Nightmare (1981)

You’ve gotta love a film that straight away states its intent (and understand a film which needs to sell its merits pretty damn quickly) and Nightmare (1981) does both of these things. We’re off with a dream of a dismembered body, a shrieking nightmare, a man in a straightjacket – and the immediate need to sedate him, so powerful are his dreams. Then come the opening credits – a gloriously early 80s run of red and black, and a claim that Tom Savini did the SFX, which he categorically denies. No messing about, then. The film has established itself as a gory, feverish, bloody unpleasant film and it does not disappoint at any point during its runtime.

Director Romano Scavolini gets ahead of the trend by about thirty-five years by adding intertitles here: the film is carved up into days, and you may be surprised by how much happens on each particular day. Hence, Night One: a babysitter’s trite dismissal of kids complaining that ‘someone is looking through the window’ segues into more dreams and flashbacks, but establishes that this is, in fact, an early American slasher (albeit with an Italian director). Our guy in the straightjacket is George Tatum (Baird Stafford), and his mental plight is of great interest to a crack team of psychiatrists and other medical professionals, who, for reasons best known to themselves, see in him the prospect of a total recovery from his conditions (and it’s quite a list – worthy of a Twitter bio). Of course George isn’t successfully cured – this would be a short, and likely very dull film if he were – but, right as rain, his care team turn him out onto the streets of New York anyway, jacked up with experimental medication and operating on the promise of turning up to outpatients once in a while. George does the obvious thing and instead heads to 42nd Street to sequester himself in a peep show or two. But the flashbacks are breaking through already: ladies and gentlemen, this is only the first day of the timeline proper, and George’s mind is already fracturing.

On Day Two – Day Two! George decides to head off on a road trip. His rather woolly psychiatrist finally notices he hasn’t arrived to his session, but doesn’t really think much beyond that for now: in the meantime, George is heading out of state which, if bad news for the experimental treatment programme, is by far worse news for a number of innocent women he encounters on his way. On his way to where, though? He seems to be particularly fixated on one address and one family in particular: he keeps calling, then hanging up, but he seems to be closing in on the household, which consists of one single mother and children. Will the treatment team deign to catch up with George before he catches up with this family, with which he has certain…ties? (It’s not looking all that likely, is it?)

Nightmare, sometimes known by the rather more embellished Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, is part of horror history. The film’s role in the whole video nasties furore is well known – but is it a film which deserves to be seen today? Actually, it is. For starters, it’s a well made, shot and lit film with a superb score, already confident enough in its use of horror and plot tropes to throw a few red herrings in there from time to time. Scavolini knows what he’s doing, and it shows. It’s also an undoubtedly OTT, gory and profoundly mean-spirited vision; unlike many of its peers, swept onto the video nasties lists for still mystifying reasons, Nightmare is, at least, a genuinely nasty video. It may be over forty years old at the time of writing, but it still looks and feels ambitious, without ever compromising on its visual style and themes. Ungoverned by most of the concerns which frequently hem in today’s filmmakers, it can be gratuitous and salacious (nudity often, suddenly breaks out in Nightmare) without feeling it needs to resolve things, or dish out comeuppances in the right proportions to the ‘right’ people. None of this makes Nightmare a nice film. But it does lend it a strangely refreshing, unconcerned quality.

It doesn’t seem to have set out to change the world, then – but Nightmare does have a few features which distinguish it further, especially at a distance of forty years from now. Its cynical spin on psychiatric medicine is interesting; clearly pride comes before a fall in the world of the film, as it’s the self-congratulatory, laissez-faire attitude of George Tatum’s doctors which sets the ball rolling here. It’s not a social commentary as such, but the film does offer an interesting take on what itself is a rather voyeuristic and potentially harmful branch of medicine, as seen in the world of the film at least. I mean, if we’re looking for moral lessons here – not advised, but possible – you could even say that not leaving your children with a disinterested babysitter could be one of them. We could take it further, and say that having children at all is a risky business, as the film plays with the furthest extremes of the nature/nurture debate.

But perhaps the film’s quality as a time capsule is where its secondary charms really lie. Now, 42nd Street is, for most people reading this review or about to pick up the Severin print of this film, someone else’s nostalgia. But it feels like our nostalgia anyway, even if for most of us always refracted through oddball exploitation and horror cinema from the past. Something else which now feels like it belongs to the past is the role of the landline telephone: the terror of it ringing, the potentially unknown weirdo on the other end, its relationship to your home, where you should feel most secure. A withheld number on a smartphone is just not scary in the same way; today, horror is more interested in phones when they don’t work, rather than when they do – but I digress. The film retains its grainy, retro look, by the way, but this print looks extraordinarily good, clean enough to be fully legible, with great colour balance and blacks which really pop off the screen. Nightmare in this version feels both near and far, looking and sounding as good as you can imagine it ever could. All in all, this is a fascinating, if grotty trip down memory lane balanced against a still watchable. engaging, unapologetic horror film, and as such it comes highly recommended. You could do far, far worse than head over to Severin and pick up a copy, which comes with a clutch of excellent special features, or click here if you’re a UK reader.

Ride Baby Ride (2023)

A sinister opening reel turns out to be something everyday – a car engine – in snappy supernatural short Ride Baby Ride (2023), showing us straightaway that all our woes are going to be vehicular – starting with the pair of geezers hoping to sell on the car in question, though treating themselves to a bit of sexist nonsense when it turns out their female mechanic (egad! Celina Bernstein) not only knows what she’s doing, but drives a hard bargain on the resale price. Who, I ask you, in that entirely reasonable position, wouldn’t simulate intercourse with the car, or start describing the mechanic as ‘a little spicy’? She looks on, honestly seeming a little tired of the shenanigans. You get the sense this happens more often than she’d like.

But is there more to these guys? Is it the car that’s ‘a little spicy’? A few minutes later and you might be asking yourself whether the car might not have had some kind of supernatural influence on them, because it seems like the car is in fact supernatural. Once inside the garage, it starts – doing things. Oozing. Flinging open its doors. And, if this could be put down to the car’s vintage (a ’78 Camaro!) and condition – well, perhaps not the oozing – it’s soon clearer that there’s something else going on here when, as the mechanic investigates the car’s strange quirks, it seemingly deliberately mangles her leg, then traps her inside.

