Author: Lady Summerisle

12 – Creature Feature (Gremlins)

You reach the point where the grassy slope meets the edge of the road. The trail you were following ends, whatever had caused the grass to wilt and die had no effect on the unyielding tarmac it seems. Checking both ways for vehicles, which side of the road do they drive on here anyway, you make your way across and see another strip of deceased foliage plunging down towards the edge of the gorge itself. Cautiously you make your way to the edge.

Peering over into the shadow strewn depths you see the rushing torrent below, imperceptivity carving its way down through the rock. The water seems to be pooling up slightly against some trapped debris, or a dam perhaps. No…not a dam. Dams don’t move like that. Dams don’t pulsate, and dams certainly don’t eject rough, scaly looking objects like fossilised popcorn from a pan. Popcorn with arms and legs…hands…eyes…

Panting, you step back from the edge. Did it see you? What was that thing? Something from the sphere? Deciding that you don’t really want to know you turn around and look down the road, first left, then right, but which way? Left looks as though it could head back towards town, but it might pass through Tavernmaw and after the experience by the church you’re not sure you trust the place.

Turning right and keeping as far from the gorge as possible you make your way along the side of the road as it winds its way up the edge of the valley. Looking back you think you see movement in the shadows of the trees below, small shapes flickering in the dark areas, never emerging into the light.

Turning away again you double your pace. Who knows, on this island, it could be night soon…

Another big one this time, and perhaps slightly controversial. I’m sure lots of people wouldn’t include this in the horror genre but I certainly would, and it’s far from being the most debatable film in my collection. They’re cute, but don’t feed them after midnight. Joe Dante’s ‘Gremlins’, from 1984.

In case you’re unfamiliar, ‘Gremlins’ follows our teenage (I think, it’s never quite clear hold old he is) protagonist Billy Peltzer, played by Zach Galligan, as he struggles to look after a mysterious pet called a Mogwai, named Gizmo, which his father obtained for him in Chinatown. There are three rules. Don’t expose the Mogwai to sunlight, don’t get him wet, and never feed him after midnight. What could go wrong? Of course, a lot does go wrong and the little town of Kingston Falls soon finds itself overrun with monsters.

‘Gremlins’ was a very successful film, coming 4th at the Box office for 1984, a year which pitted it against heavy hitters ‘Beverly Hills Cop’, ‘Ghostbusters’, and ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’. As far as horror films go it was number 1.

The creature effects are excellent and were designed by Chris Walas who created the makeup for David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly‘ and also had a hand in the melting faces in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’. Gizmo is incredibly cute and the Gremlins suitably evil looking, though not too scary, this is a family film after…well, is it? ‘Gremlins’ sits in an odd place. 90% of the time it’s wacky, or heart warming, or funny, but then it hits you with a level of violence you’re not expecting from something that has the feel of a festive family film.

One of its claims to fame was, along with the aforementioned ‘Temple of Doom’, it prompted Stephen Spielberg, executive producer of one and director of the other, to suggest the US rating system introduce a new rating between PG and R due to the complaints that the 2 films were too frightening and violent for young children. And so PG-13 was born. Here in the UK the film was classified 15, though I’m sure I remember seeing it as a child with my parents.  There’s fear, destruction, all manner of creature deaths and some human ones too, and one disturbing scene which will always stick in my memory and not because of anything visual. More on that later.

Jerry Goldsmith’s musical score is iconic. Almost everybody of a certain generation would recognise the main theme, I’ve even included it on this year’s Halloween party playlist. The rest of the music is just as good, from the beautiful ‘First Aid’ to the haunting whale song of ‘The Pool’. So good in fact that Jerry Goldsmith won a Saturn Award for best music.

I haven’t mentioned it yet but ‘Gremlins’ is a Christmas film, and not just a film that happens to take place at Christmas, a la ‘Die Hard’, but one where it’s front and centre, there’s plenty of festive carnage, gremlins posing as carollers and a young Corey Feldman dressed as a Christmas tree, it’s on the same level as something like ‘Home Alone’.

Speaking of Corey Feldman this was the same year he starred in ‘Friday the 13th Part 4′ and a few years before ‘Lost Boys’, so I doubt this is the last time we’ll be seeing him. He’s great in this film and it’s a strong performance all round really from the whole cast. If I had to criticise something it would be the stereotypical nature of the old Chinese man and his shop but it’s very of it’s time and ultimately it’s American consumerism which is taught a lesson by that same man, not as a punishment but due to its own hubris.

Score time. ‘Gremlins’ is one of my all time favourite films. It fantastically balances humour and horror, managing to be not too silly, not too scary but sit somewhere in the middle, somewhere just right. 5 Stair Lifts out of 5. Maybe it’s rose tinted glasses viewing a classic film from my childhood, but no, I think it’s just a great film. It’s almost a shame it’s as scary and violent in places as it is because honestly, most kids would love it, I certainly did.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So the first specific part of the film I want to bring up is the disturbing scene I alluded to earlier. This isn’t gory, or violent or anything like that, it’s psychological. Mostly the film is fairly light hearted, but suddenly we’re hit with Kate’s story about how her father went missing one Christmas and after several days, on a particularly cold night she goes to light the fire and notices a smell. The fire brigade come to find what’s inside the chimney, and it turns out to be her dead father who’d tried to surprise them by climbing down the chimney, fallen and broken his neck. This whole scene feels so out of place injecting some true horror into the film, I like the scene but still, what a change of pace.

Another example of something that pushes this film into non kid friendly territory, but in a much more amusing way, is the fate of Mrs Deagle. Now we’ve already established by this point of the film that she’s a bit of a bitch and it’s hilarious and satisfying to see the Gremlins sabotage her Stair Lift so that she shoots up her (Impossibly long by the way) staircase and smashes through an upstairs window into the snow. Now this is the point where a family film has her looking all woozy or screaming her head off, but no Mrs Deagle is straight up dead, these Gremlins aren’t messing around.

We mentioned the special effects earlier but one scene in particular is a fantastic example of practical effects. At the end of the film when Spike is at the fountain and gets hit by the ray of sunlight his body starts to melt, the skin bubbling and dripping off his body, it’s gruesome stuff and it’s not over yet, after his body falls into the water and we think he’s finished his skeleton leaps out onto the floor and begins to dissolve whilst still apparently trying to breathe. The whole sequence looks amazing and is something that CGI has sadly, and generally for the worst, almost eliminated from modern films.

One more scene I’d like to mention is the swimming pool. Billy has tracked Spike to the local YMCA but before Billy can stop him he jumps into the pool. As Spike sinks into the water the pool begins to smoke, and bubble like the water is boiling, and eerie green light glowing from inside and all the while the music swells with whale song which Gerry Goldsmith masterfully turns into something sinister and foreboding. This is probably the scene I think of first when I think of Gremlins and every re-watch reminds me why.

That’s it from me. Time for a midnight snack…

11 – A Sound Decision (Dead Silence)

You awake. The red glow seems diminished, the sound has stopped but your head feels thick and heavy…congested. As your sleep wracked eyes adjust you see why the glow is reduced, a bright shaft of sunlight spears from an opening in the upper side of the cavern. Tumbled rocks from the opening suggest whatever made the hole came from outside, the black object perhaps?

Making your way towards the…sphere, it’s a sphere, you stumble and throw out a hand to break your fall, grazing your palm in the process. You cry out! In…silence. You make no sound, not your voice, not your feet on the rocks. Nothing. Did that sound deafen you. Is this temporary…or…

You scramble away from the object, turning towards the opening, towards the sunlight, eager to get away from the sound which you can no longer hear. The scattered rocks and scree form a treacherous slope up to the exit hole and you scrabble your way up and out into a brilliant blue skied day.

As soon as you exit the cavern the sound of rushing water fills your ears. It’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard. Before you a narrow gorge splits a valley not much wider. A road twists and turns up either side, joined by a simple metal bridge spanning the turbulent crevasse, the rushing river that formed it the source of the sound.

Looking down you see a clear path down the grassy slope to the edge of the road. The grass of the path is not just trampled though, in fact it barely looks disturbed. Except for the fact that it’s dead. Wilted and brown next to the bright green either side, you don’t like the look of it.

