Review: The Revenant (15) / Directed by: D. Kerry Prior / Written by: D. Kerry Prior / Starring: David Anders, Chris Wylde, Louise Griffiths, Jacy King / Released: April 2nd

The zombie genre is starting to become as tired and stale as the protagonists that it represents, shuffling along with few fresh ideas, apart from projects such as Walking Dead. However, The Revenant is here to shake it up a bit. The tale centres around Bart (Anders), an American soldier who is killed in Iraq but is shipped home for his funeral. Once the ceremony is over and night falls, Bart comes back to life, rising from his coffin in full uniform. He seeks out his old friend, Joey (Wylde), who after recovering from the initial shock, works out that Bart has reanimated as a revenant – a kind of cross between a zombie and a vampire, who can only move around at night and has to drink blood to sustain himself. When, via a run in with a gang member, they realise that he can’t die, they decide to become a pair of vigilantes. This will help rid the LA streets of the criminals and supply Bart with a steady stream of fresh plasma to keep him going.

As the pair work their way through the underworld, they amass an impressive arsenal of weaponry and drugs and their actions become slightly ambiguous, although it is hard not to root for them. Eventually their actions come back to haunt them and as the net begins to close around them, things go a bit awry, with characters close to Bart and Joey suffering as a result as well as the two main antagonists themselves. There is even a scene that utilises a vibrator in a way that you would never had thought possible before. It is this kind of dark comedy that runs rich throughout the film and although it doesn’t have the warmth of something similar like Shaun of the Dead, it is a fun movie nonetheless.

The makers have dared to try something different here and, as a result, it stands out from the rest of the copycat dross that can be seen elsewhere. It lurches from comedy to horror, action to romance and takes the viewer for a ride that they won’t soon forget. Considering the running time clocks in at nearly two hours, at no time does the film appear to drag. Instead, it moves along at a fair old pace and keeps you on your toes as the sub-genres keep shifting.

If anything, the final act seems slightly out of sync with the rest of the film, as it finally turns pitch black in tone, but even this is refreshing and interesting to view. How this has taken so long to find a distributor after being made in 2009 is a surprise. There is no reason not to give this one your attention as opportunities to watch something so spectacularly left-field as this only come along once in a blue moon.

Review: Return of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – The Fifteen Years Later Affair (PG) / Director: Ray Austin / Screenplay: Michael Sloan / Starring: Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Patrick Macnee, Gayle Hunnicutt, George Lazenby, Tom Mason, Geoffrey Lewis, Anthony Zerbe, Simon Williams / Release date: 26th March

Spy kids of an advanced age will be thrilled by Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. and the chance to renew their childhood acquaintance with Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin, formerly the top two agents of secret US intelligence organisation U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) who blazed a trail across American TV in the 1960s in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in the wake of the fad for outlandish super spy adventures following the success of James Bond at the cinema. The series was ignominiously cancelled midway through its fourth season in 1968 but this hearty reunion movie from 1983, intended to launch a new series, serves as a nostalgic and occasionally quite poignant coda to the original series with the promise of more adventures yet to come and yet still unseen.

For those too young to remember, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was more than just a TV series. This was a hugely-inclusive experience with comic books, original novels, a fan club whose members were enrolled into their own department of U.N.C.L.E., an attache case full of U.N.C.L.E. merchandise including the show’s trademark guns (the Walther P.38 complete with a scope and long barrel which turned it into a carbine). For those of us who were there, Return of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. will unlock long-lost memories of our youths even if the reboot doesn’t have the pace and energy of the original TV shows. Like many resurrections of old favourites it’s done with a real and palpable affection but the fact remains that times have changed and the original Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin (Vaughn and McCallum) were dinosaurs in the 1980s and their reunion film can’t help reflect the passing of the years.

But there’s still fun to be had here, some of it outrageous. U.N.C.L.E.’s deadly enemy, the unfortunately-named THRUSH (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity…who knew?) has long been disbanded but when old THRUSH head honcho Justin Sepheran (Zerbe) audaciously escapes from prison the organisation quickly regroups and is soon in possession of a deadly nuclear device which it threatens to detonate on American soil unless a ransom of $300 million is handed over by long-retired U.N.C.L.E. agent Napoleon Solo. U.N.C.L.E.’s urbane new British boss Sir John Raleigh (Macnee) galvanises U.N.C.L.E. into action to find the retired Solo and his moody sidekick Ilya Kuryakin, now a fashion designer.