Cars are claustrophobic at the best of times – probably the smallest enclosed spaces we routinely occupy – but things get quickly far, far worse with our now panicked protagonist trying to free herself from seatbelts which may have taken some cues from the Deadite-infested branches in Evil Dead (in several key respects, from soundtrack to scenes to titles, this film clearly pays its dues to the great horrors of the 80s). As the car really shows its hand (!) this turns into an impressively bloody battle of wills, woman vs. machine, and this is a spirited solo performance from Celina Bernstein in a film which manages to be genuinely ominous, as well as in other moments grisly and OTT. With a runtime of seven minutes, writer and director Sofie Somoroff knows better than to get bogged down in an origins story for the supernatural presence here – it just is, it’s nasty, and it becomes an issue of survival.

Ride Baby Ride offers a simple idea nicely executed, calling on the likes of Maximum Overdrive (1986) and more recently perhaps, King Car, but keeping things in the horror vein, taking a real relish in building up to scenes of genuine peril and bloodshed – no mean feat with a just a few minutes at your disposal. It’s a stylish, well-made calling card all in all, and you can see it on horror short film channel Alter from the week of March 11th. In fact, here’s a link: have at it!

Interview: Joanna Tsanis, director of short film Smile (2021)

Continuing with Warped Perspective’s interviews with the directors behind ARROW Player’s recent Sharp Shorts, we asked director Joanna Tsanis about her own short film – a very brief, super-focused study of depression, grief and fear. Oh, and it’s a monster film, too. Here’s our conversation about Smile (2021).

Warped Perspective: This is a very brief short film, but it packs a powerful psychological message. How easy or hard was that to achieve, given the short film format?

Joanna Tsanis: It’s funny – the film was initially going to be even shorter. It all started with an idea I had for a horror gimmick – that gimmick being a woman smiling so hard that her face rips off. The original script was less than two pages long and I had planned to submit it to micro-short and 1-minute horror competitions. But when my screenplay was picked up by NYC-based company Zeus Pictures, they suggested I expand it to five pages. That was 100% the right call, and I really appreciated that motivation to develop the gimmick into a full story.

Though it can be a challenge to fit a story’s necessary character development in a 5-6 minute frame, the limitations force you to be more creative. Besides the quick voicemail in the opening, the film has no dialogue. I had to really focus on telling the story of Anna through her surroundings, her movements, and her expressions. It was a challenge, but an exciting one.

WP: The monster in Smile feels very much like a personification of that demand – often made of people who are suffering with depression – to ‘just smile’, whatever they might be feeling inside. Is that a fair interpretation? What did you want audiences to take away from your film?

JT: It is a dark irony. Everyone wants Anna to be happy. Her mom wants her to be happy. She wants to be happy. But the idea of her ever smiling again seems at an impossible distance. That is until her depression manifests into something truly monstrous and gives her that smile she longed for. Her fate is cruel but it is not unheard of. Anyone with a loved one that has struggled with depression understands this.

WP: Did you draw any inspiration for your creature from other films or other works, or is there someplace else that creature came from? It’s a very effective monster!

JT: Hellraiser was definitely an inspiration for the creature design. I wanted the monster to look like it was in pain simply from existing; hence it being wrapped in barbed wire, and the wire pulling its mouth into an outstretched grin.

WP: You’ve stuck very firmly with the horror genre for your films so far – can you tell us why the genre appeals to you so much?

JT: Growing up, I would visit my family in Greece every summer. Having spent most of my life in Canada, it was too hot in the afternoon for me there. So I’d stay in and watch the English-speaking channels. Anyone who is familiar with afternoon television in Southern Europe knows the kind of wild stuff that’s on there. I saw B-movies, midnight movies – all kinds of stuff. And I remember absolutely loving that feeling of ‘seeing what you’re not supposed to see’ – peeking behind the curtain. I think that’s what hooked me.

WP: What are you working on next? Do you intend on making a feature, or sticking with shorts? It certainly helps that short films are finding an audience more easily these days with Arrow, Alter etc.

JT: I recently finished my feature debut! It’s a monster movie (of course)…

Many thanks to Joanna for her time.

Interview with Susannah Farrugia, director of short film Itch (2021)

Part of the recently-reviewed ‘Sharp Shorts’ package, Itch (2021) plays with ideas around faith, mental illness and temptation, and seemed like a project we wanted to explore a little more. Having recently reviewed the title, we were fortunate to next get the opportunity to speak to the director of Itch, Susannah Farrugia, and we’re grateful to her for taking the time to answer a few questions on the film. Please remember: you can see the film for yourself right now by heading to the Arrow streaming service.

Without further ado, onto the questions:

Warped Perspective/Keri: My first question has to be – what drew you towards a convent for this story? Why a convent, why nuns?

Susannah Farrugia: I come from Malta, which is a very Roman Catholic country; that is condensed within churches and convents, so it is a subject matter I am very familiar with and have always wanted to explore in film, especially since some of my favourite films are The Sound of Music (1965) and Black Narcissus (1947). The main reason was based on practicality and budget – choose a location where it would narratively make sense for the characters never to leave – and a convent offers that. Together with this, I am inspired by nunsploitation, and wanted to invert the tropes through a feminine, queer lens.

WP: Tell us about the decision to present your film in black and white. Was this always your intention? Were you influenced by anything in particular in this respect?

SF: I always imagined the film in black-and-white, inspired by the monochromatic hues of a nun’s habit. I have my own reading that it parallels Sister Jude’s binary black-and-white thinking of good and evil, heaven and hell, purity and filth. I considered colour and tested the material in colour, yet it did not seem comparable to what it looked like, and more importantly felt like, in black-and-white. I would say another inspiration for my choice is body horror Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), which manages to heighten the horror by removing the colour of blood.

Another choice which interfolds with the colour is the film’s time. In some ways, I believe the film to take place inside a timeless era, where we are not exactly sure if what we are watching is in the 19th Century or modern-day, because all we know are the walls inside the convent where time moves extra slowly. Forever locked inside the life of a cloistered nun, time loses its meaning and the only way we can tell time is by how fast blood moves down her wrist.

WP: It is interesting that, in the film, Sister Jude is quite well aware of what is tormenting her: how important was that in creating her character, and her contested mindset?