Keeping to one side, you follow it down.

A somewhat more silly entry this time. James Wan’s 2007 film ‘Dead Silence’.

This is essentially a haunted doll film but using a ventriloquist dummy and a dark history surrounding it’s operator to give the film it’s own flavour. We follow the film’s protagonist Jamie Ashen, played by Ryan Kwanten as he searches for the truth behind the loss of his wife, all whilst being shadowed by a Police Detective played by Donnie Wahlberg, who I hadn’t really heard of, but he’s the brother of Mark Wahlberg, who I definitely have heard of.

This film has a very late 90s early 2000s ‘Dark Castle’ look to it, which I certainly don’t see as a bad thing, which you’ll see when I get round to reviewing ‘House on Haunted Hill’ or ’13 Ghosts’…‘Ghost Ship’, not so much. But essentially it’s a bit campy, but still creepy, and characters are somewhat caricatures. It’s very different in tone to Wan’s later supernatural work like ‘Insidious’ or ‘The Conjuring’ which are much more serious.

The film does manage to be creepy, but it’s short lived and only lasts so long as the source, mostly the dummy, or lack thereof is happening. This isn’t a film that’s going to leave you on edge after it’s over. Mostly the film relies on jump scares, which as I just mentioned have a short shelf life in our minds.

What I will say is that the film is fun. It’s an entertaining horror film, one to watch with friends, quite likely to laugh at or share in the gross out moments and go “Oooooh” at the reveals. Fun. Nothing special though.

One of the effects which is used in the film is the silence aspect. When something supernatural is about to happen the sound of various objects reduces, then stops. Or at least that what I think it should do, in fact what seems to happen is they slow down or at the very least get deeper before they stop. This leaves me unclear if sound is just ceasing or if time is actually stopping as well, though if it is then nothing else is implying that. It’s a minor quibble but something that bugged me since it’s one of the more interesting ‘gimmicks’ in the film.

The dummy design is good and it sticks to a classic look which is good to see. No attempt has been made to make the dummy extra creepy, it’s a dummy they’re creepy how they are. Despite other parts of this film being a bit over the top the use of the dummy is actually well done and subtle, for the most part.

As I said earlier the look of the film is a little larger than life and this means it has some fun sets. The old town of Raven’s Fair has that New England gothic look to it and of particular mention is the town’s Theatre which is a full on fog bound evil villain’s castle of a building mixed with the nostalgia of somewhere once full of life. If there’s one area where this film does well it’s with the sets.

The use of special effects if the film is limited mostly to the supernatural aspects but they honestly detract from the practical stuff which is great.

What about the plot, does it hold up? Well the main story is pretty one dimensional, we essentially follow the same character for 90% of the film but the pacing is good and I never found it dragged, even when watching it second time. It tries to make things overly complicated towards the end and I wouldn’t say any of the characters really grab you. What did grab me though was the flashback story about half way through introducing us to the character Mary Shaw, more on that in the spoiler section but it stood out to me and helped to break up the otherwise linear style.

Score time. Quite an easy one to score this one, It’s decidedly middle of the road, as is my scoring system. 3 Tongues out of 5. Looking for a group film that’s got some creep factor without causing you a sleepless night, something not too cerebral, then this probably won’t disappoint, but it won’t do anything else either.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So there’s a twist in the film. I avoided mentioning it in the main review, well I mentioned reveals, because if you say a film has a twist then people end up trying to work that out rather than watching it as they should. The twist is actually pretty fun, well half of it is, the other half I felt wasn’t explained well enough. Part way into the film we meet Jamie’s father, played by Bob Gunton of ‘Shawshank Redemption’ fame! Now wheelchair bound after a supposed stroke and never without the helping hand of his young wife, played by Amber Valletta.

It turns out the reason we never see them apart is because Jamie’s poor father has been hollowed out as is in fact a corpse dummy being controlled by his wife who has been vocalising for him as well. Great, that’s quite fun, and sick, we see some of Wan’s penchant for macabre contraptions come through here. Now what wasn’t that obvious to me, but maybe I’m a dummy…hah…is that the wife is a doll, the perfect doll in fact and possessed by Mary Shaw. Initially that went right over my head as a lot is revealed at the point in the film and I figured she was a relative or something, even though it never says that, oh I don’t know! It just didn’t come through for me.

Now I actually watched this film twice, as I’d seen it a few months back but felt that wasn’t recent enough to give it a proper review, so knowing the twist actually made it fairly watchable the 2nd time and I noticed the wife’s hand position and the twitchy movements of the dad, it really does deserve some kudos for that.

The method of killing in the film puts me in mind of ‘Saw’ and the reverse bear trap. It’s suitably gruesome though not as viscerally graphic as what we see in the ‘Saw’ films, again this is more fantasy than reality. It was an interesting idea to make it so that if you scream you die but ultimately it makes it more cheesy and you start getting worked up about what counts as a scream…well at least I did.

So about that flashback story. One of the characters reminisces about going to Mary Shaw’s show back in the 40s and we get a great scene where a kid says he can see Mary’s lips moving and she then has an argument with Billy, the Dummy, with the two talking over each other. This shuts the kid up. But then what really shuts the kid up is going missing a couple of weeks later and never being seen again. Not that is until much later in the film where Jamie and the detective discover his corpse has been made into a puppet. This is probably the most disturbing story within the film and it’s then totally ruined when they’re like “Wow we solved a 70 year old missing persons case” they seem so unfazed and blasé about finding a fucking puppet made out of a child’s corpse!

It could make me scre…

10 – Look to the Heavens (Brightburn)

Moving quickly but cautiously you descend the spiral staircase, down into the coolness of the earth, down into the unknown, down into a dead end? Why would there be an exit down here, all you’ve done is trap yourself, but what other option is there?

You continue down, the string of bulbs lighting your way as the stair spirals ever onwards. Deeper, deeper, dee…you falter as the floor levels out, your foot coming down hard. 

You peer out into a large rectangular room, stone pews are arranged in two lines facing a stone altar, just like up above. This room is a duplicate, but unlike the dusty neglected chamber in the church this place has seen plenty of use. The altar has a richly embroidered, deep red cloth neatly arranged on its top. A pair of ornate gilded chalices sit either side of a stone tablet which on closer inspection is covered with a strange symbol carved over and over into the surface, like two Carets either side of a capital T, or an M over a T, it isn’t clear. Whatever the symbol’s meaning, it certainly isn’t something you’d expect to find in a church.

Behind the altar you see a faint red glow, a passage leading further into the crypt, a way out?

As you head along the passage the red glow becomes stronger and a low humming noise begins to resonate all around you, inside you, pulsing, like a heartbeat. All of a sudden the passage opens up into a large cavern bathed in a red glow, the light emanating from an otherwise black metallic looking object at its centre. The humming is louder now, growing in volume with every passing second the pulsing getting faster, overwhelming your senses, a drumbeat against your skull, THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

Everything goes black.

Another one from 2019, this time I’m reviewing David Yarovesky’s Superhero gone awry film ’Brightburn’.

This was one of those films I remember seeing trailers for and thinking “Huh, that looks interesting” so of course I promptly forgot about it till I eventually saw it a couple of years later on one streaming service or another. I remember enjoying it quite a bit, enough to justify buying it on Blu-Ray, putting it in the crosshairs of the random number generator. Which brings us here, to this review.

If you’ve seen Superman, and I imagine a fair few of you have, then you know how this film starts. A baby crash lands on earth in an alien capsule, on a farm, and is raised by the couple who live there. Everything’s pretty normal until one day the capsule activates and Brandon, the child, starts to exhibit superpowers and his personality changes, for the worst. For the spoiler free section that’s all you’re getting of the plot. It’s a horror film, something had to go wrong…right?

The first thing I wanted to discuss regarding this film is a subject close to my heart. Violence, gore and film classification. At university, whilst doing an entirely unrelated subject (Illustration) I wrote my dissertation on violence in film and television and the ups and downs of this interest me to this day. In the UK, since the new millennium, there’s been a big reduction all round in the harshness that films are rated. So when you see that copy of ‘The Terminator’ in a shop and it’s a 15 and you say to yourself “Wasn’t that an 18?” Yes. Yes it was, until the year 2000.

