MOVIEJOURNAL 2017 (PART FIVE)

[smogo]

What follows is a list of all the films I've watched this year, excluding films that I'd seen before. My 4-star rating system uses * to indicate shite to be avoided, *** to indicate films worth seeing and **** to indicate works of brilliance. Everything else gets a "meh"-like **.

Index
** Alena
*** Baby Driver
*** Bear
* Camp Slaughter
** Cat People
** Cheerleader Camp [aka Bloody Pom Poms]
** Dial: Help
*** Doghouse
*** Dude Bro Party Massacre III
** Evil Ed: Special Ed-ition
*** Fade to Black
*** The Final Girls
*** Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice
* Hanzo the Razor: The Snare
*** Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer
** Horror House on Highway Five
** The House That Dripped Blood
*** It Comes at Night
** Jennifer's Body
*** Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell [aka Shogun Assassin 5: Cold Road to Hell]
*** Long Dream
** Microwave Massacre
** Moulin Rouge!
**** Der Nachtmahr (The Nightmare)
*** Night of Something Strange
** Nintendo Quest
** No One Lives
*** Para Entrar a Vivir (Ready to Live In) [aka To Let]
*** Peacock Season
** Ratter
*** Return to Sleepaway Camp
** Rock 'n' Roll Guns for Hire: The Story of the Sidemen
*** Scherzo Diabolico [aka Evil Games]
* Scream Bloody Murder [aka Bloody Murder]
* Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor
*** Spider Baby: or, The Maddest Story Ever Told [aka Attack of the Liver Eaters]
*** Spring
*** The Squeeze
**** Stage Fright
** Straightheads [aka Closure]
*** Straight On Till Morning
** Terror at Tenkiller
** 2019: After the Fall of New York
** Would You Rather

All reviews


FADE TO BLACK (USA 1980 / Vernon Zimmerman)
***
Eric, a movie fanatic with a particular love for Jimmy Cagney in White Heat, is an anti-hero for those of us who have a movie reference for every occasion, who think that a day watching six-plus feature films is a day well spent, and who know the slightly illicit feeling of firing up yet another one while everyone else in the house is trying to sleep. Although set in Hollywood, director Vernon Zimmerman shoots the late night streets to look like the dirty, dangerous NYC of other contemporary horror flicks; in fact the whole thing is like a Californian version of Maniac, which came out just a month later, as Eric falls in love with a model who's way out of his league, while taking up serial killing. What takes Fade to Black out of the realms of grubby realism is that Eric disguises himself as the likes of Dracula and the Mummy, and even Hopalong Cassidy, to commit his crimes, while demanding that people call him by the name of the gangster Cagney played. And this is in lieu of any proper insight into what drives him to murder, with a disappointing third act switch from offbeat character study into bog-standard crime thriller, as a heroic psychologist and his cop girlfriend drive Eric to his predictable, Hays code-friendly denouement.

LONE WOLF AND CUB: WHITE HEAVEN IN HELL [aka Shogun Assassin 5: Cold Road to Hell] (Japan 1974 / Yoshiyuki Kuroda)
***
Knowing that this sixth installment is the final one gives extra weight to the Yagyu clan's demands to "Kill Itto Ogami"; a line repeated here more frequently than ever before. As their swordsmen close in on Itto - ruthlessly murdering any innocent people who he has any contact with - there is a real sense of finality about this film, and it does even see feasible that he and his young son might not survive this one. As usual, the big bad nemesis who's set up in the first few minutes is then killed off with minimum fuss, though for a change that doesn't mean that we're left drifting aimlessly in a saggy second act: the baddies come at Assassin Lone Wolf and Cub thick and fast in this one. And when the final battle comes, it is suitably epic and original, being set in a vast snowscape with a cast of dozens. Of course, blood looks great splashing onto snow, especially so in this series, which doesn't shy away from going the full hex colour #FF0000 for its gore. An incongruous but refreshing and reassuring 1970s cop movie-type score - even interpolating "Night on Bald Mountain" - gives White Heaven in Hell an unexpectedly funky edge, helping to make it the most enjoyable entry since the legendary Baby Cart at the River Styx.

EVIL ED: SPECIAL ED-ITION (Sweden 2015 / Anders Jacobsson)
**
This re-edit of the low-budget 1995 Swedish comedy-horror extends its running time to a patience-testing 99 minutes. It's about a mild-mannered film editor who's transferred to his employer's exploitation department, where he's charged with cutting the most extreme scenes from the Loose Limbs slasher franchise, ahead of distribution to certain European territories. But the footage he has to watch sends him mad, as he hallucinates a demon that tells him to kill. Working in a secluded house, though, unfortunately (for the viewer) there are very few people around for him to slice up, meaning this main section of the movie culminates in a long and sleep-inducing stalking-around-the-corridors sequence. When the action relocates to a psychiatric hospital there's a bit more going on, but the terrible pacing is the most shocking thing here. Well, the acting's awful too; it was shot silent and then dubbed by a mainly American voice cast, but it's hard to imagine that the on-screen actors' original accents could've been a worse option. Evil Ed is more than a little indebted to Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, but sadly without that film's wit, inventiveness or gory excess, though the title character's splattery demise is very impressive.

2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK (Italy/France 1983 / Sergio Martino)
**
If an opening credit promising a special guest appearance by Luigi Montefiore aka George Eastman as "Big Ape" doesn't pique your interest, then you might as well give this post-apocalyptic nonsense a wide berth. The first half is the more fun half, with its veritable cavalcade of unconvincing mutants, unconvincing pimped-out cars, unconvincing laser blasts, unconvincing establishing shots of a rocket launch site in Alaska, and even an unconvincing and downright bizarre automaton clown. But it's these things from which the film derives most of its charm. Michael Sopkiw, looking every bit like Gary from Team America: World Police, stars as Parsifal, a suitably-named, classical mythology-style, capital-H Hero, whose mission is to capture the last fertile woman on Earth, so that she can be sent to outer space and forced to have 500 babies. The logistics of such a plan are explained much later, and seem to involve Parsifal wanking into 500 petri dishes. By the time Eastman turns up - looking every bit like Gary from Team America in his "terrorist" disguise - it's become hard to shift the feeling that you're watching the unedifying spectacle of a load of grown adults playing a souped-up Cowboys and Indians.

