Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Billy Murray (not to be confused with Bill Murray) of ITV’s The Bill fame, stars as British gangster John Morgan. John has recently come back into the country, and after a meeting with – and getting bit of pressure from – someone higher up the food chain, he decides to try to bring his family together by hosting a dinner party to meet his daughter’s new girlfriend. The dinner party doesn’t quite go as planned, and a few twists and turns later, John’s family are being terrorised by psychotic killers out for some revenge. There’s also a subplot with an ex-cop who wants revenge for his dad that ties in.

The film has obvious influences from Tarantino as it follows a similar structure, in terms of lots of dialogue and then saving most of its action for the final scenes. Unfortunately, the script doesn’t quite match up with this ambition – and that’s being very polite. The plot itself doesn’t do a very good job of out fleshing out the characters. The initial 45 minutes aren’t used productively at all and the dialogue just isn’t up the scratch to hold anyone’s attention. It tends to constantly be relying on C-bombs and F-bombs to get any point across, which after a while just seems lazy. All this means that none of the characters are likeable or relatable, which makes it really hard to care about them. This isn’t helped at all by the acting throughout which is wooden and comes across as phoned in.

It really feels like the director of the film had just accepted that this was bad and didn’t want to put any more time into. A single watch through revealed multiple issues that could easily be fixed in post-production. Some examples are: dialogue that was simply cut between too quickly not allowing for the illusion of thinking time and gaps in sentences where the audio just hasn’t been cropped properly. On top of this, there are ameuturish looking things like stock videos of the outside of the pub that completely ruin the pacing, something you expect to see in a sitcom rather than a feature film. There’s also a really odd choice where they cut back to a clip of advice a bartender gave about 10 minutes earlier. Again this is something you’d expect in comedy, or perhaps at the end of a very long film.

As the movie goes on, Nemesis unintentionally falls into the bracket of so bad that it’s good. The reactions, the dialogue, the terrible-looking action scenes late on, it’s all delightfully rubbish.

Release Date: March 29th

This low budget but high action flick proves the acting chops of both Kurt Russell and J.T. Walsh and provides a riveting ninety minutes.

Jeff and Amy Taylor (Russell and Kathleen Quinlan) have sold up and are heading for a new life in San Diego, spending far too much on their new Jeep and bemoaning their lack of finances. While distracted at the wheel, Jeff almost hits a car driven by hillbilly Lemmy-a-like Earl (M.C. Gainey). A slight altercation with Earl while filling up his oil at a gas station puts Jeff on edge, but when the car breaks down in the middle of the Nevada desert, he gets more worried. A passing trucker, Red Barr (Walsh, in one of his last roles before his untimely death), stops to help and offers to take them to a café to call for help (Jeff’s primitive boxy mobile obviously has no signal). Jeff decides to stay with the car while Amy goes with Red. When Jeff tries to find Amy, though, she’s nowhere to be seen and Red denies any knowledge of her.

Breakdown uses a very simple setup to provide an exciting mix of Duel and The Vanishing with a hint of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. The desert location provides a stunning vista to enhance the feeling of isolation for Jeff and a chance to ramp up the car chases and stunt work. Although the ‘kidnapped spouse’ conceit is a familiar, the location adds to the frustration of Russell’s character and plays into the common ‘fear of the redneck’ cliché wonderfully, and even subverts it by having the ringleader be an otherwise respectable family man.

This is the pinnacle of writer/director Jonathan Mostow’s work (he sadly went on to helm Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and Imprint’s Blu-ray release comes packed with informative extras. There’s input from many of the people behind the scenes including Mostow, who reveals how he managed to get the film released without the ten-minute opening scene written by Sam Montgomery that provided some unnecessary backstory for Jeff.

Eureka’s latest release is a pairing of obscure films, linked by dealing with situations affecting Native American characters.

Nightwing is directed by Arthur Miller, who was known for making hugely successful comedies such as Silver Streak and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. This batty eco-horror is quite the anomaly in his filmography. A pair of leaders from rival tribes (Nick Mancuso and Stephen Macht) battle it out over a contract that could see Mancuso’s Maski tribe lose their sacred land to the oil industry. Meanwhile, horses and locals are being found drained of blood and stinking of ammonia. Out of towner David Warner is more clued up than the doctors when he reveals the deaths were caused by vampire bats.

Miller’s film is a mixed bag. It tries to be worthy by raising the plight of the Native American tribes when it comes to the modernisation of everything, not to mention the pursuit of money. But it’s the bats we’ve come here for, and when we see the attacks, Nightwing is a lot of fun. It’s a shame it’s mostly a slog to get to those scenes. Even a score by Henry Mancini can’t help it. A spirited climax almost makes up for it though.

Shadow of the Hawk, meanwhile is a different beast. If you’re hoping for some giant bird-attack action, you’ve come to the wrong place. What director George McCowan brings us is a soul-searching odyssey for Old Man Hawk (Chief Dan George) and Young Hawk ‘Mike’ (Jan-Michael Vincent). Old Hawk wants to pass on his mystical powers to his grandson, Mike before he dies. Now Mike is quite happy in his modern ways but has lately been troubled by visions of a woman in a ghoulish mask. The pair – along with a young woman (Marilyn Hassett) who just happened to help Old Hawk earlier – take a perilous trek across country, encountering the failure of their truck and malevolent spirits in the shape of a bear and a snake. These scenes provide the most action/amusement (delete as applicable) in the drawn-out, pedestrian narrative.

