Tag: Horror

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.