1970s British Horror Shorts Part Three

THE RETURN
(1973)
Dir - Sture Rydman
Overall: GOOD

There is little information out there on The Return; a thirty-minute long film that was presumably shown as a double feature in cinemas as opposed to being produced by the BBC or an equivalent thereof.  Sture Rydman only has two writer/director credits, (both of them shorts), and he is successfully joined here by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, who would go on to shoot the first three Indiana Jones movies, amongst others.  The two person cast consists of Rosalie Crutchley and Peter Vaughan, and the narrative is a conglomerate of two short stories; "Nobody's House" by AM Burrage and "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" by Ambrose Bierce, respectively.  The result is appropriately spooky, Slocombe shooting in natural lighting where virtually any supernatural spectre can be lurking in a multitude of shadows.  Predictable to a point, but its simplicity and brisk running time present a fat-trimmed and atmospheric trek into the supernatural.

 

THE CONTRAPTION

(1977)

Dir - James Dearden

Overall: GOOD

The debut from screenwriter/filmmaker James Dearden was the theatrical-supporting feature The Contraption.  Also on board is none other than The Rocky Horror Picture Show's Richard O'Brien in the lone staring role as a quite man who spends the entire seven-ish minute running time building...something.  That is about it, but stay for the finale as it is a hoot.  Clearly a black comedy, Dearden edited it as something more closely resembling an advertisement in style, though the tone remains dark and mysterious.  Without uttering a word, O'Brien gets the job done as he seems genuinely pleased with his progress, and even in such a short amount of time, he cannot help but to come off as menacing.  Dearden would follow this up with the more straight-forward though equally solid Panic the following year, and then Diversion the year after that, the latter of which would famously be remade by Adrian Lyn as Fatal Attraction.

 

THE FORBIDDEN
(1978)
Dir - Clive Barker
Overall: MEH

Clive Barker's second independent, amateur film The Forbidden was his knowingly pretentious avant-garde interpretation of the Faust legend.  Nearly twice as long as the eighteen minute Salome that proceeded it, this is equally bizarre.  Once again dialog-less and in black and white, the print is shown almost exclusively in negative.  This gives Barker and his small art crew the chance to stage creative visuals, painting the sets, costumes, and actors themselves while experimenting with the inverted images.  From a technical and visually pleasing standpoint, it is close to a triumph, as well as a solid improvement over Barker's previous film.  Yet the problems come in the movie's elongated running time.  Scenes involving shadowy nails hammered into wooden squares, (a clear pre-curser to Pinhead), a naked man dancing with a full-on erection, and another naked dude getting flayed as he lays heavily breathing on a slab all overstay their welcome.  In a more condensed form though, it would be an agreeable watch.

1990s American Horror Part Forty-Four

I COME IN PEACE

(1990)

Dir - Craig R. Baxley

Overall: GOOD

 

Grad-A, B-movie schlock, I Come in Peace, (Dark Angel), adheres to every 80s action movie trope in the book while going for unapologetic silliness in its Terminator knock-off agenda.  As director Craig R. Baxley's follow-up to the equally absurd Action Jackson, (and sandwiched in between that and the following year's, Brian Bosworth-starred "masterpiece" Stone Cold), the director leans into the more goofy aspects of such movies with none of the personnel on board taking the material the least bit seriously.  Dolph Lundgren gets a worthy staring vehicle here, spouting a more lean physique and disguising his accent efficiently as the detective who plays by his own rules, partnered up with Brian Benben's wise-ass, by-the-books FBI agent in stereotypical buddy-cop fashion.  David Koepp and Johnathan Tydor's script breaks no rules with the specifics that have been seen countless times before, but it works as a borderline parody where the careless disregard for human life as well as endless quips, car chases, and explosions is meant to be laughed with instead of at.  On paper, the concept of Lundgren battling an extraterrestrial drug dealer is plenty to get anyone on board who was brought up on such testosterone-ridden camp and thankfully, the film plays to its audience with just enough inventiveness at its disposal as to not insult them.

 

SOUL OF THE DEMON

(1991)

Dir - Charles Lang

Overall: WOOF

 

Expectations are unavoidably low when partaking of anything in the SOV camp and this includes Soul of the Demon which is the first of only two such movies made by Charles Lang.  Shot in Nevada with a group of unphotogenic nobodies, the acting is terrible of course yet not as abysmal as one would expect, even if the bro-douche characters that they play sure as hell are.  Three of them have glorious, obligatory mullets and one of them speaks like a parody of a surfer dude who makes his thankfully small number of scenes unwatchable.  Though it takes almost fifty minutes until unholy mayhem is finally unleashed which is way too long, (further padded by an utterly useless and homoerotic basketball sequence), Lang goes for something ambitious as he stylizes his film as if it was not actually made for thirty-five cents with just a couple of his friends over a weekend.  The story line is embarrassingly lazy and goes for a self-referential hodgepodge of horror movie cliches, (one of the teenagers is a bonafide genre buff), but it finally delivers some splendidly outrageous gore sequences in its last act that are bound to make bad cinema fans laugh WITH the movie instead of AT it.  Elsewhere though, it is horrendously amatuerish and merely adorable at best.

