Review: Stalker (15) / Director: Martin Kemp / Screenplay: Martin Kemp / Starring: Anna Brecon, Linda Hayden, Jane March / Release date: Out Now

Martin Kemp is not a name you would normally associate with horror. Kemp is more famous as one component of 80s pop act Spandau Ballet along with his twin brother Gary. He had a brief stint where he tried acting with roles in The Krays and Eastenders, and now he has turned his hand to directing. I’m pleased to say that Kemp has actual talent behind the camera because Stalker is mostly a stylish and entertaining watch. When it comes to the story however, it’s very much a case of seen it all before.

Stalker follows troubled novelist Paula Martin (Anna Brecon) as she wrestles with her second novel. Her agent is pushy, desperate to get another best seller but Paula is haunted by disturbing, sexy and violent dreams and often wakes up screaming. Paula’s agent eventually sends her away to the country home where Paula grew up. The big creepy house in the countryside is the first sign that things are about to go awry. We learn that at some point in her past Paula suffered some kind of mental break down thanks to persistent journalist Robert Gainer (Injury Lawyers 4 You pimper Billy Murray). Once settled into the country getaway, Paula procrastinates constantly, first injuring her hand and seeming to prefer drinking wine and sleeping rather than getting on with work. Then Linda (Jane March) shows up claiming that she has been sent as a PA by Paula’s agent to help her out however she can. Everything is fine at first, but then Linda takes over writing huge swathes of Paula’s novel much to Paula’s anger. Linda also starts to show some alarmingly psychotic tendencies. Paula becomes slowly more lost in her own fear and paranoia as Linda starts to take over every aspect of Paula’s life and violently deals with those who get in her way.

Within the first ten minutes you know how Stalker is going to end. We have all seen too many psychological thrillers and Stephen King stories with writers as the victim to be surprised by the eventual reveal here. This works against the film and should mean that Stalker is a write off except it’s not completely without merit. There are other eventual disturbing revelations on the way as well as a really interesting final scene once you get past the not so shocking reveal. Despite its innate predictability; Stalker is never less than entertaining.

Working with cinematographer James Friend, Kemp composes beautiful shots that are above those of your usual low budget Brit flick. Using the old horror trope of a stalk around a haunted house, each darkened corner is alive with the possibility of horror lying in wait. This combined with the genuine beautiful oddness of Jane March’s appearance and the way they choose to make her look more and more like a driven insane maniac as time goes on; makes the climax quite thrilling.

The lead performance by Anna Brecon as Paula is very convincing. Brecon previously best known from Emmerdale plays Paula initially as a mousey, quiet woman with a sea of torment bubbling away just under the surface. As time goes on the cracks start to show and it’s believable when the eventual revelation comes as to just how troubled she actually is. Likewise with Jane March, she starts off a fairly wooden and stilted character but when things get crazy her performance matches up. The supporting cast is adequate in their parts, apart from Colin Salmon whose performance is just awful as the most miscast psychiatrist in film history.

It’s a real shame that Stalker doesn’t have a brilliant script to match all of the other elements that would have made it a superior horror thriller. Next time if Martin Kemp brings a brilliant script with him he may just make a masterpiece.

Extras: Director and cast commentary, deleted scenes, behind the scenes feature.

Review: Doctor Who – Revisitations 3 (PG) / Directed by: Morris Barry, Lennie Mayne, Michael E Briant / Written by: Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, Bob Baker and Dave Martin, Chris Boucher / Starring: Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, William Hartnell, Frazer Hines, Deborah Watling, Katy Manning, Nicholas Courtenay, Louise Jameson / Date of release: 13th February (UK)

With the end of the classic Doctor Who DVD releases very nearly in sight, it’s not surprising that the BBC/2 Entertain have gone back to the early days of the range (when the concept of ‘special features’ was in its infancy) and taken another look at some of those initial releases, given them another wash-n-brush up and put together a few more bits and pieces designed to cover production background missed by the original releases. Revisitations 3 is, you’ll not be too surprised to learn, the third such repackaging exercise, three already-released archive stories bundled together in a big box across five discs with new cover artwork and a slew of new documentaries, featurettes and assorted curiosities. But will Revisitations 3 persuade you to double-dip, to splash your hard-earned cash on core material which you’ve probably already got in your collection just because there’s some new talking-head supporting material?

It may be a tough decision because, in all honesty, of the three stories included in this collection, Tomb of the Cybermen and The Three Doctors were pretty well-served by their original DVD releases. Robots of Death was the first ‘proper’ Doctor Who release to attempt any extra material (and don’t worry, those ‘studio floor plans’ are here again in full) and it deserves the extra attention it’s received from the new edition. But oddly, both Tomb and The Three Doctors have dropped perfectly-decent quirky stuff from their earlier editions – the ‘Tombwatch’ panel discussion from the former and footage of Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning (being not at all shrill and irritating) from a 1993 convention appearance – and replaced them with interesting, if fairly traditional material on their new second discs. It may be that Revisitations 3 will appeal to completists only; fans who want the story above anything else may find their needs satisfied by the DVDs they already own.

