Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Review: The Lords of Salem / Cert: 18 / Director: Rob Zombie / Screenplay: Rob Zombie / Starring: Sheri Moon Zombie, Meg Foster, Bruce Davison / Release Date: April 29th

You can expect certain things from a Rob Zombie film. It will be filled with challenging imagery that pushes boundaries and will be heavily in debt to the more grimy and violent horror flicks that came to prominence in the ’70s and early ’80s. What you shouldn’t expect is subtlety and the lack of this is what ultimately makes The Lords of Salem a disappointment.

In the small town of Salem, a rock radio DJ named Heidi Hawthorne (Sheri Moon Zombie) is sent a vinyl copy of an album by The Lords of Salem and playing it has a strange effect on her and any female who happens to hear it. Heidi begins to experience awful dreams and hallucinations and the three spinsters that live on the ground floor of her building start to get overly friendly. Heidi, who has a history of drug addiction, wonders if she is finally losing her mind. Meanwhile, The Lords of Salem are apparently coming to town for a concert at the end of the week.  

Kudos to Rob Zombie for trying something different with his fifth film as a director even if he fluffs the execution. The Lords of Salem wants to be a surreal and trippy horror movie where you’re never quite sure what is going on but the atmosphere and mystery pull you in regardless. However, Zombie plays his hand far too early with flashback scenes of old hags writhing nude and spitting in the face of a newborn baby; and by going for the shock factor in this way, he torpedoes the surreal atmosphere he was aiming for. As the film progresses, certain moments teeter on brilliance and the build up and character work is reminiscent of early John Carpenter far more than Zombie’s Halloween films were. But it’s all stymied by Zombie’s unfortunate habit of placing genre veterans in prominent roles and then allowing them to give hammy performances. Appearances by Bruce Davison, Meg Foster and Dee Wallace give rise to laughs rather than upping the creep factor or the mystery.  

You can cry nepotism all you want but the director’s wife Sheri Moon Zombie gives the best performance here as a woman on the edge who has a past she is trying to outrun if she could only make it out of Salem. For all the good work she does though there is little pay off. Despite looking very nice the climax is a mess of exhibitionist priests, riding goats and tongue happy Goth blokes.

Zombie once made The Devil’s Rejects and The Lords of Salem has been touted by some as a return to form. Unfortunately it’s not much better than your typical pretentious direct-to-DVD horror and that is a great shame.

Extras: None

Review: Deadly Blessing / Cert:15 / Director: Wes Craven/ Screenplay: Glenn M. Benest, Matthew Barr, Wes Craven / Starring: Maren Jensen, Sharon Stone, Susan Buckner, Michael Berryman, Ernest Borgnine / Release Date: Out Now

Generally remembered – if it’s remembered at all – as the ‘breakthrough’ movie for Sharon (Basic Instinct) Stone – 1981’s Deadly Blessing is actually a curious stopping-off point for those interested in the career development of horror/slasher film legend Wes Craven. Having already attained a genre notoriety courtesy of The Last House on the Left (1972) and the original The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Craven attempted in Deadly Blessing to create something a little more mainstream, an edgy and unsettling horror yarn relying on psychological scares rather than the visceral blood-letting of his more infamous earlier work. But inevitably studio interference – especially an insistence that the three female leads should spend much of their screen time wafting about in their lingerie and a nonsensical ‘jump-in-your-seat’ twist ending – rubbishes what starts out as a smart and eerie chiller with vague echoes of The Wicker Man in its disorientating cut-off-from-civilisation setting.

