What makes you… drive angry? For me it’s people who use mobile phones while they’re behind the wheel or motorists who don’t bother indicating when they’re turning left or right. Grrr. Also the expression ‘drive angry’, which should surely be ‘drive angrily’ although, oddly, it doesn’t actually make me ‘drive angry‘. Or even angrily. But what makes John Milton (aka Nicolas “I’ll do it!” Cage)’drive angry‘? Or angrily. Well, very probably the fact that he’s dead and has had to break out of Hell to find the rampaging bunch of satanists who have murdered his daughter and kidnapped his baby granddaughter so they can sacrifice her and rip open Hell and bring about the end of the world. Obviously.

So this week’s Nic Cage movie is Drive Angry, a pumped-up grindhouse wet dream for fast car and loud gun fetishists, directed by Patrick Lussier (he edited the 1996 Paul McGann Doctor Who TV movie, fact fans!) with, it seems, a perfectly straight face and with no sense of irony or appreciation of the fact that the entire movie is hair-raisingly ridiculous. Lussier’s created a film full of moody beer-swillin’ men in leather, (not terribly) fast cars, a bit of gratuitous nudity, lots of random violence and the inevitable pumping heavy metal soundtrack.

But utterly against my better judgment I rather liked it. Cage has a knack for making this sort of high concept stuff work where an actor who takes his career rather more seriously might struggle. Cage, all wild hair and glowering looks, strides through the madness as if he actually believes it (much as he does in Ghost Rider and the feeble Season of the Witch) and he makes Hell-escapee Milton a more sympathetic character than we might expect. Milton hooks up with grungy waitress Piper (Amber Heard) to track down his daughter’s killers – he offs them with merciless abandon, particularly in an extended gun battle where Milton is, er, otherwise engaged. Tracking Milton is The Accountant (the charismatic William Fichtner), channelling Christopher Walken as the being sent from Hell to bring back escapees and, in this instance, give Milton a helping hand where and when he needs it. Fichtner, best known for his recurring role as the determined FBI officer Alex Mahone in Prison Break is brilliant, firing off deadpan quips and dismissing everyone is his way with devastating put-downs. Fichtner gives the movie the much-needed sense of humour it wouldn’t otherwise have as both Cage, despite the twinkle in his eye, and his director seem determined to treat Drive Angry as an intense experience in psychological terror when, in reality, it’s just a bit of dumb trash.

Loud, brutal, mysoginistic and inane – Cage ends the movie drinking beer from the sizzling skull of his vaporised enemy – Drive Angry feels absolutely like the sort of movie it’s impossible to condone let alone enjoy. Yet its idiocy makes it compelling and sometimes it’s cool just to kick back, sideline those critical faculties, and watch a big brash grungy film which works just because it’s what it is and not in spite of it. Hellishly enjoyable.

Drive Angry is out now on DVD and Blu-ray

Poor Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore) is king dork at Doddsville High. He’s bullied by the cool kids and ends up scarred for life when a bottle of nitric acid falls from a shelf onto a lit Bunsen burner in a class room. It’s totally daft, clearly tongue in cheek, but this British slasher feels less a spoof and more a simulacrum of the genre. Which might lend it some critical merit given this particular reading.

The high school setting, fake and real American accents (which still sound fake – work that one out) and playful expectations unfortunately can’t save it from being anything but a work with sporadic points of interest – such as the male nudity, which is highly unusual in the slasher.

Slaughter High had not one, not two, but three directors (Mark Ezra, George Dugdale and Peter Litten). Haven’t they ever heard too many cooks spoil the broth? Starring cult figure Caroline Munro and a mix of American and British adults pretending to be teens, it is a wholly strange flick and may have cult value simply for its utter bizarreness, bad acting and well designed gore.

Released in 1986 (with poor distribution) it sits well beyond the tail end of the original slasher cycle by a good few years. The film’s initial title was April Fool’s Day and changed when the makers discovered Paramount had their own stalk and kill spoof on the go by that very title.

The film, shot in what looks like a country pile (some scenes were filmed in central London in a grammar school off Marylebone Road) poses as a private US school for a bunch of rich brats. Even during the opening scenes it feels very cheap and barely convincing with the soft focus photography not helping. In other words, it feels nothing at all like an American high school. Cheap props such as an American flag waving limply in a forecourt cannot mask its fraudulence. This is where the idea of the simulacrum comes in. It’s a copy mimicking the tropes and narrative we all recognise yet something isn’t quite right.

After Marty’s accident, the group, now young adults, get together for a reunion and are dismayed to find their school is now abandoned and due to be pulled down. Then they each start to die in outlandish ways. The gore definitely makes up for a poor scenario. One man’s exploding stomach is a highlight along with an acid bath and a bed that electrocutes its occupant. Slaughter High likes a set-piece or two and the execution is very well done. It comes as no surprise that this Arrow Video edition is the first time the picture has appeared uncut.