Although there’s not much to love about Shadow of the Hawk, a couple of things do stand out. The masked visions are genuinely haunting – more should have been made of these – and there’s a spectacular effect involving a car smashing into a ‘magical wall’ conjured by Old Man Hawk’s pocket dust. The cod-spiritual dialogue no doubt had Chief Dan George gritting his teeth afterwards.

Both films do, however, boast fantastic, and contrasting, scenery. Nightwing making the most of the stunning desert vistas and Hawk providing a forestry terrain. Eureka’s Blu-ray gives us both films on one disc, with a commentary for each film should you wish to know more about them and a booklet with a decent essay on each film. They are likely movies you’ll only watch once.

Release Date: March 15th

Russian cinema isn’t known for being prolific when it comes to horror films and one of the first happens to be one of the best and most enduring. Based on a novella by Nikolai Gogol, it’s a fairy tale that utilises almost every trick in the cinematic book and excels in every way.

After an eventful at a farmhouse, which ended with a trainee monk being ridden like a broomstick by an old hag witch and him beating her almost to death before she transformed to a beautiful young woman, the monk is made to go back to read prayers for the stricken woman. Over the course of three nights, he is haunted within an inch of his life by the malevolent spirit of the woman.

What makes Viy so special isn’t so much the direction of Konstantin Ershov and Georgiy Kropachyov but the effects created by Aleksandr Ptushko alongside the cinematography of Viktor Pishchalnikov and Fyodor Provorov. There are terrifying moments early on that stand out, especially the transgressive scene involving the old witch (played by male actor Nikolai Kutuzov), which is the stuff of nightmares alone. The film gains its classic status, however, thanks to a bombardment of in-camera effects, jaunty camera angles, and a building sense of dread that explodes with an assault of strange, nightmarish characters.

Also included in Eureka’s limited edition is a later Serbian adaptation of Gogol’s story, 1990’s A Holy Place (Sveto mesto). The quality of the HD transfer isn’t perfect, with plenty of damage particularly at the start and reel changes, but it doesn’t affect the enjoyment. It’s a vastly different version compared to the 1967 version as it lacks the visual effects, but is still atmospheric and entertaining.

Viy is a seminal part of cinema and Eureka’s presentation is first class. It’s an unmissable movie that deserves to be in any horror fan’s collection.

Following their 1984 feature debut, Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan Coen well and truly put themselves on the filmmaking map with Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing and then Barton Fink. And now, 30 years since its initial release, Barton Fink is getting a new release courtesy of Umbrella.

Starring John Turturro as the titular Barton, a struggling New York playwright trying to overcome a major bout of writer’s block after taking a gig in Los Angeles, Barton Fink is a picture that’s impossible to truly categorise. Part drama, part comedy, part horror, and very much all Coens.

Doing his best to assist Turturro’s character is his hotel neighbour, John Goodman’s Charlie Meadows, and the pair end up intwined in a plot that takes some utterly bizarre turns as the picture progresses. But the chances are, given Barton Fink was released in 1991, you’re likely well, well aware of the ins and outs of this phenomenal film.

Here, the appeal of any such new release of an old favourite lies in additional elements that make this a much-buy. On that front, though, Umbrella’s release of Barton Fink is painfully disappointing.

Barton Fink is still just as good a movie 30 years on, but those looking for something more than just the movie will be left sorely disappointed by this new release. As in, there are zero special features or bonus material included here. Similarly, there’s no new restoration or enhanced audio experience.

Instead, this is every bit as vanilla a release of a film as can be. There’s the film itself included, but that’s it. And for those fans of Barton Fink, you may well actually already own this Blu-ray release – for it’s exactly the same, bar slightly tweaked cover art, as the Blu release that was first made available to Region 2 audiences in 2012.

This really is a tricky one to rate. One could easily argue that Barton Fink is a four-star, maybe even five-star movie, yet the lack of any additional content here means the score given to this release has to take a hit.

A film way ahead of its time and criminally overlooked these days, Five was written, directed, and produced by the legendary Arch Oboler and takes place following a nuclear war.

Following a global conflict that results in the wiping out of most human life, five people have survived. We have pregnant Roseanne (Susan Douglas Rubes), who was in a hospital X-ray room when the bombs went off; Michael (William Phipps), who was in an elevator of the Empire State Building; Mr Barnstaple (Earl Lee), who is obviously suffering from shock and is convinced he’s just on vacation, and Charles (Charles Lampkin) were in the vault of the bank at which they worked; latecomer to the group is European Eric (James Anderson), who says he was on top of Mount Everest at the time everything ended. It’s Eric’s arrival that provides the main conflict between the survivors, since he’s a bigot who takes exception with having to stay with Charles, a black man.

Presented in stark monochrome, Five is a stunningly filmed drama. We see deserted, litter-filled streets, the only remains of civilisation being the skeletons hanging out of cars and slumped over once-busy work desks. On the production design alone, the film is a winner.

Director Oboler made his name producing the anthology radio show Lights Out, and Five could easily fit in as an extended edition of the TV version of that show, and it’s certainly something that wouldn’t be out of place on The Twilight Zone. Long, pensive shots and meaningful, pious dialogue raise the seriousness of the production above what we’d later get in post-atomic movies. There are no giant bugs or mutated fiends here. The monsters here are man, and there’s no getting away from it.

Australian label Imprint’s Blu-ray sees the film’s debut in the format, and it looks striking. A fact-filled commentary by historians Glenn Erickson and Matthew Rovner fills the background and provides lots of information on the movie and Oboler, plus the always-entertaining Kim Newman also talks about the director and the film.

It might not be the cheeriest of films, and modern audiences might find it a little slow and ponderous, but Five is an important movie and deserves to be seen.