DVD Review: Journey 2 – The Mysterious Island / Cert: PG / Director:Brad Peyton  / Screenplay: Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn / Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Josh Hutcherson, Michael Caine, Vanessa Hudgens, Luis Guzman / Release Date: May 28th

In all honesty I can’t remember a great deal about the 2008 3D “remake” of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre the Earth beyond the fact that it was as much a “remake” as my shoes are a remake of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. I can sort of recall Brendan Fraser spewing mouthwash all over me in 3D and maybe a dinosaur or two. But then it was a kid’s film – a big, loud, silly kid’s film – and I’m sure kids would have found much to enjoy in its goofball slapstick and light adventure storyline. So here’s the inevitable sequel, again riffing off a Verne original pretty much in name only – and I’ve  a feeling that, when the next sequel rocks up in two or three years time, all I’ll be able to remember will be the scenes of smiley Dwayne Johnson bouncing berries off his impressive man-boobs.

So what do you get for your ninety-odd minutes of fun and frolics? It’s a few years since young Sean Anderson (Hutcherson) returned from his – ahem – journey to the centre of the earth with his uncle. Sean is now seventeen, his uncle has buggered off somewhere (he barely gets a mention) and Sean’s Mom is married to big, hunky, smiley Hank (Johnson – The Rock!) – and they just don’t get on. Like all American teenagers, Sean is obsessed with the works of Jules Verne (Are you sure about this? – Ed) and eventually, reluctantly accepting his smiley Stepdad’s help, he manages to track down the location of the “mysterious island” where he believes his explorer Granddad has gone missing. In the most mind-blowing example of family bonding in recent cinema history, Hank agrees to take Sean off to Indonesia where they charter a helicopter from a comic relief character – and, sure enough, his foxy teenage daughter Kailani  who really wants to go to college in America. The helicopter is soon caught up in a storm and crashes on… the mysterious island.

It doesn’t require a huge leap of imagination to work out exactly what happens next. After an encounter with tiny elephants (actually, I expect you wouldn’t have necessarily imagined that), the group wander into a field of lizard eggs, get chased by an angry mother-lizard and rescued by – ta dah! – Sean’s missing Grandad. This is Michael Caine and boy, is he doing this for the money. He’s in best ‘charming old buffer’ mode here, cackling hysterically and constantly trading insults with Hank to whom he takes an immediate disliking. PG-rated abuse abounds: Hank is “Mary Poppins”, Granddad is “Sasquatch” (he’s grown a big beard). Before long the group set off to find their way home – Grandad knows the whereabouts of Captain Nemo’s submarine the Nautilius which is lying around somewhere – but when the local volcano starts spewing gold Hank, who’s suddenly an expert seismologist, realises that the island is about to explode and sink! Much mild peril ensues as the group ride on the backs of giant bees and get attacked by giant birds.

Journey 2 is a brisk and likable little kid’s film which nods towards any adults in the audience only occasionally  – the camera lingers over Vanessa Hudgens a little too longingly once or twice and, like most kid’s films, there’s plenty of scatalogical humour and physical silliness to pass the time. Dwayne Johnson flashes his pearl-white teeth for virtually the entire movie – when he’s not imploring Sean to “pop your pecs” to impress Kailani or singing a reworded version of ‘What a Wonderful World’ which will make your toes curl. But the effects are great, there’s never a dull moment even if there’s never much of a sense of real danger and, of course, at the very end the scene is set for the next Verne-inspired romp. Looks like Sean and co are headed “From the Earth to the Moon” next time around. That’s okay. There are worse kid’s film franchises out there. This is decent, competent stuff, fun for all the family.

Special Features: Short gag reel, two or three deleted scenes (one of which you’ll want to show your kids if they’re worried about what happens to all the animals if the island sinks).

 

DVD Review: In The Name Of The King 2: Two Worlds / Cert: 15 / Director: Uwe Boll / Screenplay: Michael Nachoff / Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Lochlyn Munro, Natassia Malthe / Release Date: May 21st

It’s so fashionable and easy to slate an Uwe Boll film, his make-‘em-cheap, stack-‘em-high production mantra has produced some of the most turgid filmic offerings of recent cinema. However, it also seems that the German director, producer and general Jack of all trades has started to learn from his mistakes.

His original output of video game adaptions were lowest common denominator movie making, but recently, Boll has begun to create some more thought provoking films like Darfur and Auschwitz alongside his more audience friendly productions.