The school becomes a rigged death trap playground as Marty returns to dole out some nasty punishment for past wrongs. Slaughter High doesn’t even bother to attempt mystery surrounding the killer’s motives, therefore presenting it as a stalk and slash revenge thriller. Yet there is a lame twist in the tale. The killer wears a jester’s mask which links with the idea of pranks taken too far. Marty might have been a total chump, but he certainly doesn’t deserve the cruel jibes and harassment by the other characters. They’re a pretty despicable bunch.

Arrow Video usually provides great extra features. The film contains two separate commentary tracks, retrospective interviews and the obligatory trailer. Co-director Mark Ezra’s chat highlights the film’s origins in Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None, which was also riffed on with James Mangold’s Identity and other slasher-efforts back in the day. Ezra’s angle comes from his public school background and talks about the bullying that went on in his day. He also mentions the rather ropey dialogue which he freely admits he’d have liked to have spent more time on. This short piece is a telling and refreshingly frank discussion.

Another feature is a near half hour chat with Caroline Munro about her career as a scream queen. The actress got to work with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Down the years she’s appeared in some great cult cinema including Maniac, where she replaced Daria Niccoldi, wife of Dario Argento. It is interviews such as these that make Arrow Video releases worth buying. She reveals Slaughter High was shot in central London, an old abandoned asylum and laughs at how she was way too old for her role as queen bitch. Munro also admits the tongue-in-cheek quality of the flick was deliberate and notes the cheese factor is what draws fans.

There are two commentaries and the best one is Mark Ezra’s chat with Teenage Wasteland author J.A. Kerswell. The second one with Caroline Munro, DVD World editor Allan Bryce and Calum Waddell is a bit rambling but full of reminisces from the iconic actress. It also perhaps highlights why group commentaries aren’t great as people tend to talk over one another.

Erza and Munro, on their respective yak tracks do tell us actor Simon Scuddamore, who plays Marty, committed suicide not long after the film’s production. It would be his only film and it’s a shame because Marty is perhaps the best character. Slaughter High is sadly not a particularly memorable flick and Harry Manfredini’s score has got to be one of the worst ever. Grating, and very dated synthesiser led compositions, give this movie its real horror factor.

Slaughter High is out now

Well that was a bit of a surprise.

Sometimes it’s difficult to judge just how much one should know about a film before seeing it. Find out too much and you’re in danger of heading into spoiler territory. Too little and there’s the distinct possibility you’ll end up watching something that ordinarily wouldn’t interest you. I hadn’t read much about The Adjustment Bureau prior to viewing the Blu-ray release, having only glimpsed the trailer and gleaned enough to know it was based on a Phillip K Dick story, so I was expecting something akin to a sci-fi conspiracy thriller. What I actually got was a romantic drama/fantasy that wrong footed me until at least 45 minutes into its running time, by which point I began to realise that actually, nobody’s life was in danger and that ‘the bad guy’ wasn’t going to be making an appearance in this picture any time soon.

So let me assure those of you who, like me, may have seen the images of Matt Damon and Emily Blunt being pursued by shadowy figures in trench coats and fedoras, that the Adjustment Bureau mean you no harm. Because what they are is a group of semi-omnipotent beings charged by God (well ‘The Chairman’) with ensuring that everything goes to plan in the great entanglement of human affairs.

The Adjustment Bureau opens with a sequence depicting the political rise of man of the people David Norris (Matt Damon) as he appears poised on the verge of securing a US Senate seat. However, due to an unfortunate mooning incident at his college reunion that is then exploited by the tabloids on the eve of the elections, his chances are scuppered. Retreating to the gents in disappointment he meets ballet dancer Elise Sellas (Blunt) and the two of them develop an instant and overwhelming attraction. There then follows a period during which it appears that shadowy forces are up to no good, as the aforementioned men in fedoras (John Slattery and Harry Mitchell) set about ‘putting things right’. This involves getting Norris’s political career back on track, as well as ensuring that he never sees Elise again because it is not in God’s plan. However, Norris is determined to cock a snook to the grand designs of the Creator and so does everything in his power to foil the Adjustment Bureau’s efforts to keep him and Elise apart, even if it costs him (and her) two brilliant careers.

This was the point at which I realised nobody was out to assassinate or blackmail Norris and it became clear that what was actually at stake was the love of a good woman (oh and the Presidency of the United States if he doesn’t give her up). In that sense it’s a very old fashioned kind of movie, in spite of its sci-fi flirtations and neo-noir leanings. While its romantic elements are delivered with conviction and no small degree of charm, the rest of the movie just doesn’t provide the thrills I strongly suspect Director George Nolfi intended. When a movie makes such great play of its chase sequences you expect to feel a certain degree of jeopardy but for me this was wholly absent. No doubt these scenes are clever, even enjoyable due to their ingenuity, but there’s never any real sense of peril, the only consequence if Norris fails being that he won’t see Elise again. Not nice for him certainly but he’ll get over it and she seems to get on with her life alright in the three years that they’re apart. As far as the Presidency is concerned he’s made it clear by this point that he’s not really that arsed.