MOULIN ROUGE! (Australia 2001 / Baz Luhrmann)
**
Baz Luhrmann's anachronistic musical - set in Paris in 1900, the first thing we see Ewan McGregor's character do is compose Rodgers & Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music" - seems custom-designed to annoy me, as if Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Álex de la Iglesia had a particularly irritating steampunkish love child. But there's no denying the craftsmanship involved, with opulent and deservedly Oscar-winning production and costume design, and sequences with so much camera movement that they must have taken days if not weeks to film. It's a very simple love triangle tale, against the backdrop of the creation of the titular cabaret venue's latest spectacular, and being told entirely in flashback there are absolutely no surprises with regards to how it ends. Certain performances are very good, especially Jim Broadbent's big, bug-eyed turn as the venue owner, while McGregor's co-star Nicole Kidman throws herself into some brilliantly stupid stuff in the early comedic scenes. But part of me feels that musicals shouldn't be able to get away with using existing hits instead of original numbers, although that's not to say there aren't some clever arrangements and medleys scattered throughout. Sadly though, I was left unmoved.

STRAIGHTHEADS [aka Closure] (UK 2006 / Dan Reed)
**
A rape-revenge thriller starring Danny Dyer and Gillian Anderson? Sign me up! Dyer plays Adam, a young home security engineer, and Anderson is the glamorous client who seduces him at a countryside party. But on their way back to town, they're attacked: he loses an eye and his ability to get a hard-on, while she's brutally raped. Fortunately she has access to an army-issue rifle, and so along with Adam's equally convenient CCTV equipment, they return to the countryside to wreak vengeance. The script constantly feels on the verge of unveiling a double-crossing twist, but that never happens; this is lazily straightforward stuff, and compared with other films like it, it lacks the class of Straw Dogs, the raw power of I Spit on Your Grave or the punk energy of Baise-Moi. It's morally confused too, with Adam at one point getting a bit rapey himself, apparently a cack-handed attempt to show that violence begets violence, and to draw some sort of comparison between Alice's "ethical" revenge and Adam's more sadistic version. It seems to be made for the beer-and-cocaine lads crowd, so Dyer kicks off, Anderson gets topless, and erm, a man gets bummed with the business end of that rifle.

HONEST MAN: THE LIFE OF R. BUDD DWYER (USA 2010 / James Dirschberger)
***
"The Life of R. Budd Dwyer" is a counterintuitive subtitle for a documentary about a man who's remembered mainly for the public nature of his death. He was the Pennsylvania state treasurer who, in 1987 following his conviction for accepting a $300,000 bribe from a local IT contractor, called a press conference at which he read out a long statement, handed out letters to some friends, and then shot himself in front of the cameras. And given that his suicide is the only reason this film exists, it's a pity that it only spends a minute or two on the impact of how it was reported. What we do get a lot about is Dwyer's actual career, which is fair enough, and the charges against him, which were complex and here are simplified to an extent that doesn't do them justice. It's good that director James Dirschberger was able to conduct such open and emotional interviews with Dwyer's widow and daughter, favouring them over contributions from political commentators except where necessary; this gives weight to the documentary as Dwyer's life story, and it's eye-opening to watch them relive the man's final days, in which he kept his fatal plan a complete secret from everyone, but left behind notes that explain everything.

ALENA (Sweden 2015 / Daniel di Grado)
***
Schoolgirl Alena is somehow able to transfer from the rough local state school to the posh (and weirdly underpopulated) private school on the say-so of her shrink, even though she has no money. But her burgeoning friendship with a fellow sort-of outsider leads to jealous bullying, both from a Heathers-like clique (three rich girls who play croquet) and from Alena's ex, Josephin. One thing though: Josephin is a ghost; a malevolent spirit who has no qualms about physically harming Alena and her new classmates. That could be a spoiler, but it's very obvious from the way that Josephin keeps appearing out of the darkness that there's something supernatural about her. Plus it seems that we may be headed for a Fight Club or Haute Tension-style twist. Expanded from an hour-long version, I expect the original was a bit snappier and more urgently-paced, whereas this drifts along for a while, with Josephin coming across as increasingly ineffective the longer we have to wait before she actually kills anyone. And even then, it's pretty restrained, clearly being aimed at a young teenage audience. Interesting how it treads the fine line between schoolgirl lezploitation and treating the characters' sexuality as unremarkable.

CHEERLEADER CAMP [aka Bloody Pom Poms] (USA/Japan 1988 / John Quinn)
**
I'm not quite sure how a slasher movie from as late as 1988 can justify having a steadfastly single-figure body count, but this tired Friday the 13th clone attempts to liven things up with the obligatory post-Elm Street nightmare scenes and lots of attempts at Porky's style humour. The latter certainly hasn't stood the test of time, with the equally obligatory prankster character coming across as a borderline multiple sex criminal by today's standards, while the dream sequences (which even feature flesh being slashed by invisible claws!) are fifth-rate at best. The story concerns several teams of interchangeable bubble-haired cheerleaders who've pitch up at Camp Hurrah, a lakeside campsite, to take part in a competition. Our focus is supposed to be on the Lindo Valley girl who's haunted by those nightmares, but the only competitor with any real charisma is LV's mascot, played by Lucinda Dickey from the unforgettably strange Ninja III. In its favour, Cheerleader Camp has some fairly good gore, and the identity of the killer is left semi-ambiguous, which denies viewers a proper sense of closure and relief, and that's something that horror movies ought to do more often.

NIGHT OF SOMETHING STRANGE (USA 2016 / Jonathan Straiton)
***
Not your average low-budget zombie comedy, this mixes extreme horror with gross-out humour, setting out its stall in Scene 1 as a young man in a mortuary fucks the naked corpse of a woman who's died of radiation poisoning, and obviously everything spirals from there. Cue a series of undead people using their genitals to kill, and a very puerile obsession with bodily fluids. Initially it looks like this is going to be offensive for offensiveness's sake, but actually it gets funnier the longer it goes on, in particular an especially nasty prank in which a guy farts on his sleeping friend, only for... well, let's just say it involves bodily fluids. And the "sex in the dark" scene is awful, awful, awful... but so hilarious. I found that I had to wait for the more obnoxious characters (essentially, horny men demanding sex from their girlfriends) to get their comeuppance before I really started enjoying it, and even then there's the problem that the most obnoxious of them all is suddenly repositioned as hunky and heroic during a dialogue scene that all-too convincingly depicts two unintelligent people attempting to flirt. But I can't lie; by the end I was totally on-board with this explicit, splattery, orifice-fixated farce.