Here we’re given a sequel to the 2007 Jason Statham starring In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Is it a necessary sequel? Is it one that was demanded? Probably not, but as Boll has said himself, there is always room for no brainer movies that are just there for entertainment purposes. But this is the issue with Two Worlds. Although it’s not the worst fantasy film ever made, it’s certainly not the best either.

We are given Dolph Lundgren as our new hero, Granger – a retired Special Forces soldier who is sucked through a portal to the past to fulfil a prophecy. A plot involving a King, a coup and an ancient evil is not particularly original, but they do the trick enough to keep the story rolling along.

The biggest issue here is that the tone that the film has gone for is completely wrong. With Dolph Lundgren as the hero, there was a real chance of a fish out of water tale with lots of misunderstandings and opportunities for comedy, taking Army of Darkness as an influence. Instead, apart from a couple of moments and one-liners, the film is mostly serious and this is a mistake. The fight scenes are laboured – after all Lundgren is no spring chicken anymore – and the book-ended modern day scenes seem abrasive compared to the Medieval moments in between. There also seems to be some issues of possible mis-casting and a forced sub-plot about a “coup-de-tat involving biological warfare”. It’s a definite improvement on Boll’s earlier output, but then that’s not saying a lot.

Boll, is right, this is a no brainer – but not in a good way.

Oh well, at least there’s a dragon!

Review: Space – Above and Beyond  / Director: Various / Screenplay: Dan O’Bannon / Starring: Morgan Weisser, Kristen Cloke, Rodney Rowland, Joel de la Fuente, Lanei Chapman, James Morrison / Release Date: Out Now

Finally, after years of waiting, the UK gets its long awaited DVD release of Space: Above and Beyond, and it has to be said – the wait has been worthwhile.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, it’s similar in concept to the 1997 feature Starship Troopers, but precedes it by two years. Coming from a fine creative pedigree, the minds and talents of X-Files scribes Glen Morgan and James Wong, this series was sadly short lived, lasting only one of its projected five seasons. Set in 2063, when a previously unknown alien race, known disparagingly as the “Chigs” have wiped out Earth’s first extra solar colony without warning.

The humans are using a form of wormhole technology to travel these vast distances, whilst the Chigs have something broadly similar but which gives them a greater degree of movement.

The series of 23 episodes follows the Space Aviator Cavalry of the United States Marine Corps nicknamed The Wildcards based on the space carrier Saratoga – as they graduate through their training in the pilot episode, which is a kind of a Full Metal Jacket (complete with R. Lee Ermey) with hostile aliens and dogfights, and then go on a tour of duty, battling the Chigs on the front line.

It’s stunning how well the series has aged since it’s original run on Sky One in the mid nineties. The effects were ahead of their time back then, and for the most part, still hold up well today. In fact, I’d say that the later reboot of Battlestar Galactica is a direct descendant of Space: Above and Beyond, perhaps the next generation, as it were, but without the religious imagery and metaphors that weighed BSG down in its later seasons.

As well as the 24 episodes, which include the double length pilot episode which sets up the episodes to follow, this six disc set contains an all new documentary on the design of the show, with several of the episodes featuring an optional commentary track. Also of interest are the original publicity interviews of the cast, deleted and alternate scenes and for the completest, never before seen test FX footage of the Hammerhead fighter craft used by the Wildcards.

For those of you not fully convinced, there is a separate package available containing only the original pilot film and a commentary track, but believe me – as soon as you see the pilot, you will be back for more.

All in all this is the complete package the long standing fans have been waiting patiently for and one which will hopefully gain some new and appreciative viewers for this sadly under rated gem.

Special Features: Beyond and Back, Designs for a Future War, Audio Commentaries, Deleted/Alternate Scenes, Cast Publicity Interview, TV Spots, Stills Gallery

Review: The Return of the Living Dead / Director: Dan O’Bannon / Screenplay: Dan O’Bannon / Starring: Clu Gulacher, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Matthews, Linnea Quigley, Brian Peck, Jewell Shepard / Release Date: June 4th

Forget the recent rash of cheapo zombie flicks that have flooded our shores of late, Dan O’Bannon’s cult splatterfest The Return of the Living Dead is one of the definitive zombie movies. And it is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray in a Special Edition that is jammed with extras (five hours’ worth!) including, I am happy to confirm, the much anticipated reinstatement of the original 1985 soundtrack.