There is some talk from the Adjustment Bureau of erasing Norris’s mind if he reveals the truth but as this threat is delivered by the ever affable Slattery, it’s difficult to believe that they would ever really go that far. After all, they are angels remember, agents of a loving and benevolent God? Even when Thompson (Terence Stamp), a supernatural fixer with a fearsome reputation, is called on to intervene, it doesn’t stop Norris giving him a hefty bunch of fives and easily giving him the slip by virtue of a hat he borrows from an angel sympathetic to his plight. Stamp’s final scene sees his supposed infallibility immediately undermined by a subordinate and the poor man literally shuffles off screen in the manner of a failed music hall comic. The conclusion never seems in doubt.

However, the film features good performances from the leads, the chemistry between Damon and Blunt being particularly potent. Oh sure, she’s the kind of kooky cat who does things like answer his mobile phone before dropping it into his coffee, but in films these things are charming rather than the incitement to throat-throttling that they would be in real life. Damon makes a character who is probably too good to be true just about credible enough for you to be able to buy into a romance that is worth incurring the wrath (well, mild annoyance) of God for. It also looks wonderful, its slick visuals and shiny surfaces making New York look as good as ever.

Fundamentally though, once you get past the wrapping, this is a very familiar story, and one that lacks the depth it could have had when it comes to addressing ideas of free will and self determination. Beneath the fantasy elements that may distract the eye and its squandered potential to thrill, the film represents that most enduring of all Hollywood clichés, which is that love conquers all when two people are meant to be together (even when they’re not).

Extras: Not bad at all, my favourite being The Labyrinth of Doors: An Interactive map of New York. This allows you to follow David and Elsie’s journey through New York in the film’s climactic chase sequence, as well as offering behind the scenes footage from each of the locations.

There are also some interesting featurettes including a look at Blunt’s preparation for the role of a ballet dancer, interviews with cast and crew, a look at the romantic plot and some deleted scenes. Nolfi’s commentary is worth listening to as it is full of technical information as well as his own thoughts on the themes of the movie, even if some of this did confirm that he doesn’t always achieve what he sets out to accomplish.

The Adjustment Bureau is out now on DVD and Blu-ray

More larger-than-life shenanigans as the second – and final – season of Irwin Allen’s best 1960s US fantasy show arrives on DVD with the UK exclusive bonus feature of a full (remaining) cast commentary on the very first episode of the series, ‘The Crash’. More of which later…

Irwin Allen not being much given to character development or clever, multi-layered plotting, it’s pretty much business as usual in season two with just a little bit of front-of-house refurbishment with a dynamic new title sequence and a rousing new theme tune (which, interestly, doesn’t debut until several episodes into the run on this collection which is presented in original US broadcast order). Elsewhere there are some new costumes for Valerie (Deanna Lund) and Betty (Heather Young) and the show moves away from its over-reliance on the giant world’s security forces (the SID) as the miniature castaways’ main antagonists.

The episodes are much as before, a mixture of quaint, naïve and sometimes rather tortuous yarns where the Spindrift group help a falsely-accused giant criminal (‘Six Hours To Live’), Fitzhugh becomes involved in a horse-racing scam (‘The Inside Rail’), the group aid a trumpet player (the frankly dire ‘Giants And All That Jazz’) and in ‘Every Boy Needs His Dog’ the ‘Little People’ race against time to save Chipper, orphan Barry’s dog. Some episodes are just downright silly – ‘Pay The Piper’ sees Jonathan (Dr Smith) Harris cross over from Allen’s now-cancelled ’Lost In Space’ to play a giant who claims to be the Pied Piper of Hamblin and ’Our Man O’Reilly’ is some old tosh about leprechauns.

Whilst too many of these episodes diffuse the tension and jeopardy of the show’s concept, reducing the Giant world to just an over-sized Earth (long gone are the largely-mute and hulking giants of early season one episodes) others see the writers abandoning lazy clichés and using proper (if, even at the time, quite hoary) science-fiction ideas to create edgier, weirder episodes. Stand-outs include ‘The Mechanical Man’ (which I’d hope is pretty self-explanatory) and ‘Wild Journey’ which co-stars Bruce Dern and Yvonne “Batgirl” Craig as two humanoid alien researchers whose time travel device sends Steve and Dan back to Earth just before their ship’s launch and their inevitable efforts to change history by stopping the lift-off. Perhaps the best of the bunch are two episodes which explore the paranoia and distrust which are bound to surface in any group of people in an enclosed and dangerous environment. Gary Conway gives a stand-out performance in ’The Unsuspected’, possibly the best ’Giants’ episode ever, as Spindrift Captain Steve Burton is infected by poisonous mushroom spores which change his entire personality and cause him to betray his crewmates and passengers and in ‘The Deadly Dart’ Mark (Don Matheson) is framed for murder and starts to act suspiciously amongst his fellow refugees. There’s a sense that the writers are thinking outside the rather restrictive ‘running away from giants every week’ box and whilst there are some brave and unusual ideas on display here, the very nature of Irwin Allen’s simplistic, bright and unsophisticated view of his shows meant that few of them were ever realised with the wit and maturity they really deserved.