SF: There is a helplessness one must surrender to when dealing with illness. Your body can externalise internal trauma and this is a theme I feel is very relevant to the film. She is aware of her desires, but her knowledge only adds to the torment. The cycle of suppression is substantiated with guilt and anger which moves the narrative, so the self-awareness is pivotal to her characterisation and the last frame of the film. The contested mindset is explored in the same vein as her black-and-white thinking.

WP: The film is more psychological than graphically violent, but still has a number of unpleasant sequences which border on body horror – did you debate about what you wanted to show and what you didn’t want to show in the film?

SF: I think the psychological narrative allows the violence to be tethered to reality, but not part of it. The unpleasantness and visceral nature of body horror never truly occurs but happens nonetheless in the dreamscape.

SF: Itch is your first short film and you both wrote and directed it: did you enjoy the experience, and is it your intent to go on and make more films? If so, do you have any plans?

I’m superstitious, so the less I say the better! However, I do plan on making more films and you can keep up to date with me across my several Instagram channels: @cinema.ink, @itch.film, @makeupincinema, @nunsinsinema, and @cakesincinema.

Create or Die (2024)

“I am happy to make bad movies – one a year until I die.” This is how documentary film Create or Die (2024) gets going, and the speaker – indie movie director David Axe (above) – is the subject of the film. However, any expectations that this film will offer something bigger and more profound about the nature of indie filmmaking – such as, perhaps, what motivates low-budget filmmakers as a group to keep doing what they do – doesn’t materialise. Rather, Create or Die keeps a very close focus on Axe himself, plus his regular crew, describing his most recent feature in some detail and at points ruminating on the reasons that he personally keeps going. Shorn of any knowledge or understanding of his own career to date (I haven’t seen anything he’s made, though I’m sure that kind of makes his point about the pitfalls of his career) the film can feel a little rootless.

After introductions, the film moves to promo for one of Axe’s projects, a film called Acorn (2023) which, although starting life as something else entirely, morphed into a film-within-a-film where the embedded film symbolically reflects the main character’s life. The main character in Acorn is a filmmaker too, who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis and decides she’s going to finish one more film in the time she has left. Having established this, Axe begins to discuss his background as a self-taught filmmaker, having at the point the documentary was filmed made seven films in seven years. This is an approach he intends to keep up until he ‘gets good at it’, though of course making a miniscule-budget feature every year isn’t the only way to get good at it; lots of indie filmmakers spend years prepping and making their films. There are different ways and means, though this method happens to be the one Axe has chosen (and he doesn’t really reflect on other options or get too far into defending his approach, which would have been interesting to hear).

The documentary, at this point, segues into a run of recollections from Axe and his crew members which are very specific to making Acorn – though could be extrapolated to many other low-budget projects, and may be of particular interest to filmmakers as a result. But there’s lots of detail about making Acorn: the length of the shoot, the length of the days, location scouting, the weather, the issues around what to prioritise when you have a list of a hundred tasks and time for ten of them; these specifics were lost on this reviewer, and from around the midway point this becomes, more or less, a documentary about Acorn, an unfamiliar film. As such, discussing excerpts from the script which are clearly intended to be very moving surely can’t do much for unfamiliar audiences. Yes, there are some deviations into the huge fail rate on indie projects, for example, and other topics which may have a broader appeal, but for the most part Create or Die is dominated almost entirely by talking heads talking about a specific film.

That’s fine, but as someone who runs a website which so often covers exactly the sorts of films being alluded to here, it feels like there are lots of questions which could have been asked and answered. An often rather po-faced Axe ponders, ‘Is it okay to be a bad filmmaker?’ before asserting that yes, yes it is. Okay, sure, but there are other complexities to explore here. As above: why exactly is churning out a film per year the best approach, given that making money is seen as largely impossible (albeit there are many baffling exceptions – remember Skinamarink)? What about audiences? What is your relationship with them? What about the issues of reaching an audience? Should we enjoy the story you are telling or – as it often seems here, whether fairly or otherwise – is it more for the personal validation of the director and team? Let’s assume a film is low-budget, but brilliant – what makes it so? Or if it is a ‘bad movie’, of which the best are those which are so-bad-they’re-good – something that can never be artificially engineered, by the way – why is it still an enjoyable experience? There seems to be some discrepancy here between declaring ‘indie films are ridiculous’ and ‘indie films are significant, profound and symbolic’, which could perhaps have been fleshed out by more overarching discussion.

Of course, I could be doing Create or Die the extreme disservice of judging it on what it never set out to be (though its title and blurb – without the addition of The Making of Acorn being carried on Amazon Prime – arguably do suggest it will consider the vexed question of cinema and creativity). As a film fan who has never been the other side of a camera, there does still seem to be a lot to learn about the process which isn’t in the remit here. No doubt the film’s focus will cost it a broader audience, too. As it stands however, Create or Die is a decently-edited film with a modest runtime, making a modest contribution to the world of behind-the-scenes filmmaking, though more about the specific experiences of a small team than the bigger picture at play.

Create or Die (2023) is available now on Amazon Prime and Xumo.

Interview: Craig Williams, director

On occasion, you see a film – whether a short film or a feature – and something about it stays with you afterwards. Something about the visuals, perhaps, or some ingenious touch to the plot, or its characters – or perhaps some of its hints of a universe existing on its periphery, not fully extrapolated, but intact and understood nonetheless. As such, I’ve been pondering some of the finer details of short film The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras a lot since seeing and reviewing the film a few weeks ago; I’d go so far as to say that it meets all of the criteria above, and has successfully got under my skin. Keen to find out more, I was very happy to speak to the director and writer of Wyrm, Craig Williams, who kindly agreed to answer some of my questions.

Many thanks to Craig and the team for taking the time to speak to Warped Perspective. Much appreciated!

Warped Perspective/Keri: My first question is actually about your striking opening credits: they look reminiscent of other, older folk horror films (though of course that impression dissipates as soon as the characters in the film start using modern tech, like mobile phones, which has a great destabilising impact for the audience). Was getting the right tone on those opening credits important to you? And I have to ask – did any particular films inspire them?