HELLRAISER III: HELL ON EARTH

(1992)

Dir - Anthony Hickox

Overall: MEH

Taking his first stab at non-comedic horror, director Anthony Hickox was the next in line to helm a Hellraiser sequel with Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth.  Though another installment was being planned before the previous Hellbound: Hellraiser II was released, it took a number of years for the finished product to get underway with its appropriate personnel.  Clive Barker only came back on board in post-production after having disagreements with producers, incorporating a couple of his patented kinky gore ideas into the mix.  One of the most noticeable differences between this and the former two movies is the persona of Doug Bradley's Pinhead who is no longer the neutral purveyor of Hell's rules.  Here, his essence is split in two, one of whom is his humanity-laden World War II soldier and the other a cackling cartoon villain with his own diabolic ambitious after being untethered to the puzzle box.  Barker's initial themes of the dynamics between suffering and pleasure are gone and instead we have a less profound, more straightforward good vs evil scenario that plays out restrained until the schlocky finale which busts out the groan-worthy one-liners and ups the heavy metal mayhem.  Bradley chews the scenery when appropriate, Terry Farrell, (stepping in for heroine Ashley Laurence who only provides a mere cameo), makes an adequate if underwritten protagonist, and Bob Keen's special effects work is wonderfully ghastly, save for a couple of horrendous computer generated shots.

2022 Horror Part Seven

HELLRAISER

Dir - David Bruckner

Overall: MEH

Though assuredly pleasing for fans of what was once delightful about Clive Barker's Hellraiser, the 2022 relaunch by David Bruckner still has unmistakable imperfections that tarnish it.  Lingering in development hell, (nyuck, nyuck), for quite some time, what came out of various directors, writers, producers, and other studios brainstorming a new angle to take is a story that is completely unrelated to Barker's initial The Hellbound Heart novel.  In this respect, it should be seen not as a reboot but as the franchise's first sequel in decades to bypass decades worth of sub-par, direct-to-video installments that kept the brand alive only with increasingly diminishing returns.  Even with the non-major company Spyglass Media Group behind it, this Hellraiser is a slick, high-end production and it follows in director Bruckner's trajectory of critically favored works in the genre.  As is all too often the case though with horror, the opening is expertly handled and sets up the property's familiar components in an enticing way only for the wheels to start flying off as convoluted plotting gives way to a predictably bloated finale that seems to back itself into a grandiose, meandering corner.  Visually it is quite exceptional with a more seamless blend of digital and practical makeup effects than usually seen, plus the updated Cenobites still make an appropriate, enticingly grotesque impression.  It is a shame that the story was not allowed to scale itself back to win us over in a more rewarding way, but the low risk, "go big" approach is at least understandable if not altogether ideal.

WEREWOLF BY NIGHT

Dir - Michael Giacchino

Overall: MEH

Dubbed the first "special presentation" for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the brisk, fifty-three minute Werewolf by Night adapts the 1972, Jack Russell version of the character which originally ran for five years as its own title.  It is also the studio's first unabashed horror excursion, shot in black and white and focusing on a group of monster hunters who are gathered together in competition to wield the Bloodstone; an amulet which seems particularly useful against otherworldly creatures.  Man-Thing also shows up which is fun.  As the title character and Elsa Bloodstone respectively, Gael Garcia Bernal and Laura Donnelly are well-cast and likeable, taking the material serious enough with one or two mandatory quips thrown in for good measure.  The same cannot be said for Harriet Sansom Harris' camped-up, one-note villainess, but most of that character's lackluster obnoxiousness is due to the underwritten nature of the running time and not so much the actor's performance.  It does take a damn long time to finally unveil Russel's lycanthropian form and despite practicle makeup being used which is always appreciated, it comes off a little half-cooked, as if they stopped one step before the full-blown, totally beastly transformation was complete.  Besides the only surface level, Golden Age of Hollywood presentation and more strict horror genre adherence, this is the same ole MCU stuff for better or worse, where mild violence, one or two swear words, CGI, incessant music, a few tears, plenty of jokes, (and plenty of schlock), hit all of the requirements.

OLD MAN

Dir - Lucky McKee

Overall: GOOD

Indie genre filmmaker Lucky McKee's latest Old Man is an understated bit of psychological madness that makes the most out of its single, log cabin location and almost an exclusive two person cast.  Remarkably simple premise wise, such a troubled character study hinges on the two leads with Stephen Lang and Marc Senter expertly delivering a series of emotionally complex monologues to each other that play with the audience's expectations.  Throughout his entire career thus far at least when not penning the script himself, McKee has worked with a different screenwriter for all of his projects and the one here by relative newcomer Joel Veach finds a way to make this type of unnatural movie dialoging seem eerily in place since there is a mysterious tone that basks in its patience to unease.  Humor and good ole fashion suspense building are played with, often at the same time and just as the audience can almost relax when the characters do, there is still an unshakable aura of Twilight Zone-esque mystery that cannot be shaken off.  The musical score is a bit too manipulative at times and the narrative reveal at the end is probably easier to spot than intended, but this is still an impressive, no nonsense slow-boil offering that works both as a performance piece and as an unsettling enough head-trip.

Clive Barker Horror

HELLRAISER

(1987)

Overall: GOOD

 

Clive Barker's full-length debut Hellraiser remains his most seminal cinematic work; a flawed though inventive, disturbed, visceral, fleshy, sexually-charged, over the top nightmare that spawned a hefty franchise.  Barker adapted his own novella The Hellbound Heart where much of the dark, overt eroticism was toned down by studio heads to garnish a more acceptable R rating.  The movie is still plenty unflinching in its gruesomeness though, with exceptionally wet and bloody visual effects rather stealing the show when they appear.  Of course the design of the Cenobites is the most iconic; freaky S&M torture demons that are actually minimally used in this first installment compared to the others where they became the main attraction.  Barker's inexperience behind the lens is impressively undetected, though his chosen style occasionally gives way to grandiose camp which he would lean into far more with his next two directorial efforts.  The only other issues is the somewhat jarring American dubbing of British actors and the miscasting of Clare Higgins who looks more like a crotchety accountant than a sexy, evil accomplice.  Otherwise, good stuff indeed.

