Blu-ray Review: The Woman in Black / Cert: 15 / Director: James Watkins / Screenplay: Jane Goldman / Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer, Ciaran Hinds, Sophie Stuckley / Release Date: June 18th

When it was released in February, Hammer’s The Woman in Black made an obscene amount of money in the UK. Audiences seemed genuinely captured by this supernatural tale based on a book, which was then a play and is now a film. What was it that drew them in though? Was it the presence of Daniel Radcliffe? Was it the history of the property and its successful stage production? Or were people just in the mood for a good old fashioned spook fest? Due to its success you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the film was some kind of classic and a true return to form for Hammer. However, temper your expectations if you missed it first time around.

The haunted and grieving lawyer Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is whisked away to the countryside to sort out the affairs of a recently deceased owner of Eel Marsh House. Whilst in the nearby village, Kipps begins to uncover a tragic and haunted past and that the village’s children seemingly do not live very long. Staying alone at the mansion, Kipps uncovers a secret and is menaced by the ghost of an angry woman who is back for vengeance.

Ok so the play and book may date back to before the current supernatural craze began but the elements of The Woman in Black have all been seen before in about five different films from recent years. The house is right out of The Others and the malevolence is from Insidious. Sadly the miscasting is right out of Bram Stokers Dracula as Daniel Radcliffe seems the biggest mistake since Keanu Reeves played Jonathan Harker. I’ve always felt that Radcliffe felt uncomfortable in the Harry Potter films and here he is perhaps the most uncomfortable he has ever been, even without that many lines. He simply is not convincing as a grieving man with a child, he doesn’t seem old enough and looks like a kid on work experience at a museum. Radcliffe does well in the scenes where he has to creep about with a candle and act scared but everything else just falls flat on its face.

Due to this one fatal flaw The Woman in Black is held back in the classic horror stakes because, although derivative, everything else around the performance works wonders. The screenplay by Jane Goldman is very well paced, taking time to build its setting and the environment and the direction by James Watkins is great with a number of well-timed scares. The production design is also fantastic, littering the locations with odd little details that add to the overall eerie atmosphere including the creepiest toys ever seen on film.

The Woman in Black is a solid, haunting but flawed supernatural melodrama best enjoyed with the lights off.

Special Features: Commentary, Making of, Interviews, Red Carpet Special, Ghost story read by Daniel Radcliffe, Photo Galleries, Trailers.

DVD Review: Zombie Apocalypse / Cert: 15 / Director: Mick Lyon / Screenplay: Brooks Peck, Craig Engler / Starring: Ving Rhames, Taryn Manning, Eddie Steeples, Lesley-Ann Brandt / Release Date: Out Now

Ving Rhames, last seen strapping on his artificial machine-gun leg and giving Hell to fiendish flesh-eating fish in Piranha 3DD is back! This time, fully-legged, he’s a survivor of a zombie apocalypse (hence the title) and he’s leading a nervy bunch of survivors across a desolate, undead-ridden America in the hope of finding safety on Catalina island off the coast of California.

If the words ‘Sy Fy’ Presents’ don’t fill you with enough dread, here comes the killer credit – The Asylum. Yep, Zombie Apocalypse is a product of the house of the humdrum, the studios that ruthlessly, shamelessly churn out cheeky rip-offs off multiplex blockbusters in the hope of coining it from gullible punters who won’t notice the difference between Transmorphers and Transformers or, any day now, Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies as opposed to the big screen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

It’ll come as no surprise then, to find that this is a cheap and cheerful generic zombie movie, one of the B-est of B movies. What will surprise though, is the fact that it’s actually not a bad little flick in its own right; I wouldn’t go as far as to say that The Asylum have pulled out all the stops here but it certainly looks as if they’ve loosened them a bit and actually come up with a film which has a halfway decent script and a few more dollars than usual thrown at it.

