Review: Ink (15) / Director: Jamin Winans / Screenplay: Jamin Winans / Starring: Christopher Soren Kelly, Quinn Hunchar, Jessica Duffy / Release date: Out now

The history behind Jamin Winans’ soaring fantasy film Ink is one of those tales that exemplify the current world we live in and how films are found and distributed.

Made for a mere $250,000, the film premiered at the Santa Barbara Film festival in January 2009. It then went on to screen at other film festivals across the states and picked up some awards. Despite the acclaim however, no big studio was willing to throw their weight behind the film. The production company Double Edged Films then decided to pitch the movie directly to independent cinemas and saw to the distribution of the film on DVD and Blu-ray themselves. At first you could only buy copies of the film directly via the production company’s website, but then a strange twist of fate happened emerging from the most unusual place. Ink was downloaded something like 400,000 times in one week via BitTorrent and thus exposed the film to a larger audience. This in turn led to the film receiving a boost in DVD and Blu-ray sales. By Christmas 2009 the film was largely available on DVD via most retail stores in the United States.

It’s a damn shame that in this day and age you have to discover a film as wonderful and as accomplished as Ink via illegal means, when if there was any justice the film would be hailed as the lo-fi fantasy classic it is. Jamin Winans should now be enjoying the type of career of Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton but it seems that for the moment anyway he will continue toiling around in the low budget arena. If this film were made in the early 90’s it would have been picked up by Miramax or someone with vision and marketed into a modern fantasy classic. Ink evokes the work of Neil Gaiman and Terry Gilliam in its narrative and the work of The Waschowski Brothers with its visuals.

The film begins with stressed workaholic John (Chris Kelly) cursing and shouting in his car before being smashed into by another car. We then cut to the inside of his head where he has a dream regarding his estranged daughter Emma (Quinn Hunchar) and his inability to connect with her. We discover that the world by night is ruled over by two separate invisible factions. Storytellers and Incubi. Storytellers are warriors who provide people with inspirational and wonderful dreams by touching their foreheads whilst they sleep. Then there are the Incubi; spirits who come from vanity and pride, whose faces are covered with screens that show distorted happy faces and who influence people’s nightmares. One night a hideously deformed creature called Ink, who is neither Storyteller nor Incubus comes to Emma whilst she sleeps and kidnaps her soul. A battle with the Storytellers follows but Ink manages to escape with the girl who in the real world falls into a coma. Meanwhile John is experiencing a major stress headache when an account he has been working on is about to be swept away from him costing his company millions of dollars. Through flashback we learn that John lost custody of Emma when his wife died, leading him into a downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse. A small band of Storytellers, together with the blind Pathfinder Jacob, try and get Emma back from Ink who is travelling between dimensions, through time and limbo. Ink intends to deliver Emma to the Incubi so that he can become one of them and get rid of the endless shame and guilt he feels over his appearance. Emma’s grandparents approach John in the real world and ask for his help, he wants nothing to do with them and his feelings of resentment again rise to the surface. The Storytellers find out that John is being followed by an Incubus during the day and realise that reaching out to him may be the best way of getting Emma back. A final confrontation ensues in the dream worlds and the real worlds and we discover that Ink may be far more connected to the real world than previously thought.

The story for Ink is told in non-linear fashion, the idea being that in the dream worlds time as we know it does not exist. So at the beginning we witness some events that do not make sense until the climax of the film. This may sound confusing but doesn’t get that way whilst you are watching the film which flows brilliantly. Winans has total control over all of the elements including the editing and skillfully weaves the story elements together into a coherent whole. I’m getting to that age now where having children seems like a major priority so the story at the heart of this film touched me in ways I did not expect. Ultimately it boils down to a story about a father reconnecting with his daughter and it’s so well portrayed and so heartfelt without becoming schmaltzy that I couldn’t help but shed a tear in a couple of scenes.

Visually Ink is incredible, for a film with such a low budget it’s remarkable that they managed to accomplish what they did in this way. They filmed on cameras at the lower end of the spectrum so it’s a very soft focus film, due to the nature of the story this works wonders because it gives the whole thing a very dreamlike quality. The effects work around the Storytellers and Incubi is brilliant. They blink into existence with a flash and what sounds like a drumbeat and when they fight, they end up trashing the houses around them with the items destroyed quickly rebuilding themselves and putting themselves back where they came from. It’s a stunningly simple concept and done in such a seamless fashion that during the well choreographed fights you feel utterly exhilarated. The Incubi are some of the creepiest freaky looking beings on screen for years. First they all look like the mugshots of wanted sex offenders that you see on the news, then their faces are contorted into weird grins no matter what they are doing giving them a terrifying nightmarish edge. A sequence when Jacob the pathfinder listens to the flow of the world and disrupts it with a chain of events leading to an accident is one of the best set pieces of the last few years. What’s been missing from films recently is an abundance of new ideas, it’s why there are so many damn remakes and reboots. Ink is a film that is loaded with ideas, brilliant ideas and ones that are really well conceived. If Ink takes off as a major cult success eventually, then expect Hollywood to reboot it with a bigger budget, it’s the kind of brilliant world built with specific rules and characters that they love to get their hands on.