This is a 1960s nostalgists wet dream. Time may have thickened Vaughn and McCallum’s waistlines and the former in particular is a bit more sluggish and greyer about the temples than he was but the dynamic between the two characters is as sharp as it ever was. The film acknowledges the passing of time – one amusing scene sees Solo trying to access U.N.C.L.E. HQ through a dry-cleaning store as he did in the old days only to find that U.N.C.L.E. is a bit less secretive than it once was. McCallum remains the dour Russian agent, reluctantly dragged back into action having left the organisation after being betrayed by a colleague during a previous mission. Elsewhere there’s an hilarious cameo from one-shot Bond George Lazenby as “JB”, driving a familiar Aston Martin around Las Vegas  and using its gadgetry to help Solo escape a bunch of gun-totin’ baddies. “Just like ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” squeals Solo’s just-rescued passenger Andrea Markovitch (Hunnicutt). I’m still not sure how they got away with it…

The film’s story is simplistic generic ransom stuff and there’s an attempt at a Bond-style action-packed finale which the budget and direction can’t quite pull off but and while ‘The Fifteen Years Later Affair’ doesn’t have the colourful charm and tongue-in-cheek wit of the original, being so distanced by time from the craze which spawned it in the first place, it certainly won’t disgrace anyone’s memories of the 1960s series. With the TV episodes still unavailable in the UK (apart from a boxset of the cobbled-together 1960s ’feature film’ releases) this is likely to be an essential purchase for anyone for whose spine tingles at the phrase “Open Channel D.”

Special features: G.A.L.L.E.R.Y of publicity photos.

Review: Evidence (15) / Directed by: Howie Askins /Written by: Ryan McCoy / Starring: Ryan McCoy, Brett Rosenberg, Abigail Richie, Ashley Bracken / Released: 12th March

Evidence is the newest addition in the seemingly never ending conveyor belt of found footage films to come out of nowhere. The good news is that unlike a lot of its brethren, this is actually worth watching.

The story centres around a group of four friends, Ryan (McCoy), Brett (Rosenberg), Abi (Richie) and Ashley (Bracken), who go camping. Ryan is an amateur documentary film-maker who decides to film the whole trip, much to the growing annoyance of his friends. Once the usual bout of minimal character introductions are over with and the group find themselves camped, the first sign of danger comes when they hear strange and eerie screams in the night.

The next morning, whilst out for a walk, they see something in the ravine below them. Something that moves quickly and definitely isn’t human. Trying to track it in the bushes, it becomes clear that this is what was making the noises. That night, Ryan finds that someone has carved sentences into the trees surrounding their camp and when their camp is attacked, they decide to go back to the relative safety of their RV and wait until morning to pack the camp up in the daylight. When morning comes, they realise that one of their party is missing and, as well as packing the camp up, go looking for them. When they make a discovery that makes them think that their friend is dead. They trot back to the RV and one of the party goes to look for help, but when they don’t arrive back by nightfall, the remaining pair start to worry.

Their concern is justified considering that the RV has already been attacked and immobilised and when something returns in the night to try and get inside the vehicle, they decide to make a break for it. It’s at this stage that the film shoots off at a completely different tangent and we are witness to a quite breathless cat and mouse game that turns into an all out battle for survival with countless numbers of attackers trying to get at them as well as a few saviours trying to protect them. It’s a pleasant surprise to see this instead of countless groan inducing minutes of handi-cam footage of the floor as they run round the woods in circles.

To explain exactly what is going on in this last act would completely ruin the twist of the movie and, although the twist is completely bizarre, that would be a shame.

Suffice to say that the film-makers have tried something new here and, for the most part, have managed to pull it off. With the sheer volume and varying levels of quality in the sub-genre of found footage films that have been released since The Blair Witch Project in 1999, it is refreshing to find one that not only keeps your attention and doesn’t bore you, but is also actually quite scary in most of the right places.

Much like its 90s big sister, Evidence will leave you thinking twice about that planned camping trip this summer. If you go down to the woods today, you won’t believe your eyes!