An effective opening sequence details the coming of a lethal virus which quickly wipes out most of the world’s population, turning them into raging zombies. A few useful digital effects show a plane plunging into the tower of Big Ben, bridges blowing up in attempts to contain the virus, panic on the streets of Japan. Two groups of survivors – led by big, bluff Henry (Rhames) – join forces to battle their way to a safe haven as yet untouched by the virus. En route they’re attacked – frequently – by hordes of the undead (look closely and you’ll see the same zombie cropping up on more than one occasion… think of it as a sort of zombie drinking game) – whom they routinely shoot, blow up, decapitate and disembowel. A bit later on they meet yet another group who use bows and arrows to dispatch the unliving. Not unnaturally, not all of the survivors make it to the end of the film but, for once, there’s enough character meat on their bones to make some of them more than just zombie fodder and the script’s done enough in its occasional downtime to make some of the deaths matter because the characters are a bit more three-dimensional than the clumsy klutzes who usually wander through cheap zombie films.

Visually the film does a good job in depicting its ravaged post-virus environment with some eerie shots of dark, dead cities and devastated streets but the overuse of digital effects for explosions and during zombie fights gets a little wearing. Lovers of physical gore will be disappointed by the pumping, spraying digital blood gouting from dismembered zombies and some of the zombie make-up probably wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny.

But Zombie Apocalypse is lively and inventive and there are some good ideas here, such as the concept of the mutating virus slowly making the zombies more intelligent and any film which has the guts to climax with an attack by zombie tigers when it hasn’t got the budget to do it particularly effectively has to be given full marks for at least trying. The story itself is something and nothing and it’s certainly nothing we haven’t seen before but the film’s combination of unusually-strong performances, a knowing script (one character refers to a fallen comrade known as Kirkman, a clear nod in the direction of The Walking Dead’s creator) and some interesting visuals makes Zombie Apocalypse worth eighty-four minutes of any zombie fan’s time.

Special Features: None

DVD Review: Metal Tornado / Cert: 15 / Director: Gordon Yang / Screenplay: Andrew C. Erin, Gordon Yang / Starring: Lou Diamond Phillips, Nicole de Boer, Stephen MacDonald, Greg Evigan / Release Date: June 11th

Metal Tornado has been knocking about on the Syfy Channel for some time now and is finally unleashed on DVD aimed, I can only assume, at an audience with absolutely nothing better to spend its money on. If Syfy excels at anything at all (and the jury’s still out on that one), then it’s on schlocky so-bad-it’s-good monster movies generally involving giant sharks and/or octopi. Certainly Syfy is rarely interested in making any actual… er… sci-fi, any speculative fiction with some merit or purpose. Metal Tornado, sadly, has even less to recommend it than your average Mega Shark or Crocosaurus… at best it’s an absolute crock of something else entirely.

“This is getting scary!!” gasps Nick (MacDonald), rebellious son of top scientist Michael Edwards (Phillips) whose experiments in harnessing solar flare power and storing it to provide a useful energy resource have gone a bit haywire. Frankly scary is absolutely the last thing it ever gets. It seems that 2% of the collected power has gone rogue, setting off on a frolic of its own in the form of a weakly-animated tornado which wobbles around the countryside attracted by a vein of underground iron ore, sucking up anything metal in its path. Shiver in fear as cabinets rattle! Shriek in terror as bits of metal fly about the place! Laugh like a drain as cars and caravans are whipped into the maelstrom courtesy of the miracle of bad CGI! Fight the urge to yawn as you realise that, actually, real tornados might be a bit scary if you’re in the path of one but this one, spinning around with random bits of metal caught in its eye, is about as terrifying (and interesting) as Lou Diamond Phillips’ eyebrows.

Metal Tornado is hellishly dull stuff. There’s nothing dramatic going on at all. Edwards’ naughty son does nothing worse than skip his father’s detention an hour early, there’s an invisibly-thin subplot about Edwards romancing his colleague Rebecca (de Boer) and the usual gubbins about Edwards’ boss trying to cover up the results of the experiment. Ultimately the metal tornado threatens to destroy some Hicksville town but Edwards stops it by firing missiles at it. Over in Europe a similar tornado is on the rampage but, as we’re sombrely told after Edwards does his stuff and Saves The Day in America, “Paris wasn’t so lucky.” Never mind, there’s always time for lots of smiles and a special celebratory dinner at the end of it all with not a thought for all those mangled Parisians.