Getting to the point of all this. I was going to say ‘Brightburn’ should be an 18. But it turns out the uncut version (Exclusive to 4k, wtf film studios!) IS an 18 and the 15 version I have on Blu Ray has a couple of cuts. Having said that, my point still stands. Despite these 2 cuts (and an altered scene) the film still felt veeeerry gory for a 15 with some graphic injury detail and a lot of the red stuff. Studios, stop cutting films to get yourself a lower classification, it annoys us over 18s and really does nothing to protect those the ratings are designed to protect, especially when the cuts are so minor!

Rant over, and in case you wondered what a lover of horror is doing saying something negative about gore, it’s not the gore that bothers me, in fact it was pointed out to me that I was grinning while some of the particularly nasty stuff was happening, I love that shit, give me more of it, but don’t try and shoehorn it into a 15, give it the respect it deserves.

The film’s premise and story are fairly interesting, though everything happens pretty fast. It’s rare that this is the case, but I think the film could have done with being half an hour longer or at least spent its time more wisely. We don’t really get to know Brandon enough for us to view him in anything other than a negative light, similar to my feelings in ‘Us’ but this time it’s one of the main characters. ‘Descent into…’ films work best when we get to see who we’re losing and I didn’t get that here.

Brandon’s parents are a bit of a saving grace in this regard. It’s them who we get to see bear the brunt of Brandon’s changes, emotionally at least. They love him, that much is clear, and though their reactions are different we can see the pain being caused to them both. In a way they’re the main characters, they’re the ones we care about. Brandon himself is just a threat to move the story along, but he could have been more.

The sound design was well done, some cool ominous alien voices and effects with great use of bass, it was very effective in making Brandon seem even more threatening and gave the film an epic feel where relevant.

Score time. Another tough one, the score actually came down as I was writing this review and I decided upon 3 Notepads out of 5. There was a lot to like here. The premise was interesting and a fairly popular ‘What if…’ scenario, at least in my mind. Most of the acting is good, particularly Brandon’s parents played by Elizabeth Banks and David Denman, who you really feel are losing everything, and it’s got some great set pieces. Ultimately though it’s Brandon himself and our lack of compassion for him which lets down the film the most. This wasn’t ever going to be a 5, but it should have been a 4. It had all of the ingredients but the end result was a little bland.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

Let’s talk cuts. I made such a big deal about this in the main review that I felt I should expand upon it now that I can talk specifics.

Firstly we see a lady get a shard of glass into the centre of her eye. These are the two cuts, in the 15 version we’re missing a close up of the shard in the eye with a trickle of blood, yet we still get to see her slowly pull said shard out of her eye accompanied by a stream of blood, it’s just shorter, because, you know, that’s fine.

The altered scene is when Brandon kills his uncle. He picks up his truck and lets it fall front first into the floor, the steering wheel smashing the Uncle’s jaw off. In the unaltered scene we see his jaw fall mostly off before he grabs it with his hand and holds it back on whereas in the 15 version we cut to a view of the broken window. OK fine that make sense. But then 30 seconds later he dies, his hand falls away and his jaw again falls mostly off, but this time it’s a close up and we see everything. It’s so bizarre to me, the cuts honestly don’t make much of a difference as far as I’m concerned.

I’d like to expand a bit on what I felt was missing with Brandon. The idea is that Brandon was a great kid who suddenly started acting off and aggressive and we see him become what he was presumably sent to the planet to be, an exterminator once activated. Think ‘Dragonball Z’s’ Goku meets order 66 from ‘Revenge of the Sith’. The thing is we barely get to see him being a good kid, it’s essentially covered by showing us 1 minute of home video footage during the opening sequence of the film. This is where some extra time would have been most effective, we need to really get to Know Brandon and most importantly like and emphasise with Brandon before his fall into darkness can truly be effective. We just get to see a slightly odd kid become very odd, very aggressive then full on psychopath with little in the way of development. OK so perhaps the signal from the space ship  instantly flips a switch but it would have been good too see more conflict within him and some genuine remorse to make the fall all the more effective.

As I stated in the main review it’s the parents who you feel for the most and the tragedy of being killed by their own adopted son. To be fair the Dad was an idiot who tried to shoot his son in the back of the head so his death was somewhat inevitable and also pretty silly, laser eyes through the eyes and all. The Mum though, she spends the whole film trying to see the good in Brandon and her death is entirely…oh no wait she also tries to kill him, never mind.

Right! Think I’ll end it there. I’ve got a plane to catch…

9 – Anybody home? (Us)

Rising to your feet your eyes dart about in search of shelter, somewhere to escape from the growling all around you. A Church, there must be one, this is a graveyard, surely a chapel at least…there! Rising like a mirage from the mist is a dark stone building with a crooked steeple. You run.

Dodging left and right to avoid the crumbling decrepit tombs and gravestones you quickly arrive at the front of the church where your reflection in a large window draws an involuntary cry from your lips. You look behind you for any sign of pursuit then back at the…window? No, a door, and made of dark, damp wood, then why? No time for that now, the growls are getting closer. You grasp the iron ring of the door handle and wrench it open, slamming it behind you and slapping the bolt closed.

It’s gloomy in the church, the windows yielding little light…when did it get so dark outside?

Slowly you become accustomed to the dim space and make out two lines of pews with a tattered line of carpet sandwiched between them. At the end of the carpet stands a simple altar, cobwebs hang limp between two candelabras set on top of it. This place hasn’t been used in a long time.

Off to your left a faint glow catches your attention. A strip of yellow outlines a small door set into a stone pillar. Stepping over to it you pull the door open and peer inside. Steps. A spiral staircase leading not up, but down. Electric lightbulbs strung together like a line of paper dolls disappear round the bend…a crypt?

Down seems to be the last place you want to go right now, down is dank mortar and mould, down is grave worms and rot, down is death.

A crash echoes about the church as something slams against the front door.

Down it is.

Something a bit more recent this time, and something more widely known, today I’m reviewing the 2nd of Jordan Peele’s Films, 2019’s ’Us’.

Peele is a relative newcomer to directing but that certainly doesn’t seem to have been a hindrance, with the critical acclaim and success of his 1st and previous film ‘Get Out’ (It’s on the list).

‘Us’ follows the Wilson family as they go on holiday to a lake house near Santa Cruz. The mother, Adelaide, had a traumatic life altering experience at the beach in Santa Cruz as a child and soon her past comes back to haunt, not just her, but her family, friends and the whole country.

Now this all sounds very dramatic and ambitious for a horror film, but Peele keeps it tight and keeps things focused on the Wilsons. Almost all of the film is set around the 4 of them and we know only what they know, we have no insider knowledge and that’s what stops this film from becoming detached from the horror, we fear for this family.

We don’t just fear for them though, we root for them. I’m not ashamed to say that in quite a few horror films I couldn’t care less about the protagonists and sometimes I’m actively hoping they don’t make it. Here though, the 4 family members, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabriel (Winston Duke), Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) feel like a real family unit, like real people and not just actors in a film. Though speaking of actors, all 4 are excellent and it’s their work which brings those characters to life and makes us want them to succeed, makes us afraid for them but also…wait, no, that’s for the spoiler section. Let’s just say the actors had to work twice as hard in this film, but man, it looks like it must have been so much fun.

If I was to describe the film as a totally made up genre within Horror, I’d say it’s ‘Psycho Home Invasion on a Grand Scale’. The scope and the ideas behind the film are huge and intriguing with a nice chunk of disturbing. ‘Us’ is creepy, it makes you think ‘What if?’ and in your mind you berate the people who designed your home for making it so linear with so few exits. ‘Us’ is also funny at times, particularly when Gabe is on screen, he provides the comic relief to Addy’s serious, haunted tone. Another amusing character is Ophelia, but we’ll get to that in the spoilers.

The music. Oh wow. The music in this film is excellent, fun when it needs to be fun, and down right creepy when it wants to be. Special mention goes to the opening theme ‘Anthem’ and my personal favourite, an incredible orchestration of ‘I Got 5 On It’ that I’m listening to right now and just…chills.