Review: Doctor Who – The Face of Evil (PG) / Directed by: Pennant Roberts /Written by: Chris Boucher / Starring: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, David Garfield, Leslie Schofield, Brendan Price, Lloyd Maguire / Released: March 5th 2012

Changing times in the fourteenth season of Doctor Who, transmitted on BBC1 across 1976/7 as the cosy equilibrium of the previous couple of years was disturbed as producer Philip Hinchcliffe continued to make his mark on the show, distancing it from the colourful comic strip of the Jon Pertwee years and turning the series into an edgier show driven more by science-fiction concepts and ideas rather than the need to fill the screen with big, roaring rubber-suited monsters, previously pretty much the mainstay of the show’s stories.

The fourteenth series had already seen the departure of much-loved companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) in the otherwise-unremarkable Hand Of Fear and writer Robert Holmes got the backs of most long-time viewers of the series (especially those in the nascent ‘fan’ community) by rewriting the series’ own mythology in The Deadly Assassin where he took the Doctor back to his home planet Gallifrey, now populated not by monolithic cosmic Gods but rather by petty, bureaucratic bickering old men who spent more time complaining about their bad backs than watching over the affairs of the Universe. Such stuff is grist to the 21st century series’ mill; David Tennant or even Matt Smith would have eaten up the dramatic possibilities of such rich material but back in the 1970s Doctor Who was still, by and large, just a string of intelligent adventure stories which didn’t tend to involve itself too much with emotion and real meaningful drama and scenes like Sarah Jane’s tearful exit from the TARDIS in part four of The Hand of Fear were very much the exception rather than the norm. When the series resumed in January 1977 with Chris Boucher’s The Face of Evil after its brief Christmas break (no big budget prime time festive specials in those days) the arrival of a brand new companion seemed to offer further opportunity for Doctor Who to put a bit more flesh on the bones of its series leads but in retrospect the story was probably always destined to be a bit of a let-down after the highs of the two serials which preceded it.

The Face of Evil, sadly, is a bit of a damp squib. It’s a shame because right at its heart is a really interesting science-fiction/Doctor Who concept; the Doctor returns to a planet he’s visited before but this time his interference hasn’t been necessarily beneficial to the people he’s left behind. Tennant or Smith would wrestle the maximum angst from a situation like this but Boucher’s script, whilst clever, is more interested in just presenting the idea rather than examining any moral consequences. So the Doctor arrives – alone and talking to himself, most self-consciously – to find a planet whose simple crossbow-wielding native inhabitants (the descendants of a spaceship ‘survey team’ who had arrived on the planet years earlier)- are dominated by a malevolent super-computer imprinted with the Doctor’s own personality on a previous visit. But the computer’s gone a bit tonto and the Doctor, with leather-clad new girl Leela (Jameson) in tow, sets about putting right what he’d done wrong before but he never pauses to ponder the moral responsibility he has in wandering about in Space and Time and throwing his weight about. The computer – dubbed Xoanon – has got a bit full of itself so he breaks through its defences to reprogramme it and wipe out its hostile tendencies.

Whilst it’s not fair to criticise a thirty-five year old story for not conforming to the style and values of the modern interpretation of the series there’s no getting away from the fact that, even by its contemporary standards, Face of Evil is a misfire. As a production it’s visually uninteresting; the BBC conjure up one of their rather nice alien jungle sets on film at Ealing (even though this one seems to be comprised of a lot of corrugated plastic tubing covered with vines) but the TV studio stuff is desperately dull, dreary-looking huts for Leela’s tribe and bland spaceship corridors apparently knocked up out of old egg boxes for the mysterious Tesh. The tribe themselves are the worst sort of vaguely-embarrassed BBC thesps in unflattering loincloths uttering cod-Shakespearan twaddle like ’How say you?’ and ‘Bow down before the Evil One’ and their technological opposites, the Tesh, look like minor chess pieces as they gabble on about the super-computer they worship and protect with their lives.