Special features apart, the three stories included here serve as a decent example of the breadth and diversity of story-telling styles Doctor Who has always been acclaimed for. Long missing from the BBC Archives, 1967’s Tomb of The Cybermen reappeared from Hong Kong in 1991 and was quickly released on VHS (ask your parents) long before the words ‘remastered’ and ‘VidFIRE’ became common fan currency. Popular opinion before the story’s recovery was that it was obviously the best Doctor Who story ever, its legend founded on the fact that it was unlikely anyone would ever see it again. The bald reality, when the show did turn up, is that it was actually another slighty clunky, stagey 1960s Doctor Who serial, and its reputation took a bit of a nosedive for a bit as fans shuffled their feet and looked elsewhere in the wake of the release of the video. But in fact time hasn’t really been that unkind to Tomb of the Cybermen now that the heat of expectation has long since died down and whatever the story, any Doctor Who starring Patrick Troughton has got to be worth another look. Unless it’s The Dominators, that is… Anyway, in The Tomb of the Cybermen the Doctor and his time-travelling chums Jamie and Victoria arrive on the gravel-pit planet of Telos just as a futuristic group of archaeolgists, scientists and spacemen arrive in their rocket (that’s what they call it, honestly!) to investigate the legendary buried tomb of the ancient Cybermen. Despite the Doctor’s protestations that they’d really be better off leaving well alone they penetrate the tomb and, sure enough, the Cybermen awake from their frozen underground slumber and much chaos and general running about ensues. Production values notwithstanding, Tomb of the Cybermen is a sturdy bit of story-telling full of intrigue and double-dealing, great performances from the leads and the guest stars and a tight script which really capitalises on the classic ‘enclosed environment’ location which the show made its own during Troughton’s time. The Cybermen still retain that alien sense of nearly-human menace which defined the 1960s version and which the 21st century version have now totally lost, having becoming rather bland silver thugs who turn up when a few cheap off-the-peg costumes are required and who, according to their most recent TV appearance, can be killed by the power of love. There are one or two visual misfires – a couple of dodgy visual FX which don’t quite come off (although the Cybermats, seen here en masse, are still pretty creepy and effective) and the sight of an obviously- dummy Cybercontroller costume being flung about the set during a final-episode fight sequence is one of the show’s less accomplished sequences. By contrast the scenes of the Cybermen emerging from their defrosting tombs remains one of the show’s greatest visual images and their realisation is miraculous considering the budget constraints of the show at the time and the primitive technology available to create scenes of such a scale. At four episodes, the story bounces along and, despite the initial disappointment engendered by the serial’s original reappearance, it’s actually a strong and compelling example of 1960s Doctor Who.

The Three Doctors, from 1973, sees the series well-established in colour and is pretty much the first time the show attempted to celebrate and purposely recall its own history. It’s Doctor Who’s tenth anniversary and the show’s producer and script editor Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks succumb to viewer pressure and conjure up a storyline whereby all three incarnations of the Doctor are united to fight off some appalling cosmic threat. Just three or four years on from leaving the series Troughton manages to recapture the quixotic nature of his performance and the on-set tension between him and proprietary third Doctor Jon Pertwee is often palpable. Sadly William Hartnell was at the time too infirm to be able to participate fully so he’s reduced to appearing once every episode on the TARDIS scanner, chiding his successors for what he sees as their dim-wittedness. Day-glo and gaudy with its silly bubble-wrap Gellguard monsters and cliched booming comic book superbaddy, The Three Doctors is very much Doctor Who-as-comic-strip but what’s interesting is that, despite the fact it’s a tenth anniversary celebration, it doesn’t swamp the story with arcane bits of series folklore, content just to present its three leading men so far and the rest of the then-current cast and therefore doesn’t require massive foreknowledge of the series history beyond the fact that there’d been two previous Doctors. Later similar celebratory episodes would be much denser affairs which took for granted that the viewers were up to speed with the minutaie of the series (and in some ways sowing the seeds for the series’ eventual collapse) so The Three Doctors and its simple tale of a renegade Time Lord trapped in a world of anti-matter exacting a terrible revenge upon the people who abandoned him is refreshing in its lack of clutter, even if Hartnell’s reduced participation remains a disappointment.

1977’s Robots of Death is a much more sophisticated affair and easily the best story in the collection. Here the fourth Doctor (Baker) and his new companion Leela (Jameson) arrive aboard a giant sandmining machine on alien world where murder is afoot and the only suspects in a society which can’t envisage such atrocities are the miner’s sleek, urbane robots. Tom Baker’s in fine form here, still very much the slightly brooding, if always disarming alien rather than the jelly-baby obsessed clown he’d become not much more than a year later and the four episodes are enlivened by gloriously luxurious production design, the show’s most memorable robot creations and a Chris Boucher script which virtually sings. The fourth episode is a bit of a let down, the identity of the actual murderer having been fairly obvious a couple of episodes before and his motive’s a bit mundane but this is a smart and satisfying story typical of the mature Philip Hinchcliffe-produced era it hails from.

Revisitations 3 is a box full of well-regarded Doctor Who stories which deserve a place in any fan’s collection but whether you pick up this set pretty much depends on how much you value a few new special features and are willing to cough up for duplicate copies of stories you’ve already got. For the newcomer though, or those who missed these yarns the first time round, this is a pretty essential set to add to that burgeoning collection of classic Doctor Who.