If there is a complaint about Ink, and it’s really just a minor one, it’s that some of the acting is kind of wooden especially from the main character. The actors portraying the otherworldly characters do the best work here especially Jessica Duffy as Live the Storyteller who has an almost supernatural grace and warmth to her. Jeremy Make as Jacob is also a lot of fun, again coming across well as a supernatural being although one with considerably more character and a foul mouth. Most of the performers do a bang up job inhabiting their characters but some give fairly flat line readings. It’s a similar problem that plagued the lower budget film Monsters from Gareth Edwards last year, but in the same way the story and visuals are so fascinating that it never becomes a glaring problem. If you liked the reality bending films Dark City, The Matrix and Inception and miss early Terry Gilliam films like Time Bandits then you should seek Ink out, it’s a true low budget gem and the calling card of a major talent just waiting to be discovered.

Extras: Behind-the-scenes featurette / director commentary / interview with Chris and Quinn / deleted Scenes / trailers.

Review: Stag Night of the Dead (15) / Directed and written by: Neil ‘Napoleon’ Jones / Starring: Sebastian Street, Sophie Lovell Anderson, Joe Rainbow, Mike Busson, Rez Kempton, Bruce Lawrence, James G Fain, Doug Grant, Jeff Rudom / Released: Out now

The general problem with horror comedies is that they’re neither one thing nor the other. Because they’re trying to be funny the horror doesn’t really work because the drive to be funny just dilutes the horror and, more often than not, the humour doesn’t work because it’s weak and insipid anyway, unless it’s knowing and referential like ‘Shaun of the Dead’. ‘Stag Night of the Dead’ wants to be ‘Shaun’ so much it’s almost painful to watch because it doesn’t have the budget, the script or the high class performers of ‘Shaun’ so, inevitably, it ends up looking like a cheap, lazy and rather belated rip-off. But, like so many of its ilk, it just ain’t horrific and it sure ain’t especially funny. Despite all this, though, it does have a sort of desperate sleazy charm and there are a few flashes of inventiveness and originality somewhere amidst  all this oh-so-familiar zombie nonsense.

For once we’re not in the middle of an all-out zombie apocalypse. There’s been an outbreak, it seems, but it’s under control and the surviving zombies have been rounded up and herded into an American Air Force base out in the English countryside where experimental research has turned into a ’paintball’ style shooting experience called  ’Zomball’. Cue a bunch of drunken, irritating lads in a stretch limo on a stag night (weekend?) – with a stripper in tow for reasons I couldn’t quite get my head around – and before long (again for reasons which don’t make a lot of sense) a drunken war game becomes a fight for survival as the zombies… oh, really, do I have to spell it out??

This is cheap film-making, let’s make no bones about it. The movie looks as if it was shot on someone’s mobile phone and the acting is rarely better than acceptable and often downright appalling, with only the ‘stag’ Dean (Street) and his womanising best man (Lawrence) making much of an effort but Joe Rainbow deserves a special mention for his spectacularly-irritating and stereotypical sub-Ali G turn as the hapless ‘DJ Ronny’. To his credit, writer/director Neil Jones has clearly tried to do something a bit different in a genre which is almost laughably played-out by now and his script has the odd inspired moment which keeps your attention even when every fibre of your being tells you this isn’t going to be a great movie experience. The ‘Ghostbusters’-style proton pack gun devices the stag gang used to ‘zap’ the zombies look pretty cool and Jones uses his camera (mobile or otherwise) to frame a few quite impressive shots and while the zombies suffer from budgetary restrictions and there’s nothing new in the sequences where they attack the stag party, there’s one scene which stands out because I’ve never before seen a zombie’s hand pass right through the back of a man’s head and come out of his mouth. Yet it still isn’t horrific…

I’d love to be able to rip ‘Stag Night of the Dead’ to shreds, zombie-style, but the truth is, whilst it’s not hugely accomplished and its cheap DV camerawork makes it more of a chore to watch than it needs to be, it’s an inoffensive enough experience made with enthusiasm, energy and a script which is quite a bit better than it might be expected to be. I really can‘t bring myself to recommend ‘Stag Night of the Dead’ but it really is a quintessential Friday night beer and pizza movie which is guaranteed to elicit a few guffaws, even if not necessarily for the reasons its makers might have intended.