ROCK 'N' ROLL GUNS FOR HIRE: THE STORY OF THE SIDEMEN (UK 2017 / Francis Whately)
**
A music documentary that's initially about the younger players who step in to breathe new life into the touring acts of past-it artists like the Rolling Stones and Billy Joel, but also encompasses Wendy & Lisa from Prince and the Revolution, as well as a guy who played guitar in David Bowie's 1970s band when he toured America. It's a bit random and unfocused, in other words, not to mention self-aggrandising when it comes to the latter session musician. The most interesting bits are, unsurprisingly, those with Wendy & Lisa, because they co-wrote certain Purple Rain tracks, including the title song, whereas the others were just the titular guns for hire. The funniest bits are present-day interviews with the Stones, because they all seem to be Paul Whitehouse characters: Keith Richards is 100% Rowley Birkin QC, and Charlie Watts is basically the 13th Duke of Wymbourne. Music docs usually last an hour, and if this one did it would've ended on a sort-of high, but it goes on for another miserable half-hour in which everyone talks about how sad it is once you're no longer living the life of Riley by proxy. Except Wendy & Lisa of course, who are actually talented. Shit musicians feeling sorry for themselves are the worst.

SCREAM BLOODY MURDER [aka Bloody Murder] (USA 2000 / Ralph E Portillo)
*
You're making a new slasher movie and it's not a sequel. You can write and design your killer to be absolutely anyone, so what do you do? Put him in a hockey mask and call him Moorehouse, which sounds a bit like Voorhees, of course! And a major character in the film is called Jason to boot, and it never stops being confusing when the others say his name (although at least the script calls itself out on that fact). But then, Bloody Murder is resolutely stubborn in its refusal to add anything new to the campsite slasher template... except one thing, that is. In a laughable attempt to bring things up to date, the lead girl keeps opening her laptop and logging onto her dial-up email. She only ever gets mail from her Mr Exposition dad, whose voice we hear reading the emails out, though with the kind of dull echo that makes him sound like he's on the toilet as he does so. It does nothing to improve the movie, which - until its finalé - is one of the most feeble slashers I've ever endured. The acting is uniformly dreadful, the dialogue is tedious, the whole thing has the production values of something like Saved by the Bell, even the kills are done without any flair or worthwhile effects. Bloody Awful, more like.

SCHERZO DIABOLICO [aka Evil Games] (Mexico 2015 / Adrián García Bogliano)
***
"Show, don't tell" is a key rule in screenwriting, but I think I would've appreciated a bit more explanatory dialogue in this dark, dark, dark comedy. Or perhaps the casting is at fault, with too many similar looking young women in key roles making it hard to follow what's happening. On the other hand, it might be intentionally disorienting, because at first it seems almost like an origin story to your "portrait of a serial killer"-type movies, as sleazy Aram, an actuary with a perv moustache and a boring personal life, researches the best ways of tying up and suffocating his victims, getting advice from a prostitute, and even testing a technique on his elderly dad. From thereon out, things get very vague, right up until a burst of violence about half an hour from the end that suddenly makes it clear what he's been playing at the whole time: the film's big "ahhh!" highlight. But what to make of a movie like this? It's too glossy to properly deliver its punches, its use of familiar classical music too joyful to ever really horrify, and - once it's unveiled - its plot too unlikely linger in the mind. Perhaps it works better on a rewatch, so that you can see how Aram's dastardly scheme works from beginning to end. And what an end!!!

THE FINAL GIRLS (USA 2014 / Todd Strauss-Schulson)
***
A teen-friendly horror-comedy with the very Back to the Future-ish throughline of a teenage girl going back in time, where she meets a younger, oblivious version of her mother. But this is arguably more fun than Back to the Future, because she time travels via the medium of a movie theatre screen that's showing her late mother's starring role in 1986 slasher movie Camp Bloodbath, leaving her and her friends trapped in this dangerous fictional world. The movie gets some decent mileage out of playing with the conventions of cinema - on-screen titles, black & white flashbacks, voiceovers and the like - though disappointingly it holds back on the knowing slasher references, limiting them to a Jason/Cropsy-combo killer and a couple of references to, of all things, the over-the-top Spanish cash-in Pieces. You have to overlook certain things about Camp Bloodbath that don't ring true (Paula is clearly no final girl, and no movie from as late as 1986 would be considered the granddaddy of the genre), and just enjoy the jokes while they last, because ultimately this is quite a sappy story about grief and closure, and one that eventually overstays its welcome.

PEACOCK SEASON (UK 2010 / Alan Freestone & Fergus March)
***
London ad man Keith is fired from his job over an amusing fuck-up, and his pushy wife Hilly - a comedy fan who runs a reviews website - convinces him to take the story to the Edinburgh Fringe as a stand-up show. Unsurprisingly, this amateur's first Edinburgh hour doesn't exactly go swimmingly, while Hilly is revealed to have her own selfish agenda. Shot for next-to no money at the 2009 festival, most of the bit parts are filled by recognisable Fringe comedians, while the bigger roles are presumably played by actors who had plays on that year. With so much talent on display, it's a shame that it isn't a lot funnier, but it's tons better than 2005's painful Edinburgh-set rom-com Festival, and there are lots of inside jokes for industry types: look out, for example, for the name of Phil Nichol's character, and his list of award nominees. The film's biggest flaw is that its central character is an uncharismatic loser, and if star James Wren is more dynamic in real life (he's co-hosted the late-night club where Keith has his last gig, so presumably he is), then his acting is way too good, because I got bored of watching him within minutes. Fortunately this love/hate love-letter to the Fringe is heartfelt and convincing enough to overcome that.