Special features: So what’s in store if you chose to double-dip or if you’re here for the first time? Tomb of the Cybermen, like the other titles in the set, now has its own fairly traditional ‘making of’ feature in ‘The Lost Giants’ which, like most of its type, rolls along in a sea of talking heads and “this is how we did it and it was great fun” production anecdotes. Nice to see actress Shirley Cooklin (Kaftan) waxing effusively about the series as fan rumour has it her reluctance at seeing her early work resurrected almost blocked the VHS release of the story in 1991. ‘The Curse of the Cybermen’s Tomb’ is a deathly dry lecture piece about the story’s Egyptian origins, there’s an extended version of Matthew Sweet’s look at the history of the Cybermen, a feature on VidFIRE restoration technology, a 1960s ice lolly advert and, ported over from the original release, an introduction by director Morris Barry, title sequence footage, raw footage of Dalek devastation from the otherwise mostly-missing Evil of the Daleks and a behnd-the-scenes feature from the contemporary Late Night Line Up documentary strand. The Three Doctors now has ‘Happy Birthday to Who’, a new ‘making of’ documentary, Was Doctor Who rubbish? in which a few well-meaning fans attempt to dismiss some old myths about the classic show and Doctor Who meets Loose Women when Caroline John (Liz Shaw from Pertwee’s first season), Katy Manning and Louise Jameson meet and – often raucuously – recall their time in the series. Familiar archive material from the original DVD release bulks out the first disc as Jon Pertwee introduces his ‘Whomobile’ on Blue Peter and Pebble Mill gets a rare interview with Troughton. New features on Robots of Death include the documentary The Sandmine Murders with contributions from guest actors Pamela Salem, Brian Croucher and David Collings with Tom Baker popping up every now again with a typically irreverent observation and Toby Hadoke takes a sideways/humourous look at robots in Doctor Who in ‘Robophobia’. Commentary fans will revel in a new commentary alongside the rather dry original chat-track from Hinchcliffe and Boucher as Baker, Jameson, Salem and director Briant recall the making of the serial.

Elsewhere, trailers, production subtitles and further commentaries bulk out a typically comprehensive package of extras.

Review: 30 Minutes or Less (15) / Director: Ruben Fliescher / Screenplay: Michael Diliberti / Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, Nick Swardson, Aziz Ansari / Release date: Out now

Small town pizza delivery guy, Nick (Jessie Eisner) is not happy with his life. He hates his job, his best friend, Chet (Aziz Ansari) has gotten a respectable job as a teacher, and the girl he loves (Dilshad Vadsaria), who happens to be Chet’s sister, is about to move away to start a new career. Just as he thinks that life couldn’t get any worse, two wannabe criminal masterminds kidnap him and strap a bomb to his chest, giving him twelve hours to rob a bank and bring them $100,000.

I had high hopes for this movie. The assembled cast was impressive, the plot sounded interesting, and I loved the directors previous movie, Zombieland. What could go wrong?

As it happens, quite a bit.

The film is marketed as an action comedy thriller. The main problem is that it just doesn’t get the balance right.The pacing is fast, even frantic in places. There are a couple of good car chases and action sequences, and the cast do an adequate if uninspiring job with the script.

The problem is that in trying to find the middle ground, it ends up doing none of it very well.

The jokes come thick and fast, but the problem is that none of them are actually very funny. The director seems to have gone down the path of quantity instead of quality and so the viewer is bombarded with a seemingly endless stream of crude dialogue and profanity. Don’t get me wrong – this is not something that offends me in any way, shape or form. There should, however, be a point to it. I don’t think the movie managed to get a single, solitary laugh out of me for its entire 1 hour 23 minutes run time.

Similarly, the thriller element is rather light weight for the most part. There is never really any doubt as to how things are going to turn out, and the fast pacing means that none of it really has the chance to sink in or make any impact.

The story was interesting, as far as it went, and I did look forward to seeing how things could get worse for the characters, but I didn’t really connect with any of them, and ultimately didn’t really care what happened to any of them.

That’s not to say that this is a terrible movie (although my girlfriend would disagree on that point, and the last half hour or so was peppered with comments such as “what are you making me watch on a Friday night?”, and “Is this rubbish still on?”) Some of the action sequences were OK, and there were enough twists and turns in the plot to keep my attention. Just. All in all, 30 Minutes or Less was a vaguely interesting, mindless way to spend an hour and a half. It’s just that with the assembled cast, director and premise, I was hoping for so much more.

If I had to sum this movie up in one word, it would be “disappointing”.

Review: Sherlock – Series 2 (12) / Directed by: Various / Written By: Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Steve Thompson /  Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Mark Gatiss / Release Date: Out Now

The moment the credits rolled on the series two finale of Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ modern reimagining of Sherlock Holmes, the entire series was eclipsed by one question: How did Sherlock do it? The Reichenbach Fall ended, as the entire world knows by now, with Sherlock leaping to his apparent death in a bid to save John’s life, only to show up watching his own funeral in the closing seconds. The internet promptly exploded with theories and extravagant guesswork as the millions of fans were turned into sleuths themselves, searching for clues in an episode stuffed with so many red herrings that you could smell it from a mile away.