 

NIGHTBREED

(1990)

Overall: MEH

 

For his second film behind the lens, Clive Barker adapts his novel Cabal which is a much more ambitious endeavor than his debut Hellraiser, even if it ended up being less successful and enduring.  Though Nightbreed was granted a sufficient budget which he puts to excellent use with top-notch special effects, monster makeup, and production design, the finished product was butchered in the editing room.  Various cuts of the movie exist, with the theatrical release being nearly an hour shorter than the one Barker initially intended.  This unfortunately emphasizes the movie's poorly structured plot which is made more frustratingly messy due to the slice and dice presentation.  For better or worse, (depending on the audience member), there is an abundance of schlock, with vacantly-written characters, horrendous one-liners, and Danny Elfman's romantically bombastic score that plays uninterrupted throughout the entire running time.  The movie is unmistakably over the top by design and visually stunning, but Barker's grandiose style seems more like a byproduct of studio tampering than a fully-formed realization of his own source material.  At least we get to see David Cronenberg play a serial murderer with a silly mask though.

 

LORD OF ILLUSIONS

(1995)

Overall: MEH

The to-date final directorial effort from Clive Barker was the expanded adaptation of his "The Last Illusion" short story which appeared in the sixth volume of the Books of Blood.  Here titled Lord of Illusions, it works within the budgetary confines of his previous film Nightbreed and similarly, it was given a theatrical edit by the studio that was not in keeping with Barker's initial vision.  It is also bombastic, violent, homoerotic, and loud, with the schlock knob purposely turned up to eleven.  On paper, the neo-noir/horror hybrid is an interesting one with Scott Bakula's private dick Harry D'Amour having previous run-ins with the supernatural, here getting drawn in ever deeper with dark magic, an alluring dame played by Famke Janssen, and an utterly evil, god-like super wizard raised from the dead.  Some of the concepts and set pieces are inventive and the movie works visually when it is not hampered by horrendous digital effects, but the presentation is abundantly silly.  Barker abuses jump scares, grandiose music, screaming, and hokey dialog, with nuance being nowhere in the cards.  It becomes a bit of an accidental comedy too much of the time, failing to work as a chilling piece of macabre fantasy.  Still, the ramped-up charm that is anything but boring at least.

1990s American Horror Part Twenty-Four

GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH

(1990)

Dir - Joe Dante

Overall: GREAT

One of the most gleefully silly horror sequels ever made, Gremlins 2: The New Batch quite successfully ups the comedy to the point of pretty exclusively being, well, comedic.  With a handful of the cast returning, (including leads Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates), as well as director Joe Dante who was given a triple-sized budget and complete creative control from Warner Bros., the result is a deliberate satire on everything from frozen yogurt, to cooking shows, to technological advancements, to movie sequels in general.  Dante and screenwriter Charles S. Haas's script is ludicrous in a Looney Tunes type fashion, (it is no accident that Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck open the film), but it is also nearly perfectly structured.  There are oodles of Easter eggs and meta references scattered throughout and just about every supporting performance is from a recognizable face.  Rick Baker's more dynamic creature design gives way to an endless array of inventive puppets, famously including a female gremlin, an intellectual gremlin, a vegetable gremlin, and a spider gremlin to name but a few.  It is both arguably better than its predecessor and as strong a contender as any for Dante's finest hour behind the lens.

THE PROPHECY

(1995)

Dir - Gregory Widen

Overall: GOOD

 

Thus far the lone, full-length directorial effort from Highlander and Backdraft screenwriter Gregory Widen is The Prophecy; an adequately ambitious "war in heaven" thriller that spawned an increasingly less interesting franchise.  Led by a perfectly cast Christopher Walken as the sinister archangel Gabriel, most of the film's viewability revolves around his effortlessly quirky and eerie performance.  Elsewhere, Eric Stolz, Virginia Madsen, Elias Koteas, and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer himself add some further respectability to the proceedings.  Widen's version of such frequented, Biblical source material offers up some nifty details, particularly how the angels prefer perching to sitting, can suck out and transfer souls, and carry themselves convincingly as if they have eons of all-knowing history amongst them.  As often seriously as the story is presented, the conventional structure gets a bit silly at times with some ham-fisted dialog and plot inconsistencies.  For the most part though, both the accidental schlock and well-intended humor remain entertaining enough with all the other fun aspects firmly in place.

QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY

(1997)

Dir - Mick Garris

Overall: MEH

Mick Garris was all over the small screen in May of 1997 with The Shining miniseries dropping on ABC a mere week before yet another of his Stephen King adaptations in Quicksilver Highway premiered on Fox.  Comprised of two stories, (one, "Chattery Teeth" by King and the other, "The Body Politic" by Clive Barker), Garris initially proposed a horror anthology series which was rejected outright by studio executives.  Fox eventually came on board for a stand-alone television film, at which point original director John McTiernan stepped down and Garris went from screenwriter to being behind the lens as well.  Featuring a positively hammy performance from Christopher Lloyd as the linking Crypt Keeper Aaron Quicksilver, each segment is typically generic.  Typical in the sense that Garris' directorial work is rarely poor, but also just as rarely memorable.  Once again tampered by the censored network TV format, the stories are given a goofy yet flat presentation.  Considering that one is about a child's toy coming to life and biting its victims and the other is about people's hands leading a revolution against their human bodies while talking in cute goblin voices to each other, perhaps some fault lies with the source material itself.  Still, Barker and King's writings certainly do not read this silly and perhaps are simply not suited for primetime.