There’s also a distinct whiff of ‘TV movie of the week’ in the storyline (hardly surprising as it was originally planned as a TV project) and Craven does his best to give the uneven material a cinematic scale, beautifully capturing his disquieting, almost unearthly middle America setting of endless wheat fields and creepy, cobwebbed barns. Martha (Jensen) is married to Jim (Douglas Barr), a former member of the Amish-like Hittite religious sect who ferociously and fiercely eschew the trappings of technology and the modern world. Rather ill-advisedly, the pair move into a farm property directly neighbouring Jim’s old Hittite stamping grounds. Jim is killed in mysterious circumstances and Martha is vilified by the Hittites (especially the striking Michael Berryman as the ill-fated William and Ernest Borgnine in fearsomely fine form as Isaiah) as “the incubus”. Martha’s two city girlfriends arrive in the aftermath of Jim’s death but Martha won’t be driven away from her home despite the campaign of fear and terror being waged against them all.

Deadly Blessing struggles to balance its supernatural story against its potentially more interesting tale of stubborn religious fanaticism but Craven manages to inject a few decent shivers courtesy of Stone’s memorable barn encounter with a tarantula and Jensen’s toe-curling bathtub battle with a curious snake. But it all goes to Hell – quite literally – with a ludicrous final sequence which might well have come from an entirely different and far less subtle movie. Deadly Blessing has its moments but the stench of artistic compromise is unmistakeable and the movie remains a frustrating misstep in Craven’s body of work, little more than an interesting and uncharacteristic curio.

Extras: Craven commentary / Berryman introduction / Craven interview / Horror Hits of Michael Berryman / Screenwriter interview / Collector’s booklet

Review: Adventures in Zambezia / Cert: U / Director: Wayne Thornley / Screenplay: Andrew Cook, Raffaella Delle Donne / Starring: Jeremy Suarez, Abigail Breslin, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum / Release Date: Out now

We suspect this South Africa-grown animation passed you by, as it didn’t get to grace the cinemas of too many English-speaking countries and certainly not this one. In fact, we’re not totally certain why the UK title is Adventures in Zambezia when it was just Zambezia everywhere else, but that’s what it says on the cover so we’re not going to argue. Anyway, this lack of a UK release is a bit puzzling because what we have here is a something of a gem of a kids’ movie.

It tells the story of Kai (Suarez), a young falcon living on the African plains somewhere near the Victoria Falls. His father (Jackson) has a mysterious past and tries to discourage Kai from searching for the bird city of Zambezia… Blimey, that sounds intriguing. It’s fairly low-budget but the CGI is pretty good and used to tremendously good effect in the high speed flying scenes. In fact, in some parts of the world you could have seen this in 3D and we bet it was bloody great. The story is simple, but for a children’s film that’s fair enough and it’s still quite compelling. To be perfectly honest, it’s far better when it’s set on the “realistic” plains (it’s even quite educational) than when the story moves to the Bird City with its avian airport, hairdressers and monkey butlers. OK, it hasn’t got monkey butlers (because they’re birds, obviously) but you get the idea. The city’s patriarch is none other than Leonard Nimoy (in bird form) which is presumably how this ended up on the Starburst review pile, and there’s even some nice comic turns from Jeff Goldblum and everyone’s favourite southern African, Richard E. Grant. The climax is visually impressive and genuinely quite exciting and in the end, everyone has grown as a person (or a bird). So all family movie values are present and correct even if it is surprising brutal in places; it’s got Samuel L. Jackson in it so what did you expect? Apparently it’s his first U-rated movie, fact fans.

But at the end of the day, this reviewer doesn’t like reviewing kids’ movies without asking a proper kid what they think, so we did. He said, “It was very good and I liked the bit when he flew into the giraffe’s bum.” So there we have it; everyone’s happy. Not a bad movie at all and almost certainly Leonard Nimoy’s best film since the one with the whales.

Extras: 4 Featurettes / “Come Fly with Me” music video

Review: Blood Simple – Director’s Cut / Cert: 18 / Director: Joel Coen / Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen / Starring: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedya, M. Emmet Walsh / Release Date: April 15th

Believe it or not, there was a time when no-one had heard of Joel and Ethan Coen. But back in 1985 a tight and rather old fashioned film noir did the art house circuit and managed to get them instant cult status. Looking back it now, you might wonder what was so arty about Blood Simple (1984). Well, not that much by today’s standards; the Coen’s have had a big influence and it would seem a pretty straight piece of cinema if it was released today. But back then, its old school double-crossing plot, morally ambiguous characters and state of the art brutality (surprisingly shocking at the time) were a breath of fresh air in the otherwise fuggy auditorium of mid-’80s insipidity. The nearest thing we’d had in the preceding years was Blade Runner (1982) and nobody went to see that either. 