But in all the excitement over mysterious laundry vans and bouncy balls, people have almost forgotten the show itself, which has to be one of the most confident pieces of British television ever made. Gatiss, Moffat and third writer Steve Thompson know they have a hit on their hands and have realised they can get away with being even more outrageous than they were in series one, while Martin Freeman has a BAFTA and a leading role as a certain Hobbit to his name now and Benedict Cumberbatch is just everywhere. In some places this newfound confidence goes to Sherlock’s head. There are some misjudged moments where the performances tip towards broad, and The Hounds of the Baskerville finds itself unable to come up with a suitable way round the inevitably disappointing ending of the source material, despite some stunning visuals and one of the best sequences in the trilogy, in which Russell Tovey’s traumatised Henry Knight faces off with a malfunctioning security light.

But, on the whole, you’d struggle to call series two anything other than a triumph. The series opened with A Scandal in Belgravia, an episode so slick it’s amazing it can stay upright. Lara Pulver was excellent as Irene Adler, the only woman to get under Sherlock’s skin, and the script teases out some wonderfully humanising moments between Sherlock and his icy brother Mycroft, played again with relish by Gatiss. The episode also showed off some truly mind-bogglingly clever visuals courtesy of Hollywood director Paul McGuigan.

The finale, penned by Thompson, a writer famous only for delivering the worst episodes of Sherlock and Doctor Who, was surprisingly the best of the bunch. It was the first episode of this coolly intellectual show to really tug at the tear ducts, boasting an ending that packs a real emotional punch. Andrew Scott’s gloriously mad Moriarty very nearly steals the show, winning over most of his series one detractors, but at the last moment everything spins back round to the real heart of the show: Sherlock and John’s relationship. Sherlock’s self-sacrifice is still a killer even when you know he’s not dead, because you’re not mourning him – you’re mourning the death of one of fiction’s greatest friendships.

And that friendship is really what series two is all about. For all that the casting is flawless across the board (Louise Brealey deserves special mention for making lovelorn Molly one of the most passionately loved characters in the show) this is the Cumberbatch and Freeman show. Their chemistry is flawless – hilarious, spiky and ultimately suggesting a deep bond with the barest minimum of sentiment. Cumberbatch continues to astound as TV’s only Aspergic hero, making him just vulnerable enough, but it’s Freeman who owns this series. No-one in television does reaction shots better than Martin Freeman, who is quite simply extraordinary at being ordinary. His grieving John will be the image that sticks with viewers during that long hinterland between series two and three. Because yes – there will be a series three.

Special features: Sherlock Uncovered is a disappointingly short making of, touching briefly on each episode and a couple of key sequences and visuals, but going into few details. The two audio commentaries throw up a few more interesting factoids, including what happened the first time Mycroft stood on Sherlock’s bed sheet in Buckingham Palace. Moffat, Gatiss and producer Sue Vertue do both commentaries, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Lara Pulver on sparky form for A Scandal in Belgravia and Russell Tovey joining them for an earnest Hounds of the Baskerville talk-track. The commentaries suffer a lack of the New Zealand-bound Martin Freeman and it would have been fascinating to hear Andrew Scott and Steve Thompson’s thoughts on The Reichenbach Falls, but sadly that’s the one episode that gets no commentary – presumably because they were terrified of accidentally giving the game away and spoiling all the fun that the internet conspiracy buffs are having.

Review: Shark Night (15) / Director: David R. Ellis / Screenplay: Will Hayes, Jesse Studenberg / Starring: Sara Paxton, Dustin Milligan, Chris Carmack / Release date: Out Now

A couple of summers ago, Piranha 3D was released and did some good business. It wisely went completely over the top and crazy in terms of both its plot and the gore on display. Since then we have had a sequel that looks like it’s going straight to DVD and now Shark Night, which so badly wants to be Piranha 3D but with sharks. Problem is director David R. Ellis is not Alexandre Aja and the film feels like it doesn’t go far enough.

The plot is the standard plot from an infinite number of ‘youngsters head to the wilderness’ horror films. Six or so college kids decide to head to Sara’s parent’s house out on a lake in the countryside. On the way there they encounter a friendly Sheriff and two threatening bumpkin types from Sara’s past. They settle in for drinking, flirting and water sports, but the lake has been invaded by several different species of shark and they are picked off one by one. Gradually they learn that despite wild theories about hurricanes and waterways, someone has released these sharks into the lake on purpose and it may have a connection with Sara’s troubled background.

Shark Night is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous. The sharks in this film do not obey the laws of nature or physics. Have you ever wanted to see a large shark leap like a dolphin out of shallow water? Here is the film. Furthermore the sharks all roar like lions underwater and in the air and can swim just as fast as a speedboat or jet-ski. Some of the effects are on a par with the endless low budget Mega Shark series and for some reason apart from a severed arm, there is a serious lack of gore.

It feels odd in these extreme times to complain because a horror film doesn’t have more violence and unpleasantness but it’s seriously lacking in Shark Night and you can’t help but notice. The story is so ridiculous that the extra gore and violence should be a pre-requisite but it never comes. If they really wanted to make something in that over the top camp that has become so popular recently, then they should have turned on the gore fountains because the film without it is pretty slight. The film also has a curious lack of nudity, despite having the oh-so-adorable Sara Paxton (The Innkeepers) in a bikini; there is no nudity beyond the tease. Fans of Piranha 3D and a certain sequence in particular are going to be so disappointed with this film.