1990s American Horror Part Twenty-Three

THE GUARDIAN
(1990)
Dir - William Friedkin
Overall: MEH

 

On paper, The Guardian is notable as being William Friedkin's full-length return to horror, his first go at it since making the most lauded film of all time in the genre with The Exorcist.  Judging by this movie's relative obscurity and lukewarm at best reputation, obviously it is remarkably feeble in comparison.  Part of the reason may be that Friedkin only came on board after Sam Raimi dropped out to make Darkman, Raimi having previously constructed it as a part comedy as he is wont to do.  The end result here bares no such qualities, at least intentionally.  Another issue could be the production problems and on-set script reworkings, further muddling the affair.  Friedkin pulls off some jump scares and goes for nudity and nasty gore once or twice, but any attempted atmosphere is botched by a bland, TV movie-esque presentation.  Wooden and/or hammy performances, obvious ADR readings, and pedestrian dialog give it an unintended camp quality, which is unfortunately about the only "compliment" the movie really deserves.  It is probably best just to forget this one was made and move on accordingly.

 

CANDYMAN 2: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH

(1995)

Dir - Bill Condon

Overall: MEH

The second theatrically released film from director Bill Condon as well as the second installment in the Candyman series, Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh is a typically unsatisfying sequel.  The story switches everything from Cabrini-Green Chicago to New Orleans and plays upon similar, impoverished racial conflicts as well as classicism.  Sadly, it does this in a far less clever and engrossing way than the first film did, using its Cajun setting more for accented gumbo and Mardi Gras references than anything substantially potent. This is empathized by an obnoxious radio personality narration that comes up nearly every time there is a location change.  Condon makes the movie a schlocky, loud mess, criminally indulging in what feels like hundreds of jump scares, each one of which is accompanied by a deafeningly loud screechy noise.  The only moments of silence are right before such boisterous cliche abuse as Philip Glass' choir-heavy score barely ever shuts up as well.  Campy and rushed with a script that is pedestrian at best and nonsensical at worst, it makes the all too common mistake that half-baked horror films do.  This is that it plays itself way too dark and serious to justify its many ridiculous attributes.

THE CRAFT
(1996)
Dir - Andrew Fleming

Overall: MEH

 

Hot Topic - The Movie...I mean The Craft was one of a handful of teenage-centered horror films produced in the 1990s.  Similar to how Joel Schumacher made vampires undeniably hip nine years earlier with The Lost Boys, director Andrew Fleming attempts the same thing with witches here.  He essentially achieves this, at least in a schlocky, B-movie type way.  The script by Fleming and Peter Filardi is rather predictable and plays on the standard "high school outsiders" cliches long established for such films.  It also does not treat its supernatural magic any more or less seriously than say Buffy the Vampire Slayer would, per obvious example.  As far as the cast is concerned, this and Scream released the same year arguably solidified Neve Campbell as the decade's premier scream queen, (no pun intended), but Fairuza Balk and her textbook, Goth-girl features make the most naturally sinister of the four leads.  Besides the conventional structure which is easy to only half pay attention to, a bigger drawback is the awful alt-pop soundtrack that gets off to such a start with one of the worst Beatles covers ever done in Our Lady Peace's "Tomorrow Never Knows".  The clear feminism angle is charming enough and there are some fun, dark set pieces scattered throughout, so as an occasionally inconsistent bit of Gen X camp, it suffices.

Masters of Horror Season Two Part Two

PRO-LIFE
(2006)
Dir - John Carpenter
Overall: MEH

 

For his to-date penultimate film Pro-Life, John Carpenter chose to fuse the sensitive topic of abortion with Christian fanaticism and demonic monsters.  It is a dark, occasionally over the top thriller that is both hit and miss in execution.  Outside of the rather impressive creature design that comes near the finish line, this is the most visually bland of Carpenter's works.  A women's health clinic's lights being shut off on a pleasant, warm-weathered morning basically provides the only means of atmospheric scenery.  The script by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan as well as the musical score by Carpenter's son Cody are just as unremarkable, though Ron Perlman makes for an imposing, calmly mannered villain.  There is a couple of memorable moments and the tone is kept rather grounded and serious, but it is all not as exciting as it otherwise could be.

PELTS
(2006)
Dir - Dario Argento
Overall: GOOD

The third television film in a row from Dario Argento and the last before making the hilariously over the top trainwreck Mother of Tears the following year, Pelts may rank as one of the most curiously strange entries in the once mighty filmmaker's career.  As anyone with even a passing familiarity with Argento's work can attest to, this is saying something.  It is once again unclear how ridiculous the director's intentions were as the cartoon level gore, overt sleaze, Meat Loaf's bombastically silly performance, and the very peculiar premise all lend themselves to bursts of head scratching laughter for the audience.  As a critique on the fur industry of all things, it is played both dark and schlocky all at once and certainly a hoot if anything else.

THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION
(2006)
Dir - Joe Dante
Overall: MEH

 

Round two for Joe Dante in the Masters of Horror series is a similar social commentary essay as Homecoming was from the previous season.  Instead of being anti-war/anti- right wing propaganda essentially, the Alice Sheldon adaptation The Screwfly Solution turns violent, toxic masculinity and Christian zealousness into a virus while throwing a quite random curve-ball at the audience during its closing minutes.  Stripping away his usual knack for humor, Dante's straight-fisted approach does not particularly stick as numerous moments dip their toes into unintended silliness.  The film seems both heavy handed and quite rushed, with lukewarm performances and an amateur quality look that is due to it being shot on digital cameras.  

VALERIE ON THE STAIRS
(2006)
Dir - Mick Garris
Overall: MEH

Arguably the dullest entry in the series, Masters of Horror creator Mick Garris' Clive Barker adaptation Valerie on the Stairs has certain compelling ingredients at play, but manages to mangle them in an incredibly lackluster fashion.  Some excessive gore, nudity, and scenery chewing performances from Christopher Lloyd and Tony Toddd, (the later as a wildly made-up demon), occasionally provide a heartbeat or two, but the story itself is stagnant to a fault.  The first half is incredibly tedious as the main protagonist does nothing except sit down to write in his room, hear knocks at his door, go out to find a nude woman calling for him, get yelled at by the other tenants, make friendly with the bro out of the bunch, and then it all repeats almost exactly as such several times over.  Once things start getting more unholy and actually exciting, the boredom has taken too strong of a hold and it ends confusing and ham-fisted.

Masters of Horror Season One Part Three

FAIR-HAIRED CHILD
(2006)
Dir - William Malone
Overall: GOOD

The sole Masters of Horror entry from William Malone, (Scared to Death, Feardotcom), is possibly the most stark, humorless one in the season.  Scripted by Matt Greenberg, (Halloween H20, 1408), Fair-Haired Child presents a strange premise where an eccentric, grieving family turns to the occult and it is all played consistently straight, without any cornball acting or over the top set pieces.  That said, Lori Petty is a bit stiff as the troubled mother and there is at least one gruesome moment that comes off a little intentionally silly.  Elsewhere though, it features a genuinely disturbing monster design with Malone using the same herky-jerky, spastic editing technique he indulged in his House on Haunted Hill remake.  The more serious tone is a welcome change to the series and overall it delivers enough creepiness to recommend.

SICK GIRL
(2006)
Dir - Lucky McKee
Overall: GOOD

Throughout the majority of Sick Girl, director Lucky Mckee manages to have concocted something seemingly impossible which is an adorable horror movie.  Working again with Angela Bettis after their impressive collaboration in May, a similarly quirky, darkly comedic tone is maintained and the actress once more shows a remarkable talent for playing hilariously eccentric, socially awkward characters.  Essentially a love story that only briefly goes sinister before unveiling some freakish visuals at the end, it is that rarest of instances where something in the horror genre makes oddball cuteness actually rather heartwarming.  Deliberately silly and gross with some wonderful profanity sprinkled in for good measure, it is probably the most fun entry in the Masters of Horror's debut season.

PICK ME UP
(2006)
Dir - Larry Cohen
Overall: MEH

In what would be his final directorial effort, Larry Cohen's Pick Me Up is rather typical of the director's work.  Featuring yet another eccentric performance from character actor Michael Moriarty whose bizarre mannerisms and line readings helped to further ruin earlier Cohen entries The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent, the film is likewise morbidly humorous yet darker and more suspenseful in tone.  While certain slasher stereotypes are upheld and characters occasionally speak in lame cliches, the story by genre author David Schow does have a singular premise which is rather interesting.  Cohen's quirkiness and botching of tone is comparatively subdued though it still makes for an odd offering that is only partially enjoyable.

HAECKEL'S TALE
(2006)
Dir - John McNaughton
Overall: MEH

Originally slated for George A. Romero to be behind the lens, scheduling conflicts brought John McNaughton, (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), on board instead for the Clive Barker adaptation Haeckel's Tale.  Essentially the author's more nasty re-telling of Frankenstein with a black magic/necromancy angle thrown in for good measure, its ending at least is appropriately perverse and borders on absurdity.  McNaughton plays things rather straight though and even as it all goes over the top, it does so in a controlled manner.  It is regrettable then that the middle section is a slog, dragging the whole thing down considerably.  The disturbingly macabre finish may be worth the wait for some viewers, but the sluggish trek to get there does undermine things just a bit too much.

IMPRINT
(2006)
Dir - Takashi Miike
Overall: GOOD

Japan's most prolific genre filmmaker, (by a mile), Takashi Miike's lone contribution to Masters of Horror was the only one in the series to be rejected by Showtime due to the director's usual practice of jacking up the violence to uncomfortably disturbing degrees.  Imprint certainly goes there with some eye-wincing torture segments and shots of aborted fetuses, but the film is not exclusively gratuitous.  Technically a traditional kaidan story, the pacing is gradual and Miike sprinkles some atmospheric and bizarre creepiness here and there.  Performance wise, it is uneven with the almost exclusively Japanese cast speaking in rough English and villainous character actor Billy Drago overdoing it quite a bit.  Impressively otherworldly and bold, it is worth examining for those that can stomach its unflinching components though.