Craig Williams: I absolutely love the genre films of the 70s; the kind of films the great film writer Michael Weldon would class as psychotronic. The work of Jess Franco, Dario Argento, Jean Rollin, etc. – that’s my aesthetic ideal. But I wanted to channel the spirit of that era in a modern genre film by juxtaposing Hammer-style credits, familiar folk horror reference points and an arcane-sounding title with a more grounded, quotidian vision of the present day in rural Wales (eg: the mobile phone, new model Range Rover and also the cable ties on Dafydd as he is marched up the hill).

The titles were designed by the artist Richard Wells, who has worked on so many films and TV programmes that I love, including Doctor WhoIn the Earth and several of Mark Gatiss’s shows. I’ve been a huge fan of his work for years, so I knew from the outset that I wanted to ask him to design the posters and titles for Wyrm, and we were so thrilled that he agreed to do it. I know it’s a bit of an indulgence to have the titles appear at the beginning of a short film, but I hope they help set the tone. Given that nothing supernatural happens for the first fifteen minutes of the film, I still wanted to give a clear indication of where it was going, genre and influence-wise, and I think the titles are instrumental in that.

WP: Your film is presented in Welsh language. Whilst there have been more and more genre titles emerging over the past ten years which use Welsh, such as – quite recently – The Feast/Gwledd (2021) – was this in any way a difficult decision for you or the team? Or was using the Welsh language always the plan for The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras?

CW: With Gwledd, Lee Havan-Jones has shown that Welsh-language horror can succeed on the international stage. I think we’ll start to see the impact of that playing out over the next few years. He’s done an amazing thing. 

The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras was originally written in English with some scenes in Welsh. The night before we were due to shoot, one of the actors asked whether I was open to shooting English and Welsh versions of the film side-by-side which, thanks to the pioneering work of Ed Thomas and Ffion Williams at Fiction Factory, has become more common with high-profile Welsh television shows. Julien Allen (my producer and creative partner on the film) and I had considered this approach from the beginning, but we were worried it was too much to ask of everyone, especially with such a tight shooting schedule. But the cast and crew were enthused by the idea and so encouraging, so that’s what we ended up doing. 

We have therefore cut two completed versions of the film, one in English (with some Welsh at the end) and one purely in Welsh (with only a line from Dai in English). But it soon became evident to us during the post process that the Welsh version felt richer and more true to the material, so that’s the one we ended up submitting to festivals. I am so pleased we took this approach – Welsh is my first language, so this version of the film also feels more personal and meaningful to me.

WP: I think I’m right in saying that another working title for the film was Arswyd Bwlch Pen Barras (which I also think I’m right in saying translates to The Horror of Bwlch Pen Barras) – so if I do have that correct, and pardon my almost negligible Welsh if I’m wrong, what drove the title change to invoke something quite specific from British folklore, the idea of a ‘wyrm’?

CW: We initially thought the Welsh version of the film would need a Welsh language title but we ultimately decided that we loved “Wyrm” so much that it had be the title of both versions. I know there are many different iterations of the “wyrm” in folklore, but the version I was drawing on was the dragon from Beowulf. The dragon is the dominant symbol of Wales, and it’s a symbol of national pride, strength and unity, but in the local myths, dragons often have a more ambiguous and nefarious significance. There are still folk stories which carry symbolic weight today in which dragons protect villages – for a price, and I wanted to draw on that idea in the context of a horror film. 

WP: What else influenced your storytelling here – this fairly remote, fairly traditional society, but one with a strange secret and codes of behaviour surrounding it? Some of the horror, and the beauty, reminded me a lot of a short story by L.T.C. Rolt called Cwm Garon – I don’t know if you know it – but it has the same sense of something unspeakable, something secretive linked to the Welsh landscape which lays claim to people (though outsiders, in this case).

CW: I love Cwm Garon. In fact, I first came across it in an anthology of folk horror stories edited by Richard Wells, who designed our titles and poster. It’s a wonderful story. In terms of specific Welsh influences, there’s also the work of Arthur Machen and two wonderful Welsh language folk horror films directed by Wil Aaron called Gwaed Ar Y Ser (Blood on the Stars) and O’r Ddaear Hen (From the Old Earth). In terms of British horror, stuff like Blood on Satan’s Claw and Requiem for a Village were at the forefront of my mind, as were films like The Shout, Frightmare, Straight on Till Morning, And Soon the Darkness etc.. 

The writer Kim Newman said that folk horror is often created from townies visiting the countryside, which I think is absolutely correct. It’s where much of the sense of isolation, paranoia and discomfort come from. It’s why films like Straw Dogs can feel like folk horror, even though they’re clearly going for something different. But we shot this film in my hometown, the place where I spent the first twenty years of my life. So I was approaching it from a different perspective – that of an insider who left and came back, which itself comes with a range of mixed feelings.

WP: The film manages, in a very subtle way, to suggest that whatever code or ritual is being passed down through the generations in this village, something is not working as it should. That adds to the horror, as it implies this ritual, if we can call it that, is no longer effective. Is that a fair interpretation? 

CW: Absolutely. I didn’t want the film to show the first or last time this ritual happened – I wanted it to feel like it had become all-too familiar to the participants, almost to the point where it’s now a frustration or annoyance. But, as you noted, the wrinkle is the suggestion that the frequency of the ritual is increasing, which starts to destabilise the established dynamic between the parties and hopefully increase the sense of portent. Why is it becoming more frequent? When will it not be enough?

WP: Speaking of subtlety: did you always know you wouldn’t actually ‘show’ the horror itself? Tell us about that.

CW: The guiding principle throughout was author Ramsey Campbell’s comments about the stories of M.R. James: “[they] show just enough to suggest far worse.” Practically speaking, we couldn’t have shown anything on the budget we had so it was never an option, but I don’t think I would have wanted to anyway. The title tells us what the creature is, so there’s no ambiguity about that, but we still have room to imagine ourselves how it would actually look. I often think of the scene in Kill List where Neil Maskell’s character reacts to a horrifing video – we don’t see what’s on the video, we just see his petrified reaction. It’s such a powerful and disturbing moment. 

WP: Have you been pleased with the reception of your film, and where next for The Wyrm..? Do you have plans for any new projects?