David R.Ellis has previously made some great films like Final Destination 2 and Cellular. With Snakes on a Plane he made a movie that became a cult before it had even been released and subsequently was a let-down because it wasn’t as crazy bad as everyone expected. Shark Night suffers from the same problem, the plot is silly but has some pretty good bad guy motivations and performances and in certain scenes the effects work stands up enough to provide some good kills. Problem is the whole thing feels very much like a rushed cash-in job and it is surprising this even got a cinema release at all when the Piranha sequel is relegated straight to DVD.

There could have been a great film here and with a little more care and consideration we could have got a cult classic. As it stands, Shark Night is merely an entertaining film to catch on late night TV when it screens in a few years.

Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures – Series Five (PG) / Directed by: Ashley Way, Joss Agnew / Written by: Phil Ford, Gareth Roberts / Starring: Elisabeth Sladen, Daniel Anthony, Anjli Mohindra, Sinead Michael, Tommy Knight, Ace Bhatti, Mina Anwar, Alexander Armstrong (voice) / Release date: 6th February 2012

In a fairer world the sixth season of The Sarah Jane Adventures would be gearing up for production right about now, twelve episodes of clever, thrilling, witty adventure TV for kids (of all ages) heading for CBBC in the Autumn. But the world, as we know, just ain’t fair and the tragic death of Elisabeth Sladen last April brought the successful Doctor Who spin-off to a premature end and left the fifth series truncated down into just the six episodes which had been filmed earlier in the year for budgetary reasons. Screened last October these six brief episodes – just three two-part stories – arrive on DVD to bring the story of Doctor Who’s greatest companion to a final end. And whilst these six episdoes aren’t really the show at its strongest – who knows what might have been waiting in the second half of the season? – they remain a fitting, poignant testament to a show which never took its audience for granted and never ever sold them short in terms of the show’s remit to provide intelligent, imaginative storytelling for children.

Where season four had resolutely addressed the issues of the show’s supporting characters growing up – Sarah Jane’s genetically-engineered son Luke (Knight) went off to University (and took his robot dog with him) and the scripts were slyly suggesting that Clyde (Anthony) and Rani (Mohindra) were not only maturing fast but were becoming a sort of ‘partnership’ all their own (emphasised in this fifth season by the returning Luke calling the pair ‘Clani’ in the final story), season five attempts to press the reset button and aim the show more squarely at a young audience again with the introduction of Sky in the first story (which bears her name) which has a knowing resemblance to the show’s 2006 sixty-minute pilot episode Invasion of the Bane which saw the reclusive Sarah Jane Smith inadvertently becomimg a mother when she ‘adopts’ Luke, a creation of the alien Bane. In Sky the ages-long battle between the Fleshkind and the Metalkind spills over onto Earth when a living weapon (Sky herself) engineered to wipe out the Metalkind falls into the hands of Sarah Jane and the Bannerman Road gang and quickly develops into a naive and terrified twelve year-old girl. The story even echoes Samantha Bond’s turn as the villainous Mrs Wormwood with the flamboyant Fleshkind matriarch Miss Myers (Christine Stephen-Daly) and at the end of the story, with the aliens vanquished and Sky ‘deactivated’, Sarah Jane wilfully takes this new waif under her wing. Like Tommy Knight before her, Sinead Michael who plays Sky isn’t an especially strong actor (her cause isn’t help by the isn’t-she-sweet twinkly piano music which seems to accompany her every appearance) but she serves the intended purpose of giving the show a younger identification figure for a younger audience.

The Curse of Clyde Langer is stronger stuff dealing with themes of alienation and homelessness in a manner which wouldn’t disgrace an adult drama. Here an ancient totem pole on display in a museum exhibition exerts a baleful influence over Clyde who becomes a figure of hatred and loathing to anyone who says his name in full. With everyone turned against him – Elisabeth Sladen is on particularly good form as she pours out her bile and hatred towards her former friend and ally – Clyde finds himself cast out on the streets and living in a homeless shelter with an attractive young girl apparently named Ellie. Of course there’s a happy ending of sorts but the show manages to make a few discreet points about the fact that, to most of us, the homeless are invisible creatures whose existence we deny just as much as the more routine aliens which seem to terrorise Sarah Jane’s little corner of London with alarming/amusing regularity.

The show goes out with a bit of a damp squib in the broad The Man Who Never Was in which the launch of a new tablet computer (nothing like the iPad, Good Lord, no) is a cover for a massive scam to fleece the world’s population by conning them into buying a rubbishy piece of computer kit. Oh how we’ve all been there… This is largely knockabout stuff (although there’s an eye-openingly rude gag in the second episode) featuring a hologram operated by one-eyed cloaked aliens and a performance from James Dreyfuss as the bad guy which is so over the top it’s in orbit around Saturn.  Many an eye will moisten, though, at the end of the story’s second episode which becomes a devastatingly-sad tribute to Lis Sladen in the form of one of her familiar lovey-dovey voiceovers and a montage of some series highlights, ending up with a close-up of Lis at her best, smiling benignly like the cool much older best friend none of us has ever had.