Funny we should mention Blade Runner there in a particularly pleasing turn as, well, the same character he played in Blade Runner. Only this time he’s wearing a hat. There are also remarkable parallels with the climax of both films; it would seem the Coen boys weren’t quite as original as we might have thought. Of course they weren’t; they just paid attention when they watched all those old movies; kept all the forgotten things that worked so well in classics of the ’40s and ’50s and injected them with a bit of modern va-va-voom. Blimey, they made it look easy; why there weren’t more films like this in the dark days of the ’80s? 

Anyway, the plot: someone’s hired to kill someone and then it all gets a bit out of hand with tense and brutal consequences. We don’t need to tell you any more than that; just enjoy the ride. What’s more, you can enjoy the ride just as Coen and Coen intended as this is the Director’s Cut; and it really is a “cut” as it’s actually three minutes shorter than the theatrical release. Don’t ask us what they cut because we don’t remember; it was a long time ago. Just expect it to be even tighter than before; which is going some as it was pretty tight in the first place. The print is also a vast improvement on previous releases.

One for your collection if you’re a buff or just worth checking out if you’re curious about the Coen Brothers’ early attempts at doing pretty much what they do now. 

Extras: Trailer

Review: Lake Placid – The Final Chapter / Cert: 15 / Director: Don Michael Paul / Screenplay: David Reed, Mairin Reed / Starring: Elisabeth Rohm, Robert Englund, Yancy Butler, Paul Nicholls, Poppy Lee Friar / Release Date: March 25th

Who would have thought a tiddly little creature feature like Lake Placid could spawn no less than three sequels? But so it has proved. In this fourth instalment, the infested lake has been sealed off inside an electrified fence erected by the army, with the crocs continuing to grow to enormous size, their stomachs grumbling as they snap up all of the local deer and turn on one another. The local townsfolk are uneasy, but there’s nothing to worry about, honest.

Wait, we take that back. Because, thanks to a rubbish coach driver, a group of high schoolers on a senior camping trip wind up at the lethal lake by mistake and, as the result of a series of hard-to-swallow coincidences, end up inside the restricted zone, ready to become croc chow. These are the only teenagers in the whole world who don’t carry around their mobile phones with them at all times, which means they’re unable to call for help when trouble strikes. Meanwhile, that electrified fence everyone was so proud of turns out to be ideal for hemming them in and crispy-frying anyone running away in a blind panic. Luckily, the local law enforcement are no slouches and they’re on the case in half a day or so. 

Although it delves into the original backstory for some of its reveals, little of the quirky tone of the first Lake Placid remains. The major influence here is Alexandre Aja’s Piranha remake – so we get a plucky female sheriff who’s the spitting image of Elisabeth Shue’s character, a my-kid-is-in-peril story arc (the sheriff’s daughter is one of the campers) and a high hormone level as the teens canoodle and go skinny dipping.

There’s a fair dollop of action, including a bit where one of the critters chases a 4×4, and a nasty visual pun when the group slut literally gives head to the crocs, as in gets decapitated. But it’s weakened by silly implausibilities, such as the moment when a weedy 80-pound girl renders a monster croc unconscious by belting it over the head with the butt of a rifle. As for the CGI, it’s variable, attractively scaly in some places but rubbery-looking in others.

Robert Englund takes time away from his easel to play a crazy old poacher, and a couple of the youngsters  – notably Hogwarts alumna Scarlett Byrne  –muster decent performances, so it’s not all bad and anyone looking to slum it in front of the TV for 90 minutes could do worse. All the same, when the teacher in charge of the munched-upon kids remarks, “This is not going to look good on my resume”, you know he’s speaking not just for himself but for the whole cast and crew.