Score time. I really struggled with what to give this one. I flip flopped between two high numbers but eventually decided on 4 Rabbits out of 5. A few things could have brought it higher. The ending was a little predictable, and perhaps it’s just me but although I was rooting for the main 4, I didn’t feel anything for the other characters in the film, perhaps we’re not supposed to, but it made their fates mundane. Sure the premise is messed up, but frankly I didn’t care. Having said that, this is a clever, fun, creepy and ultimately entertaining film with a mind blowing score that deserves your full attention and I’m looking forward to Jordan Peele’s next one.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So the main idea behind the film is that there exists underground doppelgangers of the people on the surface. Clones created by the government and then abandoned when their experiments to control their surface counterparts failed. As far as we’re aware this is everywhere in America. Pretty wild stuff. This is what I meant when I said the scope and ideas were huge. It’s like a zombie apocalypse if the zombies had gold scissors, and were…well…us.

The clones are unsurprisingly played by the same actors as the regular people in the film. This is what I meant when I said they must have had a lot of fun. Imagine getting to play your normal character, and then your character if they’d lived underground their whole lives and where essentially a psychopath. The whole cast did a brilliant job with this, those twins, wow, they creep me out.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s look at Addy’s clone, Red. We first meet Red at the start of the film when Addy wanders away from her parents at the fairground. She goes down onto the beach and goes inside a hall of mirrors where she bumps into what isn’t just another reflection, but turns out to be Red, her clone. Cut to Addy and her parents at a psychologist because Addy won’t talk any more and is acting odd since she wandered off. Do you see where this is going? So yes, years later, and at the end of the film, we discover that the reason Red was different to the other clones, and the reason she was able to organise them and bring them to the surface to slay their counterparts, is that Red…is actually Addy. This was the twist ending that wasn’t much of a surprise.

Now if I’m honest, at the start of the film this isn’t obvious because you don’t know anything about the doppelgangers yet and it relies somewhat on you having forgotten the beginning scene by later on in the film. So when I say it was a little predictable it was a little, but not glaringly obvious.

Oh yes, that other funny moment I wanted to talk about. Ophelia.

The Wilsons meet up with another family on their holiday, the Tylers, friends of theirs who are staying in the area, and their resort house has an Alexa/Siri type device called Ophelia. Later in the film the Tylers are attacked by their clones. The Father and twin daughters are killed outright while the Mum, Kitty, though injured, manages to drag herself along the floor and ask Ophelia to call the police. Ophelia plays ‘Fuck the Police’ by NWA. It’s a nice nod to how infuriating these devices can be and adds a bit of humour to an otherwise gruesome and horrific scene. Though to be honest, this family was annoying…

The last scene I’d like to talk about is where that brilliant version of ‘I Got 5 On It’ comes in. Addy and Red fight in the underground facility and Red (Original Addy), lithely avoids Addy’s (Original Red’s) attacks. The movements flow with the music and the scene inter cuts with one of the two girls, years ago performing ballet in front of an audience. One on a grand stage, the other in a dark underground corridor. It shows brilliantly how their lives have switched and how different circumstances effect what is essentially the same person. It’s so well done. Hmmm…maybe it does deserve a 5…no, I’m sticking with 4.

Now if you’ll excuse me there’s some strange people outside…

8 – A Grave Mistake (City of The Living Dead)

This doesn’t seem right.

You were following a path, it seemed fairly well trodden, there was even a sign, what did it say? Tavernmaw, so there are other places.

But now the forest has closed in tight on either side and looking back the path has all but disappeared behind you, as if erased by your own steps.

You recall Steven’s Map, perhaps it could shed some light on your whereabouts. Reaching into your pocket you freeze as a low growl comes from somewhere to your right, was that a dog? Again…that doesn’t seem right, it sounds like an imitation of a dog, from a human throat. Then an odd noise and the growl again, but this time from your left, and closer.

Breaking into a run you thrash forwards through the trees, blindly pushing your way through the undergrowth which seems to be getting thicker, and thicker, when suddenly you burst out into a clearing, trip on something solid and come crashing to the ground.

Dazed and slightly winded you look up through a low thick mist and see writing.

Here lies Father Lovecraft

Parish Priest of Tavernmaw

May God have Mercy on his Soul

May God have Mercy on us all

It’s a gravestone. This is a graveyard. Now the growling is everywhere.

Wow, another one for the horror enthusiast, I mean, that’s why you’re reading this right? City of the Living Dead is from another of the ‘Godfather’s of Gore’, this time it’s Italian director Lucio Fulci and the first film of his unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy.

As a lover of Horror but a bit of a babe in the woods when it comes to the films outside of the main stream I’d only watched this film once before, and that was very recently when I got hold of a copy on Blu Ray, courtesy of Arrow who seem to be the go to company for high quality versions of semi obscure films. I’m in no way affiliated with them by the way, I’m just a fan of their output.

This wasn’t quite the first Fulci film I ever saw, that would be Zombi 2 or Zombie Flesh Eaters as it’s known here in the UK, but it was the second. So obviously Zombi 2 fully prepared me for what was to come…or not. This film is weird, I know I said the same about The Wizard of Gore but it’s equally true here, the plot is confusing, we jump around almost as much as the zombies, more on that later, and the whole thing feels a bit like a strange dream pulled from Fulci’s head.

The general premise of the film is that a priest in the town of Dunwich, no not that one, but named as an homage to that one, commits suicide and this starts to open the gates of Hell. A few days from this event, on All Saints Day, the invasion of the living dead will begin and our group of heroes is trying to stop that from happening.

This never really felt like an imminent event, even when it was, well, imminent. For a start there were already a few scattered zombies appearing throughout the film and you just don’t get a real sense of urgency. Essentially my main issue with this film is the confusing and disjointed plot which feels like it’s there as an excuse for a series of bizarre events.

The good news is that these bizarre events are great and we get to see all sorts of gross effects and craziness which I’m beginning to suspect is a hallmark of Fulci, I mean he does have that nickname.

Teleporting Zombies, check. Maggot Storm, check. Intestinal Regurgitation, check. The list goes on and I’ll expand on these more in the spoiler section. The effects for these events are great, the film does an excellent job of grossing you out, and I say this having watched a fair few gross films.

Something I’ve noted from the three Fulci films I’ve seen is that he does Zombies well, and more importantly he does threatening feeling zombies well. There’s no hint of humanity here, nothing to reason with. A special mention goes for any scene where zombies are rising from the ground, hands down of all the Zombie films I’ve seen, Fulci does this the best, it’s slow and sinister and deliciously macabre.

Visually the film is really good, there’s great use of lighting and fog that creates a spooky, dreamlike atmosphere. Dunwich itself feels like a haunted town somewhat cut off from the rest of the world, we mostly see it at night but even in the day it never feels safe.

The music is also great, but sadly very repetitive. There’s one particular piece, which I love, but it’s overused. I adored it on the Blu Ray menu but it really began to grate by the finale.

The acting, like many Italian films of this era, is a little hard to judge as the voices are all dubbed in the studio afterwards, this is true whether you listen to the Italian or the English audio, it’s just how they did things. It’s nothing special but it’s also not awful, just OK.

So to the score. I’m probably going to get frowned upon by Fulci enthusiasts but I found this to be pretty middle of the road. Maybe odd to say for something so weird but what I mean is I didn’t come away thinking it was a masterpiece, or that it was terrible either, it was just, OK. With that in mind the most appropriate score is 3 flying maggots out of 5. I definitely think it’s worth seeing for the various set pieces and the brilliant visuals, I almost gave it a 4, but it just never felt, complete. I have seen it stated that it feels like a dry run for the film Fulci released a year later The Beyond, so I look forward to seeing that in the future.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

I mentioned that the film was worth seeing for the set pieces, so let’s talk about some of those.

Peter Bell, a Journalist who’s investigating the death of the medium Mary Woodhouse, goes to the graveyard where’s she’s part way though being buried when he discovers she’s not so dead after all. What follows is one of the most stressful scenes I’ve ever had to sit through. Peter leaps to Mary’s rescue by jumping into the grave and then repeatedly slamming a pickaxe through the lid of coffin at about the point where you would expect her face to be. You would think he was trying to impale her through the head with the point of the axe, it’s frankly amazing that he doesn’t kill her for real.