2000s American Horror Part Ten

FINAL DESTINATION

(2000)

Dir - James Wong

Overall: MEH

 

No better and no worse than any of the umpteenth teenager-popcorn-crowd-targeted horror films that regularly drop every year is The X Files alumni James Wong's directorial debut Final Destination.  Initially penned by screenwriter Jeffrey Riddick as a spec script for potential X Files use, one could argue if it would have suited a more condensed television format better than launching a five-deep franchise.  With a cast comprised of almost exclusively clean, attractive, made-up young Caucasian actors, everyone gets a chance to deliver laughable dialog in an idiotic attempt to make the proceedings seem more profound.  It is this straight-faced tone that works profoundly to the movie's disadvantage.  As the real hook is in seeing characters succumb to their ridiculously elaborate demise, how serious the moronic plot and "logic" is taken cannot help but to become unintentionally embarrassing.  If the entire film played up the schlock instead of trying to balance it with a multitude of sincere monologues about Death's plan set to sorrowful music, then it would have been more fun than annoying.

 

THE LAST WINTER

(2006)

Dir - Larry Fessenden

Overall: MEH

Regular B-movie horror mainstay Larry Fessenden offers up another directorial effort with The Last Winter, a sort of psychological version of John Carpenter's The Thing if it had an environmental angle woven into it as well.  Written by Fessenden and Robert Leaver, it plays far less on conventional horror tropes than it does on character dynamics, only unveiling its genre-centric makings in sparing doses and well into the film.  While this and some solid performances effectively make the plight of the people in the story properly engaging, things unfortunately come to a muddled, ill-focused conclusion.  It is unclear what questions are being asked or even what issues are on the table.  On top of that, the supernatural components are perplexing and vague, giving it a very rushed feel in the final act.  Forgiving some minor CGI blunders, the production is professionally up to par though, marking an improvement over Fessenden's previous two excursions behind the lens in Wendigo and Habit which at least looked a bit on the amateurish side.  

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN

(2008)

Dir - Ryuhei Kitamura

Overall: WOOF

 

Clive Barker's second production credit through he and Jorge Saralegui's Midnight Picture Show company, The Midnight Meat Train is a wildly poor-scripted mess.  An adaptation of Barker's own story of the same name by Japanese filmmaker Ryuhei Kitamura and written by Jeff Buhler, it is not altogether terrible throughout the first two acts outside of some downright laughable CGI effects which remain glaringly distracting throughout the entire film.  Not as glaringly distracting as the astronomical plot holes and moronic character behavior that take center stage once the movie is revving up to its nonsensical finish line.  Dracula Dead and Loving It amounts of blood spew out of bodies, levels of bodily harm are inflicted that could not possibly be survived yet are, characters get from point A to B as if scenes are missing or they completely forgot what just happened to them, and Bradley Cooper and Leslie Bibb make the poorest, most illogical choices that could possibly be made for people in their situation.  All would be a hoot if not for the fact that everyone involved seems absolutely oblivious to the level of schlock going off the rails and by playing it straight, the end result could not be more embarrassing.

2000s British Horror Part Four

DOG SOLDIERS
(2002)
Dir - Neil Marshall
Overall: MEH

Neil Marshall's full-length debut Dog Soldiers is basically Predator and Night of the Living Dead thrown into a blender, except sillier and more gory than either.  Oh, and also with werewolves.  Marshall is not so much interested in creating a slow-boil level of dread and then unleashing it in an aggressively terrifying manner here as he did superbly with his follow up The Descent.  Instead, this is overtly comedic and over the top, with British, military badasses screaming and swearing some pretty funny dialog at each other while shooting off gallons of ammo.  There is also plenty of absolutely ridiculous set pieces, (a human and a werewolf engaging in a fist fight anyone?), all sorts of things getting blown up, and even some organs literally pouring out of a man's stomach.  Davos Seaworth is an asshole in it as well.  Good times!  All that said, it is overall less engaging than it sounds and more a combination of action movie hijinks dialed to eleven than a consistently solid movie.  It is worth a chuckle or two though.

DONKEY PUNCH
(2008)
Dir - Olly Blackburn
Overall: MEH

The somewhat ambitious Donkey Punch from Olly Blackburn, (who also made the unbelievably awful Kristy as his second and to date last full-length), ultimately bites off more than it can chew.  Large parts of the film are grounded in reality; the violence is awkward and messy and exclusively brought on by extreme acts of panic and desperation.  As things go on though, the script has an impossible task of making the rash choices that its characters engage in seem plausible.  Too many moments dip their toes into schlock while trying to simultaneously ground them in reality.  Characters at one moment seem believably remorseful only to switch to almost cartoon-villain levels of scumbaggery.  Once it becomes clear that everyone will be doomed and that the "final girl" has been established from the opening scene, it falls into the trap of conventional slasher movies where it is just a boring waiting game for increasingly awful people to get picked off.  Even though Blackburn tries a different approach here, it does not avoid enough genre pratfalls to work as well as intended.

BOOK OF BLOOD
(2009)
Dir - John Harrison
Overall: MEH

This rather loose adaptation of the linking segment to Clive Barker's "The Book of Blood" and "On Jerusalem Street (A Postscript)" from his Books of Blood collection has an acceptable amount of gore and eroticism, but does not offer much else.  John Harrison's first non-television full-length since 1990's Tales from the Darkside, it is remarkably low on schlock and plays its hand rather seriously. While this keeps the tone tightly consistent, the screenplay by Harrison and Darin Silverman does not offer much beyond typical horror movie tropes and sub-par dialog.  The diluted color pallet, generic Spirit Halloween looking ghosts, poor CGI, stock score, and stock sound effects keep it grimy and gloomy, but everything that happens plot wise is also a predictable mishmash of supernatural ghost hunter cliches.   It is worse though that the characters never become properly fleshed-out even as we spend a great deal of time trying to get to know them.  The film just continues to escalate to a skin-crawling, (and removing), finish line while falling pretty flat in the process.  It is nowhere near the worst bit of celluloid to be based on Barker's works, but it is also nowhere near the best.