New girl Leela provokes a spike of interest if only because, quite sensibly, she’s the opposite of Sarah Jane Smith. She’s savage, intuitive and merrily murderous, dispatching her enemies with poisonous Janis thorns, but by episode three she’s trotting along beside the Doctor serving the usual ‘What is, Doctor?’ purpose which was the destiny of so many of the original Doctor Who girls. Fortunately there’s a decent screen chemistry between Baker and Jameson despite the uneasy professional relationship between the two at this point – Baker would have preferred the Doctor to travel alone and particularly didn’t approve of the violent characterisation of Leela – and Jameson’s wide-eyed performance is enthusiastic enough to establish the character despite the run-of-the-mill nature of the story and the fact that when her father is sacrificed in the first episode Leela looks no more concerned than if someone had told her she’d accidentally left the cat out overnight.

Face of Evil isn’t really bad, it’s just not really very interesting and the plot, whilst containing a few neat sci-fi ideas, becomes pretty predictable when the Doctor catches sight of an image of his own face carved into a nearby cliff-face. Bright, overlit sets, clumsy action sequences and some unexceptional special effects conspire to suck the life out of Face of Evil which remains, ultimately, a solid and workmanlike Doctor Who serial which never manages to power out of first gear but is nevertheless an inoffensive way of spending a couple of hours in company of one of the most popular incarnations of TV’s top Time Lord.

Special features: A decent grab-bag of stuff which makes purchasing The Face of Evil a more interesting proposition than it might otherwise have been. Into The Wild is the usual detailed ‘making of’ documentary, Tomorrow’s Times is the latest in the ongoing DVD series looking at Press coverage of the series (this time chronicling the Tom Baker years), a clip of Louise Jameson guesting on Swap Shop with Noel Edmonds, Jameson herself recalls Leela and her time in the show in extended interview footage filmed in 2003, a couple of TV advertisements and some raw behind-the-scenes footage, production notes and a busy commentary featuring Jameson, Schofield and Garfield, producer Hinchcliffe and others.

Review: The Scarlet Blade (PG) / Directed by: John Gilling / Written by John Gilling / Starring: Jack Hedley, Lionel Jefferies, Oliver Reed, June Thorburn, Michael Ripper / Release date: Out now

Review: The Brigand of Kandahar (PG) / Directed by: John Gilling / Written by: John Gilling / Starring: Ronald Lewis, Oliver Reed, Duncan Lamont, Yvonne Romain, Glyn Houston / Release date: Out now

The now resurgent Hammer Studios remain best known for their string of innovative horror shockers in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s (and into the 1970s with inadvertent horrors like their On the Buses film series spun off from the creaky ITV sitcom) but the Studios also churned out a number of lesser-regarded historical adventures, cheap and cheerful romps full of jobbing actors and enthusiastically-realised action sequences and with often desperately low production values. Most of these B-movies have been long since forgotten, eclipsed by the latest Dracula or Frankenstein opus, but Hammer completists or those just curious to see what else Hammer did in its prime, will be intrigued by the DVD release of The Scarlet Blade (1964) and The Brigand of Kandahar (1965), boy’s own tales written and directed by the prolific John Gilling who went on to direct the much more acclaimed Hammer titles Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile.

The Scarlet Blade is easily the most accomplished of these two new discs. Set during the English Civil War in the mid-17th Century it miscasts the stoic British character actor Jack Hedley as Edward Beverley who not only has a girl’s surname but is also a rather insipid take on Robin Hood, rescuing Royalists from the clutches of Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentarian Roundhead bully boys. The Roundhead hoodlums are led by the shouty Colonel Judd (Jefferies) and his sidekick Captain Sylvester (an oddly camp performance from Oliver Reed). Judd’s daughter falls in love with Hedley’s bland Blade and Sylvester, who’s got his eye on her too, becomes as livid as the scar on his face. The Royalist cause has pretty much collapsed and plans to whisk Charles I away to safety in France are thwarted at the last minute and the Blade and his dwindling band of supporters are left to strike impotently at the Roundheads whilst plotting to rescue the King and restore the Monarchy.

The Scarlet Blade is good rousing fun, handsomely-mounted and with some lively action scenes and striking location filming at Hammer’s traditional Black Park stamping ground. Hedley’s an unusual choice for an action hero but he throws himself into some quite brutal fight sequences with gusto and while the film peters out with more of a whimper than a bang there’s enough going on to sustain interest throughout its brief 80 minute running time and it’s a decent reminder that in its heyday the Hammer production line wasn’t all fangs and vampire bats.