BEAR (USA 2010 / Roel Reiné)
**
Two bickering brothers - one a financial hotshot, the other a struggling musician - are driving with their other halves to their parents' wedding anniversary dinner, when they get a flat tyre, but have to stay in the vehicle to avoid being eaten by a grizzly bear. If that sounds like a thin premise for a feature-length movie, then you'd be right, which is why the script is padded out with all sorts of soap opera revelations: their relationship is a sham, he's an alcoholic, she's got psychic powers(!), etc. At one point it's even suggested, with a straight face, that the bear has trapped them together specifically to give them an opportunity to talk all this stuff out!!! Funnily enough, although this is blatant filler, by the time it paid off at the end, I was actually more invested in the soapy shenanigans than the business with the bear, the latter having become an unnecessary distraction. That said, without the bear, we'd be denied the great line, "I'm gonna skull fuck your stupid fucking face", which is shouted by one brother at the animal. Production values are as you'd expect from a film whose opening credits list a "casting derector", and the real star of the show has to be the bear wrangler, for if nothing else, at least this uses a real grizzly.

IT COMES AT NIGHT (USA 2017 / Trey Edward Shults)
***
As Jesús Franco stated back in 1970, Nightmares Come at Night, and they're just about the only things that do in this puzzlingly mistitled post-apocalyptic drama. Following some sort of deadly outbreak, it seems that the only survivors are the bearded doomsday preppers, and their families, who live in the woods and keep themselves isolated and wary of other people. And yet the family of three that we focus on decide - after checking that they're not infected, of course - to let another trio lodge with them. Inevitably, it ends up going wrong. But it's a slow burn, with those aforementioned dream sequences blatantly dropped in at intervals just to reassure the viewer that something bad is going to happen. I don't think it's necessary: the characters are just about interesting enough for the story to unfold without such cheap tricks, and the final burst of action is quite satisfying even if the direction and editing lack precision. Comparisons to The VVitch are valid, with its woodland setting, mumbled dialogue and focus on a patriarchal family. But what this film reminded me of mostly were the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, in which the tension is ramped up through the medium of sweaty palms and suspicious looks.

THE SQUEEZE (UK 1977 / Michael Apted)
***
A good old British gangster thriller, from the days when such films felt genuinely rough and tough, rather than dressing-up games for Mockney actors and directors. So if Get Carter and The Long Good Friday are your thing, get a load of this. It's not really mine, but I still found a lot to both admire and enjoy. For starters, there's the main character, Jim, played by American star Stacy Keach with an accent so convincing I wondered if his whole performance was dubbed. Jim is introduced in a really interesting and overly detailed way, as we follow the lowest point of his alcoholism - and subsequent rehab - as the opening credits roll; you can tell this was adapted from a novel. The other lead roles go to Carol White, superb as Jim's kidnapped and frightened ex-wife, David Hemmings who brings some humanity to the part of gangster no.1, and while I never warmed to Stephen Boyd as the crims' unlikable head honcho, I don't think you're supposed to. Add a punchy score, some charmingly low-rent action scenes, Freddie Starr of all people as Jim's useful associate, plus some uncomfortable sleaze at the halfway point as White gets naked in an unglamorous, prolonged sequence, and you've got a treat for fans of the genre.

LONG DREAM (Japan 2000 / Higuchinsky)
***
Long Dream is a funny title, and it's even funnier when you keep hearing its doctor character say the words "long dream" as if it's a valid medical term. His patient, Mukoda, is suffering from these: overnight dreams that seem to last months, years, decades even, and he's scared about what might happen if he has a dream that never ends. It's probably for the best that the dreams are never depicted on screen - Mukoda's one-line descriptions are chilling enough... everyone can relate to the horrible idea of not being able to find a toilet for eight years, surely! Straddling the line between horror and absurdity, much of the film's amusement comes from the physical toll these long dreams have on their victims' bodies, and you can tell that it's based on a manga the moment that you first see a transformed Mukoda looking like a live-action cartoon, with a bulbous head and bug eyes. In fact, the manga was written by Junji Ito, whose Spiral was also adapted by the same director, Higuchinsky, in the same year, although Long Dream was made on a far lower budget, shot on video and with much less elaborate special effects. But Higuchinsky does a decent job with his limited resources, and it makes a good companion piece.

NO ONE LIVES (USA/UK 2012 / Ryûhei Kitamura)
**
A mostly obnoxious backwoods horror-thriller which begins with a couple on a road trip making an overnight stop at a motel. There's a strange tension between them, as if their relationship is abusive, he - the unnamed "driver" - having control over her, but he's also eloquent and intelligent, and therefore apparently our protagonist. But following a confrontation with the vile local family that likes to throw their weight around, there's a switcheroo and suddenly the antagonists are the heroic victims, the driver becoming an almost superhumanly powerful villain. The problem is, those heroic victims are arseholes. But this has one of those screenplays that seems to love arseholes, especially relentlessly sweary ones. And so, everyone's all "fuck, fuck, motherfucker, fuck", like they're in a Rob Zombie movie, but then all of a sudden you'll get a line like, "I'm your path to living, but you seem intent on the road to death"... again, like they're in a Rob Zombie movie. It's very reminiscent of The Devil's Rejects, in fact, except the titular Rejects were likeable, larger-than-life cartoon baddies, whereas with this lot, I couldn't give a shit if no one lives.

DIAL: HELP (Italy 1988 / Ruggero Deodato)
**
In which Ruggero Deodato, the director of Cannibal Holocaust, turns his attention to supernatural killer telephones! I wish I loved this because it's insane, but unfortunately every moment of madness is followed by five minutes of lifeless dialogue and exposition. British actor Charlotte Lewis, who's not overly talented (though she looks great in lingerie), stars as Jenny, a young woman who's desperate to get a call from her ex-boyfriend, but instead is taunted by every phone she encounters; the devices even manage to kill some of her friends in elaborate and ludicrous death scenes. Highlights include a bit where the camera is strapped to a phone as it shuffles along the floor to get closer to its next victim; a jump scare in which a telephone suddenly lands on Jenny's shoulder; and the "sexy" bit where she's seduced by a telephone and ends up writhing around on the floor, rubbing the receiver over her upper body as if she's modelling a, um, "personal massager". Surely at some point someone involved must've pointed out that these sequences were ridiculous and unworkable; I like to think that Deodato's response was, "I know - it'll be hilarious". If this wasn't so long and slow, it could've been amazing.