It was way back in 1982 Starburst first reported on the controversy surrounding the planned movie adaptation of John Russo’s novel Return of the Living Dead, his sequel to Night of the Living Dead (1968) (which he co-wrote with George A. Romero). Legal wrangling between Russo and Romero over the Living Dead title stalled the project for years. Originally producer Tom Fox had called in screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Dead and Buried) to polish the script and Tobe Hooper to direct it in 3D. After Hooper eventually jumped ship to helm Lifeforce (which O’Bannon also scripted) O’Bannon was offered the job of directing and the rest is living dead history.

Completely re-writing Russo’s script in order to distance Return of the Living Dead from Romero’s sequels, O’Bannon created one of the greatest ‘splatstick’ comedy-horror films of all time.

James Karen and Thom Matthews play a pair of blundering medical supplies warehouse workers Frank and Freddy, who unwittingly set off a US military chemical that bring the dead back to life (O’Bannen asserts, cheekily, that a similar chemical spill in 1968 was the basis of the ‘true’ story behind Night of the Living Dead). Taking shelter in the nearby crematorium, along with a band of punks (including legendary scream queen Linnea Quigley as a sexy punk-zombie), Frank and Freddy try to fight off the zombie hordes, unaware that they have set off a chain of events that could lead to the end of civilisation.

From Frank and Freddy’s comedy-duo attempts to deal with the initial spill of ‘Trioxin’, to Linnea Quigley’s graveyard striptease dance, to the appearance of ‘Tar Man’, to the final zombie apocalypse, for its entire 91 minutes, Return of the Living Dead cracks along at a wicked pace. O’Bannon packs the film full of classic one-liners (“send more paramedics”) and the performances are hilarious all round. If I had to make one minor criticism of the movie, it would be that the ending seems a little rushed. But, hey, along with Re-Animator and The Fly, Return of the Living Dead remains one of the classic horror movies of the 1980s.

As part of the package distributor Second Sight are including the brilliant making of, More Brains! – a definitive two-hour documentary featuring interviews with the cast, writers and producers (including special effects artist Bill Munns who was hired two weeks into filming).

All in all, The Return of the Living Dead Special Edition is an essential purchase for any ROTLD fan. According to Scuz (Brian Peck) himself in our upcoming interview (see Issue 377, available May 18th!): “you guys in the UK are getting this great DVD that we don’t even have here in the States! We have it all in separate versions but you have to buy, like, three DVDs to get all the stuff that’s on the set that’s being released over there”.

Return of the Living Dead Special Edition has more thrills! More extras! More BRAINS!

Extras:

Contains Original Soundtrack (Dolby Digital 2.0/PCM 2.0) and 2 Remixed Soundtrack Options (Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0/DTS 5.1 Digital Surround & PCM2.0) * More Brains! A Return To The Living Dead: 2 hour documentary featuring interviews with cast, writers, producers and many more, as well as previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage, storyboards, conceptual art, publicity materials and archival documents * A conversation with Dan O’Bannon: The Final Interview * The Won’t Stay Dead: A Look at Return of The Living Dead Part 2 * Love Beyond The Grave: A Look at Return of The Living Dead 3 * Stacey Q Live: Exclusive ‘Tonight’ music video * Even More Brains: Deleted documentary interviews * Return of The Living Dead in 3 minutes * Resurrected Settings: The Filming Locations Today * The Origins Of Return Of The Living Dead: with John A. Russo * The FX of the living dead: with production designer William Stout and FX make-up artists William Munns and Tony Gardner * PARTY TIME with music consultant Steve Pross and 45 Grave singer Dinah Cancer * Exclusive to Blu Ray Steelbook – ‘Ernie’s Notepad – 20 page replica notebook by embalmer Ernie Kaltenbrunner, featuring production otes, carting information and exclusive artwork.

DVD Review: Yatterman / Director: Takashi Miike / Screenplay: Tatsuo Yoshida, Masashi Sogo / Starring: Sho Sakurai, Sadao Abe, Kyoko Fulade, Kendo Kobayashi, Kutsuhisa Namase / Release Date: May 21st

I’ve seen it but I sure as Hell don’t believe it. It appears, entirely unbeknownst to me, that Yatterman was a hugely-successful Japanese anime series which ran for 108 episodes between January 1977 and January 1979 and was remade in 2008 before hitting the Big Screen – and how – in Japan in the form of this 2009 feature, directed by Takashi Miike (previously best-known for extreme violence flicks such as Ichi the Killer). Yatterman gets a belated UK DVD/Blu-ray release this month where this very particular brand of Japanese entertainment is likely to find an appreciative audience amongst those up to speed with this sort of stuff. Me, well as an anime virgin I was left baffled and slack-jawed… but also curiously entertained.