Hapless and hopeless, Metal Tornado is about as dire as TV movies get. You’ll make no alloys if you choose to waste your time on this one, at the very least it’ll test your mettle and… (‘Alright, alright, we get the picture’ – Ed). Avoid. Ore else.

Special Features: Don’t be silly.

DVD Review: The Squad / Cert: 15 / Director: Jaim Osorio Marquez / Screenplay: Diego Vivanco / Starring: Juan David Restrepo, Andres Castaneda, Juan Pablo Barragan / Release Date: July 18th

The Squad (aka El Paramo) is a joint Columbian, Argentinian and Spanish horror production from first time director Osorio Marquez. It follows the eponymous group of elite commandos who are sent to investigate when all communication is lost with a remote military base. The base is set on Knife’s Peak, an isolated hilltop that is shrouded by fog, and the initial consensus is that guerrillas have managed to overrun the bunker.

Once the team arrive, things start to go wrong straight away with a member of their group becoming incapacitated by a mine. When they finally manage to get the power running again at the base, they find blood everywhere, but hardly any bodies. Investigating, they find the radios disabled and walls with prayers written on them, with chicken feet hanging from the ceilings. One of the team hears a knock from behind one of the walls and smashes it down, finding a lone woman bound behind it. They bring her out and try to ascertain what has occurred, but she is unresponsive.

The base log is found, which details what happened to the previous team and also states that the woman is a witch. She escapes and further revelations ramp up the tension until the squad degenerate into paranoia and claustrophobia. The chain of command collapses and the commandos start to turn on each other as their situation worsens by the moment when their backup that they are expecting shows no sign of arriving.

Considering this is by a debutante director, it is a smart horror piece. The first half is quite slow burn, but the second is a master-class in eking every last penny out of your location. Similar to John Carpenter’s The Thing, there is a real tangible sense of insanity befalling the soldiers as they try to discover if their predicament is down to the actions of the supposed witch, the guerrillas or their own imaginations. There are other nods to genre classics such as Alien and Predator, but they are more from tight camera angles and a creepy atmosphere. Don’t let the fact that the three films above have been mentioned make you think that this is an extra-terrestrial piece – far from it – but the issues of trust and friction that those films imbue are present here in abundance. Despite the gore quotient – which includes a pit of dead bodies and one nasty piece of bodily dismemberment – The Squad relies on psychological horror, and is all the better for it.

The soundtrack seems to amount to little more than a chorus of strings that literally scream tension, but this only works in the film’s favour. The cast are commendable and deliver some really good performances. Of course, the movie is presented in its original Spanish soundtrack with English subtitles, but we all know that can make for a very pleasant experience, and this is no different.

Special Features: None

Blu-ray Review: Mask Maker / Cert: 18 / Director: G. E. Furst / Screenplay: G. E. Furst / Starring: Nikki Deloach, Stephen Colletti, Terry Kiser, Michael Berryman, Treat Williams / Release Date: Out Now

Post-Cabin in the Woods any movie featuring a bunch of good-time American kids decamping to some rundown, middle-of-nowhere retreat for some weekend fun’n’frolics is going to have one Hell of a hard time being taken seriously. Joss Whedon and co have pretty much made that one a no-go area for a while until their deconstructive heat has died down a bit.

Retitled from the clumsy US Masquerade this retread of a thousand-and-one stalk and slashes, from Friday 13^th through Texas Chainsaw Massacre and most points in between, is pretty much by-the-numbers slice-and-dice horror and yet it’s done with enough style and conviction to keep the attention even as it merrily reheats horror clichés we’ve all seen too many times before.