Extras: None

Review: 247°F /Cert: 15 / Director: Levan Bakhia, Beqa Jguburia / Screenplay: Lloyd S. Wagner, Levan Bakhia / Starring: Scout Taylor-Compton, Travis Van Winkle, Christina Ulloa, Michael Copon / Release Date: Out Now

You’ll remember Open Water, in which a bunch of dumb teens go swimming and then realise they can’t get back on board their boat? Or how about Frozen, in which a bunch of dumb teens get stuck on a ski lift? Here we go again. In 247°F another pack of howlingly-imbecilic all-American airheads who really shouldn’t be allowed out of the house without adult supervision find themselves in a deeply improbable situation (although the movie’s opening credits remind us that what we’re about to endure is ‘based on true events’). But where Open Water had the thrill of our witless heroes stuck in the water terrorised by circling sharks and the numpties of Frozen had prowling hungry wolves to contend with, the trio of unfortunates here find themselves… well, stuck in a sauna. No sharks, no wolves and, in all honesty, not much real sense of threat and certainly none of the searing skin, burning lungs and boiling blood promised by the DVD cover.

Jenna (Taylor-Compton) is getting her life back on track three years after a road accident which killed her fiancé (even though the car we see them in doesn’t seem to be moving or indeed even have its engine running), so she joins her chum Renee (Ulloa), her jock booze hound boyfriend Michael (Copon) and his pal Ian (Van Winkle… seriously) for a weekend of partying in a remote lakeside cabin. All is well until they discover the cabin’s sauna and, after a boozy row, Michael storms out and leaves the other three trapped inside. Horror. 

There’s really very little of interest going on here. Death-by-sauna has vaguely interesting dramatic possibilities but a thin, clumsy script padded out by flashbacks, flash-forwards and dream sequences clearly has no real idea what to do with them. The temperature of the title is never referenced, the trio find some relief almost immediately when they smash open a small window in the door of the sauna to let in some fresh air and they’re at more risk of driving each other nuts by bickering with each other than of actually suffering anything other than mild discomfort in a slightly hot wooden room. Plenty of huffing, puffing, screaming and some scenes of mild perspiration but 247°F is absolutely nothing to get steamed up about.

Extras: Deleted scenes

Review: Community / Cert: 15 / Director: Jason Ford / Screenplay: Jason Ford / Starring: Jemma Dallender, Elliott Jordan, Paul McNeilly, Terry Bird / Release Date: Out Now

Another entry into the burgeoning sub-genre of British urban horror, this journey into the grubby world of potheads and feral kids has an interesting angle and amps up the terror without going over the top with gore.

Isabelle (Dallender) is a film student looking to make her mark by highlighting the awful conditions in the run-down Drayman Estate, a forgotten concrete jungle of the type familiar to many of us. Shooting interviews with her cameraman Will (Jordan), she hears stories of the horrors going on there; tales of deprivation, drug abuse and even murder. Of course, this spurs her on to go into the lion’s den and see for herself and earn some bonus points on her media course. She has made contact with an old man who is prepared to talk, but when they get there they find out from the not too inviting youths that he has died. They also discover that all the parents on the estate are off their faces on weed which they grow themselves, and the estate is run by a character known as Auntie. Will is understandably keen to leave, but Isabelle is adamant that she must get her money shot of the cannabis crop. Naturally, things get out of hand as the locals (who look as though they have come straight from the Jeremy Kyle green room) are less than welcoming, and even less keen on the pair leaving.

Watching the opening sequence of talking heads you would be forgiven for thinking this is going to go down the found footage route, but fortunately this is not so, and we see only glimpses from Will’s camera along the way. Once the pair reach the estate – via the only bus which stops running before sundown – the tension is palpable, and the deeper they delve, the closer they are to danger. The obvious thing would be to get the hell out of Dodge, but, as we soon find out, there is a reason Isabelle isn’t so keen on that, so the film gets a pass for stupidity on that account.

