(1973)
Dir - Clive Barker
Overall: MEH
Made in Liverpool when he was a mere teenager, Clive Barker's Salome was an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play of the same name in the loosest sense of the term. A textbook experimental student art film in the vein of so many others, it plays out in intentionally super-grainy black and white, without dialog, and brimful of bizarre images that young energetic filmmakers would find profound. This is not anything to make fun of per se, in fact the contrary; Barker and his crew of friends, (which also includes future Pinhead Doug Bradley), get by on their amateur charm more than anything else. That said, it is a primitive effort that while managing to succeed with a few striking visuals, does not come off as a benchmark of avant-garde cinema. That is unfair to expect of it though, and any horror connoisseur who would logically also be a Barker fan would be doing themselves a disservice by not seeking out this and its similar follow-up The Forbidden.
(1977)
Dir - Neville Smith
Overall: GOOD
A government commissioned PFI, (public information film), made for the Central Office of Information and Health and Safety Executive, Apaches is meant to showcase the dangers of children playing unsupervised in a farm, something that must have been a point of concern at the time. Six kids partake of cowboys and Indians while meeting gruesome ends, all with no adult narration and minimal musical accompaniment. This gives it an eerie intimacy, and the cast of non-actors, (all of whom where chosen from a local school in Maidenhead, Berkshire), sell the material accordingly, staying in character as they use their imagination while falling into sudden danger and soldiering on, too young to comprehend the magnitude of their friend's demises. There were several such educational films made at the time, but this one is more atmospheric than explicitly academic, letting its sobering images sink in more than any overt commentary would.
(1978)
Dir - James Dearden
Overall: GOOD
The second short feature from James Dearden was the seventeen-minute Panic, (literally "on the streets of London", nyuck nyuck), which would later be remade by Sean Ellis in 2001, again as short and titled Left Turn. Speaking of Dearden and speaking of remakes, he would follow this one up with the cold semi-thriller Diversion, which would likewise get turned into Fatal Attraction seven years later. Most likely based on an urban legend and utilizing the well-established and often effective premise of "picking up hitchhikers = scary", this one has some misdirects as Dearden leads the viewer down one or two different roads, (pardon the pun), as to what creepy doings are transpiring. That said, the final sequence is easily foreseeable, yet it is also well done, bringing in more welcome and inconclusive supernatural elements that leave the viewer with a nice creeped-out feeling, as is appropriate.
Dir - James Dearden
Overall: GOOD
The second short feature from James Dearden was the seventeen-minute Panic, (literally "on the streets of London", nyuck nyuck), which would later be remade by Sean Ellis in 2001, again as short and titled Left Turn. Speaking of Dearden and speaking of remakes, he would follow this one up with the cold semi-thriller Diversion, which would likewise get turned into Fatal Attraction seven years later. Most likely based on an urban legend and utilizing the well-established and often effective premise of "picking up hitchhikers = scary", this one has some misdirects as Dearden leads the viewer down one or two different roads, (pardon the pun), as to what creepy doings are transpiring. That said, the final sequence is easily foreseeable, yet it is also well done, bringing in more welcome and inconclusive supernatural elements that leave the viewer with a nice creeped-out feeling, as is appropriate.
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