Student Jennifer (Deloach) is none too pleased when her boyfriend Evan (Collette) blows all their savings on a battered and abandoned old plantation house for her birthday present. He manages to convince her that the house could, with work, be a decent investment so they invite a gang of friends to join them for a weekend of partying and light house renovation. Naturally enough a couple of creepy locals (Berryman, Williams) try to warn them off but what kind of movie would we get if the kids just packed up their stuff and went home? Sure enough the house’s history rises up to haunt them. Back in the 1960s a hideously-disfigured young boy watches as his own demented mother is killed and now he’s back from the grave to terrorize those who’ve invaded the family home. Before long he’s on the rampage with an axe, slicing off his victim’s faces and wearing them like death masks and Jennifer’s suspicions about the house aren’t enough to stop the bodies piling up.

Mask Maker is about as derivative as they come – there’s nothing hugely original here – but it’s watchable enough despite the fact we know we’ve seen all this before. The slayings are commendably bloody, the silent, relentless killer, whilst indistinguishable from silent, relentless killers in dozens of these cheap movies, is pretty formidable and whilst the twist ending (which is, literally, a twist) isn’t exactly a surprise it still manages to pack a bit of a punch. Furst directs his own script with bags of energy and commitment and there are several decent effective sequences where the killer chases and corners his victims before mercilessly mutilating them.

Hardly destined to join the ranks of the modern horror slasher classics, Mask Maker’s a competent effort and, as a budget release, it’s worth a look if you fancy a quick fix of grisly beheadings and disembowellings in a pleasant rural setting.

Special Features: None

Blu-ray Review: Chronicle / Cert: 12A / Director: Josh Trank / Screenplay: Max Landis / Starring: Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, Michael B. Jordan / Release Date: Out Now

This past winter, Chronicle made a fair old bit of a splash and propelled writer Max Landis and director Josh Trank into the big time. Rarely a week goes by without these two being linked to a new project. Now the dust has cleared after the initial hype and the film is out on home video we can view it and judge it against its merits. Thankfully Chronicle holds up wonderfully on repeat viewing thanks to strong performances and character work.

If you don’t know the story, allow me to recap for those who missed it first time around. Three teenagers from different backgrounds and social circumstances find something buried under the ground outside a party one night. They find that this mysterious something or other imbues them with telekinetic abilities at first and eventually their powers increase to allow them the ability of flight. This changes their lives completely but lonely, scarred Andrew (Dane DeHaan) takes things too far and his inner turmoil threatens everyone with its capacity for destruction.

Okay so Chronicle is a found footage movie, and truthfully it really does stretch the format to breaking point in its attempt to thrill you and also make sense. Thanks to Max Landis’ clever, intelligent and witty writing we begin the film as a diary of abuse filmed by Andrew as he shoots his sad, lonely life and the abuse he suffers at the hands of his drunken father. This not only sets the scene but also builds the character and gives the film a core of sadness that ensures we take it seriously. Then we change tack as the abilities come to the fore and they continue to document the events as they unfold. They keep the format thanks to the very abilities they are documenting as the cameras are controlled remotely by Andrew’s increasingly powerful telekinetic abilities. Come the explosive and surprising finale, you may think that it goes too far and events are not believable, as the camera becomes increasingly difficult to track in terms of where the footage is coming from. By this point though Andrew’s obsession with filming everything is very clear and as his rage consumes him he could be absentmindedly and psychically controlling things.

Apart from this unique use of the found footage format, the film is also good for what it doesn’t show you. Just enough information is withheld from the viewer to ensure maximum attention. The source of the powers that the trio of teens encounter is left fascinatingly unexplained leaving room for endless interpretation and of course a sequel. A complaint that I had to initial viewing is that the film was almost too short and really did feel slight, the extended edition Blu-ray includes roughly two or three minutes extra consisting mostly of extensions of scenes already in the film, so doesn’t exactly redress the balance but the additional material doesn’t feel tacked on which is a problem many of these ‘extended editions’ face.