The film runs out of steam in the final act, but before it does it manages to tap into the fears we have about Broken Britain and hoodie culture, while also pulling off a few surprises and pointing out some of the clichés of the inner city documentary (“There’s a shoe. There’s always a shoe.”).

Extras: None

Review: I Didn’t Come Here to Die / Cert: 18 / Director: Bradley Scott Sullivan / Screenplay: Bradley Scott Sullivan / Starring: Indiana Adams, Kurt Cole, Madi Goff / Release Date: April 15th

Doesn’t look as though they came here to do any work, either. For various reasons, a gang of layabouts join a voluntary work scheme in the woods, where they are given power tools to play with and free reign to kill themselves and one another either through gross incompetence or motives unknown (usually to cover up their own gross incompetence).

That title certainly got your attention, didn’t it? Like A Lonely Place to Die and A Horrible Way to Die (sensing a theme yet?), the film has a wonderfully evocative title that ensures it stays lodged in your memory long after you’ve forgotten what the whole thing was actually about. This low-budget sort-of slasher movie has a more original plot than those aforementioned films, although the long stretches of nothing much happening between action and gore sequences will do it no favours.

The story is like a cross between Tucker and Dale vs Evil and a Final Destination movie, which would be awesome if I hadn’t already seen Tucker and Dale and Trippin’ last year (a cabin in the woods horror film with almost exactly the same gimmick). The concept is a clever one, but the lack of any distinct threat leaves the film feeling slightly lost and aimless. And then a girl goes and gets a chainsaw stuck in her own face, and the film’s flaws don’t seem quite so bad any more. It’s no bloodbath, but the death sequences are a lot of fun – offering bloody effects work, grisly violence and a whole host of eyeballs impaled upon sharp branches. Best of the bunch is the chainsaw kill (which shows why you shouldn’t piss about with chainsaws) but there’s also a nice bit of eyeball trauma and the best car-related carnage in years too. The film goes out on a high, with a recurring gag providing the biggest laugh.

The characters may not have come here to die, but the film doesn’t give them any other purpose or reason for us to engage with them beyond that. Worse, when they’re not dying, I Didn’t Come Here to Die is downright dull, with lengthy scenes of boring dialogue and flimsy characterisation failing to enliven any time when there’s not a chainsaw on screen. At least it looks good though, with a washed out effect to the cinematography giving it an old-fashioned, Grindhouse sort of vibe. With a little more gore, a little more wit and a little less padding, I Didn’t Come Here to Die could have been a bona fide exploitation classic. As it is, it’s competent but flawed, a little lost and suffering from a disappointing lack of purpose.

Extras: None

Review: Beach Babes From Beyond (Grindhouse 7)/ Cert: 18 / Director: David DeCoteau / Screenplay: Alexander Sachs / Starring: Joe Estevez, Joey Travolta, Linnea Quigley, Sarah Bellomo / Release Date: Out Now

Back in the early ’90s, direct-to-video maestros Full Moon Features set up a subsidiary, TorchLight, which was tasked with producing sci-fi themed sex comedies. Beach Babes From Beyond was their historic first release, and Starburst would be remiss if we didn’t devote a review to its reissue on DVD – after all, we pride ourselves on our uniquely comprehensive coverage of all things genre-related. Well, that’s our excuse anyway.

The plot needn’t detain us long. Out for a weekend jaunt across the galaxy, a trio of space vixens crash land on the coast of California, where they fall for (and engage in slow-mo soft focus sex with) a trio of hunks, two of whom are staying with surfer hippy Uncle Bud (Estevez) at his run-down beach shack. Bud’s in a spot of bother though. He needs $30,000 to fix up his hovel so it won’t be condemned. Luckily, this is exactly the same amount of money as is on offer as first prize in a bikini contest, and one of the bodacious space babes is a whiz with a thread and needle.