There’s a scene which seems to be fairly well known, at least in horror circles, and that’s the girl who starts bringing up her own intestines. She and her date are making out in a car when they’re confronted by a teleporting Father Thomas, the aforementioned priest who committed suicide. He then stares at her until her eyes start to bleed and her entire digestive tract makes its way out of her mouth, the effects of which are pretty good, especially coming off the back of watching The Wizard of Gore.

One of the next scenes that stands out is where the hapless character Bob, who people seem to be blaming for the recent deaths, gets straight up murdered by a Dunwich resident who thinks he’s after his daughter. This isn’t a simple case of a father getting carried away and accidentally killing the guy, or even pulling the trigger and shooting him from across the room. No. This fucking psychopath of a Dad holds Bob down on a workbench whilst a lathe drill slowly drills through his head! When I say slowly I mean it, even in the world of film where it takes a descending stone door forever to close it still takes 1m 15 seconds, PLUS Bob was trying to run away, he wasn’t even fighting the Dad. He tries to explain why he was there and the Dad looks at the lathe, then at Bob and makes the decision to drill through his head. Psy-cho-path!

The last of the weird set pieces I’m going to mention is the maggot storm. There’s a shot where our 4 main heroes are sat discussing what they’re going to do when the window blows open and maggots start spraying in through the window. A lot of maggots. 10kg of them apparently, blown at the actors by two wind machines. Lovely!

Some more general observations.

The zombies seem to be able to teleport. This isn’t explained, or discussed, it’s just something they seem to be able to do, well at least some of the time, it’s pretty inconsistent.

Somebody, Fulci I imagine, definitely liked the idea of Zombies grabbing somebody’s scalp and pulping the back of their skull by squeezing it. This happens at least 3 times that I recall. It’s a great effect but some more variation would have been nice.

Lastly, and appropriately, the ending. Our two remaining heroes Mary and Gerry emerge from the crypt beneath the Dunwich graveyard, they’ve saved the day. The little boy who they helped earlier, John-John, really? What a name choice. Anyway John-John runs towards them, everyone’s happy, then slowly we hear Mary start to say, “No!”, “No!” and finally scream and we freeze frame on the boy’s face as animated cracks appear, the screen goes black and the credits roll. I’d love to now explain to you what that meant but unfortunately the best I have is that either, that’s just the ending and it’s weird, live with it, or that the ending was damaged or destroyed and they had no money to re-shoot it so that’s what we ended up with, I haven’t seen a definitive answer.

[Happy laughter then screams. Crackle effect to black. Credits]

7 – Can I Have a Volunteer? (The Wizard of Gore)

You finally reach the edge of town. Cobbled streets give way to trodden dirt and ahead, a wall of green, a forest, with an opening like a gothic archway of viridian leads into darkness.

At the edge of the wood, there has been a massacre. The stumps of trees fill the space, like islands in a sea of muddy ground. You look closer, the earth has been trampled by the coming and going of many feet and the stumps themselves appear worn and smooth on top, smooth except for numbers carved into each one. The ground slopes down to the west and there beyond the rows of stumps, is a stone dais…this is an amphitheatre

A stout wooden table sits in the centre of the dais, dark wood with dark stains.

Looking down, a sheet of paper flaps against your foot. Picking it up you see it’s a flyer for some event.

Mittwoch the Magnificent!

Magic and Mayhem.

You won’t believe your eyes, if you still have them!

A magic show then, but promising something more than just the usual mundane tricks. The flyer has no date but looks fairly new, perhaps the show is still on, if not here then somewhere else on the island…is there anywhere else on the island? People weren’t clear on that.

You fold the flyer and slip it into your pocket with Steven’s map.

Taking one last look at the dais, you turn and stride towards the trees.

Today’s film is a bit more of an obscure one, at least outside of Horror fan circles. I love Horror, but I’d never heard of this film, perhaps shame on me, until I heard it mentioned on Cinemassacre. The Monster Madness series introduced me to many of the lesser known films in my collection and I’ll forever be grateful for that, even when it’s a film like this. Ominous? Perhaps.

The Wizard of Gore is a 1970 film, directed by, The Godfather of Gore, or at least one of them, Herschell Gordon Lewis. This is one of the later films in his initial run between 1961 and 1972 and follows the exploits of a rather intense Magician named Montag the Magnificent. Montag has an unusual show, it has the old clichés like sawing a woman in half, but he takes it up a notch and uses a chainsaw!

Like the film, the spoiler free section of this review will probably be somewhat confusing as I’ll mostly be wanting to type ‘But what the fuck was actually happening when…’ or ‘I don’t understand! I thought…’ etc… Basically the film is all sorts of weird and despite having watched it twice in the space of a month it didn’t really answer my questions.

Let’s get on to what we can talk about. The film is gory, very gory. Real animal offal is used in the gruesome death scenes and performances, though despite the use of real gore, I’d be lying if I said it looked real…does that make sense? It looks like what it is, people with animal guts on them, there are some fun prosthetics and fake body parts used in close ups, though again they’re obviously fake. So despite all of the blood and guts this, probably, isn’t going to make you cringe or look away in the way the Saw or Hostel films might do, I mostly found myself laughing at it, though maybe that’s just me.

Because we’re still in the spoiler free section I can’t go into too much detail regarding the plot but essentially Montag is doing his shows and selecting ‘volunteers’ and these same people are turning up dead shortly afterwards and it’s really a bit of a who done it mystery, which I actually found pretty compelling, at least until the end sequence. I really did wonder what was really going on behind the mysterious deaths, as I hinted earlier this really doesn’t pay off in the end, if you’re looking for a film which pays off in the end, this will disappoint.

On the theme of disappointing, the acting is awful, though hilariously so. The film’s main protagonist, talk show host Sherry Carson, played by Judy Cler puts in probably the best performance though it’s Ray Sager as Montag who steals the show. He’s so over the top and dramatic, which kind of works for a Magician, but he’s always at 200% even when off stage. Oh, special mention goes to the mortuary owner…just wait.

So it’s a badly acted, over the top gore film with a somewhat compelling plot but a disappointing ending, but is it worth watching? Well, I’m going to give this film the lowest score I’ve given any film so far, 2 bloody hands out of 5. It’s campy, it’s silly, but ultimately it isn’t fun, and a film like this really needs to be. If you do decide to watch it, do so with friends, it’s a film that requires lively debate and incredulity. It succeeds as a talking point where it fails as a film.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So my main question with this film is WTF IS HAPPENING?? We see Montag performing his magic tricks, such as chainsawing a girl in half and we keep cutting between a calm scene where he’s going about his business, everybody is watching intently and there’s little going on it seems, and super gory shots of guts everywhere and blood, and screaming, and then back to the calm shot again, and repeat. It seems clear that the audience aren’t seeing all of the viscera or hearing the screaming and are only seeing the ‘trick’ being performed. Are the bloody bits in Montag’s head, is he using magic to hide this part from the viewers?

Later we see the volunteer/victim seemingly succumb to the wounds they received in the show and now everybody can see it. The cast start to think a copycat killer is following the volunteers after the show and killing them in the same way as the tricks that were performed.

We know…do we? I’m honestly not sure. That it’s Montag who is killing these women with magic, or perhaps some form of mass hypnosis (That works on people who weren’t there? And keeps people alive who should be dead?). Honestly this is why I said it was compelling, I found myself really wanting to know how it worked, what was the trick? At the end it seems like perhaps this was all in Montag’s mind, the entire film, this makes the most sense I guess but the ending is equally strange and there’s even a false ending to confuse things further. Montag is killed and our two main protagonists enjoy a well deserved drink. But wait! Jack peels off his face to reveal that he is actually Montag! He goes to kill Sherry but then she laughs and tells him that everything that happened was actually HER illusion! She tells him he’ll have to start again and we go back to the start of the film.

So okay you say, Sherry explains it, it was an illusion of her making, but you know what, that’s bullshit! That’s a case of not knowing how to end the film, it’s similar to the classic ‘It was all a dream’ ending, and those are never satisfying! I was hoping for something clever, but then that was wishful thinking with a film like this. Ultimately it left me unsatisfied.