Chronicle won’t change the super-hero genre forever but it is a sharp, thrilling shock of super-powered carnage that should be seen by fans and non-fans of fantasy cinema.

Special Features: Deleted Scene, Actors Camera Test, Theatrical Trailer, Pre-Visualisation of two scenes and Soundtrack Info.

DVD Review: Playback / Cert: 15 / Director: Michael A. Nickles / Screenplay: Michaek A. Nickles / Starring: Christian Slater, Toby Hemmingway, Johnny Pacar, Ambyr Childers / Release Date: July 16th

Wannabe film-maker Julian (Johnny Pacar) enlists his friends to film a reenactment of the town’s gruesome Harlan Diehl family murders for a school project. He asks social outcast Quinn (Toby Hemingway), an employee at the local news station, to assist with video equipment and research. During Quinn’s examination of raw video footage of the Diehl family farm, an evil spirit is unleashed with a menacing agenda. As Julian’s friends start disappearing, local police officer, Frank Lyons (Christian Slater), receives the order to investigate. As the secrets of the past are unveiled, the dark entity threatens to consume everyone in its way, using video as its evil medium.

Building on this intriguing premise writer-director Michael A. Nickles borrows liberally from past films that have used similar ‘haunted videotape’ themes. Think Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), Ring (1998) and Jeff (Squirm) Lieberman’s obscure 1988 alien mind-control flick Remote Control, and you have some idea of where Mickles is coming from.

In Playback the evil entity uses video technology as a way of possessing its victims and controlling them into doing its bidding, becoming stronger with each ‘generation’ of transfer. Intriguingly, Nickles provides a backstory for the entity that sees it first using early cinema for its nefarious ends: the idea held by many in the first days of photography that the film image somehow captures the soul or provides a form of immortality. As the decades go on and film becomes videotape and then digital media, the entity grows stronger as video imagery becomes more prevalent. In the modern world of iPhones and video emails, there is no escaping the evil influence if it wants to get you! A comment on the insidious effects of social networking and voyeurism in the digital age? Maybe.

Voyeurism certainly plays a big part of the film. Christian Slater (whose talents are woefully underused here) plays a cop-with-a-crush who enjoys watching covert footage of high school girls provided by Quinn. The film opens with an extended Halloween-type POV shot of a murder scene filmed by the killer. These tapes later provide the clue to the motives of the evil entity and a plot twist involving the protagonist, Julian. The film also pulls a few ‘real or filmed’ tricks on the viewer, making us wonder if what we are seeing is really happening or just a scene in Julian’s documentary.

So, Playback has some interesting ideas and develops them well. The trouble is it lacks the cold fear and suspense of Ring because Nickles gives away the plot too soon. Instead it soon becomes a more run-of-the-mill slasher as Quinn sets out to retrieve the original Diehl tapes, killing everyone in his way.

Shame, as Playback could have been so much more gripping.

Special Features: None

 

DVD Review: Alien Infiltration / Cert: 15 / Director: Colin Theys / Screenplay: John Doolan / Starring: Lindsay Jeremy London, Roddy Piper, Cuyle Carvin, Adrienne LaValley / Release Date: Out Now

Some B-movies effortlessly achieve instant cult movie status, others try hard to achieve it but never really succeed. Alien Infiltration (AKA Alien Opponent) has all the ingredients of a B-movie classic: space ships landing behind barns, drunken rednecks with shot guns, kung-fu babes and even a kick-ass preacher. It has all the right moves, and is enjoyable enough but I doubt it will set the B-movie world alight.

The plot is pure Troma-type silliness. Rita, the owner of a small-town junkyard offers 100 grand in cash to whoever can kill the space-suited alien whose spaceship has crashed on her property. Every wacko within 100 miles turns out and before long the junkyard is transformed into a war zone of Man vs. Machine vs. Alien.

