Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

There’s something about films that involve simians that always wins us over. When Link was first released way back in the day, eyebrows were raised about one particular scene involving the lead orang-utan and burgeoning starlet Elisabeth Shue in a bathroom, the moment in question still provides a sordid jolt.

Shue plays student American Jane, who offers to be an assistant to zoologist Dr Phillip (Terence Stamp) for the summer. His home is a clifftop mansion far away from civilisation, which is good as he shares it with two hyperactive chimpanzees and an elderly orang-utan named Link, who takes on the role of butler. Phillip’s experiments upset Jane but she’s still keen to learn all she can. When the doctor disappears – presumably heading to London for a meeting – Jane becomes the victim of an increasingly agitated Link.

Link can be read as a straightforward slasher, with the stalking killer replaced by a nattily-dressed primate. Mike Molloy’s cinematography amps up the terror, with plenty of shots from the height of the apes and involving creepy fisheye moments. This heightens the direction of Richard Franklin (Road Games), who stays away from cheap moments of gore but makes the threat posed by Link (and the other hyperactive chimps) very real. Which brings us to Locke, who gives an Oscar-worthy portrayal of Link. Even when at the most terrifying, he has a sympathetic touch. Maybe we’ve just got too much of a soft spot for monkeys. The infamous scene alluded to in our intro shocks still, particularly when we’ve heard Phillip tell Jane that Link doesn’t like to take his suit off. Seeing him without it in an awkward stare-off with an even more naked Elisabeth Shue is startling and very creepy, but not as offensive as we’d remembered. Jerry Goldsmith provides a whimsical theme and solid score, although it’s far from his best.

StudioCanal’s Blu-ray release features an interesting commentary from film historian Lee Gambin and critic Jarret Gahan, plus an on-screen dissection from Anna Bogutskaya. There are also some VHS quality deleted scenes from the work print that adds a few moments worth watching.

Link has benefitted from being elusive for so many years. The psychotic simian tale is a lot of fun and thanks to the eerie camerawork packs quite a punch.

 

Described by its director in the extras as ‘made for 17-year-old boys’, Raw Force is a knowingly silly concoction of martial arts, zombies, action, gore, and nudity that renders criticism of it effectively pointless. This film knows it is not aspiring to high art, but it does aspire to entertain and does it very well. The Burbank Karate club get tangled up in a web of cannibalistic monks, mercenaries, and kung fu on an island awash with jade and undead warriors. If you have ever wanted to check that ‘zombie getting beaten up with an empty bazooka’ box on your cult scorecard, this is the film for you.

For this UK Blu-ray debut, Raw Force is presented in mostly fine shape, considering the film’s low budget and age. The onscreen nonsense is sharp and bright and it’s unlikely to have ever looked better than this. For extras, the Vinegar Syndrome release making-of and audio interview are included, along with the suitably hyperbolic trailer and a new commentary from David Flint and Adrian Smith, who have as good a time as you probably will if you approach this in the best frame of mind to receive it.

Whilst not the film to convince your vanilla friends you have the best taste; this is another gloriously daft exploitation film given a deserving amount of love on a release that ticks the necessary boxes. If such films are your thing, this comes warmly recommended.

Based on a character created for British satirical weekly Private Eye, cult comedy The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is a bawdy, raucous, ‘of its time’ movie that won’t find favour with the millennials but shouldn’t be dismissed since it’s a well-made, fun endeavour.

Aussie ‘ocker’ Barry (Barry Crocker) is forced to go to England as part of an inheritance, and along for the ride is his Auntie Edna (Barry Humphries, in the first appearance of his most famous comic character). His misadventures in London are an episodic affair and peppered with familiar faces such as Spike Milligan, Dennis Price, and Peter Cook (who started Private Eye back in the ‘60s). Forever in search of a cold tin of Fosters, Barry is surprisingly likeable, if a little dim-witted and naïve. His attempts at impressing the ladies generally fail and despite the coarseness of his language and backwards attitude, comes across fairly inoffensive and a sympathetic chap.

Co-written by Humphries and director Bruce Beresford (yes, the guy who helmed Driving Miss Daisy), this is a simple fish out of water story and is full of stereotypes. The Aussies are boorish, womanising drunkards and the British are weird, rip off artists. This isn’t mean spirited affair but also isn’t biting satire. While it may not be laugh out loud funny, it does offer enough humour to keep the interest, with Barry’s motor mouth spouting colloquialisms (if you want to know where we get our numerous euphemisms for going for a wee, look no further) and the odd behaviour of the eccentric Brits (Dennis Price, an acting legend in one of his final films, boasts some hilarious sexual peccadillos). Barry McKenzie fares better than some comedies of the era, largely due to the honest, unashamed depiction of its main character. The deliberate crassness of some of the comedy aside, it’s a fun watch for those who pine for the olden days when you could say what you want.

Umbrella’s Blu-ray release boasts a smorgasbord of special features. A two-hour documentary takes us through the making of the film, with the main cast and director being completely honest in their appraisal. The political correctness debate is raised, and not swept under the carpet, neither is the ‘chunder’ controversy. Separate interviews and archive material – including several short films. The disc is recommended if only because it’s packed more than a vegemite sandwich.

From the cupboard marked “Well, we’ve seen all this before, haven’t we?” comes this derivative but charmingly enjoyable Australian sci-fi shlocker, which merrily plunders every zombie film you’ve ever seen, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 30 Days of Night, Alien, Tremors and, quite possibly, Coronation Street.