Special features: 23-minute ‘making of’ feature, zombie make-up feature, deleted scenes, out-takes, stills gallery, commentary.

Review: Tales From the Darkside (15) / Directed by: George A. Romero, (various) / Written By: George A. Romero, (various) / Starring: Catherine Battistone, John Marzilli, Karen Shallo, (various) / Release Date: Out Now

“Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But . . . there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real but not as brightly lit . . . a DARKSIDE”.

Way back in the murky depths of 1984, George Romero – he of the Dead franchise – was asked to direct a series of short horror stories for television. Two years earlier Romero had directed the moderately successful Creepshow anthology – a film collecting five interpretations of Stephen King’s work to instant cult status and an assured place in the annuals of horror. Unlike Creepshow, however, Tales of the Darkside would lack animation and instead focus on the bizarre and outright strange. Romero, a big sought-after director of the time agreed, perhaps recognising a cash-cow when he saw it, and Tales of the Darkside ripped its way into the world.

In the strange days of the 1980’s, where 42k computers were considered cool, there is a marked difference between budget allocation for television and film, and Tales from the Darkside suffers heavily from a shoestring budget. Most of the scenes are set indoors and limited to one or two rooms at best; the acting varies between outstanding to shockingly bad. But the true strength of Tales from the Darkside comes in the form of its twenty-one tales of moralistic caution. We are served episode after episode of the many failings of man: greed, envy, sloth, the darker aspects of our lives are dragged into the open and dissected for our viewing pleasure. In this manner, Tales from the Darkside borrows heavily – some might say unashamedly – from Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.

Romero does on occasion deliver a good episode, but, as if often the way with anthology shows, most of the episodes are lacklustre affairs and the sting in the tail all too obvious from the start. In fact this becomes something of a game, plenty of fun can be found trying to guess the dark and nefarious twist that will undoubtedly befall the protagonist as the show creeps, flounders, or sprints towards it’s all too obvious conclusion. That said, when the show delivers it really does pack quite the punch. Word Processor of the Gods and A Case of the Stubbons both stand head and shoulders above the other episodes.

George Romero, Clive Barker, and Stephen King have all contributed to the show in some form or other and as a result Tales from the Darkside can at times resonate with powerful writing, strong direction and horror at its spine-tingling best.

Despite its many flaws, Tales from the Darkside Season 1 remains entertaining viewing almost thirty years since its original conception. And as an added bonus, the pilot episode comes with audio commentary by George Romero. Also keep an eye out for little nods towards Night of the Living Dead and a very young Christian Slater who stars in A Case of the Stubborns.

Tales from the Darkside is at times shocking, horrific, and darkly humorous. Well worth the watch.

“The dark side is always there, waiting for us to enter, waiting to enter us. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight”…

Review: Doctor Who – The Complete Sixth Series (12) / Directed by: Various / Written By: Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Various /  Starring: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill / Release Date: Out Now

2011 was an odd year for Doctor Who, a split series left many a die hard fan with an odd taste in our mouths. The termination of Confidential and the announcement that we will soon be deprived of our Rory and Amy goodness has not helped, but with the latest series available in one handy box set we can experience all the stories back to back and distract ourselves until the long wait is over and the leaves turn golden brown.

The inclusion of Christmas 2010 special ‘A Christmas Carol’, starts this run off well, (although, if you want to see the Doctor Who Proms will still need to buy the vanilla release) and we hit the ground running with the – apparently – fixed point in time that is ‘The Impossible Astronaut’. The Grand Moff and co guide us on a breathtaking trip through the (largely) reverse life of River Song and witness the SF staple that is a rapidly aging child and a host of other topics that kept internet forums buzzing thorough the game of two halves.

I will not bore you with an episode by episode breakdown. Other reviewers have that covered elsewhere and I need to examine the box set as a single entity. Does watching these episodes in one sitting make it any better? An unreserved ‘Yes’. Moments of perceived dullness such as ‘The One with the Pirates’ or ‘The One with The Dolls House’ whizz by as we pop in on ‘The One By Neil’ and onward to the visual treat that is ‘The One Where We Know How it Ends by Watching the ‘Previously On’.