Right away we know we are in Robot Monster (1953) territory but Alien Infiltration is neither bad enough to be so-bad-it’s-good or camp enough to be another Big Meat Eater (1982) or Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988). Instead what we do get is a mindless but fun 92 minutes that is enjoyable enough without being that memorable, an affectionate nod to the classic B-movie if maybe not a classic in itself.

26 year old director Colin Theys (who also handled the cinematography, editing and visual effects) does a fantastic technical job on what is obviously a small budget. Alien Infiltration looks great, and zips along at a fair pace. It’s made with love, and Theys is one to watch. John Doolan’s script is a bit thin – and has a habit of setting up characters only to kill them off prematurely – but there are plenty of gory stand-offs between the alien (and its robot slave) and the humans to provide a few laughs along the way. Nice also to see the women get to shoot some guns and kick some ass.

Good also to see Roddy Piper (he of the Carpenter classic They Live) again, playing the aforementioned kick ass preacher. His scenes are the best in the movie and it’s a shame he’s not given more (although he does get to rise from the dead).

All in all Alien Infiltration has energy, good performances, blood, gags and junk yard aliens. It’s better than average, but keep your expectations low if you don’t want to be disappointed.

Special Features: None

Review: Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea – The Complete Collection / Cert: PG /Director: Various / Teleplay: Various / Starring: Richard Basehart, David Hedison / Release Date: Out Now

110 episodes, 31 DVDs. That takes some serious Irwin Allen kahunas. Lost in Space may remain the best-remembered of Irwin Allen’s cheesy, cheerful, high concept SF TV shows from the 1960s and yet Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea – at four full seasons – was the longest-running. Previously released in individual box sets the whole lot have now been bundled together, similar to the recent reissue of Land of the Giants with the added bonus of a colourful and informative souvenir booklet.

Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea, famously spun-off from the early 1960s feature film starring Walter Pidgeon and Robert Stirling (and generating a wealth of props and FX sequences which the subsequent series could and would merrily recycle), arrived in the 1964-5 US TV season. Although its pilot was filmed in colour (and is presented as a special feature in the boxset) the first season of 32 episodes was filmed in black-and-white. Typically for an Irwin Allen series what started out as a fairly straight adventure series, reflecting contemporary concerns like the Cold War and with espionage and political intrigue in imaginary far-away foreign countries to the fore, slowly deteriorated into lurid sci-fi monster of the week stories full of mad scientists and outlandish aliens. As early as episode two (episodes are presented in US broadcast order), ‘The Village of Guilt’, the frankly-awesome supersub Seaview is tangling with a giant octopus, the creation of a crazed scientist whose experiments in organic growth as a means to end world hunger have gone a  bit awry. In truth the whole episode’s a bit of an excuse to reuse footage from the feature film and in later episodes Allen had no qualms about regurgitating action from his own earlier films to spice up Voyage yarns. More than once in the show’s run the Seaview crew found themselves in a long-forgotten land where dinosaurs and prehistoric monsters prevailed – allowing Allen the chance to crowbar in footage from his 1958 reworking of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (which also starred Hedison and thus allowed even more footage to be reused).

Season two – in colour! – sees a few changes amongst the supporting cast and some minor modifications to the Seaview herself as well as the introduction of the iconic Flying Sub, a detachable craft which, memorably, was often seen emerging from the Seaview and soaring above the ocean. Season two sets out its stall in the opening episode ‘Jonah and the Whale’ which Basehart’s Admiral Nelson and a visiting Russian female boffin are swallowed by… you guessed it… a giant whale. Elsewhere there are any number of giant jellyfish, ghosts and even an episode entitled ‘Monster From Outer Space’ which is about as self-explanatory as it’s possible to imagine. The show hadn’t quite lost touch with its spy/thriller roots though as ‘Escape From Venice’ is a lively pseudo-James Bond romp with Hedison’s Commander Crane in tuxedo and playing the dashing romantic lead.