But ‘Land of the Giants’’ remains a personal TV archive favourite. The clever camerawork and ground-breaking special effects still look good today (most of the time) and even if the twaddle/quality story ratio is dangerously uneven in the second season, there’s still much fun to be had from the vibrant colours and the occasionally over-earnest performances of the show’s attractive and athletic cast. TV production has moved on in leaps and bounds since 1969, of course, and whilst today’s fantasy shows look a lot slicker and a lot more expensive, few of them are as brazenly enjoyable as ‘Land of the Giants’ and if you enjoyed the first season boxset this one is pretty much an essential purchase.

THE DVDs: Containing more of the cast interview snippets from the US release, the USP of this second set is an exclusive UK-ears-only commentary by the six remaining cast members for the show’s pilot episode. Sadly this isn’t as informative as we might have hoped as the cast are clearly having too much of a good time in each other’s company, as anecdotes and memories are talked over or forgotten about halfway through and it’s hard to take Don Matheson’s assertion that the show featured real character development seriously if you’ve watched even two of these episodes. It’s left to Stefan Arngrim (Barry) to impart a few nuggets of information about the show’s production (when he can get a word in), the most interesting of which reveals that the show was still a ratings hit at the end of season two and was effectively cancelled by Irwin Allen himself who refused the ABC Network’s request to slash the show’s huge budget – $350,000 per episode (in 1969!!). Still, nice to hear the cast reunited and clearly enjoying each other’s company again after all these years.

‘Land of the Giants’ season two is available on DVD in the UK now.

Cody (Cory Knauf) and his brother Q (Bret Roberts) are members of an infamous Californian biker gang – the type of boys you don’t want to make enemies with. Late one Friday evening they take the long drive out of town to the families cabin in the woods, where their mother and a group of friends are celebrating her fiftieth birthday with a typically debauched and hedonistic party.

Later, after the party has broken up and most of the guests have left, Cody’s ex-girlfriend Michelle (Tiffany Shepis) turns up bloodied and in agony. It appears that someone or something has been having a good time at her expense. However when the remaining friends, including Q’s girlfriend Megan (Christina Prousalis) and Michelle’s sister Shade (Taylor Cole) attempt to get help, their plans are thwarted with the arrival of a rival gang who appear to have stepped straight out of the 1950’s. But this new group of thugs, who make Cody’s family look like the Brady Bunch, aren’t looking for trouble – well they are, but that’s not their sole purpose. They have much more sinister ends in mind, and Cody and co have become unwitting pawns in their twisted game.

A friend of mine once said that she wouldn’t go and see a particular film as watching it would mean that she had wasted two hours of her life which she could never get back. After watching The Violent Kind I know what she meant.

There are some films which leave you questioning how anyone could have been involved in such a gratuitous piece of filth, let alone watched it (though I guess the fact that the duo who co-wrote and directed it are known as ‘The Butcher Brothers’ should have rung alarm bells). After the opening scene which involves the three main male characters (I won’t use the term heroes as they hardly warrant that description – they’re simply the lesser of two evils), pulping two members of a rival gang, I was about to turn the film off. However I suppose a fatal fascination made me continue to watch – could it possibly go any lower? The answer is yes – a lot!

Some of you may remember me saying in my recent STARBURST review for the film Mother’s Day that I could “find absolutely nothing to say in favour of this cinematic abomination”. Well The Violent Kind goes one better, or perhaps that should be worse. At least you could have had some kind of pity for the victims of De Mornay’s sadistic character and her dysfunctional family. Here however you feel nothing for any of the people involved, except perhaps the two girlfriends who, to a degree, are hapless bystanders to the grisly goings on. However even they are pretty wanton, and not the kind of girls you’d take round to granny’s for Sunday tea.

If I say that this film makes The Evil Dead (with which it bares some resemblance plot wise – in as far as it involves a group of young people partying in a house in the woods, where one of their female members gets possessed and has to be chained up for her own safety and that of everyone else) look like an episode of Scooby Doo, you’ll realise that there isn’t much going for it. Where the notorious 80’s schlocker managed to get away with an horrendous amount of violence and on screen gore because it did it all with a degree of black humour and its tongue (at least those which hadn’t been bitten, cut or torn out) planted firmly in its cheek, The Violent Kind, makes no such pretence. Blood flows freely, especially when the rival gang turns up, and as well as the frequent beatings the various characters inflict on each other we have finger amputation with the slash of a knife, a slit throat, suicide by shotgun (the remains of the headless body are dwelt on unnecessarily in a lingeringly extended shot), a large chunk getting bitten out of one boy’s throat and towards the end multiple stabbings which seem to go on ad nauseam.