Moving away from the plot there were a few moments in the film which I did enjoy. I liked the creepy scenes in a graveyard where Montag retrieves the (Suddenly far less grisly) corpses of the victims and starts placing them one by one into a mausoleum, some creepy music plays and there’s a red filter over everything and the whole section plays out like an old gothic horror and is really the cinematographic highlight of the film, in fact if taken on its own the first of these scenes in particular would be a great creepy little short.

Speaking of the graveyard, I mentioned him earlier but the mortuary owner is hilarious. Apparently he’s the actual owner of the graveyard used in the film and he wanted to be in the film. There’s a scene where he’s in the morgue and Montag freezes him with his stare and he stands there with one arm in the air supposedly frozen but he’s swaying about and to be fair to him he’s kept in shot for a very long time for somebody trying to stand still, maybe his direction was to sway about, that’s entirely possible, I could be being too harsh on him, but it’s amusing none the less.

Other than that there’s little else I really want to mention. If you’re looking for a gore fest and you like some 70’s exploitation then you might enjoy it. I myself didn’t hate it, I gave it a 2 out of 5 but it maybe creeps towards so bad it’s good, but doesn’t quite make it. Herschell Gordon Lewis’s slightly later The Gore Gore Girls was a more enjoyable one for me because it wasn’t trying to be serious, the only humour in this feels unintentional.

Now, go back to the beginning…

6 – Tasty Treats (Shaun of the Dead)

With Albert’s ominous warning still fresh in your mind you make your way north through the town, looking to escape the strangely deserted streets flanked by crooked buildings, the occasional twitch of a curtain catching your eye where the windows aren’t covered by shutters.

Did somebody move across the end of that alley?

Was that the sound of shuffling feet?

ICE CREAM!

The voice seems to come from directly behind you. Crying out you spin about and see a thin man with a gaunt face wearing white overalls and what appears to be a sailor hat.

Surrounding him is a gaggle of children, but surely you would have heard them, children are usually so…silent, these children are silent. They fidget and jostle one another reaching for the Ice Cream cones the man is handing them, but they don’t say a word.

One by one the children claim their treats and patter off down side streets and into doorways, soon it’s just you and the Ice Cream vendor.

Little rascals, I’ll lose a hand one of these days.

With that he turns his cart around and shuffles off. The streets are empty again.

It’s been a long time coming this review. For whatever reason I found myself procrastinating and kicking the can down the zombie infested road. I had a similar issue with Alien, I think there’s more pressure when it comes to reviewing such a well known and well regarded film.

Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead sits astride the Horror and Comedy genres and manages to be an excellent example of both. Ask anybody who watches a lot of horror to name their top 10 zombie films and Shaun of The Dead will most likely make an appearance, often near the top.

The film follows the titular Shaun as he navigates through his mundane run of the mill life, dealing with housemates, family, his love life…and zombies.

The pacing of the film, and in particular the introduction of the zombies, is brilliant. It’s gradual and subtle at first. We’ve already been shown how zombie like the human characters can be, that Shaun…well, no spoilers. If you haven’t seen this film already then you should go watch it right now. Still here? Fed up of this cliché review trope? OK, let’s continue.

The introduction of the zombies is slick, which is one of the best ways to describe Shaun of the Dead. Whether it’s the rapid cuts to staccato sound effects, or the excellent use of music, it’s lovingly crafted and really stands out in a saturated genre, be that horror or comedy, take your pick.

So it’s been established that Shaun of The Dead is a slick horror comedy, but is it scary, is it funny? I wouldn’t say it’s a scary film, but it has its moments, the threat is real, and the gore is wonderfully done, there’s a scene where a character is pulled through the window which has echoes of a similar scene in George A Romero’s Day of the Dead. The zombies look great, they’re not as grim and relentless feeling as the ones from Lucio Fulci ‘s Zombi 2 for example but they look believable, especially as newly created undead with their skin and clothes mostly intact, these are your neighbours, the people from down the road.

Another thing this film has is real emotion. Be prepared to cry in this film, it’s not all gory set pieces and comedy, it has some truly moving and upsetting scenes. This is the beauty of Shaun of The Dead, it’s just as good at making you cry as it is at making you laugh, and it’s oh so good at making you laugh!

Shaun and his interactions with his best friend Ed, more on him later, provide the bulk of the laughs but honestly the whole cast are hilarious, each in their own way. Fans of Edgar Wright’s series Spaced will feel right at home as the crude fart jokes evolve into ridiculous set pieces, though what I will say is it’s very British. I mean, I am British, so that’s fine for me but I’d be interested to know how the humour translates to non British audiences.

Ed. If I have one issue with this film, it’s that I found Ed entirely unlikable. He has his funny moments, indeed as I said it’s him and Shaun’s banter which provides the meat of the humour, but I find myself adverse to him on every watch through. So there we go, something negative, but it’s more of a personal feeling rather than an issue with the performance, in fact Nick Frost is excellent in the role. Speaking of performances Simon Pegg is at his very best in this film, the range of emotions he goes through and the seeming ease at which he portrays Shaun has you fully engaged with him throughout, you feel what he feels, good, bad and ugly.

Was there ever any doubt, not only of the rating system but of the final score, I’m going to give Shaun of The Dead 5 Cornettos out of 5. An incredible film which is a real contender for best comedy horror ever made.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

Let’s talk about the introduction of the zombies. I mentioned this in the spoiler free section but couldn’t go into any detail. It’s so well done. We see signs of what’s to come, a woman collapsing, a man in the park who looks like he’s about to bite into a pigeon, then as we go on, we the audience see more obvious signs whilst Shaun and Ed, drunk at this point, are oblivious to the true nature of a couple of zombies they encounter on their way home from the pub. The culmination of this is when Shaun manages to walk through mostly deserted, except for the occasional zombie, streets, buy something from the shop, leaving money for the absent owner, and walk back home without noticing the zombie apocalypse has even begun!

I mentioned moving and upsetting scenes, there are several, not many of our core group make it through the film, but the scene that hits the hardest is the death of Shaun’s mum. As a viewer we notice something isn’t quite right after her earlier off screen encounter with a zombie, she keeps holding her arm, she’s been bitten. After a tearful reveal in the Winchester, Shaun’s mum dies in his arms, and then to make things worse he has to shoot her when she rises as a Zombie. It’s devastating, and to think 5 minutes ago we were laughing as the gang fought off zombies to the sound of the jukebox blaring Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now, this film has a huge range.

There’s a moment early on in the film which I feel has affected my own life. Now bear with me. In my garden I have a rotating washing line. The central pole of this washing line slots into another pole which is cemented into the ground. I’d quite like to be able to remove the washing line from the base pole so I have a better view of the garden, but I can’t. Not because it doesn’t come out, it does, but because I know that if I do, that exposed pole is 100% going right through somebody! I’ve always found mundane deaths or injuries the worst in films, because I can see them happening! Ugh! No! It makes me cringe.

The end of the film is a nice touch. We get a happy ending…ish…maybe? I mean, it’s about as happy as it could be with the dead people and all. The zombie plague is over, Shaun and Liz are together, and Shaun still has his best friend Ed, in zombie form, chained in the shed…ok so it’s not THAT much of a happy ending.

Sorry.

No no, I’m sorry.

5 – A New Friend (Alien from the Darkness)

Stepping from the Inn you find yourself on a wide cobbled square surrounded by thatch roofed buildings. At the centre of the square is a tall pole. Different coloured ribbons hang from the top and flutter lazily in the breeze. Your hand brushes the scrap of paper in your pocket…the map, perhaps later, there’s a whole island to explore.

Hullo there friend!

A cheery voice rings out. You look over to a quaint little shop with a multipaned bay window where a jolly looking man with white mutton chops is beckoning you over.

My name is Albert, I heard we had a new visitor to the island. I’m the town chemist, can I interest you in anything?

You glance into the shop through the open door behind the man. Various jars line the shelves, full of things you’ve never seen in any other chemist shop, is that a tentacle?

No? How about some advice then? Not everyone is as they seem. Beware false friends. But most of all, enjoy yourself!