CW: I’ve wanted to make a film since I was a child, but I was always scared that it was something I wouldn’t be able to do. I’ve written scripts for years but never done anything with them. My son was born in 2021 and I didn’t want him to grow up and realise that his father gave up on his dream, so I knew I had to get out of my own way and just do it. So, given how much making the film meant to me, a part of me was nervous about putting it out in the world, but the reaction has been better than I could have ever wished for. People have been so kind about the film and I am so grateful to everyone who has taken the time to watch it and to the programmers, distributors, writers and podcasters who have supported it. I feel genuinely emotional and overwhelmed when I think of everyone who has helped make this whole thing happen.

Julien (left) and Craig

As for new projects, Julien and I are working on something at the moment that we’re both dying to speak about, but we don’t want to say anything until it’s fully confirmed. We will hopefully have some news to share shortly. For now, I’ll just say it’s another Welsh-language project in a similar register to The Wyrm...

For more information on The Wyrm of Pen Bwlch Barras, you can check out the official website.

Cold Meat (2023)

It’s the run-up to Christmas and, somewhere in a remote corner of Colorado, a lone traveller is off on a road trip, despite the treacherous conditions. He stops his car at a roadside café, but it seems that something is unfolding there: as the last customers depart for the day, leaving only our traveller – David – the waitress, Ana (Nina Bergman) has apparently been fielding a series of unhinged texts and calls from her estranged husband. She puts on a brave face, but – irrespective of the fact that David is sat there – the husband turns up, threatening, demanding, threatening, demanding.

This puts our guy David (Allen Leech) in a quandary: help her? Or recede into the background? He decides on the former, getting into a nasty conflict with Vincent (Yan Tual) as a result, but he successfully talks Vincent down in a well-acted and scripted sequence of events which feels like a genuinely tense situation. Things only lull momentarily however: after receiving Ana’s gratitude for his pains, David is back on the road again, but Vincent is soon on his tail, having presumably already jettisoned the sound moral lesson meted out back at the café.

So it seems as though a game of cat-and-mouse is to ensue through this remote and hazardous stretch of the Rockies – in the dark, with a snow storm incoming. This would, by the by, serve for a great horror film on its own terms, in the right hands – a kind of Tailgate (2019) On Ice – but quickly, startlingly, Cold Meat begins to cycle through a range of different possible horror genres. We’re clearly faced with the horrors of the dark and the cold; there’s potentially a dangerous and sexually-jealous male out there; in fact, what could the film’s title actually mean? It’s a fairly workaday horror title, but still ambiguous: actually, I’d be all for scrapping the female voiceover during the opening credits, leaving things entirely to the audience to fathom, even though that would deprive the film of a neat moment of circularity later on in its runtime. But back to where we were: panicked, pursued and feeling the heat (ironically), David veers off the road, running his car into a sizeable snowdrift.

Is it bizarre that our Mr Rational is travelling by night, in the Rockies, without a snow shovel? Yes – the film does have a couple of moments where basic incredulity comes close to impeding on the film as a whole – but regardless, he can’t free his car, there’s a blizzard raging, and he decides to just hunker down for the night. So this is a survival horror now? David passes an uncomfortable night and, as planned, tries to look for help the following morning, where it’s clear just how much snow has fallen. Just as it could be a road movie, it could be an introspective nightmare of survival, but – as we soon find out – there’s more, far more than the cold to contend with here. In a dark twist, the film begins the real about-face work, disrupting, changing tack and introducing a range of ideas and threats to its audience.

It’s hopefully not to spoiler the film to point out that a lot of it takes place inside a vehicle, and as such, it needs good characters and a great script to stave off indifference. We very definitely get that here. David immediately comes across as an eminently decent, plausible man. He’s not quite an Everyman character – because most of us aren’t brave enough to tackle a potentially violent, spitting stranger – but he comes across well, which is important in a whole range of ways in how the film plays out. Kudos to Allen Leech for that, and to Yan Tual too, who does a great job of being David’s unreasonable Other: Vincent is splenetic, vindictive – and a bullying brat of a man, a danger to himself and others. Are these impressions accurate? The question seems answered, but then something else occurs. There are other characters too; they are equally valuable, and equally well-written, and the film uses the relationships between them, as well as other, external factors to perform abrupt bait-and-switch moments but also, gradual, casual, devastating reveals. Appearances are always deceptive in Cold Meat. We also get dreams and flashbacks which add texture and interest, but always more questions.

Just as interiors are of vital importance here, so are the exteriors, and the film makes great use of the landscape; it’s quick off off the mark with those intimidating, dangerous, unlit routes (there’s something so evocative about a car’s headlights picking up the next-to-nothing of a dark, mysterious road). It feels entirely plausible that someone could be buried in the snow out here and never found. It is certainly a cold-feeling film, too: the audio, as well as the visuals, make sure of that. The jeopardy is realistic. The early-stage frostbite looks convincing. All of this, and then more going on out there: a couple of very minor lulls are more than forgivable, given the devastating developments to follow.

As things progress, you see more and more that the film contains a sickly layer of misogyny, one which hits all the harder because it all stems from very commonly- and casually-held attitudes about women. These are often taken to their grimmest conclusions in horror of course, but they stem from something recognisable, and Cold Meat signals early that it knows this. The battle of wills aspect in the film hits all the harder for this early signalling, and the film is even confident enough to have its characters self-reflect on this, and other horror truisms along the way. Whilst it feels like accidental good timing that Cold Meat is releasing hot on the heels of True Detective: Night Country with its own long, dark roads and monstrous aspects, it is its own beast for sure. Filmed in just twelve days, and the first feature by director Sébastien Drouin, this is a tense and successful story which will surprise you. Recommended, and worth seeing without risking the news coverage by some of the larger horror outlets, quite honestly. It deserves to grant audiences those discomfiting surprises.

Cold Meat (2023) will be released in the UK on 26th February.

Devil’s Advocates: I Walked with a Zombie by Clive Dawson

Ah, it’s been a while since I reviewed a Devil’s Advocates title. For anyone not currently in the know about this series of books: they’re each focused on an influential horror film, each book has a different author, and offers different kinds of focus and perspectives, but without fail you can expect a detailed, academic-lite study of the selected film title (and there are over fifty books in the series, to date). Clive Dawson’s book is on the seminal Val Lewton work, I Walked with a Zombie (1943). It’s a timely study: so often, IWWAZ tends to crop up in zombie film books which are en route to writing about the Romero ‘ghoul’ type of zombie, and can feel a little like a pit-stop – which is clearly unfair to such an innovative piece of cinema. Dawson redresses that here, in a five-chapter book (adding up to a little over a hundred pages). There’s an introduction, a full bibliography and, helpfully, a reference list at the end of each chapter, too. He begins the introduction by spending time cementing IWWAZ as a very important title, looking at it alongside Lewton’s other most important early work The Cat People; as these two titles appeared within months of each other, they suggested that Lewton’s groundbreaking style wasn’t simply a fluke, and they each helped to bolster his early reputation as a careful and conscientious producer.