I’m sort of aware that Japanese movies very often don’t obey the normal laws of story-telling and rationality. They’re all about colour, spectacle, insane, gravity-defying action and are often set in some fantasy-world just to the left of our own. Anime, in particular, tends to deal with some very adult themes and situations and Yatterman, it seems, very often skirted close to controversy in its anime days as adults were uncomfortable with the amount of slapstick and crude innuendo in an entertainment aimed at the very young. It seems that Miike decided that his live-action reboot of the franchise should accentuate the suggestive which leaves us with a film which, with its bright, primary colours, excruciating musical interludes and daft robots and impossible action sequences, seems oddly sullied by its fixations with nudity, breaking wind and villains who, I kid you not, at one point employ something called a Titty Machine Gun in their battle against the heroes.

Gan is the only son of the owner of the Takada Toy Shop in Tokyoyo (not a misprint, move on) and he and his friend Ai both become ‘Yatterman’, a superhero conglomeration which, along with their giant robot dog Yatterwoof, fight the incompetent but persistent Doronbow gang led by the sexy Lady Doronjo whose schemes are frequently scuppered by the idiocy of her wacky pig-faced henchmen Boyacki and Tonzra. ‘Yatterman’ springs into action when the daughter of a missing explorer brings them one of the pieces of the mysterious, magical Skull Stone which, when assembled, will give its owner ultimate power. The mysterious (and frankly irritating) Skullobey sets the Doronbow gang on the trail of the missing pieces and the gang travel the world with Yatterman in hot pursuit in a race against Time for the possession of the Skull Stone.

I’ve never seen anything quite like this in my life. Even accepting that it’s aimed at kids, this is extraordinary stuff full of outlandish action set pieces which make little or no sense, extraordinary gadgets and special effects and a script that has no truck with narrative and just dumps its characters in one ridiculous situation after another with little in the way of rhyme or reason. And yet despite all this it’s oddly hypnotic and maddeningly enjoyable. Yatterman is like one big sugar rush, dazzling with its palette of garish, primary colours, an overload of insane ideas and nonsensical action which is impossible to resist. Yatterman travels across the world on the back of their robot dog, the Doronbow Gang break into spontaneous song-and-dance routines after scamming the public so they can make enough money to build their own outrageous robot travelling machine and ludicrous weapons with which to attack Yatterman. In the middle of it all there’s a love triangle as Lady D falls in love with Gan despite Ai’s affections and, unless I’m very much mistaken, one of Lady D’s giant robots orgasms itself to death.

Yatterman is so blazingly colourful and inventive it’s really hard to look away and you’ll find yourself compelled to stick with it even when you know you really shouldn’t. But part of the fun is just finding out where on Earth it’s going next and what new implausible, impossible tricks it’s got left up its sleeves. I’m not quite sure I’d recommend Yatterman to those of a nervous or sensitive disposition and I’m really not sure it’s for very young kids; but if you’re an anime fan this is very probably tame bread and butter to you and you’ll likely find the combination of over-the-top characters and outlandish storytelling absolutely right up your street. Me, I just found it very, very odd…

Special Features: Japanese teaser trailer, features, interviews, stills, Cannes promo.

DVD Review: 666 – The Prophecy / Director: Darren Lynn Bousman / Screenplay: Darren Lynn Bousman / Starring: Timothy Gibbs, Michael Landes, Brenden Price / Release Date: Out Now

Successful novelist Joseph Crone (Timothy Gibbs) flees to his family home in Spain after a series of very unfortunate events take their toll on his atheist soul. First his wife and son are killed in a fire started by a deranged fan, then he crashes his car and winds up in hospital. He begins to suspect some sort of supernatural conspiracy when he discovers that these cataclysms occurred at exactly 11:11. With the palindromic date 11/11/11 rapidly approaching in the calendar, Joseph begins to suspect that something terrible his way comes. And there most people were busy worrying about the Mayan 2012 thing.