OK…so this is a review I was both amused by and dreading to some degree. Little did I know when I purchased this film in a ‘Wow Anime!’ period I was going through back in the early 2000s, when it was becoming available over here in the UK, that I would be reviewing it 20 years later.

Alien from the Darkness, or Alien of Darkness as the DVD I have calls it (淫獣エイリアン is its original Japanese title or Injū Eirian in the Hepburn romanization), is a Japanese Hentai, about the crew of a Spaceship who discover and explore a derelict craft which turns out to have an alien entity on board. The Alien turns out to be hostile, not to mention horny, and so of course the crew end up in a fight for survival in this pornographic horror from 1996.

I will be the first to admit that I went into this film as a bit of a sceptic. It had been around 2 decades since I last watched it and I honestly couldn’t remember much about it or if it was any good. Spoiler alert, you may be surprised by the result.

I’m going to go right out and say that this would be a better film without the porn side of it, but also if you take those scenes out it barely even qualifies as a film anymore with its already meagre runtime of 45 minutes. The graphic sexual scenes are what they are, they vary from standard lesbian porn scenes to the hentai staple of invasive tentacles. To be fair we’re not talking full hardcore, though it’s entirely possible my copy is cut, being from the 90s, but it’s certainly over and above incidental sexual scenes that are present in many exploitation films for example. The porn scenes are what people are generally watching this for. The thing is, as a by product of wanting to watch some horny space ladies get it on, the viewer inadvertently ends up watching a fairly decent sci-fi horror. It’s nothing special but I’ve very much seen worse.

The film makes no effort in disguising its influence from a film I’ve already reviewed. Alien. Crew finds an abandoned ship. Crew brings something alien aboard their own ship. Crew start to die. OK so that’s fairly vague but wait until you see the crew’s stasis pods and then tell me Alien wasn’t an influence.

I think what I wasn’t expecting in a 45 minute long hentai was a secondary plot, hell I wasn’t even expecting a plot full stop, I actually found myself fully engaged with the film. Yes it’s got some ridiculous scenes and it’s not a film I would ever recommend to people, unless they were after a sci-fi hentai, but it has plenty of good points.

The artwork is decent and at times quite creepy with the various decomposing corpses on the abandoned ship they find. The absolutely bizarre but entirely welcome inclusion of a cute pet ferret running around the ship and providing some awwww moments as well as taking part in the main plot and providing some comic relief. Speaking of comic relief there’s a fair few examples of it in the film. It’s entertaining and after all, isn’t that what films are supposed to be.

With this in mind and taking the film as what it is, porn, I’m going to give Alien from the Darkness 3 rotating vibrators out of 5. This film has no right being this watchable, it feels like the director Norio Takanami wanted to be making something more serious, and it shows.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

The film is strongly influenced by Alien, but surprisingly doesn’t go the whole way and instead goes with quite a few of its own ideas, or at least ideas from different films. Having the creature spend most of the film in the form of a young woman was likely so they could show more boobs but it also means that the crew have no idea that she is in fact the cause of all the deaths and makes this into more of a slasher than Alien.

There is a secondary plot based around the banned substance Metrogria, and our second secret protagonist Lindo, who is trying to smuggle it onto the black market. This was a surprise to me, the fact that they included this in a 45 minute film shows that they cared about more than just a string of tentacle rape scenes.

Let’s talk about Einstein. This furry little ferret was a highlight of the film for me, he’s very cute, even if he sounds ridiculous, his noises clearly being made by a person pretending to be a ferret. He seems like a stand in for Jonesy, the cat from Alien, but really he’s a far more important character. Near the end of the film he leaps at and bites the Alien’s dick! This in turns makes it drop his owner Hikari, who was being gripped by the monster’s tentacles and allows her to shoot it with the Metrogria and blow it out the air-lock. Einstein is my hero.   

For a hentai the women are drawn as relatively normal, if physically fit women, which I guess makes sense if they’re the crew of a spaceship. A little more variety in body shape would have been nice but to be honest it’s just nice that they don’t all have massive gravity defying breasts.

In some ways it’s a shame that the film is as short as it is. It does mean that there’s always something happening and the pacing is quick, but it’s a little too fast, even now writing, at this point a week or so later, many of the scenes blur into each other in my mind. It would have been good if we’d had more time to get to know the crew, so we could actually care when they get killed.

Flair, our main protagonist is frankly dull, because, she’s just a monster in a human form, so she doesn’t talk to the crew, or lure them to her in clever ways, they just kind of stumble into each other’s paths and fall under her spell. She’s frankly far more interesting in her monster form, if only because it’s something different to look at.

With regards to the rating system I used, shout out to the scene which I found hilarious the first time I saw it, where the captain and the doctor are getting it on and one of them produces what looks like a grenade, but hey, the captain certainly seems to enjoy it.

This is Emma, last survivor of the…wait, I already did that one…

4 – Time for a Brew (The Mummy’s Hand)

Your breakfast consumed, you sit in a comfy chair by the fireplace, a cup of strong herbal tea steaming beside you. All of a sudden you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder.

Sorry to bother you. My name is Steven Banner, I’m an archaeologist from the mainland. I hope you don’t mind me intruding but it’s just, you have the look of a mainlander yourself, am I right in my observation?

Oh good! Wonderful! May I join you?

I’m sure you think me mad, but I’m telling you, the Egyptians came here, she came here, the Princess, I’m sure of it. The locals tell me I’m wrong, oh they’re nice enough in how they say it, but I don’t like the look in their eyes, they’re hiding something, they don’t like us mainlanders, you’ll find that soon enough.

So what do you say, will you meet me there? I’ve marked the location on this map.

He looks up suddenly, his eyes darting about the room, he stands quickly, speaking overly loud.

Mad am I? I take my leave of you then, good day!

Then in a lower voice.

Come soon…

Some of you may consider the previous review’s film Alien to be ‘pretty old’, and indeed, 1979 was 43 years ago! Today’s film however, came out almost as many years before that, in 1940.

This time I’m reviewing the first of Universal’s Kharis Mummy films, The Mummy’s Hand. Not the first Mummy film from Universal, that would be 1932’s The Mummy, but that film is unrelated, staring Boris Karloff as a very different Mummy named Imhotep.

Chances are that if you imagine the mummy, you are thinking of a shambling, bandaged, killer. That is exactly the mummy that you get in this film, and it is perhaps the earliest example of that stereotype.

The plot follows two American archaeologists searching for the tomb of an Egyptian princess. Along the way they befriend a Magician and his daughter and run afoul of an Egyptian priest and the re-animated mummy Kharis.

When watching films from this far back you have to view them with a somewhat different mindset. The 1940’s is one of the more sterile eras of filmmaking. We are past the introduction of the Hays Code, but before there was much push back against it. There’s no gore, or even much in the way of violence, characters die but it’s all very tame. When it comes to flirting and relationships there’s not even a hint that the characters are anything other than perfectly prim and proper.

If you are capable of watching most recent horror films then this film is not going to scare you, you’d be hard pressed to find a horror film from this period which would. Having said this Kharis himself, played by Tom Tyler, does a good job of appearing creepy and menacing, particularly the shots of him looking towards the camera with those dead black eyes. To modern audiences it’s not very scary but at the time it was probably very effective.

The story itself is decent and compelling if a little disjointed and unnecessary at times, it’s nicely paced, it has to be, the film is after all only 67 minutes long! The main characters are fun, in fact the first half of the film is more comedy than horror with the duo of Steve Banning and Babe Jenson providing a few laughs, particularly once they meet the magician Solvani. The second part of the film becomes more what you would expect with Egyptian tombs, rituals and murder, if you’ve seen the 1999 version of The Mummy then you can see some of it’s roots here.

There’s some nice sets and the scale of the film is good for a lower budget offering, it’s believable that we’re in Egypt even if we don’t see much real evidence of it. It would have been nice to see more in the way of exploration but when a film is this short there’s only so much you can fit in. If it had been even 5 minutes longer and that time had been used to set the scene and add some more atmosphere I feel it would have greatly benefited.