Dawson also provides early evidence of how IWWAZ pushed narrative boundaries, at a time when narrative cinema was still in its relative infancy. However, Dawson refers to Lewton’s “modest revolution”, one not always best served by lurid publicity campaigns, even accepting that RKO were already struggling by the 1940s, grasping at straws, or else simply wrongheadedly doing what they saw as best in trying to promote their roster. Lewton’s was a modest revolution, then, because his style and approach was so often markedly different to those taken by his professional peers. However, revolutionary it certainly still was. Drawing on literary influences like Jane Eyre and Rebecca, challenging accepted attitudes to representations of race and colonialism; Dawson puts across a strong case for Lewton as a revolutionary filmmaker, and you could perhaps suggest that Dawson’s own enthusiastic but measured tone seems to echo Lewton’s own.

Chapter 1 offers some background on Lewton’s early life and how his production unit came to be. These two things are linked together: Val Lewton’s early experiences as a writer, then as a story editor and finally as a new ‘horror guy’ whose role would be to generate new styles of horror – horror to rival Universal’s own highly successful version of same – each overlap with one another. Yet it was all a big gamble for Lewton, who privately agonised about the financial insecurity of his career. Still, he took on the task – officially as a producer, albeit a very involved one, keen to push the artistic freedoms being granted, while they were still being granted. Think Covid was hard on filmmaking? Try World War II, where everything from fuel allowances to the critical presentation of anything deemed antithetical to American interests could change, or even be pulled at any point, jeopardising entire projects. And then there was the burning question: how will audiences respond to this kind of nuanced, literary horror? Dawson successfully provides a sense of the great affordances and limitations surrounding the birth of the film.

In terms of context, there’s some interesting information about the short story Lewton based the film upon, and the treatment of its author, Inez Wallace (often mistakenly identified as a male author) – albeit that her own story didn’t come out of a blue sky, and owed some debt to pre-existing authors (William Seabrook, for one). The reading public had already been tantalised with certain ideas of ‘zombies’ by the time of the film’s inception, something with which Lewton had to tread quite carefully to secure his own screenplay, and the development of the film’s script is discussed here – something which turned out to be quite a complex process. At this point, Dawson gives some consideration to the relationship between Lewton and director of IWWAZ, Jacques Tourneur, considering the notion of auteurship – but briefly, and it doesn’t shift the focus of the book. At this point (Chapter 3) there’s a detailed walk-through of the film itself, including mention of a deleted ending, and then a section on the film’s critical reception, early promotion and release (both at home in the US and, where the recorded information allows, overseas). This part of the book has a bittersweet element, noting how Lewton’s successes quickly built his reputation, but that reputation placed ever greater demands upon him and his health. He died at the tragically young age of forty-six, having suffered his first heart attack at just forty-one. But the book ends on a more positive note with an informative assessment of the film’s influence on other works, in its own decade and far beyond it.

Dawson’s book is a pleasure to read. It boasts wonderfully clear prose which unpicks a great deal of information and presents it back to us is a nicely flowing, easy to follow format. This also ensures a calm, considered and well-evidenced approach to the film, including dispelling myths and misconceptions about it wherever necessary. It’s obvious that there’s a wealth of research and knowledge at play here, though never crowding the text with dry stats or else losing focus. The book doesn’t opt for any particularly left-field or academic kinds of critique – there’s no long deviations into Deleuze, for example – but sticks closely with the film itself, discussing context as and when it springs from the film itself, rather than seeking to apply it. There are no axes to grind here. It’s a good approach, it’s a consistent approach, and all in all, this is an enjoyable, fresh and timely study of a film which clearly still rewards audiences eighty years after its inception.

To buy a copy of I Walked with a Zombie, please head direct to LUP in the UK, and to Amazon in the US.

A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023)

When you so much as glimpse the subject matter of A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (Una jauría llamada Ernesto), you may come away with certain expectations, so this review will start by explaining what Wolfpack is not. Despite being about Mexican cartel-linked violence and its impact on communities, this is not an ultraviolent, deliberately shocking, ‘hail of bullets’ treatment of street crime. It is shocking, but that shock comes on slowly, and via rather unusual means. No, this take on the documentary format hands us an unconventional and humane take on its subject, one which feels very immediate, very real and everyday: this is its key strength. It won’t be for everyone, but it absolutely deserves to be seen and evaluated on its many merits.

As the opening credits roll, and before we get a picture to accompany the sound, there seems to be a game of basketball taking place – so immediately we get a sense of an urban location, and (most likely) a young, male group of players. When we get visuals this turns out to be a correct guess, and we’re thrown straight into in medias res as we play catch-up with a group of young guys chatting about…well, we’re never really privy to the conversations taking place on screen. They fade in and out, or they’re too quiet to be heard; they’re not for us. We also have to contend with the ingenious framing device of a shoulder-mounted camera (actually iPhones), worn on a scorpion’s tail harness. This makes it feel as though we are with the film’s subjects, but held apart from them at the same time. It’s quite a strange experience at first (fans of Gaspar Noé may feel more at home with it), but it certainly feels more intimate than a standard fly-on-the-wall approach. Furthermore, we learn all we learn about the film’s various characters through the use of their voiceovers, with only one or two deviations from this throughout the film. What we are told and shown is carefully controlled and constructed.