Crone is the very worst kind of atheist. He’s smug and aggressive, constantly criticising others’ faith and saying things like “I resent what you represent” even when they’re being nice to him. At his worst when bickering with his wheelchair bound pastoral brother, he’s a thoroughly unsympathetic character. “You know how I never believed in God or fate or purpose?” Crone says, explaining his theories to a friend. It’s a funny thing to have him ask, considering that his lack of faith is practically all he ever talks about. He could give Richard Dawkins a run for his money. And judging by the reading Crone gives early in the film, he’s a pretty terrible novelist too; all “woe is me” and “life sucks”. Even the family maid tells him that she hates his books. Blame Stephen King, but these days the novelist as a horror protagonist is very cliché. Which is fine, because 666: The Prophecy is a cliché itself. As Joseph becomes obsessed with the repetition of the number eleven, the film feels reminiscent of the Jim Carrey/Joel Schumacher collaboration The Number 23 and Nicolas Cage’s Numbers. Apparently the aligning elevens will open a Hellmouth, the results of which could be catastrophic for Crone and all mankind.

Darren Lynn Bousman’s psychological religious thriller was originally released theatrically on November 11, 2011 under the title of 11-11-11. Unimaginatively retitled with a different number (now making it sound like an Omen rip-off), 666: The Prophecy is quite literally past its sell by date. As date inspired horror movies go, Bousman’s own Mother’s Day remake was much better. It’s more atmospheric than most PG-13 rated horror films, but has no substance to back up the mood and gloom. The Spanish locales and dusty bookshops make for interesting settings, but when the central mysteries are as dull as they are, the film might as well just have had Crone sitting alone in a dark room Googling his paranoia. The action and scare scenes attempt to channel The Omen by way of Insidious, but the threat isn’t well defined enough to be of any consequence. The story is wrapped up amongst a finale that’s too dark to make out what’s happening and a silly twist (replete with Saw style flashbacks that last too long). The Prophecy is by no means a terrible film, but it is dull and instantly forgettable. Either Bousman chose the wrong outlet for his talents here or it would appear that he isn’t very good at telling a story without lashings of blood to rely upon.

666: The Prophecy is by-the-numbers horror. Maybe it will play better in another hundred years’ time.

Special Features:  None

DVD Review: Re-Cycle / Director: The Pang Brothers / Screenplay: The Pang Brothers / Starring: Angelica Lee, Pou-Soi Cheang, Erin Cheng / Release Date: Out Now 

The Pang Brothers have directed some interesting films in their career so far and are often more miss than hit apart from the occasional gem like The Eye or Bangkok Dangerous (the original). Looking at their filmography some of their titles are kind of obscure with many not even getting an international release, which is why Re-Cycle has suddenly appeared on DVD despite being released in the east in 2006.

The start of the film is very familiar, Ting-Yin (Angelica Lee) is haunted by the success of a trilogy of million selling romance novels she wrote and is struggling to come up with a follow up. A strange ghostly figure with long dark hair starts hanging around her apartment and she gets weird freaky phone calls. Just as you start to lose interest and think this is another in a tired series of similar films, things get weirder as she follows a ghostly grandma down a lift and into an alternate dimension full of abandoned ideas who take the form of ghosts and gigantic children’s toys. Ting-Yin meets up with a lost little girl who may hold the key to escape and inspiration for her new novel.

Re-Cycle is an incredibly frustrating film. It has the brilliant visuals you have come to expect from the Pang Brothers and has lush visually stunning sequences that rival the imagination landscapes seen recently in The Lovely Bones and Sucker Punch. It’s also pretty damn creepy with some really effective set pieces. Once you get past the familiarity of a dead long haired Asian ghost then you get some scenes involving a cave of screaming aborted foetuses and some zombies who have been hanged with stretched necks lurching towards our heroine. Its effective stuff and it’s nice to look at, but what does it all mean?

The trouble is not an awful lot. You go through many a finely realised sequence to realise that essentially what you have is a story about a woman who was too up her own ass to realise she had a wonderful life a few years back. There is what seems like twenty minutes of tearful scenes that left me scratching my head. It could have told you that in ten minutes, and maybe included a few magic tricks to stimulate your eyeballs.

The lower budget of the film is also an issue, as the ambition on display exceeds the effects budget so some sequences don’t stand up. It seems like a major loss as with a tighter script and an effects budget to match the Pang’s ambition this could have been cracking. As it stands Re-Cycle is a moderately diverting curiosity that’s still better than most of Hollywood’s fantasy output.