CAT PEOPLE (USA 1943 / Jacques Tourneur)
**
A fedora-wearing engineer spots a lonely foreign woman at a zoo, negs her for a few minutes, and it seems to work because she invites him into her apartment. But watch the forced smile on his face when he thinks that she's "friendzoned" him. Unperturbed, he puts the maximum number of kindness coins into her vending machine (he splashes out on their wedding, in other words), yet still sex doesn't come out, and so he starts seeing a different woman instead. In fact, his new wife won't even kiss him, so afraid is she of her own passion, in case she turns into a panther just like her ancestral history suggests she will. This vintage horror-ish melodrama is all talk and little action, although the famous scene in which the possible Cat Person follows her husband Oliver Reed (not that one)'s new lover down a dark street is reasonably tense. Plus you get to see lots of cats, although for the ending to make sense, you have to accept that the zoo has an unbelievably lax big cat safety policy. It's also one of those films where the bit part actors have way more charisma than any of the stiff, prim leads: I'd rather watch a spin-off with the hotel clerk, the café waitress and Oliver's office cleaner on a night out together.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP IV: THE SURVIVOR (USA 1992 / Jim Markovic)
*
I've accidentally watched a fan-made homage movie, and it was worse than I could've possibly imagined. Sleepaway Camp IV is, according to IMDb, "unfinished", though based on what's here, it was barely even started, and yet still it was given opening and closing credits and released on DVD. An introductory text crawl explains that it's about multiple massacre survivor Allison... but who is Allison really? It's Angela, obviously it's Angela, not that they got around to filming the big reveal. Instead, we get just under an hour of randomly sequenced clips from the three proper Sleepaway Camp films, in quality that varies from poor to awful, with amateurish shots of "Allison" occasionally dropped in, shown sitting on a jetty in a bikini, looking vacant, sometimes with a shoddily-recorded line of narration. Eventually, and with only about seven or eight minutes left, we get to the new footage, which consists, in its entirety, of Allison in a forest ranger's arms, the forest ranger chasing her through the woods, and Allison planning to kill him. AND THAT'S IT. It's a rape-revenge quickie with neither key ingredient having actually been filmed. Why was this released? WHY?????

STAGE FRIGHT (Canada 2013 / Jerome Sable)
****
10 years after her stage actor mother was stabbed to death on opening night, young cook Camilla's stepfather decides to produce a revival of the the fateful show at the musical theatre camp where they both work. Although an employee rather than a camper, Camilla goes for the lead role, and finds that she has to flirt heavily with the few heterosexual men around in order to get to the top. But just as the sexual politics are getting interesting, the movie turns into the slasher that it's been promising to be since the start. And that's fine, because the balance between drama, comedy, gorily brutal horror and - yes - musical is spot-on. Even the mix of musical styles is pleasing, ranging from super-camp Broadway parodies, to earnest modern opera, to screeching heavy metal (which is the preferred genre of the Kiss-masked killer). Allie MacDonald and Meat Loaf are both really good as Camilla and her stepdad, though for a professional rock singer, the latter's vocals are worryingly short-breathed and lacking power. Perhaps he should talk to the girl with all the throat treatments, my favourite character who's played adorably by Leanne Miller. Plus there's an excellent joke about kabuki theatre.

RETURN TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP (USA 2008 / Robert Hiltzik)
***
Opening your movie with a boy lighting his own farts is a surefire way of setting expectations at rockbottom. Sitcom-like production values - and even what sounds like a laugh track in the next scene - don't help. Isaac Hayes even has a small role as... Chef! Yet by the end of the film, you'll most likely be glad that it exists: arguably the only true sequel to the 1983 film, it reunites director Robert Hiltzik with his original characters Angela (played by Felissa Rose for the first time in 25 years), her brother Ricky and camp counsellor Robbie. It seems that Angela has resumed her killing spree on behalf of Alan, a chubby kid who's being horribly bullied at summer camp. But Alan totally has it coming: he's not just annoying, he's sexist, violent, obnoxious, needy, too unintelligent to have more than one insult in his repertoire, and it's unbelievable that he hasn't been sent home for personal hygiene reasons alone. He's such an over-the-top monster that it's hard to tell if Michael Gibney is actually any good in the role, at least until things come to a head and he impressively crumbles into a convincing emotional wreck. Be warned: you don't get much Angela in this movie. But what you get instead is something quite special.

SPIDER BABY: OR, THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD [aka Attack of the Liver Eaters] (USA 1967 / Jack Hill)
***
Right from the animated opening credits and the silly, jaunty song that accompanies them, it's clear that this movie is aiming for cult status above any other things, like actual horror or comedy. So while on the surface it's a piece of southern gothic that gradually mutates into gothic horror, what you're meant to take away from it are its quirks: Sid Haig's pinhead-like man-child (in the Freaks sense rather than the Hellraiser sense), his sister Virginia's games of "spider" (in which she traps unsuspecting men in a homemade web), their diet of mushrooms and grass (from the lawn, not a drug dealer), and even Lon Chaney's comparatively strait-laced butler, the man who's devoted his life to looking after this weird household of clinically infantile young adults. Into this fractious environment come four normals - as per the 1960s' typical mainstream vs counterculture premise - and upon the opening of a cellar door the family's rural homestead turns into a cobwebby castle. Despite such references to classic horror, Spider Baby is actually a very modern film, pre-empting 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and, indeed, every subsequent backwoods chiller involving a group of innocents running into a clan of maniacs.

DOGHOUSE (UK 2009 / Jake West)
***
A zom-com with the irresistible lineup of Danny Dyer, Noel Clarke, Stephen Graham and Neil Maskell, as four of a group of men who take a trip to a remote village - because, unlikely as it seems, the population is 80% female - for a lads' weekend. But when they get there, they find that the population is 100% female, and undead, the place having been transformed by a zombie-creating virus that only infects women. What this means in narrative terms is a zombie movie in which the heroes can't become zombies themselves, which is good because that's a tediously overused plot device in the genre. They're still in danger though, because these zombies are armed with all manner of sharp things; look out for a heavily disguised Emily Booth as a scissor-wielding zombie hairdresser. Of course it's also a little problematic that this is a film in which the heroes are (to a greater or lesser extent) misogynistic men and the villains are innocent women, but it's so tongue in cheek that I can't get too pissy about that. Besides, Dyer is on top form, when Maskell finally turns up he's hilarious, and it's very, very gory. The descent into slapstick doesn't work too well, but otherwise this is a great little brother to Shaun of the Dead.