Series five is a tough one to call because it’s really only half the intended story. Sky suggests the show’s very first story arc with the brief reappearance of the mysterious, quirky Caretaker (Cyril Nri) from the previous season, and a vague promise from Sarah Jane that we’ll find out just who he is “one day” and with Luke passing on the mantle of Sarah Jane’s ward at the very end of the series. So many stories untold, so much left undone. But the final caption promises, as it probably should, that the adventure continues forever. The Sarah Jane Adventures will be replaced in the CBBC schedule later this year by another Russell T Davies show – Wizards Vs Aliens is casting at the moment and will start filming shortly – and whilst I’ve no doubt it’ll be a robust, exciting adventure it just won’t be The Sarah Jane Adventures, the children’s own spin-off which adults could enjoy too.

Special features: The Sarah Jane boxsets haven’t previously been overflowing with bonus material but season five boasts a real doozy. ‘Goodbye Bannerman Road – Remembering Elisabeth Sladen’ is a beautiful twenty-minute tribute to the beloved actress with Daniel Anthony, Anjli Mohindra and series script editor Gary Russell returning to the Bannerman Road location just outside Cardiff a year after their last filming sessions and a few months after Lis’s death and they share warm, sad memories of working with the legendary actress. Elsewhere there are clips, contemporary news reports of Lis’s passing and even current Doctor Matt Smith voicess his admiration. It’s a lovely piece, and it alone justifies purchasing the set, even if the episodes represent the series operating at half-strength. ‘Goodbye Bannerman Road’, trust me, is enough to make a grown man cry. Oh. It just did…

Review: Pumpkinhead (18) / Director: Stan Winston / Screenplay: Mark Patrick Carducci, Gary Gerani / Starring: Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D’Aquino, Kimberly Ross / Release date: Out now

Incredible as it may seem, there are still a good few films yet to see a R2 DVD release. In the Mouth of Madness, Fright Night 2 and Terrorvision are all notable by their absence. If they are ever released, it’s usually extras and fanfare free. Such was the case in 2009 with Twilight Zone – The Movie and most recently, Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead.

Released in 1988, Pumpkinhead tells the story of Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen), a small town shop owner and father whose son is accidentally killed by the obnoxious leader of a group of dirt biking teenagers from the city. Looking for vengeance, Ed makes a terrible bargain with an old hag, named Haggis (honestly), to raise the demon, Pumpkinhead, to exact his revenge.

What follows is a hybrid slasher/monster movie as the teenagers are stalked and killed by the titular demon, culminating in a neat twist that lays the groundwork for the sequel (1994’s straight to video Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings).

Nicely paced with a satisfying conclusion, Pumpkinhead is an entertaining example of the monster genre, but the real selling point is the monster itself.

Created by Stan Winston’s effects team, Pumpkinhead is a memorable creation. Essentially a ‘Man in a rubber suit’, it manages to be realistic, expressive and, like Alien, goes through several physical changes in service to the story. 

Inside the suit was actor and fellow special effects master Tom Woodruff Jr, who continues to work behind and in front of the camera to this day, most notably creature design and acting in the Alien Vs Predator franchise.

With the amazing talent involved and solid final product, it’s difficult to see why Pumpkinhead disappeared into obscurity while some of its less deserving peers found mainstream success, it certainly ticks all the boxes. If we had to nit pick, we’d say some of the deaths are a little uninspired, but that’s just a quibble.

Pumpkinhead is a solid entry in the genre and well worth your time.

Review: Melancholia (15) / Director: Lars von Trier / Screenplay: Lars von Trier / Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland / Release date: Out Now

It seems as if Lars Von Trier is one of those directors who really needs to get out of his own way. At the Cannes film festival last summer, his film Melancholia met with some critical praise and it seemed as if he would end up walking away with some awards. Then he made that ill-advised Nazi comment and was declared persona non grata by the French meaning that effectively the adoration for his film was eclipsed by the controversy. Melancholia is very much cinematic marmite, it may even be more divisive than The Tree of Life but you can’t deny it’s an impressive art-house experience worth watching.

Melancholia begins with some impressively staged almost still shots of the impending doom that is yet to come, before arriving at the remote country mansion complete with golf course where depressed Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is about to be married. We meet her affable groom (Alexander Skaarsgaard) her uptight sister and her millionaire husband (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland) her drunken lush of a father (John Hurt) and pushy boss (Stellan Skaarsgaard). As the evening wears on, Justine does her best to put a brave front on things when inside she feels anything but cheery, constantly wandering off and trying to sleep. We learn that her mother (Charlotte Rampling) may be something to do with her condition as she has lots of similar nihilistic tendencies. Eventually the evening draws to a close with Justine eventually acting out on her feelings and moping around in her wedding dress until dawn. This is the first half of the film, the second follows Gainsbourg, as her sister Claire, who dotes on her son and cares for a post wedding, catatonic Justine much to her husband’s disapproval. The science fiction element comes in the form of a planet named ‘Melancholia’ which has appeared in our solar system from behind the sun and is due to pass us by. Claire is increasingly worried about the appearance of the planet, convinced that it is going to crash straight into the Earth despite what her husband says. All the relationships are strained as the apocalypse looms and Justine embraces the end whilst Claire clings on to life.