Extras: None

DVD Review: Strippers vs. Werewolves (15) / Director: Jonathan Glendening / Screenplay: Pat Higgins, Phillip Barron / Starring: Robert Englund, Steven Berkoff, Billy Murray, Lysette Anthony / Release Date: May 7th

Strippers vs. Werewolves starts off bad, trails off in the middle, and the less said about the end, the better.

What a bitter disappointment. This is a film that has squandered every opportunity it had to shine. It’s a lamentable take on horror and a monumental step in the wrong direction for the genre as a whole. If a review could be summarised in two words, it would be: Don’t Bother.

The story follows the untimely demise of werewolf Mickey (Martin Kemp) in the strip club Vixens owned by Jeanette, Sarah Douglas of Superman fame. His pack, led by Ferris (Billy Murry), a hard, cruel gangster type, seeks revenge. But these aren’t any ordinary run of the mill strippers the werewolves are up against. These gals can fight as well as strip, and the stage is set for a bloody, titanic showdown.

Strippers vs. Werewolves makes no secret of its tongue in cheek approach. It’s a send up of the genre, a tribute to all those wobbly set horrors of our youths. Or rather it should have been. But it falls short of the mark; in fact misses the mark completely. The script simply doesn’t deliver. There’s no substance to work with, no memorable dialogue, no interesting characters. In fact, the characters portrayed are for the most part heavily clichéd and uninspired. The press release refers to an adult with learning disabilities as a masturbating man-child. Also adding to the general woefulness is the almost complete lack of budget, we can only assume it must have been spent on the actors. There’s not a lot of cash here, and it really shows, but that’s not reason enough to produce one of the worst films of all time.

Dog Soldiers had a meagre budget and produced a strong Werewolf film. They couldn’t afford the transformation scenes so became creative in their approach. A few years back we were treated to Colin, a zombie flick with a heart, all for the meagre sum of £45 and a packet of biscuits. Colin proved you don’t need money to tell a good story. And here we come to the heart of the matter. The story sucks. The writing is so bad it would make an episode of Dora the Explorer positively shine. Amazing really when it actually has good actors stepping up for various roles: Billy Murry from EastEnders, Martin Kemp in a short-lived cameo, Alan Ford as a barman (sadly underused and lost in what are mostly filler scenes), Lysette Anthony – from Corrie – and worse of all, Robert Englund. How the mighty have fallen. In fairness to Mr Englund, his one scene is performed with sufficient menace, almost as if the writers pulled their collective finger out when they decided to bag a film star, but true to form once his one scene is out of the way they fall back on their laurels and serve yet another double helping of bland.

The film truly flounders, scenes fail to move the story on in any meaningful way, actors do the best they can, but it’s simply not enough. Stripers vs. Werewolves shies away from gore when it should embrace it. The strippers don’t actually do that much stripping. And it fails to engage on almost every level. So congratulations to Strippers vs. Werewolves, they have successfully achieved:

Blu-ray Review: The House By The Cemetery / Director: Lucio Fulci / Screenplay: Lucio Fulci / Starring: Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni / Release Date: May 21st

As his best, Italian maestro Lucio Fulci brought a disturbing, flyblown fleshiness to the horror genre. Watching him, you can practically smell those zombies rotting in the heat, and feel the clamminess of the sepulcher on your skin. But he also had a penchant for dreamy symbolism and portents of another world beyond the veil. The House by the Cemetery (1981) has too much of the second and not enough of the first to rank among his finest work, but it is still, like most of his oeuvre, bizarrely memorable.

Upon the mysterious death of an academic named Peterson, Norman and Lucy Boyle (Paolo Malco and Catriona MacColl) move to a small New England town where the husband, another academic, intends to continue the dead man’s investigations into suicide. They settle into a creepy old house (“Most of the old houses around here have tombs in them,” Norman says reassuringly when Lucy uncovers a dusty crypt in the hallway,) but are soon being victimized by a strange presence in the basement. Norman and Lucy’s son Bob, meanwhile, receives dire warnings from a mysterious red-haired girl in Victorian costume.

