Tag Archives: Horror

Action/Adventure, Horror, Imaginary Australian Cinema

#237 – Blood Wild

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(1983, Aust, 85 min) Dir Chuck Mallory. Cast Steve Bisley, Joanne Samuel.

Between his spooky debut Hannah Blet and his posting to Hollywood, Chuck Mallory found the time to produce Blood Wild, a turn into Mad Max territory, apparently made just to see if he could. Unlike Mad Max, Blood Wild is set in the present day and owes just as much to Deliverance and Duel in it’s premse – Bisley and Samuel (not accidentally both MM veterans) are JB and Shanny, a big city couple travelling to Darwin where JB has a new job. There is tension between the two, Shanny not masking how aggrieved she is at having to move so far away. Her displeasure only increases when she finds out JB’s plan – his scheme is to travel in a straight line through the vast desert expanse of the interior. Before you can say ’bad idea’ locals are offended and they are forced to drive through the night to the next town for accommodation. From out of the dark, while JB snores beside her, Shanny spots a pair of faraway headlights. Her heart in her chest she watches as they get closer and closer still and before she knows it this mystery car has shot past mere inches from them, waking JB. “What was that?” he splutters but when Shanny points out the window there are no tail lights ahead, only darkness. So far so Deliverance/Duel but by the time the third act wheels around JB and Shanny are racing for their lives against some very real enemies in the form of a racing gang who have gone ‘Blood Wild’ in the desert and are hungry for sport. The creeping dread of the first two-thirds are as effective as you would expect from the director of Hannah Blet and the end shows he has as much talent for unrestrained action as he does for controlled suspense.

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Horror, Imaginary French Cinema, Imaginary Italian Cinema

#233 – Evenings of the Dead (Soirées du Morte, Les)

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(1976, Fr/It, 118 min) Dir Alain Andere. Cast Sylvia Maria, Niels Arestrup, Maria Rohm, Orson Welles.

For his first film since 1968’s Extase de l’Obscurité Alain Andere teamed up with Sylvia Maria, then white-hot following her performance in Louis Blanc’s absurd, offensive and inexplicably popular Prostituée de l’Amour as the titular ‘Prostitute of Love’. She and Arestrup are a pair of heroin addicts bobbing on the poverty line in Paris – nonpersons, basically, who can be kidnapped by Maria Rohm and her band of henchmen who travel around the city in an old ambulance collecting such types. They are conveyed to a vast country estate presided over by Orson Welles’ Count Puce (mostly confined to a big chair or a litter), the head of a group of parasitic entities from beyond space who drain the life force from their victims. But first, sport – they, along with another half-dozen victims, are released onto the estate and are hunted down one by one. To the keen-eyed this is basically the same film as his last one but with the Marxist subtext amplified and as subtle as a brick. To those who can stomach their metaphors broad and can live with Maria’s inept acting (she appears cross-eyed and stoned throughout) there’s plenty to enjoy with typically stunning photography and some fantastically gruesome death scenes both sides of the class divide.

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Comedy, Horror, Imaginary British Cinema

#229 – Astonishing Transparent Man, The

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(1958, GB, 99 min) Dir Henry Phillips Breech. Cast Peter Cushing, Alison Lucy, Alex C Bream.

When Albert Meeler (Cushing, with typical gravitas) is accidentally subjected to a large dose of ‘X Radiation’ in the lab he works he soon finds himself see through. That’s right, he has become transparent but not invisible – apparently someone then owned the rights to the story of a man inflicted with invisibility. If you’re so desperate to make a film about a man who has become invisible to go to these semantic lengths then you must need to bring something new to the table. In this instance Albert is totally pleased to have become invisible (sorry, transparent) and instead of railing against his separation from society the rest of the film follows his attempts to leave civilisation behind. Of course he finds himself thwarted at every turn – how can he drive himself to the middle of nowhere where he can live an ascetic life when a car that is apparently driving itself draws so much attention? How can he buy food or even steal it when it appears to everyone else that loaves of bread and that are floating clean through the air? Unable to overcome such logistics for long the films end finds Albert still among society, using his transparency to survive on the detritus of the visible. Basically a feature length Twilight Zone episode, it’s an amusing tale with a bittersweet end.

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Comedy, Horror, Imaginary French Cinema

#228 – Vacances de Morts Vivants, Les (Holiday of the Living Dead, The)

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(2011, Fr, 108 min) Dir Jack Vitesse. Cast Swann Nambotin, Frédéric Pierrot, Géraldine Pailhas.