The Brigand of Kandahar is a different kettle of fish though, dodgy hokum with blacked-up white actors which can’t help but evoke happier memories of Carry On Up The Khyber. Here Oliver Reed (in his final appearance for Hammer) plays ferocious tribal leader Ali Khan who recruits British “half-caste” soldier Lieutenant Robert Case to his bunch of desert-roaming bandits in 1850s India when Case is disgraced for apparently abandoning a fellow officer whose wife he’s been having an illicit affair with. Charged with cowardice, Case escapes and is determined to clear his name with the help of the maniacal Khan and his band of cut-throats.

The Brigand of Kandahar is achingly-poor stuff, its realisation of 19th century India largely studio-bound and with stock footage from bigger-budgeted films artlessly inserted to beef up underpowered and under populated action sequences. Whether you think political correctness has been allowed to go mad or not, it’s still tough to watch a film whose lead characters are resolutely British actors in black-face and Case never really presents himself as much of a hero figure. The only fun to be had here comes from Oliver Reed who, we can only assume, drunkenly thought he was signing up for a role in a panto and not a feature film. The Brigand of Kandahar is dated and clunky and is unlikely to hold the attention of anyone but the most determined Hammer fanatic. Best avoided.

Special features: To be fair both films have been beautifully remastered and the colours and images are vibrant. ‘The Scarlet Blade’ features a silent alternative US opening sequence.

Review: The Orphan Killer (Unrated) / Director: Matt Farnsworth / Screenplay: Matt Farnsworth / Starring: Diane Foster, David Backus, Matt Farnsworth, James McCaffrey, John Savage, Karen Young / Release date: Out Now (via iTunes)

With the advent of cheaper duplication and a DIY distribution infrastructure already in place in the shape of the internet, more and more film makers are selling and streaming their films online and completely cutting out the normal market of big labels and stores. There are some gems that can be found this way, and I’m always on the lookout for new talent.

The Orphan Killer is one such film, written and directed by Matt Farnsworth and promoted initially via viral videos and Facebook pages, it tells the story of a brother and sister, Audrey and Marcus Miller who were orphaned at a young age after a standard home invasion turned into a blood bath.

Sent away to a strict Catholic orphanage, they are separated when Marcus finds it hard to cope with his inner demons and begins lashing out violently. The only discipline the nuns running the place know of course is to beat him, lock him away in the attic and make him wear a creepy mask all the time so that the other kids will fear him and not get close enough to be hurt. So, nothing that would cause him any permanent damage then, especially since he’s just seen his mum and dad slaughtered?

Audrey (Diane Foster) is adopted, and moves away, to grow up to be a normal member of society, even if she does go to church dressed like a prostitute. Marcus (David Backus), on the other hand still has an axe to grind – and by now it’s gotten quite sharp. Still wearing the same mask (I can only assume he has loosened the fittings slightly since he was younger) he sets about finding his sister and hacking, slashing, pummelling and chopping anyone who he happens to come across along the way.

The problem with the film is that there is very little to take in other than blood and guts, and that seems to be where the film is gaining lots of plaudits, it has won awards at all sorts of festivals, and from lots of horror websites. The gore on show – and there is a hell of a lot of it – is, on the whole, superb and the practical effects outshine many of the bigger budget films that hit the shelves. It’s just a shame that it’s at the expense of a better flowing story and more natural acting. Having said that, I’ve seen a lot worse and both Foster and Backus are watchable and veteran actor John Savage adds some gravitas in a small role as a detective.

The biggest flaw with the film for me is the over powering metal soundtrack. Now, I am a “metal head” myself, but it does not do the film any favours and I found it quite distracting most of the time and completely takes you out of the horror you’re seeing on screen.
Reading the hype surrounding the film on their Facebook page and the official website, Farnsworth really sees his creation as a successor to Jason or Michael Myers, and given a little more time on the story and a stronger supporting cast there may be scope for the character to develop as there is potential with his ideas.
All that said, it isn’t a badly made film, and if it’s a slasher film you want that doesn’t pull punches, you can do much worse.
You can buy the DVD and Blu-ray from the official website, where you can also stream the film for 72 hours for only $1.99, which is approximately £1.30, (payable by Paypal). For that price you really don’t have any excuse not to give it a go if gore’s your thing.