With elements of several different genres, the film is at times in danger of becoming confused. We have horror, enough of which has already been said I think. Sci-fi, when it emerges that some kind of alien force is causing the mayhem and has taken over the bodies of the rival gang in order to carry out its diabolical plan of world domination – at least I guess this is its aim though it’s never fully explained (maybe they’re leaving that for the sequel?). And drama with the infighting between the brothers and their relationships with their girlfriends, along with a bit of 50’s inspired, Rebel Without a Cause tension, when the alien possessed bad boys turn up. Whew, it all gets too much! Those who know their British horror film history might see similarities with 1973’s cult shocker Psychomania, however that is probably doing Don Sharp’s classic an injustice. Towards the end there is a nice little nod towards Stephen King with the inference that a town has been taken over by the invading aliens and Shade and Cody realising there is no escape from the inevitable doom to come, but this is unfortunately too little too late to save this sickening exercise in depravity.

The 1 star rating I give the film is for no other reason than that the Californian scenery is beautiful, and the interior of the family’s weekend cabin where the whole nasty business takes place, looks like something from World of Interiors – though I expect its off white colour scheme is there to show off the blood and gore better, rather than for any aesthetic reasons.

I’ll finish there as I don’t want to dwell on this film any longer. I won’t be recommending The Violent Kind to my friend. I don’t want to be accused of losing her two hours of her life which she won’t be able to get back.

The Violent Kind opens in select UK cinemas on the 22nd July 2011, and is released on DVD on the 25th July 2011.

Finally – the wait is over for Irwin Allen fans, as the prolific King of Sixties TV sci-fi’s catalogue of 50 minute underwater epics makes its way to region 2 DVD, a full six years after Lost in Space made its debut on disc. Yes, we’ve been kept waiting – the region one market have had these discs available to them for more than three years – but there is a compensation. The North American R1 versions had each season split in half and released as two seperate boxes – but for the European market – the seasons are here in full.

March 28 saw the release of season 1. This was a grimmer, grittier season which packed tales of espionage, sabotage and international intrigue in the cold war years in among stories that were flat out science fiction. The June 17 release of the series’ second year is a whole different ball game.

There would be a handful of spy stories, but Allen’s emphasis was beginning to focus heavily on science fiction – or to be more accurate, science fantasy. Thinly veiled references to Russia as “an unfriendly foreign power” would give way to various sea monsters-of-the-week. Foreign despots were rare, but mad scientists were everywhere and seemed to crawl out of the woodwork at any opportunity.

The series underwent some changes between the first and second years, the most obvious and striking being that the series was now shot in colour. Bright, unflinching primary colour that even makes the same era’s original Star Trek look positively pastel in comparison. To compliment the upgrade, crewmen uniforms were changed from the generic sailor uniforms seen previously to really garish and bright one-piece outfits. Pity poor Kowalski who has to endure the rest of his career in a bright red boiler suit.

The hand-me-down sets and miniatures from the 1961 feature film of the same name were abandoned in favour of newer, sleeker ones. The control room of the Seaview is a brightly lit, wider room with TV monitors and banks of flashing lights presumably denoting the status of the sub’s systems. The original was thought too claustrophobic. The sub itself is sleeker, with a new design to the glass area in the front (though this makes their frequent use of the film footage from 1961 even more obvious as the Seaview constantly skips from having four windows in front to eight and then back again).

And then, there’s the Flying Sub. A yellow saucer shaped two man sub launched from underneath the front of the Seaview that can, well, fly. It’s a beauty of a design which still looks great today, 46 years later, which is itself remarkable.

So, what do you get for your money?

We have all 26 episodes, spread over seven discs. As I’ve mentioned, the more “reality based” stories of the first season give way to plots that are more outlandish, preposterous and sometimes downright silly. The tone of the series is set in the opening episode ‘Jonah and the Whale’ which although it has a plot that can only be described as absolutely crazy – is great fun to watch and had some excellent effects. In a nutshell, Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart) and a female Russian scientist are in the diving bell, investigating the destruction of an undersea research lab when they’re swallowed by a giant whale. It’s up to Captain Crane (David Hedison) and a couple of crewmen to tranquillise the whale, enter through its mouth while it’s unconscious and retrieve the Admiral and the scientist before they run out of air.

I won’t go into the number of scientific or logical flaws in that plot – but as I said, it plays like a big, colourful B-movie with some surprisingly good model work when it comes to the whale. (Though its insides are represented by inflated pink plastic bags, seaweed and the sound of breaking waves – which I didn’t quite get.)

As the series progressed, the Seaview crew are exposed to Victor Buono as a scientist out to destroy a third of the world with the aid of a cyborg double of Nelson. Interestingly, as with several episodes to come, there were cross overs of monster suits and make-up between Lost in Space and Voyage. The unfinished faceless cyborgs are identical to the monster who chased Dr Zachary Smith through the first season ‘His Majesty Smith’ episode. ‘The Cyborg’ wasn’t the only automaton to plague the Seaview – a pre Time Tunnel James Darren would appear as ‘The Mechanical Man’ before the season’s end. ‘The X-Factor’ wasn’t an early version of the insidious TV show, it was a plot by enemy agents to kidnap an American scientist, coat him in wax and pass him off as a mannequin. (Whereas in The X-Factor with Simon Cowell – they really ARE mannequins). We also have the closest Voyage ever came to a story arc, with ‘The Phantom’ – where Alfred Ryder plays the spirit of a U-Boat captain who tries to reincarnate himself as Captain Crane (David Hedison with an outrageous German accent) and the season closer ‘The Return of the Phantom’ – where he tries it again.