Extras:

A full disc of cut down Confidentials makes its last showing and shoots itself in its own foot with the infamous ‘Top Gear’ episode but it is with the River Song heavy ‘Night with the Doctor’ series of short episodes that this box set really gives us a reason to buy. The remaining parts of River’s life are played out before us in a collection of moving and funny moments. Specially shot for the DVD. Maybe it’s the future of DVD box sets to have whole episodes that never appear on television. Weather this signals the beginning of the end of televised Doctor Who or simply illustrates the standard of writing that the Moff era has to offer, time will only tell.

Another extra worthy of mention is the Neil Gaiman solo commentary on his episode. Basically it is the coolest chat you will ever experience, a peek into the mind of the king of the Goths.

Maybe it’s that I have been spoilt by the simply wonderful extras that are on the Classic series DVD release that these gems still leave me wanting more. Maybe those will turn up in twenty years time on a format not even on the drawing board yet…

Review: Faces in the Crowd (15) / Directed by: Julien Magnat / Screenplay by: Julien Magnat, Kelly Smith / Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sarah Wayne Callies, Julian McMahon / Release Date: Out Now

Prosopagnosia is a disorder where face perception is distorted and the brain fails to recognise the faces of every day folk that the patient sees every day. Often the only way the sufferer can get over this disorder is through association of objects such as beards or scars. The condition is associated with brain damage but it is now thought that 2.5% of the population may suffer from a congenital form of the disorder. Faces in the Crowd takes this unfortunate condition and spins a fiendish serial killer plot around the central conceit that a witness is no longer able to recognise a killer.

The film begins with timid school teacher Anna Merchant (Milla Jovovich) and her boyfriend Bryce (Michael Shanks) living in a city, happily getting by like any young yuppie couple. Anna likes to go out with her two singleton friends to pretentious bars every now and then and Bryce seems more into Anna than she is into him. A serial killer known as ‘the tear jerker’ who cries over his murdered victims is making headlines for claiming victims across the city. One night out and walking home alone, Anna witnesses the tear jerkers latest victim having her throat slit. The killer comes after her and she is injured and falls off a bridge, smacking her head on the way down. When Anna comes to in hospital later, she is horrified to see other people seem to have replaced all those she knows and loves. Understandably confused she is diagnosed with ‘face blindness’ (Prosopagnosia) and is unable to recognise people due to her injuries with people’s faces constantly changing. This comes much to the frustration of Detective Kerrest (Julian McMahon), the homicide detective hunting the killer, who wants her to be a witness. With the help of psychiatrist Dr Langenkamp (Marianne Faithfull) Anna starts to put her life back together. Trouble is the killer has started to stalk her, returning items she lost that fateful night, but with her condition she never knows who she is talking to.

Despite being marketed as kind of a horror movie which it isn’t really, Faces in the Crowd should have been a slam dunk, the ingenious premise writes itself. Trouble is it never rises above merely entertaining and has some massive flaws when it comes to character development. Around the mid-section when the killer starts to stalk Anna it’s truly thrilling and leads to some wonderful set pieces like a chase through a subway train or a stalking via mobile phone through a packed nightclub. The film then throws in an unearned and unnecessary romantic subplot which casts doubt on all the sympathy the main character has earned. It’s a sudden shift where Anna seems to fall in love with Detective Kerrest purely for the fact that he has a beard and is therefore easy to recognise. When this happens you just end up feeling sorry for her old boyfriend rather than being invested in this new development. Anna comes across as very fickle and shallow because of this and her and her friends habit of rating the rear ends of men they meet in bars.

Apart from the previously mentioned brilliant suspense sequences, director Julien Magnat makes the smart decision to have the characters in Anna’s life be played by different actors in every scene after her accident. This truly gets across the confusion of the character and is a wonderfully surreal touch which keeps you guessing. Part of the fun is seeing who is going to appear and how in the next scene. Characters Anna doesn’t know are often played by the same actor so if she sees three cops talking in a hallway then they all appear identical. I’m unsure if this was in the script or was a directorial decision but for an inexperienced director it was a ballsy move which could have fallen flat but is really effective in the context of this story.