Review: Castle of the Living Dead / Il castello dei morti vivi (18) / Directed by: Luciano Ricci (‘Warren Kiefer’), Lorenzo Sabatini (‘Herbert Wise’), Michael Reeves (uncredited) / Written by: Michael Reeves and Lorenzo Sabatini / Starring: Christopher Lee, Gaia Germani, Phillipe Leroy, Donald Sutherland / Release date: Out now

Although many of the ‘Golden Age of Italian Horror’ Gothics are now available to us on DVD (albeit mostly in the form of Region 1 NTSC releases), 1964’s Castle of the Living Dead has long remained a missing link in many a Eurohorror fanatic’s collection. And, for fans of that era, the film is indeed an enticing proposition, featuring as it does the eminently collectible Christopher Lee, Eurocult fave Philippe (The Frightened Woman) Leroy, and Donald Sutherland in his first three film roles. It also marks the first film credit of Witchfinder General wunderkind Michael Reeves, here at the tender age of twenty, just five years before his tragic barbiturate overdose. With so many points of cineaste interest, it’s a pity that the film is finally revealed by this vanilla but pristine disc from Odeon Entertainment to be something of a letdown.

In the early nineteenth century, a roguish troupe of circus performers is lured with the promise of gold to the remote castle of one Count Drago (Lee, of course), there to provide a private performance of their travelling show. They soon find themselves getting knocked off one by one by Drago’s sinister assistant Sandro, as played by Mirko Valentin (the gaunt actor who a year earlier had featured (uncredited) as ‘The Living Skull’ in Antonio Margheriti’s The Virgin of Nuremberg, also alongside Lee). But no simple murders are these; it transpires that Drago intends to preserve them all for eternity as ‘living statues’ with a serum that he has invented. In particular, for some reason, the exceptionally attractive Laura (Gaia Germani, fresh from Lucio Fulci’s The Maniacs).

Whilst not without cultish charm, Castle comes up pretty short when compared with many other Gothics of the period. The obviously minuscule budget doesn’t help matters. However, as with many such films, the location filming in and around a 100% genuine Gothic castle ensures that it at least looks and feels right by default. The main problem is that there’s no real engagement with the characters; the troupe of players seem too dopey and Count Drago is one of Lee’s sillier and less frightening villains.

Those Sutherland-spotting will be amused and entertained to see Donald in three different roles. Over the course of the film he plays a soldier and, briefly, an old man, but has much more screen time in drag and heavy make-up (and rather good make-up at that) as a gruesome old witch. Donald was so grateful to Luciano Ricci for giving him his first movie credit that he named his son ‘Kiefer’ after the director’s pseudonym for the film. At the beginning we see said Donald-witch roam the countryside and randomly murder a couple of people, which is a bit odd considering the role that she has later in the story.

Although Reeves was only credited as second unit director, it’s widely believed that he directed a number of scenes, including that where the troupe’s dwarf (also uncredited) fights Sandro on the battlements. On the whole, Castle is definitely a lower-tier entry in the Italian Gothic cycle, but makes for a desirable collector’s piece for Eurohorror fiends, made all the more so by some gorgeous specially commissioned box art from Graham Humphreys (above) and liner notes by Benjamin Halligan.

Extras: Trailer, Liner Notes by Benjamin Halligan.