All episodes are in 4:3 ratio, and you have a choice between the original mono sound mix or stereo (obviously no 5.1 option on a series this old.)

The special features consist of a five minute excerpt of an interview with David Hedison, continuing from the first season box set in which he paints a pretty bleak picture of Irwin Allen from his recollections. There’s also a silent 25 minute montage of special effects shots. This is footage of a man in a monster suit swimming, the Seaview going right to left, down at a angle, fully submerging etc. Truthfully, it’s a bit dull and could have benefited from at least having the theme music play in accompaniment. There are galleries of merchandise and miniatures and an excerpt from a 1966 issue of Mad magazine where the series was parodied in a strip called ‘Voyage to See What’s At The Bottom’.

All in all, it’s an excellent value for money package for fans of Allen’s work and an entertaining introduction to a simpler age of sci-fi to a new generation of fans.

I look forward to the release of season 3 on September 12.

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea – The Complete Series 2 is out now.

Poland, in the 9th century.  Prince Popiel and his Viking tribe, subjects the land and its people to a reign of terror.  In order to ensure that his son becomes heir to the throne, Popiel wipes out anyone and anything that stands in his way or threatens his evil ends.  However two men, army commander Piastun and a young warrior outcast called Ziemovit, band together to take on the Viking hordes and ultimately the gods themselves, with cataclysmic results. Brrrrrrr – exciting! Er, no. Not really.

As a publication which covers fantasy, horror and Sci-fi, STARBURST has an obligation to advise all its readers of what’s new on the market.  Most of the time, fortunately, this is not an arduous task – who doesn’t like spending their time watching movies. However sometimes you feel as though it is something that just has to be done, like going to the dentist (though at least you have the benefit of knowing that your six monthly check-up is doing you some good).  The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for sitting through Army of Valhalla. In fact not much can be said about it at all. It’s neither good nor bad – it’s just… nothing!

In the wake of recent films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, everyone thinks they can produce an epic fantasy. Gather a few rugged, broody, ‘Abercrombie & Fitch’ males, some sultry girls, dress them in this seasons eco friendly fashions, give them a few horses and drop them into a forest setting. Hey presto, with a bit of Enya-esque incidental music, you have a sure fire hit. Well no, it’s not that easy. Come on guys, even the straight to DVD market, for which this film is clearly aimed, should make more effort than that.

Can I find nothing in the film’s favour? Well there are some lovely shots of wild animals (and no, I don’t mean the ‘Abercrombie & Fitch’ males) and the said forest setting is beautiful. But I wasn’t expecting to sit through an episode of Nature Watch (though that might have been just slightly more entertaining).

Everyone knows (though not all would admit publicly) that Britain produces some of the best film and television in the world (even if we do complain about the copious reality shows and re-runs which clog the box on a Saturday night). No one does a period film or historical adaptation better than the Brits.  However when you view something like Army of Valhalla, and realise that films (which usually cost a lot more than television productions no matter what language you speak) from a lot of countries look like extended episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess, it makes you glad you don’t have to watch their actual television!).

I make no apologies for such a short critique. I really can find nothing else to say, and no real reason as to why anyone would want to spend and hour and a half watching this. If you’re really keen on Nordic / Viking-esque fantasy do what I’m going to do and save yourself for next years The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – if you can hold out that long.

Army of Valhalla is released on DVD on the 18th of July

Something large and scaly is terrorising a mining community somewhere in the Congo, and snacking on the unfortunate locals. In the Atlantic something equally big and inexplicable is attacking the US navy, and making fish food of them.

Enter explorer and big game hunter Nigel Putnam (Gary Stretch), and scientist Lt. Terry McCormick (Jaleel White) who, along with Special Agent Hutchinson (Sarah Lieving) has been sent by the government to assist them, must find out what is causing the chaos and try and halt it’s carnage.  However whatever it (or they) is, is heading towards the American coastline with devastating results!

I was so tempted to open this review by saying that Mega Shark Vs Crocosaurus was a ‘crock of &?@!’!  But let’s wait until the end before I give my final prognosis.

Fortunately I never saw Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus. I wanted to, but there always seemed to be something better to watch. However if I had I wonder if I would have been any better able to relate to the characters and situations in what is billed as its sequel? No, I doubt it as well. Films like this are the cinematic equivalent of a Jackie Collins novel, glossy in a trashy kind of way, but making no pretence whatsoever at being a quality  production. It’s not good. But there again it’s not dreadful either.

