Thursday, November 12, 2020

90's British Horror Part Four

DARK WATERS
(1994)
Dir - Mariano Baino
Overall: GOOD

The curious entry Dark Waters, (Dead Waters), from Italian filmmaker Mariano Baino also serves as his to date only full-length movie.  As one of the first non-local films to be shot in the Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is equal parts unforgivingly baffling and macabre as well as cinematically clumsy at irregular intervals, creating an odd atmosphere in the process.  The pacing issues and perhaps unintentionally goofy moments are difficult to come to terms with since the movie also seems assuredly serious.  Music by Igor Clark and unearthly sound design which features indistinguishable growls and moans throughout, (as well as nearly incessant rain), generally go along memorably with a hodgepodge of nonsensical yet confidently evil visuals like gratuitously candlelit catacombs, blind, ancient looking nuns, people eating raw things, burn victims, creepy kids, disturbing paintings with album-cover worthy demons on them, bubbling gore, and almost everything on screen looking wet, cold, and on fire all at once.  Good luck trying to stay invested in the actual story, but with such a barrage of uniquely strange horror movie eye candy to gawk at, the film certainly leaves an impression.

THE HAUNTING OF HELEN WALKER
(1995)
Dir - Tom McLoughlin
Overall: MEH
 
Yet another retelling of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, The Haunting of Helen Walker inescapably does not compare to the original, 1961, Jack Clayton film version The Innocents, but it is as mediocre as any other such adaptation.  Originally airing on CBS in December of 1995 and shot in England with a cast including Diana Rigg, Michael Gough, and Valerie Bertinelli in the lead, genre director Tom McLoughlin never gets it past the Lifetime movie presentation to create anything all that visually or otherwise remarkable.  While the seasoned adults are surely competent, a smirking performance from child actor Aled Roberts gets rather annoying even if he is playing a brat who is possessed by a creep.  As far as psychological horror goes, it forgoes creating a slow, brooding atmosphere sans a small handful of somewhat creepy set pieces and in place of that, some wordy exchanges rush the plot a bit to its finish line.  Speaking of a finish, the ending is laughably weak and one that is entirely due to characters reaching conclusions that they only could have reached because they read the script.  It is fine for what it is of course, but the pedestrian presentation as well as familiarity of the source material does not really go too far.

TALE OF THE MUMMY
(1998)
Dir -  Russell Mulcahy
Overall: MEH
 
A few months after Stephen Sommers' mega hit The Mummy dropped, prolific, Australian music video director Russell Mulcahy, (also of Highlander fame), delivered his own ode to Hammer monster movies with Tale of the Mummy.  Though it received a theatrical release and its production schedule could be seen as a mere coincidence, it nevertheless comes off as the lower-rent, straight-to-video mummy movie from that year.  The cast is mostly recognizable though hardly A-list, with brief appearances from Gerard Butler, Shelley Duvall, and Christopher Lee, all of whom appear for about a grand total of maybe six and a half minutes of screen time.  In any event, the schlock is laid on massively thick, with cliches in every scene, macho performances, frantic editing, and textbook early digital effects that are wretchedly embarrassing.  That said, the practical effects and set design are acceptable enough.  As far as the movie's title villain goes, there is not a more lame mummy in all of cinema history as most of his scenes simply revolve around dirty, CGI toilet paper whipping around and making people scream to death.  Eventually he does take on a conventional form, but by that point the ham-fisted presentation is laughable enough to undo, well, the whole movie.

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