When we first meet Garrick Turrell (AJ Bowen, from House of the Devil and Hatchet 2) he is seemingly comforting a bound and gagged girl he has just taken out of the boot of a car. Then he snaps her neck. A fittingly grim and sombre opening to another entry into that new sub-genre – brutal horror.
Sarah (Amy Seimetz) is in an AA meeting, three months dry and obviously struggling emotionally. It’s here she meets Kevin (Joe Swanberg) and the pair slowly begin dating.
A Horrible Way To Die is a film that is told in a non-linear order, the narrative flitting back and forth between Garrick escaping from prison, to being in a relationship with Sarah. It seems Sarah discovered what Garrick was up to when he kept going for midnight walks during their time together, and she rightfully reported him. Now, Garrick is loose and seemingly on his way to find Sarah, leaving a body count in his wake. Garrick seems a complicated killer, though, his victims are completely random and almost incidental, just stepping stones used to get nearer his goal of finding Sarah. He is tormented and remorseful too, and it’s a credit to Bowen as an actor that this quality shines through.
Telling of our modern morbid times, we find out that Garrick had lots of fan mail during his prison time, including several proposals of marriage and a Facebook fan page with members in the thousands.
With the irregular narrative, it sometimes takes a few moments at the start of scenes to figure out at what point of the Sarah/Garrick saga we are up to, but it’s not too hard to grasp and soon everything begins to fall into place as the killer crosses the country in search of the woman who put him away, and we realise they both had their (very different but both very self destructive) addictions to deal with.
There’s been mention in other reviews about the camera work used in the film, true, it can be a little off putting at first, but after a while you realise the camera is just replicating the human eye. We don’t always see everything in perfect focus, nor do we always look straight at what you imagine the point of interest or focus should be. Some of the shots are heavily stylised, when Kevin and Sarah get it on for the first time, it seems as though the scene was shot through a screen of bokeh, then it becomes clear that she has fairy lights throughout her room, and it becomes a perfectly natural look. The sex ends quite prematurely though *ahem*.
The film has a grainy, grindhouse look, reminiscent of Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer, and it’s that film that this is closest to more than any other serial killer film. Director Adam Wingard has made a very good film, maybe not one you would call enjoyable, as it’s quite bleak but certainly well made. Both Wingard and actor Swanberg are amongst the directing talent on the upcoming V/H/S found footage film which gives me at least a little hope for that one! Recommended.

Review: Fantastic Voyage – The Complete Series (PG) /Directed by: Hal Sutherland / Written by: Jerome Bixby, Eric Blair, HF Mauberley, David Melmuth, Ken Sobol, William Welch /Starring: (voices) Marvin Miller, Jane Webb, Ted Knight / Release date: Out now

Raquel Welch caused quite a stir in 1966 at the Box Office – and elsewhere, very probably – when she and a bunch of other earnest Hollywood types such as Donald Pleasance and Stephen Boyd were shrunk down to microscopic proportions, bundled aboard the nuclear submarine Proteus and injected into the comatose body of the scientist who found a way to make the revolutionary miniaturisation process temporary but  suffered an assassination attempt which left him with a blood clot in his brain. The team aboard the Proteus had just sixty minutes to repair the damage caused by the blood clot before their sub  reverted to normal size and the scientist’s immune system began to attack and reject the invader.

Exciting stuff and the resulting film – Fantastic Voyage – was a smash hit, attracting rave reviews for its innovative special effects and imaginative storyline. A couple of years later animation studio Filmation took the title and refashioned the idea into a bright, lively cartoon adventure series for kids which aired on ABC in the States between September 1968 and January 1969, running to one brief series of seventeen episodes.

Naturally enough, some changes needed to be made to the concept as presented in the movie to turn Fantastic Voyage into a series format. In the animated show the submarine – now redesigned into a simple winged mini-sub/plane called Voyager ­– is deployed by the CMDF (Combined Miniature Defense Force) to combat sinister (and often comical) threats to world security, some of which were distinctly extra-terrestrial. The Voyager is piloted by square-jawed eye-patched Commander Jonathan Kidd, biologist Erica Lane, geeky boffin (and designer of the Voyager) Busby Birdwell and the outrageous turbaned “master of mysterious powers” known as Guru who appears to have some extremely non-specific paranormal abilities subject to the requirements of the script. In the animated series the miniaturisation process lasts for 12 hours giving our heroes more time to get involved in tricky situations involving space aliens, magic crystals, cackling bad guys, giant butterflies and, in one memorable episode, Busby is shrunk down to the size of a doll to provide entertainment for kids at a local orphanage.

Fantastic Voyage, never screened in the UK, is primitive stuff by today’s snazzy computer-animation standards and, in truth, I suspect it was even a bit primitive by 1960s standards. Filmation churned out a lot of product in the 1960s but they were very much a second tier outfit behind the much slicker Hanna-Barbera. Filmation’s stuff relied horribly on stock shots – here it’s the repeated images of the Voyager being shrunk and shots of CMDF bigwigs sitting around desks in exactly the same positions week after week. The real giveaway with Filmation was always the number of dialogue scenes where characters had their backs to the camera or else were shown from the nose up, animation reduced to a shoulder-shrug or a raised eyebrow. Fantastic Voyage tries a bit harder because its premise demands that it has to so there’s a bit more going on in these often outlandish, but always trivial little stories and even here there’s a bit of a residual thrill at watching miniaturised humans fighting off giant-sized enemies. There’s even time for the odd flash of humour too; in The Magic Crystal of Kabala  the evil Mephisto conjures up hallucinatory visions of the future for the Voyager crew, one of which sees Erica getting married to hunky Commander Kidd which leaves the Commander sputtering “But I don’t want to get married…yet” when he’s told about it. Well, it made me smile.