NINTENDO QUEST (USA 2015 / Robert McCallum)
**
Not suitable for people averse to false jeopardy in documentaries, Nintendo Quest is at least upfront and honest about the artifice of its conceit: it's a Canadian movie "aboot" the director's friend, Jay, whom he's challenged to buy all 678 official Nintendo Entertainment System releases within 30 days, in person as opposed to online, and with a limited budget. Why? Because they're fans of the console and Jay's a bit of a collector, but primarily because they wanted to make a movie and decided that this would be their premise. It's flawed though, because that aforementioned jeopardy doesn't really kick in until the last few days, when Jay's struggling to complete his collection; the bulk of the film shows him simply visiting a series of shops and telling us - without mentioning actual monetary figures - what bargains he negotiated. One particular title is shown selling on eBay for nearly $80,000, yet there's one on sale right now for £16.09, so what's that about? You never really get a sense of what makes the games special - footage of them is sparse, their titles just flashing by in captions. And perhaps worse, you don't even get much of a sense of Jay as a person. It's an empty, unsatisfying experience.

CAMP SLAUGHTER (Sweden 2004 / Martin Munthe)
*
Five girls and two guys drive out to spend the weekend at a house in the woods, but whaddyaknow, there's a crazed, inbred killer on the loose, in this dire, ultra-low budget Swedish slasher. Only two of them have any kind of personality: one is the stereotypical comedy fat bloke who never stops stuffing his face, and the other is the rebellious goth type who's first seen demanding to hear her favourite type of unconvincing, composed-for-the-movie happy hardcore track as opposed to the extremely similar unconvincing, composed-for-the-movie happy hardcore track that's playing on the stereo. Until the killings eventually begin, Camp Slaughter has a horribly similar vibe to the interminable Blood Lake. However, there are glimmers of something more arty when it comes to the early scenes that feature the murderer's weird old mother; at one point she even performs a maudlin musical number while lamenting the way her child turned out! With the Swedish cast apparently dubbing their own, heavily-accented English dialogue, this would be a good film to show anyone who mocks the dubbing in classic Italian & Spanish horror flicks, to show how much worse it could've been.

SPRING (USA 2014 / Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead)
***
Evan, a young Californian man who's got himself in trouble, flees to the beautiful-looking city of Bari, Italy, where he runs into yet more trouble in the form of the sultry Louise, a sexy student who harbours a very dark secret. For, it turns out, she's a shape-shifting monster - sometimes a vampire, sometimes a werewolf, at one point half octopus even! - who must feed on live animals... or humans. Once their intense relationship has begun, almost everyone else is swiftly written out of the movie, sadly including the sweary comedy Cockney who Evan met in Rome, played viscerally by hooligan movie regular Nick Nevern. What follows is a weirdly believable "disease-of-the-week" romance in which the pedestrian use of CGI has the unfortunate effect of making Louise's condition look like little more than an annoyance, though towards the end her transformations are played for humour rather than horror, and that kind of works. As the pair spend what might be their last night together, Spring becomes the Before Sunrise of monster movies, which isn't the worst combo. In other news, I think I'm going to book myself a weekend in Bari.

PARA ENTRAR A VIVIR (Ready to Live In) [aka To Let] (Spain 2006 / Jaume Balagueró)
***
Before he directed [●REC] and Sleep Tight, Jaume Balagueró's interest in the mysteries of old tenement buildings was evident in this TV movie about a couple who've accepted an estate agent's invitation to look at a property. But when they arrive, it's in a rough area, it's falling apart, and, weirdly, some of their personal items are already there. It quickly becomes apparent that the estate agent - and the other tenants - aren't what they seem, and bloody mayhem ensues. It's a slight premise, one that's whizzed through in a few short minutes at the start, leaving the rest of the running time to be dominated by a violent game of cat and mouse; it's actually surprisingly intense at times, and Balagueró also delivers at least a couple of well-timed jump scares. It should be brilliant, but actually such relentless action becomes quite tiring, partly because the characters are so thinly drawn, partly because the locations are so limited, and partly because of the drab, brown colour scheme. Still, "the action is too relentless" is hardly a damning criticism, and there are some good moments of suspense and brutality.

DUDE BRO PARTY MASSACRE III (USA 2015 / Tomm Jacobsen/Michael Rousselet/Jon Salmon)
***
Somehow it took 10 credited writers and four directors to make this slasher spoof, which is presented as a VHS taping of a banned film from a late-night TV screening, complete with all-too brief snippets of absurd-looking commercials every few minutes. And rather than a straightforward retro homage, this is played for increasingly stoopid laughs. Following on from two Slumber Party Massacre-style movies, in which students were slaughtered by a killer known as Motherface, the twin brother of the first film's "Final Boy" has to try and fit in with the heavy-drinking, hard-partying frat boys to ensnare Motherface and avenge his sibling's death. It begins on a high point that can't be matched - a splattertastic montage of clips from the (fictional, of course) first two installments - and goes steadily downhill from there. There's more of a gentle ribbing of frat boy culture than the outright bro-shaming piss-take I was hoping for, but that's fine, and Paul Prado does a decent impression of Animal House's John Belushi. The more ridiculous humour doesn't work so well, least of all Brian Firenzi's overly zany cop character. But, there's lots of decent gore, and I enjoyed the music gags surrounding Andrew WK's cameo appearance.

TERROR AT TENKILLER (USA 1987 / Ken Meyer)
**
Sleepy-voiced student Leslie is persuaded to get away from her abusive partner Josh by spending the summer working at a lakeside dinner with her female roommate. They spend much of their time droning on about Josh (no Bechdel points for these girls, despite the female screenwriter), while drippy music plays in an attempt to convince the viewer that their dialogue is deep and meaningful (but it really isn't; they're just going through the motions). Fortunately, a local man, Tor, is a vicious but hunky serial killer, which livens things up significantly. With a miniscule body count, though, there are long stretches where very little happens. But there's something about a normal-looking guy being the villain in a slasher movie that I really like: see also The Mutilator and Final Exam, for example. Even better when there's no clear motive. It makes Tor's murders look all the more realistic and, hence, disturbing: witness the clumsy jacuzzi kill, which you could imagine happening in real life far more easily than when, say, Jason Voorhees punches someone's heart right out. I'm not saying this is better than the average Friday the 13th sequel (it isn't). But it has a raw cruelty that keeps a horror sicko like me interested.