By season three the show had become irredeemably silly – and yet still monstrously enjoyable. Shamelessly borrowing sets and costumes from his other sci-fi shows (Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel were airing at more or less the same time) season three saw the Seaview stalwarts turned into werewolves, episodes featuring more and more outlandish aliens, mermaids, mummies and giant lizards. Season four merrily dispenses with any last vestiges of credibility as stories become ever more ridiculous with appearances from Blackbeard, the Abominable Snowman, the Flying Dutchman and yet more aliens. Still successful by the end of its fourth year, a fifth series remained a real possibility but Allen chose to move on to his next – and best – project and the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea came to end, replaced by the more expensive and lavish Land of the Giants.

Voyage is very much a product of its time with its simplistic, sensationalist storylines, utter lack of regard for real science and characters who were pretty much cyphers throughout the four-year run. But even now, nearly fifty years on, the show still looks wonderfully vibrant and colourful and its storytelling is always inventive. Sci-fi has moved on a bit since Irwin Allen merrily churned out his shows for a fairly undemanding audience and whilst today’s tastes may be somewhat more sophisticated there’s still much to enjoy and even cherish in the bright, breezy, voyages of the Seaview and her trusty crew. Great nostalgic fun. 

Extras: The original pilot episode, multi-part David Hedison interview, raw footage, audio interviews, bloopers, stills galleries.

DVD Review: Mystery Science Theatre 3000 – The Movie / Cert: PG / Director: Jim Malllon / Screenplay: Michael J. Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy / Starring:  Trace Beaulieu, Jim Mallon, Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, John Brady / Release Date: Out Now

For the uninitiated, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 was a TV show that ran from 1988 to 1999, plunging hapless astronaut, Mike (Nelson) and his wise-cracking robot buddies into B-movie hell at the hands of the evil Dr Clayton Forrester (Beaulieu). On a weekly basis, the mad scientist doctor would force Mike and the robots to watch the worst science fiction movies ever made, in an effort to mentally ‘break’ them. Unfortunately for him, it never worked as the captive crew just used the screenings to yuk it up.

With the movie playing on a giant screen in front of them, as a viewer ourselves, we simply see the silhouettes of Mike and his pals, Crow, Gypsy and Tom Servo reacting to what’s happening. Inevitably, their interpretation of the film and its original narrative have very little in common. An overpowering score can suddenly become an additional character in the movie, or an over-excited lab assistant a crazed stalker. The list is endless.

And so we come to this, a movie that arrived three years before the show finally bowed out, and this time subjected the hapless inhabitants of the orbiting space station to 1955’s cheesefest This Island Earth. This being an attempt at a theatrical film, it also throws in some vague plot points including Tom accidentally mining through the hull of the ship in an attempt to tunnel to Earth and the crew booting up their own Interocitor to contact the inhabitants of Metaluna. But thankfully, the rest of the movie stays on brand as the crew laugh their way through the movie, pumping out one-liners and driving their insidious tormentor insane in the process.

Okay, so effectively the creators of the show have captured here what we all do with friends over a couple of beers and a pizza after a night out. But then that’s what has always made this concept so accessible and the perfect format for those who love old movies or taking the mick out of them. There is a ‘but’ however. Bizarrely, this movie is actually shorter (at 74 minutes) than the series episodes (which ran to 91) and as a result this just feels as if there’s something missing. The mini plot points squeezed in between don’t help. And while This Island Earth is certainly ripe for mockery, it doesn’t give the crew as much material to bend the narrative as other examples in the TV show’s 10-season history.

What there is though, is great. Featuring hilarious internal monologues, film references, impressions (Shatner’s Kirk being a favourite) and observations that blow apart the already thinly glued plot, this might not live up to the show’s reputation, but it is nevertheless an enjoyable watch with some real laugh-out-loud moments.

Special Features: A disappointingly thin selection for a franchise with such a rich history. A five-minute Featurette speeds through the premise and concept of the film, with interviews and behind the scenes shots thrown in among clips of the trailer and movie.The Trailer is also here in its own right, along with some stills (which include press material and, bizarrely, screen shots from the film), all accessible via a fun little animated menu.