Beyond the great premise and pacey and exciting screenplay, sadly not much else works. The problem is down to casting and character development. Milla Jovovich is fine as the woman in peril and does frightened very well, but because of her previous preferred roles I kept expecting her to pull out twin sawn off shotguns and start blowing people away. Apart from her brain damage, Anna is as previously mentioned, a pretty shallow and fickle character, Jovovich’s previous background as a model doesn’t really help matters and if the role were played by someone else it may have made all the difference. Her friends are even worse, the writers seem to have just studied the promos for the last Sex and the City movie and decided that yes, this is how women are. The two other important roles in Anna’s life post-accident are even worse in terms of who they cast. Julian McMahon is terribly miscast as a grizzled homicide detective and you can tell because of how much he seems like any moment he will be revealed to be the killer. McMahon has a natural sliminess to him that lends itself towards rich creeps and does nothing to indicate he could play this kind of role. All the depth this character seems to have is a beard and a beer belly. He falls for Anna seemingly after just the second meeting on a whim because his psychologist mate questions him on it. Worst of all is Marianne Faithfull as a supposedly brilliant psychiatrist. Her line delivery is as wooden as Pinocchio and nothing about her rings true at all.

If you can look past these deep flaws then there is fun to be had here. Faces in the Crowd is reminiscent of the glossy whodunnits of the early 90s and the kind of film they don’t make much anymore. Just don’t expect the film to live up to its brilliant premise.

Review: Brazil (15) / Directed by: Terry Gilliam / Screenplay by: Terry Gilliam, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown  / Starring: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Ian Holm, Robert de Niro, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Ian Richardson / Release Date: Out Now

Resolutely, spectacularly untainted by the ravages of time, ‘Brazil’ is almost certainly Terry Gilliam’s modern masterpiece. It’s one of those films it’s easy to take for granted because you’ve almost certainly seen it before at least once, admired it or maybe even loved it but somehow it sort of slips into the backwaters of the memory, never forgotten but almost always under-appreciated. Sometimes it takes a casual reacquaintance – this time courtesy of a sprightly new sparkling Blu-ray release – to make you just find the time to actually watch the damn thing again. Should you do so – and you should – you may sit there for a while after it’s ended, gawping at the screen as the credits roll and muttering to yourself ‘Blimey, I’d forgotten it was that good…’ That’s what I did.

‘Brazil’ (originally entitled ‘1984 and a half’) is, of course, the film that more or less scuppered former Python animator Gilliam’s Hollywood film career. It’s a testament to his talent and his dogged determination that he’s pressed on and added a number of bizarre and eclectic credits to his name – more ‘mainstream’ stuff like ‘The Fisher King’ and ‘Twelve Monkeys’ ­- as well as disasters-waiting-to-happen like ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ (once a firm favourite, now virtually unwatchable) and the horrible ‘Brothers Grimm’ not to mention the abandoned ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’ (rain, amongst other things, stopped play – check out the superb, near-tragic documentary ‘Lost in La Mancha’ for the full and frank fascinating story). When Gilliam delivered the final cut of ‘Brazil’ his first proper non-Monty Python feature, he gave studio chiefs apoplexy. ‘Brazil’, they argued, was unreleasable, uncommercial, it was going nowhere. They hacked it down to a running time of just over 90 minutes, compromising Gilliam’s singular vision and started a war which has been simmering away ever since, with Gilliam always the outsider, struggling to direct the sort of films he wants to make regardless of whether they’re fashionable and commercial or not. And ‘Brazil’ is where it all began…

Set “somewhere in the 20th century”  ‘Brazil’ tells the labyrinthine story of timid, underachieving Sam Lowry (played by Gilliam favourite Jonathan Pryce) working in an unassuming clerical job in a grim, dystopian, Orwellian future dominated by rules and regulations and paperwork and ducts. He dreams of life as a sort of superhero-cum-birdman, soaring high in the clouds and coming to the rescue of his dream-woman. When a rare Government clerical error causes the incarceration of the innocent Harry Buttle instead of suspected terrorist Harry Tuttle (de Niro), Sam finds that the woman of his dreams is real and that she’s a suspected terrorist too. With the help of his vain and manipulative mother Ida (Helmond) Sam engineers a promotion to the ‘Information Retrieval’ department where he’s able to track down the mysterious Jill (Greist) before setting off to find her and declare his love for a woman he’s only ever met in his dreams…

In truth, trying to summarise the plot of ‘Brazil’ is a bit like trying to knit fog because the film can be pretty much whatever you want it to be. It’s a wild Gilliam flight of fancy with vivid and fantastical imagery (Gilliam’s Python illustrations brought to life), it’s a quirky condemnation of officialdom and authoritarianism, it’s a cautionary tale of the Shape of Things That Could Still Come, it’s a sweet love story. It’s a wild fantasy, a comedy and, in some ways, it’s a horror story. No happy ending here either, the cause of much of the Hollywood disquiet which met the original cut’s arrival in 1985.