JENNIFER'S BODY (USA 2009 / Karyn Kusama)
**
Semi-amusing supernatural teen horror about two unlikely BFFs: Needy, who's quiet and mousy, and Jen, who's a popular and promiscuous cheerleader. After a gig venue burns down, Jen leaves with the band (who aspire to be as "cool" as Maroon 5, which I hope is a knowing joke). But they're satanists and, because she's not the virgin they think she is, their attempt to use her to summon a demon doesn't go quite to plan and she's left possessed, immortal and hungry for human flesh. I'm sure this is supposed to be a treatise on female friendship rather than straightforward horror, so it's a pity that the message in the end seems to be that chalk and cheese relationships can't work; that's not a very interesting or unusual take for a story that starts out by making a virtue of their strange pairing. But then, it's not an especially clever or original film full stop, with a bit of Heathers here, a bit of The Lost Boys there, teenage funerals will always recall A Nightmare on Elm Street, no high school dance will ever match Carrie, and even the excellent theme tune is suspiciously similar to that of 28 Days Later. What's more, writer Diablo Cody does that thing of making Needy psychic, purely to enable some easy narrative shortcuts.

HANZO THE RAZOR: SWORD OF JUSTICE (Japan 1972 / Kenji Misumi)
***
Rack this up in Scenes You've Never Seen: a man repeatedly thwacks his erection with a wooden baton, in a surprisingly artful sequence in which clever focus pulling is used to switch between a close-up of the weapon with blurry flesh behind it, and the vague yet unmistakable image of his penis being hit. It's remarkably explicit for 1972, and even moreso in a Japanese film, given that culture's prudery around images of genitals. Said cock belongs to Hanzo, a maverick police officer: the opening scene sees him refusing to swear an anti-corruption oath. And true to form, he soon rapes a female witness into a confession; this too is shown in a weirdly artistic way, with an extreme close-up of what is presumably the inside of his victim's mouth, but is deliberately suggestive of her vagina. What's more, this is scored with romantic music as opposed to the jazzy guitar and organ licks that dominate most of the film. Like director Kenji Misumi's Lone Wolf and Cub movies, this is set some centuries ago, and I admit to a mental block when it comes to period stories. But the plot of this one does seem to be genuinely hazy. It's episodic at best, but it's fast paced, violent and nasty, on top of the impressive, dynamic direction.

MICROWAVE MASSACRE (USA 1983 / Wayne Berwick)
**
I'm fairly sure that, if you bought a microwave oven in 1983, it wasn't (a) big enough to fit a person inside, and (b) because you wanted to start cooking restaurant-style gourmet food, especially when your domestic kitchen already inexplicably has four(!) conventional ovens. Still, that's what middle-aged housewife May has done in this sleazy horror comedy. But her slobbish construction worker husband Donald isn't impressed. He's played by standup comedian Jackie Vernon, and May is the long-suffering straightwoman for his misogynistic put-downs, and because none of them are funny enough to be forgivable, their relationship is just depressing: not the banter-filled comedy it's trying to be, more a realistic portrayal of spousal abuse. Even worse, once Donald's killed and cooked May, he has no one at home to talk to, so he starts breaking the fourth wall and implicating the viewer... well he can fuck right off with that shit. The rest of the mercifully short running time is filled with repetitive scenes of young dolly birds making unlikely passes at Donald, who then does the same to them as he did to his wife. Believe it or not, the foodie-themed end credits are the wittiest part of the film.

BABY DRIVER (UK/USA 2017 / Edgar Wright)
***
Hang on, I know this one - it's about a character who's a great criminal, but an even better man: in this case, fresh-faced getaway driver Baby. He tries to get out of the lifestyle, but there's One Last Heist that he truly can't refuse, and soon enough he's having to protect his loved ones. To these clichés, writer/director Edgar Wright adds a gimmick: to alleviate his tinnitus (cue maudlin backstory), Baby listens to music on his oh-so retro iPod(s) almost constantly. And so, car chases are set to a soundtrack of Baby's (and probably Wright's) favourite tracks, mainly 1970s soft rock and disco. Oddly enough, although there were things that irritated me in the first act (I'm rarely thrilled by car chases and the music isn't to my taste), these were the exact things that I missed most during the laggy middle section (of which a gunshot-assisted remix of 1958's "Tequila" is a highlight). With its snappy dialogue, gangster glam and the occasional funny pop culture reference, there's one obvious overbearing influence, and Baby Driver is Wright's obvious attempt to pay homage to his mutual fan, Quentin Tarantino. But the balance of humour, action and sentiment is too ordinary and the True Romance-style ending falls way short.

DER NACHTMAHR (The Nightmare) (Germany 2015 / Akiz)
****
It's worth noting that this cool and quirky horror fantasy shares its name with a feature-length documentary of the same year, about sleep paralysis and the frightening goblin that sufferers sometimes see squatting on their chests, restricting their breathing. Because in this film, teenager Tina keeps seeing a similar monster, initially when she's on the cusp of sleep and waking, and always seen in a crouching position, although rather than on her chest it's found all over her house. When it eats eggs - which she's allergic to - Tina comes out in a rash, and when it slices its tongue with a razor, her mouth bleeds... so does she have some sort of symbiotic or voodoo-type relationship with the creature, or as seems more likely, is she harming herself and blaming it on the goblin? Fortunately the truth turns out to be rather more complicated, otherwise this would be a lot of effort for an eminently predictable story. By the final act, it's less horror and more like a retelling of E.T., but against a backdrop of teutonic woodland raves and an industrial/techno soundtrack by the likes of Boys Noize and Atari Teenage Riot. It also features one of the best and most justifiable fake-out dream sequence shocks I've seen in a long time.

THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (UK 1970 / Peter Duffell)
**
The second of Amicus's three anthologies of Robert Bloch stories is a very, very gentle affair. Supposedly about a troublesome house that keeps killing off its tenants, in fact that building is only central to the first and third segments. In METHODS OF MURDER, horror author Denholm Elliott moves into the house with his wife for inspiration, which he finds in the face of an imaginary razor-toothed lurker who becomes increasingly real the more he writes. WAXWORKS cheats by barely featuring the house at all, and instead sees Peter Cushing and Joss Ackland darting in and out of a Chamber of Horrors, mooning over a laughably bad plastic dummy who reminds them of a mutual former flame. There's only ever one twist in waxwork-based horror stories, and that's the one you get here. SWEETS TO THE SWEET has Christopher Lee entrusting his daughter to a friendly home tutor, but the girl turns out to be a killer. And Vincent Price was presumably unavailable for THE CLOAK, so instead Jon Pertwee plays the veteran horror star who obtains his latest costume from an actual vampire. These are four frustratingly ordinary and unexciting tales, so the film only really has its likeable and famous cast to recommend it.

WOULD YOU RATHER (USA 2012 / David Guy Levy)
**
Unwashed hair, washed-out colours, a mumbled conversation with a sick relative in a dated kitchen, a major role for a cult actor from the 80s... yep, it's another modern American indie horror flick. It's even set largely in one room to keep things affordable. Into that room comes Iris, invited there with several other people who, like her, have been given the chance to win expensive, life-saving medical care by shady philanthropist Lambrick (played by Re-animator star Jeffrey Combs in a wonderfully oleaginous performance). All they have to do is decide if they'd rather harm themselves or one of their competitors in a series of challenges that take in electrocution, stabbing and beating, to prove how much they want the prize. If Lambrick sounds like Jigsaw on a budget, lacking the Saw villain's elaborate and credibility-stretching traps, then you'd be right. However, while Jigsaw goes big on punishing people for their supposed faults, Lambrick's victims' backstories go mostly unexplored. It would be so easy to easy to attempt the "punishment fits the crime" thing and make it really cheesy and on-the-nose, but on balance I think the thinness of the characterisation is a bad thing, as it gives the viewer no sense of justice at all.

HORROR HOUSE ON HIGHWAY FIVE (USA 1985 / Richard Casey)
**
As a director, Richard Casey definitely knows horror. The problem is that, as a writer, he doesn't know how to fill the gaps between the nasty bits with anything other than dumb-and-dumber slapstick comedy. And as a director, Richard Casey is no good at filming slapstick. This is a real oddity; one of those films where, initially at least, you'd be hard-pressed to pin it down to a particular year... it could be 1972, it could be 1983. In fact it's from 1985, which seems a tad too late for this sort of thing. The plot, such as it is, has a small class of students being sent out to research Bartholomew, a local Los Angeles man who had something to do with Nazi Germany's V2 bombs. Unfortunately, they each run into the aforementioned "dumb" character, a Bartholomew expert who for whatever reason, has to kill them, as does a prowler dressed as Richard Nixon. The shifts in tone are jarring, and even in the rather dark final half-hour, Casey can't resist having one victim step on a garden fork and whacking himself in the face, right in the middle of his death scene. There's not a lot to recommend the movie, but the closing message that you can't trust anybody is unnerving enough to save it from complete uselessness.

HANZO THE RAZOR: THE SNARE (Japan 1973 / Yasuzô Masumura)
*
The first Hanzo the Razor film was sick as fuck, but had a real artistry about it, with its tasteful close-up penile masochism, implied internal vaginal photography and rape as an effective interrogation tactic, set to an anachronistic jazz-funk score. This sequel, by a lesser director, attempts to recreate several of that film's most memorably shocking scenes, but in a much more matter-of-fact way... and besides, we've seen it all before, and better. As for the storyline, well, take IMDb's synopsis as a warning, because it begins, "During the currency devaluation by the Edo's treasury", which is nobody's idea of an exciting backdrop. Anyway, during the currency devaluation of the Edo's treasury, maverick officer Hanzo happens across a young woman who's died during an illegal abortion (he fingers her to check, although under her skirt because this film is boringly tasteful compared to its predecessor) and his subsequent investigation takes him all the way to the local mint. Largely because his vile treatment of women is the same as last time, but without the clever photography, the film feels off-puttingly misogynistic rather than entertainingly out-there, and what's worse, the story around it is incredibly unengaging.

STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING (UK 1972 / Peter Collinson)
***
Brenda from Liverpool packs her bags and heads to west London, hoping to find a man to have a baby with. She lands in the middle of a trendy party scene that emphasises her unsophisticated northern frumpiness, leaving her vulnerable to the dubious charms of Peter, a chauvinistic yet oddly effeminate man-child with an unfortunate habit of murdering his girlfriends. The first thing that strikes you about this is its breakneck, head-spinning editing, which enables scenes to overlap with others from the future or past; this subsides as the film goes on, but it's a great way to keep your attention focused early on. The ending is predictable from the moment Brenda first picks up a hairbrush, because nothing about the downbeat atmosphere suggests that Brenda & Peter are going to live happily ever after, despite their mutual love of fairy stories. But editor Alan Pattillo lifts the climax out of ordinariness and towards scariness despite the mundanity of the images he has to work with. I'm not sure if the result of Brenda's beauty makeover is intentionally grotesque, or if the Crossroads receptionist look was hot back then, but she doesn't measure up well against her stunningly beautiful flatmate, played by Katya Wyeth.

RATTER (USA 2015 / Branden Kramer)
**
Emma, a student who's recently dumped her boyfriend, has moved to NYC to start afresh in a nice little apartment, where it's just her and her laptop. Except someone's hacked that laptop, and her phone, and her smart TV, and is using those devices' cameras to watch her every move. Unlike most found-footage movies, where the person holding the camera is part of the action, the person watching Emma is in the same remote position as the viewer of this movie, therefore making the viewer uncomfortably complicit in her terrorisation. More disturbingly, perhaps moreso even than I Spit on Your Grave, the message of this film seems to be: it's inherently dangerous to be a woman. You will be stared at, stalked, raped, and now also hacked. Think about how many cameras you have in your house: someone could be watching you through all of them. Be paranoid, be afraid, know your inferior place in our society. Even if you're doing nothing more provocative than standing around, someone will be trying to take a photo up your skirt. Such awful modern horror is effectively depicted in this film, but fuck me does it struggle to stretch it to 80 minutes. The horror is real; it's just a shame the screenplay is so weak.