French zombie comedy set on the French Riviera. Pascal’s travels with his family to the town of Piabo for the summer. Piebo, a former sleepy fishing village on a remote spit of land, is now a vacation complex that lines the coast, an island of luxury that looms over the modest houses of it’s year-round residents. Young Pascal, a shy and quiet young man, doesn’t want to join the resort’s youth groups for enforced fun so he pretends to his parents that he’s participating but instead amuses himself by exploring the many nooks and crannies of the complex – the backroom staircases for example, or the labyrinth of air conditioning passageways. As he amuses himself however he begins to see things that suggest to him that all is not well at the heart of Piebo – a chef who has been tethered to an armchair where he froths at the mouth and writhes with an almost supernatural strength, a family of tourists with a strange illness marched into one of the walk in freezers where there are imprisoned. Something is going on and the owners of the Piabo Hotel don’t want anyone to panic. How can Pascal let anyone know without giving up his lie? When will people be roused from their relaxations to notice those among them who have been reduced to brain-dead cannibals? A lively, subversive comedy blessed with some great locations from Jack Vitesse, the one time enfant terrible of the cinéma du look (see Homme du sous-terre, Les) who seems to have developed an affinity for plot in the intervening years.

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Art Film, Black and White, Horror, Imaginary British Cinema, Silent

#225 – Meat Palace

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(1921, GB, 41 min, b/w) Dir B. Richard Crisp. Cast Conrad Hoot, Phillidia Fitzhibbert, Ivy Bean MacTashman, B. Richard Crisp.

A delicious Scots oddity, the fever dream of the unnamed, destitute and moor-stranded lead (a bearded, shambling Hoot) who is led by moonlight to the titular edifice (constructed, as suggested, of food flesh) by a beautiful pair of diaphanously gowned and supernaturally glowing women (Fitzhibbert and Bean MacTashman). Therein our anonymous bum hero finds himself at the service of The High Lord Meat and Creamy (the director Crisp himself, encased in what was apparently a self-made and fantastically pungent ‘Beef Suit’) whose whims begin at the curious and before long descend into the downright wrong. All this is gleaned from the script – of which a half-dozen scribbled pages remain – a roll of mostly fogged-out photographs from the set and the recollections of esteemed film critic Maxim Puccini who was, at the time, a fourteen year gaffer’s hand. The recollection of the set’s “thick creamy stench” apparently put him off dairy for the rest of his life. The result is a grab-bag of suggestion and little in the way of fact – the ‘downright wrong’ of Lord Meat’s whimsy, for example, is frustratingly unknown. It seems to have found little favour with audiences of the time and it’s last recorded exhibition seems to have been in 1926, when it was screened to a visibly discomfited Lord Evelyn French-Parstley, the keeper of the King’s Exceptionals, at the Royal Estate of Bip, West Scotland. Now presumed lost and much sought after by aficionados of Crisp and his ‘Meat Films’.

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Black and White, Giallo, Horror, Imaginary Italian Cinema

#205 – Seven Deaths in a Broken Lens (Sette Morti in un Obiettivo Rotto)

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(2013, It, 98 min, b/w) Dir Bruno Cattet. Cast Claudio Gioè, Laetitia Casta, Elio Germano.

A curious giallo homage/mash-up of Italian cinema history. The year is 1963 and the fact that this is the same year that Fellini’s 8½ was released is no coincidence. Claudio Gioè is blocked film director Nino Milo (done up as Mastroianni in, yes, 8½) following up the international sensation that was his last film, Ama LaVita with his dream project – a simple slice of life drama set in Rome. The problem? Well, for a start it’s a slice of life drama set in Ancient Rome, not it’s modern day counterpart and on top of that Milo hasn’t a story beyond that, the setting. As we join him on the set in the third month of shooting amidst the vast historical set he is so bereft of ideas that he is seriously considering the inclusion of a character from another planet. “Possibly Mars,” he says, “Or Venus. We would need to research.” Oh yes – there are also a slew of grisly murders happening in and around the film studio at night with the police – more interested in the catering than investigating – clueless. As we follow the killer at night we’re given glimpses into the myriad genre of Italian cinema, all beautifully recreated – the sword and sandal epic, the science fiction, the spaghetti western are all given their time in the sun. Soon enough Milo’s lead, the international film sensation and lust object Tutti Ripieno (Casta) has fallen to the beast and the world’s media are thick like flies on the proceedings to disturb Milo’s delicate muse. A fun affair made no less entertaining by the obviousness of it’s ending – if you haven’t figured it out already then shame on you!

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Horror, Imaginary US Cinema

#204 – No Pain, No Gain

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(1987, US, 97 min) Dir Calvin Hardwick. Cast Melvin Brewer, Harley Brewer, Jimmy Mix.