The best way to enjoy ‘Brazil’ is not to read about it but to experience it. Drink in its glorious, gorgeous imagery, the stunning, stark direction, the beautiful production design and visual effects (all accomplished pre-CGI, thank you) and savour career-best performances by the likes of Pryce, Palin and Helmond. Some critics argue that this 143-minute edit is a bit too long and while it’s true that there are moments of flabbiness and self-indulgence, the world of ‘Brazil’ is too fascinating and wonderfully-realised to really want to spend a moment less there than Gilliam is able to offer. Do yourself a favour and visit (or revisit) ‘Brazil’ as soon as you can – you won’t regret it for a moment.

Special features: 30 minute ‘What is Brazil?’ featurette. Original theatrical trailer.

Review: Rolling Thunder (18) / Director: John Flynn / Screenplay: George VanBuskirk / Starring: William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes / Release date: 30th January

In this little-known but extremely worthwhile revenge thriller from 1977, two Vietnam vets return home to a hero’s welcome after 8 years of imprisonment and torture. But for Major Charles Rane (William Devane) it’s hardly a fairytale ending: his wife’s been cuckolding him, his son doesn’t remember him and America has changed almost beyond recognition. When he points out that his wife isn’t wearing a bra, she replies, “No one wears them now.”

Rane himself has been transformed by his experiences into a remote, impassive character, harbouring twisted masochistic longings. Almost the only thing in the first reel to get his pulse racing is his reenactment of some of his captors’ favourite torture tricks with the aid of some rope and the bewildered cop who’s been sleeping with his wife.

It’s almost like a spiritual homecoming for him, then, when a gang of thugs break into his house and rough him up in an attempt to discover the location of some silver dollars given to him upon his return. What follows is a rangy, loose-limbed vendetta story as he attempts to track down the gang and exact his vengeance.

The script was co-written by Paul Shrader, and it has his fingerprints all over it. Rootless, alienated, out of step with his times, Rane has a lot in common with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976) and even looks like him when he stands shirtless in front of a mirror, a holster strapped to his malnourished side. To help him take down the evils goons, the obsessive major hooks up with his war buddy Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones,) a revenge-as-bonding-ceremony motif which recalls another Schrader-scripted movie, The Yakuza (1974) But perhaps most interestingly, Rolling Thunder prefigures the theme of male masochism which crops up both in Taxi Driver and Raging Bull (1980.)

Yet whereas, in those films, the theme is an intriguing undercurrent, here it is front and centre. When someone asks him how he survived all those years of suffering, he explains “You learn to love the rope.” The irony is that people are constantly mistaking his masochistic passiveness for cool machismo. When, in the hands of the goons, he takes his licks without giving up the silver dollars, they assume he’s acting the hero – in fact, he’s swooning in exquisite agony. This sly puncturing of the whole idea of tight-lipped, bloody-knuckled masculinity is Schrader at his best.

Rolling Thunder‘s director was the late John Flynn, a reliable Hollywood journeyman who went on to helm action flicks with Stallone and Seagal. His work here is first rate, calm and unfussy in the style of Schrader’s own later directorial efforts. He handles the violence with a casualness that makes it seem even more outrageous, and takes all of the oddball themes in his world-weary stride, while wrapping up everything in a pleasing Tex-Mex ambience. He’s abetted by a clutch of fine performances from Tommy Lee Jones as Rane’s wingman, James Best (Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard) as the twitchy, sweaty leader of the gang of thieves, and windblown beauty Linda Haynes as a waitress who does her best to get under Rane’s skin. As Rane, William Devane bottles up his feelings expertly. He was a most watchable leading man at this stage of his career, before the box office disaster of Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) turned him into one of Hollywood’s forgotten men.

Review: Camp Hell (15) / Director: George VanBuskirk / Screenplay: George VanBuskirk / Starring: Dana Delaney, Andrew McCarthy, Caroline London, Will Denton, Bruce Davison / Release date: Out now

Recently it was revealed that actor Jesse Eisenberg was none too happy with the producers and distributors of Camp Hell as they had used his image so prominently in promoting the film when his role amounts to little more than a cameo. The truth of the matter is Eisenberg is probably ashamed to be associated with a film as un-redeemably bad as this one. Make no mistake, Camp Hell is Christian propaganda masquerading as a horror film and is on a par with those over the top 1950s government health warning films like Reefer Madness.