Apparently Lars Von Trier suffers from depression and you can tell in every single frame of this film. Anti-Christ may have been more on the nose than many could take but with Melancholia the metaphors are hardly subtle, they are smack in your face. A planet called Melancholia may well pass us by and everything will be okay, or it may well send us to oblivion. Depression sufferers will know this sensation all too well, often feeling initially it’s just a phase or is something that threatens to consume their whole existence. Von Trier gets his depiction of depression absolutely right and it may well be the first film to get this dead on without going all self-consciously quirky about it. Kirsten Dunst is absolutely incredible here after being absent from our screens in anything of note for a while. Dunst plays Justine as a woman so sad and so without a purpose that she alienates everybody around her and affects the lives of her nearest and dearest with her self-absorbed moping. Rumour was a while back that Dunst suffered from some demons of her own which kept her out of the acting game for a bit and it feels as if she channels every ounce of that experience into the performance. Von Trier really did her a disservice with his behaviour in Cannes as she was cruelly overlooked at this year’s academy award nominations and this is probably the best performance of the past year.

The second half of the film concerns Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character whilst Kirsten Dunst is put into the background. We also get more of Kiefer Sutherland as her often bewildered and frustrated husband. Whilst Gainsbourg’s role is perhaps the less showy of the two it’s still an impressive performance. Gainsbourg plays a character clearly capable of great love and kindness that flips between wide-eyed wonder at the galactic spectacle unfolding and sheer terror at the possibility of annihilation. It’s a nice flip side to the other sister who is capable of great affection towards her family but often hurts the ones who care most for her.

The climax is inevitable, it’s spoiled in the first eight minutes but the build-up is intense and well played out. Considering this is an art-house film they don’t scrimp on the special effects, although if you are looking for the giant tidal waves and earthquakes in something like 2012 then you will be disappointed. The tension mainly comes from the uncertainty over whether Justine will embrace her family and be with them come the end of the world, and that’s something that is rare in these days of bloated budget spectacles with an emphasis on explosions rather than emotion.

Melancholia won’t be for everyone. I have met just as many people that hate it as people who placed it high on their top ten lists for 2011. It’s a film that will stay with you for a long time after the credits have rolled and Lars Von Trier continues to be a successful director in terms of making you actually feel something. Let’s just keep him away from the press…

Extras: Making of, Astrophysics feature and Interviews

Review: Four Flies on Grey Velvet (18) / Director: Dario Argento / Screenplay: Dario Argento / Starring: Michael Brendon, Mimsy Farmer, Jean-Pieree Marielle / Release date: Jan 30th

Dario Argento’s little seen third picture, Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), has been partially restored by Shameless Screen Entertainment for this latest re-release. Why only partially? The print they’ve scrubbed up still possesses some wear and tear in places and not even modern technology could sort it out fully. The blemishes, frame wobbles and print scratches only appear once in a while but it jars badly when the rest of the film is a visual treat (even on DVD). In fact, it highlights what a great job, in general, Shameless has done when you see the differing quality.

Before the movie commences a warning is given announcing the glitches. Nevertheless what they’ve done is commendable given nobody usually cares about genre pictures compared to the usual restoration process of ‘classics’. They’ve fixed up a lot of problems and re-inserted several shots previously thought missing. What we have now is the most complete version of the film to date.

Co-written with Luigi Cozzi, Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Italian title: 4 Mosche di Velluto Grigio), takes a fantastical idea: the retina being able to record the very last image it sees (thus a murder victim will perhaps reveal a clue as to the perpetrator). Of course it’s all completely absurd making it less forensic revolution and more science fiction. However, Argento’s masterful weaving of dreamlike atmosphere firmly acknowledges everyday realism is the last thing on his mind. Was it ever?

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage announced a new sort of new subgenre in horror-thriller cinema. The giallo, historically, might have kick-started with Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace in 1964 and examples can be found more or less throughout the 1960s, but Argento cemented a variety of tropes and launched the great – and much imitated – gialli boom.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet began as a title in the director’s head. He befriended former music journalist Cozzi and they developed a storyline around death scenes they’d devised. It might appear an experimental (or foolhardy) approach to narrative but in the realm of Argento, this is entirely normal. Bizarre mysteries, exquisite and violent death and the director’s own obsessions are what make these films tick and why they’ve been singled out for all sorts of reasons over the past forty years.

Michael Brandon plays Roberto Tobias, a musician in a rock band, who develops a great unease after the same man follows him across town day in, day out. Finally, pissed off more than unnerved, Roberto is led to a deserted theatre where an accident leaves him in a vulnerable position. Who is the figure in the mask taking photographs?

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage took inspiration from Frederic Brown’s dime store novel The Screaming Mimi and Argento turned to American pulp fiction again for inspiration. Cornell Woolrich’s Black Alibi provided the movie with a great sequence involving a woman trapped inside a park. Giallo fans may also notice Sergio Martino staged a similar scene in The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, and seems to think Argento was paying some sort of homage. Luigi Cozzi, quite believably, disputes this in the bonus DVD interview, saying Argento would never copy those he saw as imitating him. Not that they’re against Martino’s film or the director himself, it’s just Argento set trends – he didn’t follow them.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet also completes what fans call the ‘animal trilogy’, which began with his debut and continued with Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971). The third feature also forefronts Argento’s passion for rock music. Yet this would be film where Ennio Morricone and the director, after arguing over the score, parted ways for over twenty years. Unusually for Morricone, it’s not very good or distinct.

The opening scene of Roberto pounding away on his drum kit only to stop the music all together for a few beats helps set the off-kilter, disruptive tone of the entire film. The editing, too, delivers a querulous, albeit, exceedingly stylish tone. Argento was growing more and more confident, that much is clear.

