner begins trying an experimental new drug called Eph-3. Side effects may include megalomania and loss of conscience. Helena (Komorowska) is transformed from a mild-mannered young thing into a malevolent nut. It’s not long before she’s murdering her father, forcing uptight suits to perform The Full Monty on restaurant tables and making TV presenters talk dirty to one another live on air. Alerted that something might be amiss, her estranged brother Alex (Parrish) must attempt to put a stop to this loved one’s telekinetic rampage. It’s like The Dark Phoenix Saga all over again.

The worst received of the three Scanners movies, (although, to be fair, one of those was directed by David Cronenberg) The Takeover is very different to everything which came before. The template is broadly the same – good Scanner vs bad Scanner – but it’s less about government conspiracy and paranoia, more a movie about a renegade Scanner running about making things explode and convincing people to do bad things to themselves and others. The best kill of the movie – a man who jumps from a diving board into an empty swimming pool, splattering himself all over the tiles below. It’s hardly the classy mind war of Scanners, but it is brilliantly schlocky. There’s even another head explosion, albeit an underwater one. 

As with the previous movie in the trilogy, there are no extras with this Blu-ray transfer. It looks and sounds good, but it’s a very no-frills release. Still, we should be glad that they opted not to go with the movie’s alternate title – Scanner Force, which makes it sound even cheaper than it already is. 

Scanners III is exploitative, silly and fun. Fast paced and nasty, it’s almost everything one could hope for from a movie about angry psychics mind-punching one another in the face until one or both of them explodes. 

Extras: None

 

Review: The ABCs of Death / Cert: 18 / Director: Various / Screenplay: Various / Starring: Various / Release Date: June 3rd

The ABCs of Death in a collection of 26 short films from across the world, directed by 26 different directors which, as you might guess from the title, depict 26 different ways to die. It’s an eclectic collection and, by the very nature of its subject matter, it’s not exactly easy viewing. Most of the shorts here are very short; unlike last year’s collection of international zombie movies, Ultimate Zombie Feast, there’s nothing long-form, just a string of generally nasty, ugly films of five minutes’ duration or less. Consequently it gets a bit wearing – at just under two hours it’s a real slog – because there’s no time for any of the films on offer to create sympathetic characters or build anything resembling a narrative. So we’re bombarded with 26 death sequences and it’s likely that by the time you get to to U or V even the most obsessive horror-hound will be squealing for mercy and a release from the dreary hopelessness of it all. 

But arguably it’s just as well that these 26 films are all on the short side because many of them are just rubbish and some are vile. Inevitably the Japanese entries are the most extreme; Fart is a Sapphic love story of flatulence obsession and Zetsumetsu (extinction) is insane live action comic strip porn. Elsewhere, Libido is grotesque, Ti West’s Miscarriage unpleasant and pointlessly brief, while Ingrown is a random and disturbing effort about a kidnap victim which, like too many of the offerings here, seems to exist just for the sake of it. 

It’s not all bad news though. There are a handful of worthwhile efforts, not least Ben Wheatley’s Unearthed, clearly filmed on the set of Kill List (it features the same cast), the initially amusing Thailand-originating Nuptials which features a too-talkative parrot and Brit Lee Hardcastle’s warped Claymation-style Toilet. Best of all is Adam (A Horrible Way to Die) Wingard’s Quack in which a plan to film a “real death” – albeit of a caged duck – backfires with consequences which, if not hilarious, do at least raise a welcome smile amidst all the gore (XXL is an effective if eye-watering comment on body image and one woman’s desperation to conform) and filth (Klutz is about a murderous turd). 

Resolutely not for the faint-hearted or those who like to get stuck into a good story, The ABCs of Death is an interesting experiment but by its very structure it’s a frustratingly bitty, unsatisfying and rather sour experience. 

The ABCs of Death will be playing at UK horror festivals throughout 2013 and receive a limited theatrical release on 26 screens across the UK on 26th April. 

Review: Scanners 2 – The New Order / Cert: 18 / Director: Christian Duguay / Screenplay: B.J. Nelson / Starring: David Hewlett, Deborah Raffin, Yvan Ponton / Release Date: April 8th

Although the film may be home to the single greatest head explosion in the history of cinema, David Cronenberg’s Scanners is actually one of the director’s less eccentric movies. It’s a cut above the dire eXistenZ and the slow (but respectable) Eastern Promises, but not of quite the same Cronenbergian standard of weird as his classics The Fly, Dead Ringers or Videodrome.

Still, that Scanners spawned a trilogy is unsurprising, since the film’s blend of clever ideas and grisly body horror lends itself very well to sci-fi franchising. Of all Cronenberg’s movies, it’s one of the few that lends itself to sequels (although we wouldn’t say no to The Further Adventures of the Brothers Mantle). Cronenberg himself is absent for this sequel, with Christian Duguay (best known – or not – for a number of TV movies and straight-to-DVD sci-fi thrillers) in the director’s chair. He does a better job of it than Chris Walas did with The Fly II, without ever approaching Cronenberg’s auteur status. You have to feel for the fellow, stepping into the mighty big shoes of one of cinema’s greatest, most original visionaries.  

Like Scanners, it kicks off with one particularly memorable incident – in this case, a ‘Scanner’ running amok in an amusement arcade – before settling down to tell a quietly paranoid sci-fi story that’s high on drama but low on spectacle. It would have been fun to see Scanners play out as a gory horror movie about mad psychics who run around making folks’ heads explode – but Cronenberg was never really interested in that, and nor is his heir. Scanners 3 is a little more entertaining in that respect, but we’ll have to look elsewhere for all our sleazy head exploding needs (perhaps the inevitable remake, whenever that happens).

Young vet David Kellum (Hewlett) discovers his Scanner abilities when he moves from the countryside to the city. Using his powers to kill an armed robber, David rises to government attention. He is recruited by a high ranking police officer to assist in hunting and capturing criminals. The plot thickens when he starts to question the motives of his new employer. The plot is a less memorable retread of the previous movie, only without Ironside’s enjoyable scenery-chewing or Cronenberg’s confident, always unsettling direction. The Blu-ray itself isn’t much cop either, offering nothing in the way of extras or commentaries. Worst of all though: no decent head explosions anywhere.

Scanners II is a competent but needless and uninspired redo of a minor classic. It has its moments, but this so called ‘New Order’ doesn’t feel nearly new enough.

Extras: None