Day-Glo vampire flick set among Californian exercise nuts. Identical twin brothers Max and Hal (real life weightlifting duo the Brewer Brothers) are new in town, moving to California to ‘live the life’. They sign up to the expensive glass and steel gym around the corner from their apartment which seems perfect, filled with super buff workout buddies and tons of hot chicks. But soon enough they find out that of course it’s just too perfect as Hal starts spending all his time there, looking more and more wan and weak no matter how much working out he does. Max, of course, has to do something about this and starts investigating the surprisingly shady history of Jimmy’s Gym. Produced by Jack Pryce of Pryce Professionals as a feature length advertisement it was turned into a vampire film on the insistence of the hired director, Calvin Hardwick, a director of gay pornography turned low budget horror peddler. When it was released it was met with derision by horror aficionados – as any film that ignores one of the central tenets of vampire mythology like their aversion to sunlight without explanation will – it still found itself a cult following, especially among fans of eighties cheese and muscle-bound men.

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Horror, Imaginary Japanese Cinema

#203 – Rancid House

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(1982, Jap, 75 min) Dir Kan Tan.

In the early eighties Kan Tan, director of the mostly offensive and fairly popular Apartment Lust and Zoom Lens series, found himself regarded as nothing more than an also ran. His scheme was to channel his unpleasantness into what he imagined would be his definitive filmic statement before taking his own life and fortunately for him his plot backfired – the vile and shoddy Rancid House found itself an audience and not just locally either. An aspirant British distributor called Phil Roget caught the film on a stopover from the Philippines and immediately negotiated the rights for the burgeoning UK video market where the gross schlock of Lucio Fulci et al was going over a storm. Unfortunately for Roget his title was released in 1984 just as the Video Recordings Act was kicked into play and was immediately banned. Once the laws were relaxed in the early 2000’s it was finally released but without much fanfare. If your idea of a good time is to watch a trio of schoolgirls try to survive a night in a house with scabbed walls and a basement full of pus where they can’t sleep for five minutes without being hosed with maggots or assaulted by invisible molesters and flying razor blades then be sure to check out the shoddily transferred copy currently being plied under the Electric Video Company name – all Tan’s attempts at depravity are hilariously undercut by his own ineptitude to create a film of unmissable craptitude.

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Horror, Imaginary Italian Cinema

#186 – Giungla Che Derise, La (Laughing Jungle, The)

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(1981, It, 101 min) Dir Marco Pastrami. Cast Robert Yorke, Gabriel Ciardi, Francesca Pirkanen, Perry Giorgio.

Poor Marco Pastrami – a more gentle-hearted would-be exploitation filmmaker you would be hard pressed to find. A dedicated leech on the hide of success, he followed Il Pugile (The Boxer, his Rocky knock off) with The Laughing Jungle, his own entry to the burgeoning cannibal film genre. Unfortunately for him while Ruggero Deodato, for example, had the imagination to come up with all kind of graphic horrors to depict and the constitution to walk into a jungle and start slaughtering animals for the camera too, Pastrami couldn’t even bring himself to look at Francesca Pirkanen’s breasts during the filming of the obligatory nudity, apparently directing the action with a pillowcase over his head. So what we have instead is a film where the violence is accompanied with all the realism of actual tomato ketchup, jungles which look as much like the Amazon as you can find in northern Italy and Amazonian tribespeople who are really just short actors in fake tan and bowl haircuts. So tame a film that it was only in the cannibal genre to survive the UK government’s ‘Video Nasty’ witchhunt.

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Horror, Imaginary Japanese Cinema

#177 – Dr. X

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(2000, Jap, 91 min) Dir Hiroya Hino. Cast Yukie Inoue, Mitsuo Ibaraki, Kon Ito.

Based on the Japanese urban legend of the masked doctor. In case you haven’t heard of it, it goes like this – you’re on your own and you fall maybe and hurt yourself and from a nearby side street or even from out of the bushes appears this man in a long white coat and a surgical mask offering to help. If this ever happens to you get up and run as fast as you can no matter how badly you’re hurt – the legend goes that if this mysterious helpful passerby were to lift up his mask you wouldn’t return to tell people what you saw. So how has this slim premise become another film in the J-Horror canon? Nanako is at home one day waiting for her son Rikiya to get home from school but he never arrives. Asking about she hears from one of his classmates that he saw Rikiya fall and a tall man in a white coat and face mask appear to help him. The young boy won’t tell her any more. Later, when the old man Hiroyuki turns up at her doorstep to tell her about his own son who went missing thirty years before and shows her the drawing of the masked man, at that point Nanako’s desperate search is on. An eerie urban nightmare in a rare display of restraint from director Hino (Dark Tentacles, the uncomfortable Gynaecologist series).

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Twitter: @MadeUpFilms