After the oddest mash up of imagery and music ever playing over the credits, the film begins in an ultra-religious community where Tommy Leary (Will Denton, woeful) lives with his ultra conservative and god fearing parents Michael and Patricia (Andrew McCarthy and Dana Delaney, as confused as we are). Tommy along with devout priest Father McAllister (Bruce Davison, giving it his all for no reward) and a few of Tommy’s Christian pals are shipped off to Christian summer camp where Tommy is tempted to sin with ‘sister’ Melissa (Valentina De Angelis). Eventually after an over zealous camp councillor tears up a copy of the comic Spawn and punches another student who went to a fun fair, Tommy and Melissa succumb to the sins of the flesh and dry hump in the woods. Whilst Tommy tries in vain to hide his semen encrusted jeans from the Christians, some kind of vaguely interested evil presence appears in the woods. The evil presence then knocks some people over and vandalises a church. The end.

It’s hard to understand what the intention was here, director George Van Buskirk who has been involved in the production of independent films like Roger Dodger and The Secret Lives of Dentists clearly has some issues with religion but seems to be saying that if you sin, bad things will happen, end of story. Then on the flipside he takes a devoutly religious man like Father McAllister who does no wrong, and has nothing but bad things happen to him. So what exactly is the point he is trying to make? The film doesn’t work as as horror as it’s not scary (it’s on a par with an episode of Byker Grove in those stakes) and it doesn’t work as a satire of organised religion because it isn’t really pointing any fingers. If you are going to make a judgemental fire and brimstone Christian horror flick then have the guts to go full tilt into major carnage as a consequence of sinning. It seems that the overriding message of the film isn’t the old horror adage that sex equals death but those wet dreams and Todd Macfarlane comics equal possession and damnation. Even in these times when the right and left wings are further apart than ever, the message seems muddled and misjudged.

The more I think about this film the more it annoys me. At the beginning of the movie the cast are spouting po-faced scripture and you could be forgiven for thinking you are about to have a right old giggle at the American Christian right wing. This never really happens though as these idiots are presented as the good guys and some shadow in the woods and some crusty jeans are the most evil things in the world. The whole affair is just tedious and like a trip to Sunday school after years as an atheist. At one point in the middle I thought the film was about to come to life as Tommy tries desperately to hide the previously mentioned dry humping soiled jeans and they seem to become the McGuffin on which the rest of the film hangs. No such luck because the film chooses to proceed with half-assed effects and an ending that says even classic literature is no good for you.

As for Jesse Eisenberg’s role, he pops up as a former member of McAllister’s flock now in a mental home because he too succumbed to the lure of comic books, sugar and having a wank. The man is right to want to distance himself from this film which he no doubt did as a favour for someone.

Camp Hell is hopeless; it wants to point a finger at you and craft a scary cautionary tale at the same time but never rises above tedious sermonising. Avoid at all costs, even when it appears on DVD shelves in Poundland in a couple of weeks.

Extras: None

Review: Dead Heads (15) /Directed and written by the Pierce Brothers / Starring: Michael McKiddy, Ross Kidder, Markus Taylor, Thomas Galasso, Natalie Victoria / Release date: Out Now

Another year, another tide of low-budget straight-to-DVD zombie movies. Oh well. First off the blocks in 2012 comes Dead Heads, a comedy zombie horror, falling broadly into the ‘zomromcom’ category created by and for the brilliant Shaun of the Dead, written and directed by the Pierce Brothers, sons of one of the FX bods from The Evil Dead. But rest assured that whilst this is no SotD at least it manages to be a cut above many of the dreadful catchpenny zombie titles which clutter up the shelves, stinking the place out like rotting flesh.

This is supposed to be a comedy, remember, so the premise is a barrel of laughs. Mike and Brent, two amiable slackers, wake up during what’s clearly a fairly localised and low-key zombie outbreak, to find that they’re actually dead. They’re zombies. But they’re not groaning, shuffling, flesh-eating zombies; they’re thinking sentient beings with all their memories and thought processes intact, even if their flesh is veiny, bloody and discoloured and Mike’s arm has a tendency to fall off. Much hilarity and prat-falling (signposted by quirky music just so we know it’s supposed to funny) as the two stumble about avoiding other zombies and being shot by men with guns. Fifteen minutes in and you may be tempted to press ‘eject’ and look for something less aimless to do but hang in there because Dead Heads is just about worth sticking with as it settles down and develops into a bit of an unconventional road movie. Mike (McKiddy), who realises he’s been dead for three years – shot in the head – discovers a ring in his pocket and remembers the girlfriend he was clearly about to get engaged to, so he and loudmouth Brent (Kidder) set off to try and find her so they can be reunited. They team up with a tame dumb zombie they nick-name Cheese (Taylor) and hitch a ride with Cliff (Harry Burkey) who’s off to scatter his late wife’s ashes. Meanwhile we discover a bit more about the zombie outbreak and its cause, and the luckless undead pair are pursued by a couple of macho zombie killers and the scientist whose experiments caused the outbreak in the first place. 