All right, so it’s not the most eventful or action-packed of movies, or the most PC either. But, with its lazy charm, it’s sun-kissed visuals and its healthy hedonism, it’s a surprisingly easy one to like. It ambles along, cracking jokes, exhaling ozone and throwing breasts at the screen, all to the strains of some rather decent surf pop. The whole thing feels like one of the zanier episodes of Baywatch, and if you’re a sucker for that Hofftastic show, you’ll probably like this. Anyone wanting to research early ’90s bikini fashions is also likely to have a field day.

Someone had a lot of fun with the casting: the brothers of John Travolta, Patrick Swayze and Martin Sheen take on supporting roles, as does Sylvester Stallone’s mother (and very nice she is too, Sly), while none other than Burt (Robin) Ward crops up as a smooth business exec. The acting is a bit rough around the edges, but the young folks are nice to look at and very personable.

This disc comes with a very jolly behind-the-scenes documentary, and steamy deleted scenes which, if included, would have taken the film in a harder, blue movie-ish direction. As it stands, Beach Babes From Beyond is rather cute and innocent. It’s also a movie which touches on important themes of togetherness in a world and a universe that all too often seems divided… okay, no, it doesn’t, but it’s still well worth a sneaky watch.

Extras: Extended scenes / Original Videozone / Full Moon Trailer Park / Original Trailer

Review: Bloodstone – Subspecies 2 / Cert: 18 / Director: Ted Nicolaou / Screenplay: Ted Nicolaou / Starring: Denice Duff, Anders Hove, Melanie Shatner, Michael Denish, Pamela Gordon / Release Date: March 18th

This is the second of the Subspecies films, a quartet of vampire movies made by Full Moon Features on location in Romania during the early ’90s. Along with its successor Bloodlust, it’s very much the centrepiece of the series, and its shows its writer-director Ted Nicolaou taking wing as a master helmsman of old school horror with a twist.

Having been bitten by the evil vampire Radu (Hove) and now in the process of turning into one of the undead herself, American student Michelle flees to Bucharest, where she contacts her sister Rebecca (Shatner), who hops on a plane to come and help her. However, by the time she arrives, Michelle is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Radu is also looking for her because he wants back the Bloodstone, a powerful holy relic that Michelle has liberated from him.

The shock-haired bloodsucker emerges as more than just a bogey man this time round. While he’s in town, he catches up with his sorceress mum (Gordon), a vicious skeletal hag with a wispy-bald head who lives in an underground crypt full of bubbling potions. With a mother like that, you can see exactly why he’s ended up the murderous malcontent he is. She’s eager for him to kill Michelle, but he hesitates. He’s feeling lonely (his fault – he’s slain almost everyone he knows) and rather fancies the idea of having a fledgling to raise in the ways of darkness.

Denice Duff takes over the role of Michelle from Laura Tate. With her birdlike beauty and flowing curls, she makes a touching damsel in distress, clad in a series of fetching beggar-girl costumes filched from the opera house where she holes up during the day. Bit by bit, we watch her hardening into a predatory animal who doesn’t belong in the human world.

It’s in this film that the creative team’s skill with in-camera and practical FX really comes to the fore. As Michelle wanders the streets of Bucharest, she’s pursued by wheeling, grasping shadows that are as beautiful as they are sinister. Nicolaou is also very good on the little things that go into being a vampire, in particular the importance of a nice, cosy resting place to take a nap in. In Michelle’s case, she finds a crystal coffin among the opera house props that fits her like a glove.

The tightening bond between Radu and Michelle is the core of the film, but its corners are filled out with colourful and engaging characters. There’s Popescu (Denish), an eccentric professor who serves a mean plum brandy, and Lt. Marin (Haiduc), a seemingly comical cop who correctly surmises that this all boils down to ‘a case of stolen goods’. Quirky and fresh but also potently romantic, Bloodstone is a release not to be missed by anyone with a thing for fangs.

Extras: Cast and Crew Interviews / Killer Montage / Videozone / Trailer