Shades of The Shining and The Amityville Horror, but Fulci makes rather a botched job of what is supposed to be a slow-burning tale of mounting tension. The script scatters loose ends and red herrings like a dog shedding fur – why is Norman so shifty-eyed? Why is Lucy popping pills? Is there something going on between Norman and the babysitter, Ann? And has he really been to the town before, as everyone seems to think? The dramatic set-pieces falter thanks to a certain haziness (the basement door has a habit of slamming and then creaking open again for no very good reason other than Fulci’s whim,) while Norman and Lucy react to each new crisis with a dreamlike torpor which will have you longing to take a knife to them yourselves.

Fulci fanatics will dignify all this with the claim that everything is deeply symbolic and not to be taken at face value – the basement is a gateway to Hell and the Boyles, perhaps, souls in purgatory. But sceptics will feel that Fulci simply lacked the self-discipline to orchestrate plausible chills in a minor key. (To be fair, this movie’s immediate predecessor, The Beyond, blurs dream and reality rather more successfully, as well as serving up dollops of soupy gore.) Luckily, the director gets back to what he does best with a Grand Guignol finale boasting enough body parts for half a dozen Frankenstein’s monsters. This exemplary release from Arrow Video offers a fine transfer and hours of extras to chew over.

Extras:

Reversible artwork sleeve / Double-sided fold-out artwork poster / Collector’s booklet / New HD restoration from the original uncut negative / Commentary with Catriona MacColl, moderated by Calum Waddell / Commentary with co-star Silvia Collatina, moderated by Mike Baronas of Paura Productions / Introduction to the film by star Giovanni Frezza / Back to the Cellar: Interview with star Giovanni Frezza / Cemetery Woman: Interview with star Catriona MacColl / Freudstein’s Follies: Interview with special effects artist Giannetto De Rossi / Wax Mask Finishing the Final Fulci: Interview with Sergio Stivaletti about his completion of Wax Mask after Fulci’s passing / Women of Italian Horror: Featuring Silvia Collatina (The House by the Cemetery), Stefania Casini (Suspiria/ Bloodstained Shadow) and Barbara Magnolfi (Suspiria/ The Sister Of Ursula) / Onstage Q&A Cast Reunion: Live from the Horrorhound convention: Featuring Catriona MacColl, Giovanni Frezza, Silvia Collatina, Carlo DeMejo and Dagmar Lassander / Italian Trailer Compilation / Deleted scene / Original House by the Cemetery Trailers and TV Spot

DVD Review: Hirokin – The Last Samurai / Cert: 15 / Director: Alejo Mo-Sun / Writers: Alejo Mo-Sun / Starring: Wes Bentley, Jessica Szohr, Angus Macfadyen / Release Date: Out Now

I know from experience that no one sets out to make a deliberately bad film. These things just happen despite themselves. Here we have a movie that is simultaneously bad while not being bad enough to warrent cult status.

The reason that this 2008 film is suddenly available to buy at all seems to be summed up in the phrase “It’s got Wes Thingy in it… You know Wes Thingy out of that other film… The one that’s big with the kids…” Wes Thingy is in fact Wes Bently who plays Seneca in The Hunger Games. A wily producer has looked at the success of the new film and jumped on its passing band wagon full of screaming fans.

Well, a word of warning to such fans. Just don’t bother. It is not very good. Not very good at all.

The plot, such as it is, concerns a planet where subjugated human like aliens – cheaper than CGI – scavenge the desert wasteland. Hirokin – enter the hero with the obligatory dark past – promptly sets off on a mission to fulfil his destiny. Having fought to the death to save his wife and son from the planet’s evil dictator – Griffin (Sands) – and his elite army of hunters (all dressed in Clone War castoffs). The eponymous lone warrior is left for dead in the (reasonably) vast desert. And the audience have trouble caring less. Armed with his samurai blade, Hirokin is forced to choose between avenging the murder of his family and fighting for the freedom of his adopted people. Oh and there’s a (small) rebellion thrown in to try and hold the viewer’s attention.

Even the presence of genre mainstay Julian Sands is not enough to rescue this slow motion car crash of a movie.

Yes, this feels like Dune’s poor relative but it has more in common with the Yeast Lords movie as seen in Gentlemen Broncos. The effects are shoddy and the story line is laboured. Perhaps the oddest aspect of this film however is the title. It has nothing what so ever to do with samurai other than featuring some disappointing sword play, which wouldn’t have looked out of place in an episode of Xena.

All in all, it has the feel of a movie you would come across while searching for something to watch at three AM with an itchy remote control thumb. Save your money. Wait for it to be on at 3am and let your insomnia be cured.

Special Features: None