1980s American Horror Part Twenty-Nine

MOTHER'S DAY
(1980)
Dir - Charles Kaufman
Overall: MEH

The second film by Troma Entertainment, Mothers Day is certainly trashy and in vile, despicable taste, but at this early stage it is also far less ridiculously comedic and schlocky in tone.  Meant to be a satire of television violence, misguided parenting, and probably some other things by Troma founder and producer Lloyd Kaufman and his brother Charles behind the lens, it falls a bit short of providing any well-intended chuckles.  It is certainly high on unpleasantness and boredom though.  Truthfully, the movie could be a lot more nasty than it is as its indulgences in torture porn run a bit tame by contemporary standards, (this is a good thing), but since it is not that funny and is not winking hard enough at its audience, it spends a lot of time just meandering in its bush-league presentation.  That is until the final act where the victims turn on their tormentors and things like groins getting brutally hammered in and television sets getting slammed on heads become difficult not to find humor in.  At the same time though, the film gradually switches its tone and becomes a lot more dark which kind of further complicates matters as to how silly the whole thing was supposed to be in the first place.  Maybe it deserves a deeper dive into its themes which is odd since we are talking about a Troma movie here, but on the other hand, maybe it is just an amateurish mess of a film.

THE HIDDEN
(1987)
Dir - Jack Sholder
Overall: GOOD

This surprisingly solid, somewhat oddball sci-fi/horror/action hybrid from Jack Sholder, (Alone in the Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge), and comedy screenwriter Jim Kouf, (credited as Bob Hunt here and on 1981's The Boogens), is the first yet only second weirdest project where Kyle MacLauchlan plays a young, eccentric FBI agent.  Right out of the gate, The Hidden has quite a fetching opening where a guy nonchalantly shoots up a bank and leads a high speed car chase in a Ferrari while headbanging to punk music and seeming genuinely pleased with himself for doing so.  Proper explanations come quite a bit later, but by that point the audience can make an educated guess as to what might be going down.  Moving at a steady enough pace to not bother with tightening up some loose logical gaps, (in typical, 80s action movie fashion), the script wisely maintains a borderline humorous edge which makes such moments successfully forgiving.  The tone changes may be a bit odd at times on account of the film's ambitions, but they're also regularly enjoyable.  As are appearances from Claudia Christian, Lin Shaye, and a not famous yet Danny Trejo for one line and about three seconds.

HELLBOUND: HELLRAISER II
(1988)
Dir - Tony Randel
Overall: MEH

Round two in the Hellraiser series, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, is more poorly structured than its modest yet still over the top and schlocky predecessor though it bares those qualities as well unfortunately.  Giving up the directors chair, Clive Barker at least penned the story for Peter Atkins to write the screenplay from, though from here on out, his role in the franchise would grow increasingly minimal as he would usually just serve as a non-creative, executive producer if that.  Picking up where the last one finished and with its two main female cast members returning, one of the problems is that they are both underwritten.  The better stuff instead are the visions of the labyrinth-like, Cenobite hellworld which are expanded upon and impressively surreal.  The movie is also still deliciously gory for fans of skinless, ultra-bloody mayhem.  Outside of all the macabre window dressing though, its story is very weak and the camp value once again becomes inescapable with some half-baked performances and lame dialog.  With a still humble budget to work with and attempting the standard "go bigger" sequel approach, the film does occasionally come off as if its reach exceeds its grasp.  If one can forgive and/or find amusement in its inconsistencies while basking in the violence and diabolical weirdness though, it is an adequate second installment you can say.

1980s Foreign Horror Part Seven

CURTAINS
(1983)
Dir - Richard Ciupka/Peter R. Simpson
Overall: MEH

Wrought with production problems for three years around initial director Richard Ciupka clashing with producer Peter R. Simpsons, (who subsequently took the helm), it is rather sad that Curtains ends up being so bland after all of the trouble.  It was conceived from the beginning to be a slasher film that focused around adults instead of teenagers or college students and Ciupka wanted to go one further from the trend of the day by steering it in a more arthouse direction.  This never came to pass and what was eventually released is a tired rehash of another masked killer mystery with a ludicrous, unnecessary twist.  The story comes off a bit messy as well, setting up some interesting avenues to go down but then never really establishing its characters enough to work.  Instead, it just cruises along to the next illogical death scene.  There are numerous set pieces that seem like they would be unnerving such as a slow motion attack on ice skates in broad daylight, a random doll standing in the middle of the road, and a cat and mouse chase through a prop house.  Yet these are all accompanied by typical, "dumb horror movie" logic that regrettably is attributed almost exclusively to women who behave only the way textbook horror movie victims do.