Roberto, a total innocent in the unfolding mayhem, is being blackmailed by a killer for some maddening reason. The list of suspects is surprisingly slim but there are red herrings a-plenty along the way. One of the best moments visualises a re-occurring dream Roberto has involving a man executed in a large public square with a sword. The details of this nightmare come direct from a friend’s story related at a party but takes on significance in greatly symbolic fashion.

Four Flies on Grey Velvet is, of course, absolutely ludicrous (like most giallo movies) but so assured is Argento’s directorial panache that even the most silly plot developments somehow remain in tone and do not disrupt the film or experience. The same cannot be said for several characters including a gay detective whose effeminate manner is meant as a jokey polar opposite to the traditional hard-boiled gumshoe, but is cringe-worthy.

Fans of Argento love the gruesomely staged set pieces. He doesn’t disappoint here though it’s not as gory as later films. However the final scene, in which reality and dream collide to create the brutal passing of an omen, is stunning. It takes Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Ballet of Death’ notion from The Wild Bunch and re-contextualises it, making a rather wacky ‘whodunit reveal’ strangely poetic. The slow motion is gorgeous despite the gruesome nature of what takes place.

This new release will definitely be something for Argento and giallo fans to check out. Whilst it’s not an essential work from the Italian maestro, it is near quintessential. It feels much like a transient movie and displays inklings of what would come in masterpieces such as Deep Red (1975), Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Tenebrae (1983). The Italian filmmaker was gaining great confidence in both style and thematic concerns.

The DVD comes with a few extras but nothing of great significance. A featurette on the restoration would have been most welcome. The film is also presented in Widescreen 2.35:1 Anamorphic and this further creates a beautiful sense of composition. It’s great to see foreign genre cinema given the same amount of care and consideration afforded to Hollywood classics. Only the unfortunate print defects sully an otherwise excellent release.

Extras: filmed introduction by Luigi Cozzi, theatrical trailer, interview with Luigi Cozzi, Shameless Screen Entertainment trailer reel

Review: The Watermen (15) / Director: Matt L. Lockhart / Screenplay: Matt L. Lockhart / Starring: Jason Mewes, Luke Guldan, Tyler Johnson / Release date: Feb 27th

Considering the salty sea dogs I have come across in dingy corners of our shorelines, it’s a mystery why more horror films are not set at sea or at least in eerie fishing villages. The Watermen tries to transpose the backwoods, inbred maniac sub-genre from the countryside out to sea and this idea should work like a charm. Except if you are writer, director and producer Matt Lockhart and don’t actually have any talent to speak of then the brilliance of a premise will elude you completely.

Our film begins with a half-naked young woman running for her life from what looks like Rob Zombie in waders. She conveniently falls over every five minutes and lets her barely-there top fall down to expose her breasts. At this point I thought we were in for a Scary Movie style spoof but sadly when the psycho fishermen start speaking their own bizarre lingo, I realised this was serious business.

After this prologue we meet our main idiots, sorry, characters. Trailer (Jason Mewes being himself) is a trust fund millionaire with a trio of gold diggers in bikinis who hang around and conveniently kiss each other or admire one another’s breast implants. Trailer is taking a yacht out to sea with his two other friends who have some tenuous connection with the coast guard but now just get stoned, flex their muscles and do some fishing. After purchasing some alarming looking bait from a swarthy seaman at the bait store, our fools head out to sea. After what seems like an endless series of helicopter shots either of the boat or the sea (ooh look how big it is!) the engine packs up and the party is over. Five minutes go by without power. The gold diggers freak out and so does the millionaire, there is a fistfight and then a rusty looking fisherman’s boat shows up. The dead meat perks up and craves water, but the fishermen on the other boat have drugged it and next thing we know one of them wakes up tied to a table and witnesses a fisherman’s behind, waders round his ankles as he thrusts into one of her comatose friends. So the next half hour or so is taken up with the usual rape and torture that too often constitutes a horror film these days – it’s redundant and devoid of any dramatic or narrative tension.

Things get lively again when the stoner twins wake up and we get some frankly bizarre slow motion fight scenes between them and the fishermen which belong in an early 90s action film. One of them even takes a gunshot in the stomach and recovers remarkably well. The whole thing ends explosively and on a weird geographical note that makes me question if Matt Lockhart actually understands how the ocean works at all.

The first half of The Watermen was constantly threatening to be one of those ‘so bad it’s good’ type films. The acting is on the level of a high gloss porno and for some reason even whilst out at sea the camera never stays still giving you a feeling of seasickness – boom, realism! If they had just gone for out and out cheese this could have been fun but they seem to be really trying to make some kind of point about the cruel sea and the plight of overfishing at times and this combined with the gratuitous unpleasantness means that the second half of the film is a chore to sit through. The character development is also non-existent. Jason Mewes plays a millionaire who we know is a millionaire because one of the bikini bimbos says he is on his cell phone all the time.

The actual motive of these savage fishermen is also a mystery. They are not far out enough to be really backwards and for some reason they kill people to chop them up and sell them as bait. You would think someone would notice because it’s not like our heroes drive a long way to get to their bait store, it’s just down the road.

With more talent and inventiveness this could have actually worked, as it stands The Watermen is a damp squib of a film that deserves to sink without a trace.

Extras: None