I’m going to award The Mummy’s Hand, 3 Tana leaves out of 5. Not a true classic but an important film in the Mummy mythos. If you’re after a shambling slasher with the archetypal bandaged monster then this is where it began.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

Let’s talk Tana leaves. They are integral to the plot, being the key ingredient of the elixir which revives Kharis, but…why? They just seem to add extra complexity which never pays off. We’re told that 3 keeps him alive, 9 will revive him and allow him to move about, but more than 9 and he’ll become some unstoppable monster! But no, we never get to see that happen, it’s just a tease.

The elixir also seems to work like mummy cat nip and vials of it are used to lure Kharis to his various victims, but again, why? He seems perfectly capable of following orders, it does seem that they’re his payoff for doing the priest’s bidding, but honestly for a film this short we could have done with less Tana and more tombs.

Despite what I said about the story being decent it really does derail a bit towards the end. The Priest, Andoheb, spends most of the film coming across as intelligent, if a little creepy, but then as soon as Kharis brings him Solvani’s daughter Marta, he goes full horn dog and decides he’s going to inject her and himself with the Tana leaf elixir making them both immortal. Oh, so it can do that now? Why hadn’t you done it already if this stuff is so good? It comes out of nowhere.

Speaking of Marta she’s quite a strong female character for a 1940’s movie, she only faints a couple of times, but seriously she’s shown as being the confident, sensible, intelligent person that her father is not and isn’t entirely there to get kidnapped. It’s her who figures out there must be a secret passage, and Steve doesn’t doubt her conclusion. It’s a real plus point for the film that there isn’t a bad boy / good girl dynamic between Steve and Marta which is an often used stereotype.

The final confrontation with Kharis is actually pretty fun, he’s impervious to bullets, super strong and he’s getting close to overdosing on the Tana leaf elixir (OK so maybe it does add something but it could have been handled better!) Kharis meets a fiery end at the hands of Steve and Babe with one fairly graphic, for 1940, shot of the burning Mummy on the floor.

We can’t end on that though, there’s a few light hearted jokes including a nice call back to a letter Steve received earlier in the film. There’s a lot of humour, and it’s well done, it never feels too much and rather than detracting from the horror aspects it helps to make those sections more effective, always end on a joke.

I think that wraps it up…

3 – How do you like your Eggs? (Alien)

As you stare at the TV screen, engrossed, a respectable looking man in a tweed suit walks into shot and turns to camera.

Scientists have yet to determine the age of the craft, or who created it. What they suspect is…hold on…it looks like the first team is returning, perhaps they can…oh…I think somebody is hurt. Dave, cut it there, we’ll do some interviews once we find out what’s happened.

That’s all there is.

Willa steps into the room. The TV screen has turned to static.

Local kid found that tape floating in the brook just east of town. Strange thing is, nobody has any idea where that was filmed. Oh the island is small, but it’s also big at the same time, like a scrunched up piece of paper. You never know what’s hiding round the next bend.

So! How do you like your eggs?

Once again it seems the random number dice Gods have been kind to me. Today’s film is not only my favourite in the Alien franchise, but one of my favourite films of all time.

Alien is a household name when it comes to either the Science Fiction or Horror genres and is probably the film most people think of when asked to name a film which straddles both. We’ve all seen it (We’ve all seen it right?) but we’re still going to review it, Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien.

The story of Alien follows the crew of the Nostromo, a commercial towing vessel. The ship intercepts a signal from a nearby planet and the crew heads down to the surface to investigate. Once there they discover an alien craft with an organism onboard, an organism which soon has the crew fighting for their lives.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first saw Alien. It was certainly when I was younger than the film’s 18 rating, likely watching a late night TV edit, but I didn’t care, and probably wasn’t aware, I just knew it by reputation. This was one of those films that everyone had to have seen, you were a real grown up if you could say that.

Since then I’ve seen Alien an unknown number of times in various forms, cut for TV, uncut and finally the Director’s Cut. This is one of those films that I’m very happy to own on Blu-Ray, it’s a beautiful film with a stunning sense of enormous scale and claustrophobia at the same time. The iconic look of the alien and its surroundings is the work of Swiss artist H.R. Giger. The organic but, well alien, look of his designs adds hugely to the feeling of unease and fear we get from the alien itself. The design is so important to the film that it’s one of those, sadly rare, times when the average viewer is aware of who created it.

Every time I watch Alien, I’m reminded how timeless it is. Partly this is due to its sci-fi future setting but mostly for me it’s because the film is so tight, it’s so focused on the small crew of the Nostromo and we are so engaged and on edge for almost the entire film, that we don’t have time for reflecting on the depiction of computers or characters’ hairstyles. All of that other stuff becomes iconic and I feel myself believing that it’s entirely what things could look like in the early 22nd century (The far future setting certainly helps as it’s a long time before anybody’s going to be able to call Ridley Scott out on that.)

So hey, this is a horror review, is Alien a horror? As a whole series I think it becomes a matter of opinion and certainly varies a little by film, but this film? Damn straight it’s a horror, it just happens to be set in space. Alien, when you really break it down, is a slasher film. A group of people, being hunted down and taken out one by one by a seemingly unstoppable foe. Slasher, and a terrifying one at that. The claustrophobic setting of the Nostromo, the body horror, the excellent creature effects, the eerie score, and the superb acting keep you paranoid and in suspense for most of the film.

I was going to point out a few stand out members of the cast, but that would be doing a disservice to the others. They are all excellent, from the comic relief (Well as much as a film like Alien allows it) duo of Harry Dean Stanton’s Brett and Yaphet Kotto’s Parker. To Sigourney Weaver’s no nonsense Ellen Ripley, they all do their part to immerse you in the film’s universe and make it real to you. The Alien itself is a true monster, it’s both beautiful and repulsive at the same time, a marvel of design with a reproductive cycle to keep you awake at night.

All of these things come together to create something very special and that’s why I’m (unsurprisingly I imagine) going to award Alien, 5 Rolled up Magazines out of 5. This is a true masterpiece, a candidate not just for best sci-fi horror, but for one of the best films period. A film which stands the test of time and feels as new as the day it was released, but then you don’t need me to tell you that, you’ve seen it, right?

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So now that the 3 people who haven’t seen Alien have left the room let’s indulge in some specifics, starting with the iconic Chestburster scene. This scene is fantastic, the mood of the film turns lighter briefly with Kane seemingly fully recovered from his ordeal with the face hugger, everyone’s smiling and joking when suddenly Kane starts convulsing. The crew hold him down and we meet the alien for the first time as it bursts bloodily from Kane’s chest. It’s so visceral and such a contrast to the relaxed feeling moments before that it continues to be shocking with every watch.

Another sequence of the film I love, and one which shows that Alien isn’t just a one trick pony, is the scene where Dallas is crawling around in the air ducts trying to flush the alien out. The paranoia and the claustrophobia in this scene are intense. Every junction in the ducts has multiple directions the alien could come from and the crew’s simple tracking device does nothing to ease the tension. In the end it’s a simple jump scare, but it works.

Let’s talk about Ash. He could just have been a particularly zealous crew member. He could have been a character who was killed for his error of overriding Ripley and bringing Kane back onto the ship, that could have been the limit of his involvement. Many films would have done that. Not here. Having Ash turn out to be an Android, and one programmed to make sure the alien is recovered, crew expendable, really comes out of nowhere. We’re busy worrying about where the alien is and who it’s going to kill next when suddenly there’s another threat, one which we had no idea about, we didn’t even know Androids were a thing! Ian Holm is fantastic and somehow manages to make a scene where he tries to kill Ripley with a rolled up magazine scary, rather than ridiculous.

Ripley has a reputation for being a bit of a badass, but that mostly comes from the sequels, here she’s more of a hardass. She’s far from being a damsel in distress but she’s certainly terrified by her situation and to be honest it’s another thing that I love about this film. She isn’t a superhero, she’s just doing the best she can and keeps her head when those around her are panicking. Ultimately she defeats the alien, blasting it out into space, but it feels like a desperate fight for survival rather than plot armoured inevitability.

Whether you prefer this, or its admittedly excellent sequel Aliens (That’s usually the extent of it, I don’t know many people claiming it’s Alien: Resurrection) this is where it all began and where many other films in the sci-fi horror sub-genre got their inspiration.

This is Emma, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.