Now before I get inundated with messages on the comment board saying that all my credibility as a critic has just gone out the window, I am by no means saying that this film is a masterful National Geographic like insight into the aquatic life of sharks or the swamp habitats of scaly reptiles. Nor am I going to make out that this is an edge of your seat shocker, with blood, guts and gore along the lines of 1978’s Piranha and its plethora of sequels and remakes (it is only a certificate 12 after all). However neither is it all bad.  In fact, if taken as seen, it’s a bit of a laugh, if only because it’s so naff in parts. If I say that one of the scientists appears to have a fixation with his hydrosonic balls which he hopes to attract the mega monsters with, but are clearly there as an excuse for innuendo, I think you’ll understand the level of humour that the film is aiming for without any help from me.

The jungle settings in which much of the initial crocodile action takes place are reasonably realistic, at least as far as general ‘jungle’ environments go – whether it’s what the Inner Congo actually looks like is another question. And it does look as though they used actual battle ships to film the sea bound shark attacks. As far as settings go, so far so good. The humans in the story are reasonably believable as well, and the acting isn’t in fact bad, in a second feature kind of way (though with dialogue like, “focus people we haven’t seen anything yet”, or “sir, the creatures are toast!”, they’re unlikely to be collecting a little yellow man any time soon).

It’s when the giant beasts actually show themselves that, as one might expect, the film starts to come adrift. The crocodile is passable when seen on dry land, however the shark, which spends most of it’s time out of water time sailing through the air like a member of an Olympic synchronised swimming team, looks totally animated (or should that be un-animated) for the duration of the movie.

The real problem with films like this (and here I include recent big budgeters like 1998’s Godzilla), is that they are actually not much different from their prehistoric predecessors, such as 1954’s Them and 1977’s Empire of The Ants (you know, the ‘epic’ that Joan Collins has spent the rest of her career trying to forget). However, where the creakiness of those old black and white ‘B’ movies with their giant moths dangled from visible strings, and women in prim suits stuck in the middle of a desert at the mercy of some radioactive super beast (and by way of interest there is a hint of this woman in distress scenario here with an inappropriately attired mining executive who becomes croc bait early on), is part of their charm, these modern takes clearly spend a fortune trying to achieve similar results, but end up as distinctly paler imitations – at least the dialogue in those old films was believable even if the creatures weren’t.

The climax (after a promising but disappointingly short lived attack by Crocosaurus on Orlando, Florida, and an attempt to trap the beasts in the Panama Canal), involves Mega Shark swallowing a nuclear submarine and becoming a nuclear bomb itself (and no, I’m not joking). Needless to say the whole thing attempts to go out with a bang. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I felt it did or not…

There are some trailers at the start, including one for Mega Piranha (does anyone else notice a theme emerging here?) that actually looks better than the main feature which is always a little worrying. Extras include a bloopers reel and the making of, though after the film I’d had enough.

Mega Shark Vs Crocosaurus is released on DVD July the 18th

On the eve of D Day two New Zealand commandos (why they have to be New Zealanders is never quite explained) Ben Grogan (Craig Hall) and Joe Tane (Karlos Drinkwater), are sent to destroy German gun emplacements on an island in the English Channel.  However once on the island the soldiers discover much more than mere guns and boobytraps. The Nazis are hatching an occult plot to unleash demonic forces to win the war, and this godforsaken British outpost is where Hell will literally be loosed on earth.

I didn’t, in all honesty, know how to feel about The Devil’s Rock – good, bad or indifferent? If you can get through the first five minutes, which mainly concerns the two mercenaries (whose dialogue gratingly seems to consist of nothing but the ‘f’ word) arriving on the island and takes place virtually in the pitch black, then things begin to pick up – just.

Over the years there have been countless horror films concerning the Nazis – hardly surprising considering that the atrocities they committed provide prime fodder for horror – think Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975), Shockwaves (1977), Zombie Lake (1981), and Dead Snow (2009) to name but a few (as well as Sergio Garrone’s notorious SS Experiment Love Camp (1976) – but we won’t even go there!).  One in particular however, bares an uncanny resemblance to The Devil’s Rock.  Analyse 1983’s shocker The Keep (interesting if for nothing else than the fact that it was one of the first films from the highly respected Michael Mann) – Nazi soldiers harbouring an evil force within a fortress, which they intend to use as a weapon in the war – and the premise is almost a blue print for this devilishly odd film.

What did I make of The Devil’s Rock?  Not much.  There is a lot of occult paraphernalia – circles, candles, pentagrams, flesh, blood (plenty of that). In fact everything you’ve seen before from The Devil Rides Out to Hellraiser, which its predecessors pulled off with more panache.  The real trouble though is that this film doesn’t seem to know what it is. Wartime thriller, as in the arrival of two soldiers on a windswept island out to sabotage the Germans’ attack plans.  Love story, as Grogan battles with the loss of his wife and the demon’s reincarnation of her to torment him.  Or subtle horror – inexplicable groans and erie screams echoing down dark subterranean corridors, apparently ’empty’ rooms with gratuitously dismembered corpses and glistening, slimy piles of gore and intestines…  Ok, let’s forget the subtle.  Though the horror takes its time in coming, when it does it does thick and fast, with no pretence whatsoever at style or atmosphere.  Severed fingers, decapitation, a rather gruesomely detailed and unnecessarily prolonged removal of a bullet from one guy’s stomach. It’s as if the producers had decided oh, this is a horror movie.  We haven’t shown any yet. Let’s throw in as much (admittedly pretty realistic) gore as possible.