For a low-budget indie zombie flick Dead Heads is a fairly slick experience. Whilst the script’s humour is more tiresome than hilarious, the Pierce Brothers have managed to give their characters a decent amount of flesh on their rotting bones so at least they come across a bit like real(ish) people rather than zombie fodder and there’s a couple of quite touching  moments where Mike mourns his lost love and Cliff finally arrives at the beach to say farewell to the remains of his wife. Elsewhere this is broad, brash, knockabout stuff, packed with typically unsubtle performances and a few splashes of gore here and there. The movie covers a lot of fairly haphazard ground across its 92 minute running time and only finally loses the plot towards the end when an already rather silly idea just gets too ridiculous and comedic for its own good. But Dead Heads is affable enough stuff, well directed and with a fairly unique style which sets it apart from the slew of other cheap shlocky zombie horrors which are surely just around the corner.

Special features: Trailer

Review: The Skin I Live In (15) / Directed by: Pedro Almodóvar / Screenplay by: Pedro Almodóvar, Agustín Almodóvar / Starring: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet / Release Date: Out now

Pedro Almodovar is one of the most acclaimed directors to ever come out of Spain. His films often tread some very uncomfortable melodramatic territory so it’s a wonder he has never made an operatic horror film before. The Skin I Live In, whilst being familiar to many of Almodovar’s established art-house fan base is essentially a horror film that works hard to make you uncomfortable and has some difficult subject matter not usually seen outside of South Korea.

The film begins with Vera (Elena Anaya) a beautiful but suicidal woman being held captive by prominent plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas) at his thoroughly modern home. Vera’s beauty is a direct result of Ledgard’s experimentation with transgenesis, a technique for creating perfect and artificial skin and Vera has reached the end of her treatment. Ledgard lives with his housekeeper Marilia (Marisa Parades) who urges Robert to dispose of Vera before he is found out. When Marilia’s criminal son shows up and takes a liking to Vera, this leads to a violent reaction from Robert. Through flashback we then learn of the obsession’s driving Robert and the truth behind Vera’s existence.

This plot summary is probably only the first twenty or so minutes of the film and is all I am going to reveal. Part of the terrible beauty at the heart of The Skin I Live In is watching the story unfold and how it surprises you with its revelations and character development. The film manages to balance perfectly the melodrama in much of Almodovar’s work and introduce a new Cronenberg esque cold detached body horror element reminiscent of Dead Ringers. Along with much of the countries’ recent output this is a further example of how Spain is producing the best genre filmmaking anywhere in the world right now.

Antonio Banderas started out in Almodovar’s films and then went Hollywood where they tried to turn him into a megastar with mixed results. Back working with Almodovar again after so long, Banderas reminds us all why we liked him in the first place. Here he puts in some great work and with not a lot of dialogue conveys a world of pain and simmering anger just below the surface which threatens to explode at any minute. Elena Anaya has been a small bit part player in some Hollywood productions but due to her work in this film (and because she is gorgeous) super stardom cannot be far away. Anaya has the showier role here and has to play a character that begins with our sympathies but also becomes a figure of disgust and has an incredibly complex arc. Anaya does all the heavy lifting with ease, flipping between sexy compliance and devastation. The other central performance at the centre of this film is Marisa Parades as the housekeeper Marilia. This character has her own revelations as the plot unfolds and is the medium between the two extreme characters of Ledgard and Vera and has a world of conflict within her.

The tricky structure is both a strength and at times a weakness of this film. The decision to tell the horrifying tale in mostly flashback is necessary for the full horror of the story to be effective. If it was linear it just would have felt like shock for the sake of it. Almodovar is too smart a filmmaker to be like someone like Tom Six for example, and tells a shocking tale skilfully without resorting to cheap shock tactics. Although this is one of the film’s great points, around an hour into its running time you may be scratching your head and wondering what is going on. The more impatient viewer at this point will either abandon the film in favour of something with more violence or will be so invested in the strong performances and characters that they will wait until the rewarding and moving conclusion.

If you are not a fan of Pedro Almodovar’s previous work do not be put off by this. The Skin I Live In is incredibly smart and adult filmmaking from one of the masters of the medium.

Extras: Behind the Scenes, Somerset House Premiere Feature, Production Photos, Theatrical and Teaser trailers.