Colourful and relentlessly undemanding, fans of garish 1960s cartoons may be fascinated by this little-seen rarity but for anyone else it’s likely to be a bit of a slog.

Review: If a Tree Falls (18) / Director: Philip Carrer / Screenplay: Ryan Barrett / Starring: Breanne TeBoekhorst, Jennifer De Lucia / Release date: Out now

Imagine a world where every single half-baked student film gets a release on DVD, well it seems like we may well be living in that reality because based on the quality of things like Evil Things, The Watermen and now If a Tree Falls, it seems like anyone can make and release a movie. There are advantages to this, there is the occasional quality title that passes most people by and gets to an audience on home video. However the signs all point towards a coming apocalypse for these people when Blockbuster eventually goes the way of the Dodo. The fact is sex and violence sell, so the straight to DVD market is flooded with anything that features a half-naked brutalised woman on the cover whilst other more interesting genre films languish in obscurity. The latest film with a cover of this type is Canadian horror If a Tree Falls. With that title, I was prepared for an existential exploration of silence and our relationship to nature; sadly this is an endurance contest of epic proportions…

Initially things start well, we are treated to the Tarantino approved ‘Our Feature Presentation’ title card that appeared on his Kill Bill and Grindhouse films. Hopes were high for a Hobo with a Shotgun style romp at this point. Things then go all grainy in a pleasingly retro video nasty way as we witness a scantily clad woman running through the woods and confusingly killed and dragged away by some men we don’t see. Then we meet our lead characters and this is where it all goes wrong. Siblings Brad and Lisa Carpenter with two other friends, the ‘slutty girl’ and ‘the beefcake’ head off into the Canadian wilderness to camp by a lake. The sound is muffled and the dialogue atrocious but I got the sense that Lisa was pregnant with someone’s child and was keeping it a secret, for all I know it could have been her brother’s child, but this interesting plot twist is never expanded on. At some point between drinking beer and flexing by the lake and then going for a pee outside the tent in the middle of the night, six or so burly men show up with tights over their heads like they are about to rob your local post office. The next hour of the film is spent in the company of these grunting men as they torture and brutalise the four characters you couldn’t give a toss about.

To approximate what it is like to watch If a Tree Falls, I would have to put you in a rabbit hutch, throw shit at you and then run around the hutch kicking it with all my might. There are times during this film where I questioned if I was actually watching a snuff film. Somehow an incriminating film had been misplaced by some rich perverts and it had inadvertently arrived at my house. I was considering calling the police and possibly The Samaritans and I realised that life isn’t this crap, ‘It’s only a movie’ as they say. Faced with the complete loss of all hope in humanity at 9.30 on a Thursday night, I reminded myself that this is merely so very badly shot it just seems like it’s a snuff film. Did I mention that the killers actually film what they are doing? Because they do, and what they film is shot even worse and is inserted into the film very badly as the director flirts with the realisation that he should have made a ‘found footage’ movie like everyone else.

The acting here is terrible, not even porno bad but rejects from auditions for Degrassi Junior High bad. Most porn looks like The King’s Speech compared to this film. Canada definitely has some talent, as evidenced by the careers of David Cronenberg and Jim Carrey. Canada also gave us Bryan Adams and along with this film they should probably be brought before the Hague tribunal for crimes against humanity. Any idiot can get a camera and go make a film, Brett Ratner has made millions this way but it takes real talent to film drivel the way director Gabriel Carrer does and then slap a Grindhouse presentation on it so it seems like it’s meant to be this bad. The ending of this film is trying to make some kind of point about something to do with how men in tights will eventually make you one of them but this moment of piqued interest gives way to more badly executed violence.

Unless you hate yourself and feel a powerful need to wallow in misery for a never ending hour and twenty minutes, you should probably give this one a miss.

Extras: None, thank Christ…