Before the demon reveals itself in all its abominable glory, the female form it takes on in order to seduce the understandably bewildered Grogan (and believe me he won’t be the only confused one after you’ve sat through the film), resembles Jessie Wallace from Eastenders, which would probably be horror enough for most people. When eventually the demon does emerge from the shadows, it looks like a female version of Tim Curry’s Darkness from Legend, which isn’t a good look in anyone’s book – even for Hell spawn.

There are some smart touches, like when the death of one character inadvertently provides a bridge for the demon to enter the circle, which is supposedly protecting the hero from it. However these are few and far between and not enough to save this hokum ridden schlock fest from a wearisome death and an ending which, though it takes the viewer by surprise by just, happening, doesn’t come soon enough. The film’s accompanying poster says to “Prepare for Hell in 2011“. I think that should include the warning that ‘Hell’ is having to sit through it.

This film could have been fun, but instead ends up like a Nazi experiment – fatuous and grisly. Fortunately many of the Nazis’ planned atrocities never got past the drawing board. Unfortunately The Devil’s Rock did.

The Devil’s Rock – Out on DVD – 11th July

 

Cantering gracefully through his twilight years, Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood is really cutting the mustard these days as one of the most interesting and intelligent directors in the industry. He’s prodigious, too, churning out film after film with nary a dud amongst them. Think Million Dollar Baby, The Changeling, Gran Torino (likely to be Eastwood’s acting swan song) and last year’s Invictus (a film about rugby? In South Africa?! I’m in!); all great pieces of grown-up modern cinema-making. Now we can add Hereafter to the list and whilst it’s not a film which did enormous Box Office business (and certainly didn’t garner the usual glowing Eastwood notices), it’s one of those striking, studied movies which is likely to stay with you far longer than one of your more typical quick-fix action movies. Hereafter is a film more suited to home viewing than in the Multiplex and it’s here that I suspect it’ll build its reputation and find its true appreciative audience.

    Hereafter is Eastwood’s first foray into the world of the supernatural and his first large-scale (if brief) involvement with the heady world of CGI. The movie introduces us to three main characters as they all skirt the fringes of the world of the ‘hereafter’. French journalist Marie Lelay (Cecile de France) suffers a near-death experience when a devastating tsunami rages through her tropical holiday resort. London schoolboy Marcus finds his world torn apart when his twin brother Jason is killed in a road accident and Marcus is taken into care due to his mother’s drug addiction. Over in San Francisco, reluctant psychic George (Matt Damon) is trying to ignore his ability to communicate with the dead and forge a normal life working in a factory. How the stories of these three characters slowly converge forms the backbone of this slow-burn movie as Eastwood, working from a script by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), invites the audience to draw its own conclusions about the nature of the ‘Hereafter’ and the ability of the living to experience it whilst leaving us in no doubt that George has very clearly defined psychic abilities and is able to communicate with the dead.

Hereafter is a satisfying and compelling dramatic experience because Eastwood isn’t a showy director. He lets his story take its time to unravel – which is probably why the film comes in for critcism for its graceful pace – largely relying on character rather than action. But the film kicks off in blockbuster style with the brilliantly-realised tsunami sequence as raging torrents of seawater sweep all in their wake, a monolithic demonstration of the terrifying and destructive power of Nature. The film doesn’t linger on the plight of Marie in the wake of the tsunami, instead introducing us to psychic George (a mature and restrained performance from the increasingly-impressive Matt Damon) and then Marcus and Jason, two kids living in a South London tower block trying to protect their drug-addled mother from the attentions of Social Services. Back in France Marie follows her own obsession with her near-death experience at the expense of her own career, George meets up with Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) at a cookery class (the extended two-hander between Damon and Howard in George’s apartment is a beautifully-realised intimate character piece) and Marcus, devastated by the death of his brother and aching with the loss, becomes determined to find a way to contact Jason one last time.

It’s easy to see why Hereafter didn’t make a connection at the Box Office as it’s a languid, unhurried piece generally pretty much out of kilter with the bulk of Hollywood’s big bang output. It’s got its faults, of course. It could do with getting a bit of a move on in places, the two London kids are crippled by the fact they can’t act and the denoeument, which sees the three main characters all at the same place in London at the same time, is achingly-contrived. But these are pretty much minor quibbles in a movie as individual and, I suspect, as memorable as Hereafter. Here’s to the next one from the Eastwood production line…

Hereafter is out now on DVD and Blu Ray in the UK