Things start with some of these young men recounting memories from their childhoods, games and pastimes which began to skirt closer and closer to criminal behaviour; eventually, this meant hanging out with older boys who, alongside some family connections for some of the speakers, meant an introduction to gang life. Grooming; it’s grooming, even though that particular word isn’t used and may or may not have made the leap from the English-speaking world to the Spanish-speaking one. Other youngsters, other members of the Ernesto gang (one name which is used for several anonymous speakers) take over and introduce their own voiceovers – their tales are similar – and then, older gang members appear, to describe their experiences, too. Although there’s not so much as a raised voice at any point during the film, you can’t help but pick up a sense of alarm; something about all of this is so inescapable, and the more we begin to hear about drugs, guns, cross-border criminality and other features of gang life, talked about very casually, the more chilling it all feels. There’s a slowly building picture here, via an ongoing tally of different people and personal perspectives: poverty, poverty’s very narrow idea of ‘luxury’, crime as a means of power and death as a kind of occupational hazard; these come up again and again.

What the film reveals, and how it is done, is startling, subtle and considered. To return to the shooting style, never seeing the faces of the people associated with each voiceover takes some getting used to, as does the way that the anonymising back-of-head shot also occupies nearly all of the frame. Added to that, any other occupants of the frame are usually kept out of focus; this makes the viewer feel quite helpless, a bit reliant even, on where the film is choosing to take us: if that’s not a symbolic decision – though I am assuming it is – then the way it keeps us following blindly, with little sense of an overarching perspective, is very clever and fitting. Likewise, the film is big on the use of total darkness, with the film cutting to black as a means of punctuating between scenes and speakers, and this also has an impact along similar lines. But whether or not this is all intended to mirror the thoughts and feelings of the different speakers in the film, it is definitely a very ambitious, clever creative decision which pays off. The use of dramatic music – which often fades in and out of street music, played on radios or home stereos – is very compelling too.

What the film reveals is understated, for the most part, and a careful representation of bigger truths. A lot is said these days about the notion of ‘toxic masculinity’, and in a lot of cases, this has already turned into a rather lazy label for an ever-billowing range of traits or behaviours, but do you know what? A Wolfpack Called Ernesto shows us toxic masculinity in spades. Its culture of competitive violence and one-upmanship, where weakness is punished and the insult ‘fag’ is hurled at anyone perceived to actually be weak, is both a response to Mexico’s endemic unfairness and also the means of its perpetuation, as everyone involved suffers. The toxic repercussions of weird ideas about ‘respect’ have a lot to answer for here. But by elaborating on all of this (with only the briefest hint that there is a life for these men outside of the gang), the film humanises the key players in ways which statistics or depictions of bloodshed could not. The casual, fatalistic attitude which we encounter, as spoken, is chilling because it is so utterly normal, and so much of the film is utterly normal, too: we walk with the different characters through home interiors, markets, alleys, ride on scooters, peer over balconies. It would all be incredibly humdrum, if not for the guns, so often on screen, just out of focus but undeniably there, in people’s hands, as if they were – nothing.

You don’t get to the end of A Wolfpack Called Ernesto feeling uplifted, as though justice has been done – and that’s the point. There’s no big denouement here where someone walks off into the sunset, a sadder and a wiser man. But this is an engaging, unorthodox and gripping crime tale which leaves its mark.

A Wolfpack Called Ernesto (2023) will be released via Sovereign Films on 23rd February 2024.

Geronimo (2022)

Arcade music and flashing lights cut through the title screen which displays Geronimo, alerting us straight away that the weird world of ‘amusements’ will figure here. But, it’s a film of contrasts, and we get that straight away, too. We first meet the arcade owner Peter (Ged McKenna) navigating his way through everyday life, which many would call a quiet life, but that’s just a turn of phrase: oh my, we’ve no sooner met this character, than we’re following him to the clinic for a prostate exam. His wife Linda (Eiry Thomas) is a snorer, too, and it’s taking a toll. Here’s a man who is stressed, worried, and very, very tired. But is there more to his plight than lengthy trips to the littlest room, and a partner who snores?

It turns out that Peter gladly takes the opportunity to complain about his lot to the doctor (Paterson Joseph), just as he’s about to perform the prostate check. Perhaps needs must? Or, being about to expose himself quite literally, Peter decides to go all in? Whatever the thought process behind it, it transpires that Peter has another problem: Geronimo (Gwen Ellis). Or at least, that’s what he calls a problematic regular customer at the arcade, a woman happily gambling away the money formally belonging to her ex-husband (and lottery winner). Peter says that Geronimo wins her money back with interest by seemingly being able to select a machine – every full moon, funnily enough – then clearing it out. That would be weird enough, but he’s also plagued with dreams in which Geronimo appears at night, a little like the imp in Fuseli’s most famous painting. There’s one key difference: she always appears speaking Welsh.

Is this Welsh-speaking, lucky widow real, or simply part of a nightmare? The doc thinks not; Peter is on the fence, because after all – who really knows what Geronimo can do? If she has a sixth sense for emptying his machines of cash, then anything is possible. He even ponders momentarily if she could get through the cat flap. The doctor avers that this is simply a good old fashioned case of hypnogogic hallucination, often caused by falling asleep too quickly (fat chance, Peter seems to think), and there’s an app for that (of course there is). He recommends something called Erebus, and it’s probably best not to ruminate too long on the meaning of that name, but by all means look it up, if you like.

Peter downloads Erebus onto his phone. He’s dubious, sure: it seems tantamount to being read a bedtime story, which feels like adding insult to injury, but he sees it through and quickly falls asleep. Restful? Fat chance. Peter immediately finds himself at the arcade, which is the source of his stress in the first place, and – here she is, here’s Geronimo, striding into his business to ruin it.

This is a very colourful and aural nightmare, full of the gaudy lighting and rather overwhelming sounds of an amusement arcade, places which often feel like they’re holding out against change and modernity, or at least slowing it down considerably. Things quite quickly get unsavoury, too, with little hints or glimpses at aspects of Peter’s nightmare that he’d probably rather not discuss with a medical professional. That may turn out to be a pointless line in the sand, by the by, as the doctor is here in the dream, too, armed with a phrasebook which he uses to partly translate Geronimo’s distinctly unfriendly comments.

The use of Welsh, translated or otherwise, is interesting here: it falls into line with a fair few old stereotypes: there’s long been the idea that Welsh speakers just speak Welsh to lock out monoglot English speakers, just as Geronimo is doing here – as she’s bilingual, and readily speaks English at the counter when she needs something. Of course, this all ties in with Peter’s paranoia very nicely and – they say familiarity breeds contempt! – he’s a Scouser, too. The use of Welsh, or simply the unfolding situation leaves us to wonder how much of all this is or isn’t his delusion. Added to this, the way in which the film embeds its dialogue in bingo calls is clever, too, albeit calling to mind The League of Gentlemen’s Toddy’s Bingo to an extent. Here, Peter’s occupational anxieties turn the arcade into a very overwhelming place, using the horror staple of the full moon to escalate the nightmarish, and yes, hellish aspects further.