RAWHEAD REX
(1987)
Dir - George Pavlou
Overall: MEH

Released the same year as Hellraiser, Rawhead Rex was technically the second film whose screenplay Clive Barker had written, based off of the short story that had appeared in his third Books of Blood volume.  Similar to the British film Underworld, (Transmutations), which came out two years prior, the Irish production Rawhead Rex is plagued by budgetary problems.  The titular demon/pagan god monster looks exceptionally dumb and no attempt is made to disguise the rubber suit and ridiculous Halloween mask, making the character unintentionally goofy each and every time he is on screen.  While this effectively robs the movie's star creature of all of its menace, what is left is some hammy acting, cliche dialog, and a rather unremarkable plot about a small Irish village trying to stop him.  The violent set pieces are not particularly that great, several of the monster's victims are people that we do not care about anyway, and a lame and kind of silly ending does not help much either.  As is often the case unfortunately, Barker's written work provokes far more chills and captivation so when brought to the screen in a B-movie fashion with such a meager budget like this, it becomes a more frivolous experience.

BLACK PAST
(1989)
Dir - Olaf Ittenbach
Overall: MEH

This shot-on-video debut from German gore maestro Olaf Ittenbach can be seen as the country's answer to The Evil Dead and at the same time, 80s slasher/splatter films in general.  Though this one revels more in its supernatural aspects, to be fair.  As impressive as the relentless violence is which is clearly the main selling point, (and some of the sound design effectively channels the aforementioned first Evil Dead), Black Past cannot muster up any enjoyment beyond how painfully amateurish all of the other aspects are.  Frumpy, non-actors and sets that have got to be nothing more than the homes of the filmmakers, plus being a S.O.V production, the technical limitations easily dwarf any other perverse upsides the movie may have.  Some of the other cliches used like a kid getting picked on in high school and misunderstood by his family are quite hacky, with some montages over absolutely horrible music being unintentionally laughable.  This is also the case with Olaf Ittenbach himself in the lead who with his mullet fully in tow and often posing on his bed in his underwear in a curiously and probably accidentally feminine manner, makes for some goofy visuals.  The lame story and incompetent cinematic elements aside, it is a solid showcase for Ittenbach's gruesome special effects skills and something to take note of for gore aficionados at least.

1980s British Horror Part Three

UNDERWORLD
(1985)
Dir - George Pavlou
Overall: MEH

The first full-length screenplay credit of Clive Barker's career was Underworld, (aka Transmutations), a film that has most of Barker's less desirable quirks in tow while forgoing his better ones.  The aggressively B-movie quality is impossible to take seriously.  Every aspect of the production from the set design, make-up,  and special effects cannot hide the meager budget.  That said, the synth-pop score from Welsh band Freur is kind of fun if also quite dated.  Though it is certainly nice to see people like Ingrid Pitt or Denholm Elliott doing something on screen, the performances are universally hammy, theirs included.  It is always odd that Barker's novels and short stories are virtually void of schlock when it comes to the dialog, but for whatever reason the hokiness rises to the surface when he is writing for the screen.  That is certainly the case here.  The plot is not particularly engaging anyway as it is meant to be kind of a sci-fi noir in tongue-in-cheek, somewhat bad taste.  Barker would get to direct his next film vehicle with Hellraiser two years later, a movie that still showcased some of the author's more silly mannerisms but is an astronomically superior story at least.  This one is really only of interest to Barker enthusiasts.

GOTHIC
(1986)
Dir - Ken Russell
Overall: GOOD

Ken Russell proved highly adequate at crafting high-octane, feverish nightmares on screen at various times throughout his career and Gothic is a textbook example of the filmmaker's trademark, visceral style.  Utilizing the historical context of Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Dr. John William Polidori, and Lord Byron all vacationing and losing their minds on opium at the latter's estate, Russell depicts their complicated, horror-fueled imaginations as one trippy set piece after the other.  Naturally, some of the images are gleefully grotesque and bizarre, (like Byron performing fellatio on a pregnant woman who miscarriages while he is down there, a set of animated armor with a giant, horned dildo, eyeball nipples, and Polidori trying to kill himself by drinking cyanide and then having insects frantically crawl out of his mouth), but these are usually the high water marks of Ken Russell horror movies anyway.  Gothic has no room to be subtle and the performances, music, dialog, and cinematography border on parody, taking genre cliches to over the top heights.  With any kind of caution to the audience's comfort thrown to the wind, it is an amusing and satisfyingly insane excursion that is clearly having fun with its macabre subject matter.

EDGE OF SANITY
(1989)
Dir - Gérard Kikoïne
Overall: MEH

When watching any Jack the Ripper based movie, it is always laughable both A) how many prostitutes there are in London apparently and B) how many of them openly push for business when a madman is exclusively targeting them night after night.  This cliche gets aggressively exploited in Edge of Sanity, a Ripper/Jekyll and Hyde combo that is equally clever and brutal in some instances while remaining just a bit over the top to a fault.  Anthony Perkins is typecast once again playing a lunatic and he makes a splendid Hyde the Ripper while his Jekyll is the usual, overly passionate zealot who gets more and more difficult to sympathize with as things go on.  The violent treatment towards women is more emphasized here than in most previous versions of these stories, with Hyde's physical and mental abusiveness getting kicked up the point where he even gets some opium-hooked accomplices to terrorize his wife and indulge in such vileness.  Besides these more modern and nasty hooks plus an extra level of schlock brought to the proceedings, it is otherwise the same old story that we have seen dozens of times since the silent era.  It is also bleak and goofy enough to approve of to a certain extent.

1970s British Horror Shorts Part One

SALOME

(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.

 

APACHES
(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. 

 

PANIC

(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.