Something extra-terrestrial crash-lands near an isolated Australian desert town releasing a hideous alien parasite that attacks the brains of its victims, turning them into bewildered and apparently belligerent semi-zombies (who, in fairness, spend a lot of time standing around looking confused and not much time actually attacking people). Human interest of a fashion is provided by local cop Joanne Sharp (Jolene Anderson), who is anxious to take her sister Samantha (Stef Dawson) and her young son Sam back to the big city with her. But suddenly, the town is without communication and the community is cut off. We see about six of them altogether, although at one point one of the characters reels of the name of a dozen or so local families who have wisely decided to stay indoors until this all blows over. Joanne and her police partner, Luke (Richard Davies), realise that the town is under siege and this strange new alien virus is indiscriminately infecting the populace. Just to add to their woes, another much bigger alien creature appears to be on the prowl, keen to clear up the mess caused by the spaceship crash.

The Dustwalker is hugely generic stuff and the clichés might as well appear on screen accompanied by a flashing sign proclaiming ‘this is a cliché’. But despite its numerous shortcomings – a narrative that takes time to get up and running, infected psychopaths who don’t really do much except chase people quite slowly and a couple of shonky visuals – The Dustwalker is oddly enjoyable. Probably because it’s so familiar and doesn’t try to hide from the fact that it’s telling us a story we’ve been told (usually better) a hundred times or more before. Writer/director Sandra Sciberras keeps the thing rolling along at a decent pace once it finds its feet, there are a few agreeable moments of icky body horror and the CGI monster itself is decently rendered and refreshingly inhuman-looking, scuttling through the dark and emerging from sinkholes to ensnare the victims of the escaped virus.

Competent but most likely eminently forgettable, The Dustwalker doesn’t deserve to be swept under the carpet and mote provide a diverting hundred or so minutes entertainment even if it won’t soot those looking for something with a bit more originality.

Screened just once in the UK on BBC2 in June 1982, Jindřich Polákc’s lever, witty 1977 Czech time travel movie – yes, that’s right – quickly slipped into obscurity but the memory of it quietly lodged itself in the back of the minds of those who unexpectedly caught this sole UK outing, this reviewer included. Images of a clumsy-looking, military-style time machine standing in a snowy landscape surrounded by curious Nazi soldiers lurked for years in the dark recesses of the brain so the opportunity to not only finally put a name to this oddity but also to be able to see it again on this new Blu-ray from Second Run is proof that miracles can still happen, even in the middle of a world gone mad.

In the (presumably) near future, time travel is a reality and holidaymakers can journey back to any era they wish to get their jollies. A group of rather incompetent neo-Nazis hijack a ‘rocket’/time machine to return to 1944 where they plan to deliver a hydrogen bomb to Hitler to enable him to turn the tide towards the end of World War II and thus change the course of history. They have enlisted the aid of a sympathetic time machine pilot, but on the day of the launch he inadvertently chokes to death on a stale bread roll and, in a moment of sublime madness, his dowdier twin brother decides to adopt his late brother’s persona and pretends that he has died instead. Thus is set in motion a chain of events that are alternately slapstick, knockabout, dramatic and at times even a little disturbing. The scheme goes horribly wrong when the machine deposits them in 1941 instead of 1944 and bemused pilot Jan (Karen Bures) returns to ‘the present’ allowing the story to cleverly take a turn for the timey-wimey that Doctor Who supremo Steven Moffat himself would surely approve of.

Tomorrow… is great fun even if it isn’t quite the film we remember and the stark images we recall are only a small part of the larger scheme of things. But the story is wickedly anarchic, performances are often wide-eyed and over-the-top and the special effects and music are charmingly naïve. Despite its comedic elements, the time travel aspects are wonderfully convoluted with scenes of two versions of the same person existing at the same time and the same events often told from slightly different perspectives. Huge kudos to Second Run for exhuming this delicious half-remembered curio and even the new transfer, full of pops and blemishes and the odd jump-frame, helps to evoke the homespun nature of the entire production and conjures warm memories of that strange June evening nearly four decades ago when an unexpectant discerning audience discovered this mad, irreverent, and frankly absurd minor sci-fi classic and then promptly forgot all about it.

The great silent-era director Paul Leni made his mark in his native Germany as with movies such as Waxworks (1924), as well as being a fantastic, expressionistic art director. He, like several other German filmmakers, moved to the US to work for Carl Laemmle’s Universal Studios. He made four genuine classics there (one of which is lost), of which The Last Warning was the final film made before his untimely death at age 44.

Several years after a lead actor was killed during a stage production, a big-shot producer decides to bring the original cast back to the long-closed theatre for a revival of the show. However, as rehearsals progress, it’s clear things are not right as the theatre becomes a veritable haunted house of creepy occurrences.

Like Leni’s first US picture, The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Last Warning was based on a stage play. However, unlike many theatrical adaptations of the time, this movie isn’t hampered by stagey direction or production values. Leni keeps the camera moving – something very rare in early films – and dresses the set with plenty of hidden, creepy components. Utilising the grand Phantom of the Opera theatre set, the atmosphere is playfully dark; spiders and cobwebs permeate all corners and Leni amps the shadowplay to glorious extremes. As with The Cat and the Canary, the intertitles have a life of their own, adding a voice to the silent actors (a partial-sound version was released, since this was the dawn of the new cinematic era, but that sadly no longer exists either) and proving what a visionary Leni was.

The print used for Eureka’s Blu-ray release shows signs of damage here and there, but the contrast of the image is perfect and the few scratches that exist are bearable and in no way distract from what is a superb murder-mystery. Of the special features, an audio commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman provides background and plenty of titbits on the film and Leni’s career, and is well worth a listen, as is the video essay by John Soister.

Younger fans of cinema may be reticent to check out older films, but The Last Warning is one than could win them over and act as a gateway into an era that has many delights to behold.