These nightmarish aspects suddenly give way – neatly and succinctly – to something far queasier. All the way through, we’ve had contrast between the arcade and the magnolia tones of home, or the doctor’s surgery: the bland, if familiar, workaday world. Well, the ending of Geronimo suddenly and literally darkens, giving the audience a sudden wake-up call which matches Peter’s, who wakes up disorientated and alone. Through the tail end of his bad dream, we are finally able to ascertain what has been going on here, and it closes this short film on a clever, if jarring note. It all goes to show, once more, how much can be done in just a few minutes; appearing as part of the Beacons Ffilm Cymru showcase (available on BBC iPlayer), Geronimo does a great job of balancing its elements and telling a surprisingly rich and engaging, darkly comic horror story.

Arrow Films: Sharp Shorts

It’s really encouraging that more and more short films are being picked up for general release of late. Hopefully gone are the days when someone’s groundbreaking project, full of blood, sweat and tears, could only ever disappear from sight after its festival run. So it’s great that Arrow – so often the benchmark for cult film, new releases and just generally what’s worth seeing – are now joining in on this, making a fresh batch of short films available via their Arrow Player service. Here’s what you can expect from three of their newest titles.

Itch

Ever heard the expression ‘an itch you can’t scratch’? Well that’s given very literal form in Itch, a film clearly reaching for a retro, exploitation feel whilst simultaneously keeping things comparatively low-key, and very stylish throughout. It’s a funny thing: like clowns, you tend to see far more nuns in (horror) cinema than you ever do out in the wild; our story as such takes place in a convent. Itch tells the story of a novice nun, Sister Jude, about to seal the deal and take her vow of chastity. However, when we see her at prayer, she’s behaving in a way which strikes the Mother Superior as rather indecorous: to put it bluntly, she’s scratching at her skin so much, she even starts raking at her thighs, lifting her skirt. During Mass! Jude tries hard to distract herself from this compulsive itch, but she cannot stop: strange, soft-focus, rather scandalous dreams trouble her, too, and before long, her skin is starting to break and bleed.

But why is this happening? As it turns out, Jude doesn’t need a psychotherapist to decode her dreams or her compulsions: the issue is lust. Jude is having uncontrollable feelings towards another of the sisters, and clearly, a crisis is approaching in terms of her wellbeing, her behaviour – and her impending vows.

Either dreamy and unreal or sharp, crisp and unsettling, there are lots of engaging visual details in Itch which focus us on its different aspect, real or imagined. And, whilst there have been plenty of nunsploitation films down through the years, things are a bit different here: the film is just not titillating, not at all, turning out instead to be a stark and troubling film which borders more on body horror than Visions of Ecstasy. The use of black and white is a bold choice, too, not negating the body horror, but presenting it in a slightly more subtle way than it might otherwise appear in colour.

Smile

By sheer coincidence I’m sure, Smile is another short film focused on the extreme loneliness and introspection of a vulnerable young woman, but this time we are planted firmly in the modern world, with its technology which both closes the distance between people, and entrenches it. Clearly a person struggling with depression – the bottles of pills in the bathroom certainly seem to point towards this – Anna (Konstantina Mantelos) is brushing her teeth, listening to a well-meaning but upsetting voicemail from her mother, who wonders aloud: whatever happened to the happy little girl she used to be? There’s no call back: Anna continues on through her day, alone, but she’s troubled by something. There’s a noise at the door of her apartment: maybe someone is trying to get in, but, who, or what?

Smile is only seven minutes long, but quickly establishes its protagonist as sympathetic whilst also deeply troubled; Anna’s pained, troubled expression does give way to something else, but that in itself is part of her nightmare, maybe of this spectre of an untroubled past coming back to haunt her. Great SFX, too, makes this a vivid and shocking few minutes, doing just enough to escalate the horror but always feeling rather hefty and introspective. This is a great calling card by director Joanna Tsanis – and horror fans will also be interested in spotting the Ashley Laurence cameo.

The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras

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..and the absolute stand-film of this collection, for me, is the super-subtle, thought-provoking and disconcerting Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras, which opens with some stellar 70s folk horror vibes, right from the text and the appealing Kodak film grain of the opening credits (which, if it turned out was for a lost film by Piers Haggard, wouldn’t feel at all amiss). But, again, The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras is bang up to date, and the more disturbing for it. This isn’t the 70s at all; a man is woken from sleep by a phone ringing, which he answers, barely speaking back, but immediately begins to get ready to leave the house. His wife clearly expects this call, though she notes that it doesn’t seem to have been long since ‘it’ needed to happen last time.

She’s not otherwise included in this, though, and her husband Gwyn (Bryn Fôn) is soon headed out, picking up what seem to him (and perhaps to us) a rather ragtag bunch of other local men who are also needed for some duty, now once more ahead of them – something to be dreaded.

To say much more is to risk spoilering the film – which would be unforgiveable – but know this: the film’s bleak intersection of clearly ancient, onerous traditions and modern concerns (there are hints that one of the small party is there, unwillingly there, for some community transgression) makes for a surprisingly involving concept, with so much to unpack. The film is not heavy on dialogue, and it is a mostly very quiet film through and through, but says and does enough to suggest a whole world beyond itself, one which rewards further consideration. It doles its questions out thoughtfully and carefully; it leaves us to ponder, but doesn’t give us the comfort of full closure, which speaks to the confidence of writer and director Craig Williams. The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras is laden with atmosphere, too, much of which comes from allowing the landscape to do the talking – it was filmed in, and pardon my bias, the most beautiful country in the world, and is also presented in the Welsh language.

This film really is testament to what short films can do, with its clear characterisation, minimal, but at times wonderfully poetic dialogue, and its world of terrible possibilities hanging in the ether, barely acknowledged or spoken of, but undeniably there in the world of the film, and threatening to recur – perhaps quicker than these men would wish.

Arrow’s Sharp Shorts are available now on Arrow Player. For more details, please click here.