Archive: Month: July 2016

By Ben Bussey

As a site primarily focused on horror, BAH has of course noted the resurgence of the anthology format in the genre this past half-decade or so. While it would be a pretty big stretch to declare Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales symptomatic of this new wave of portmanteau horror, in its own distinct way the film does fit comfortably within the subgenre, given it strings together a number of loosely connected stories, distinctly nightmarish in nature, which take place within a shared story world. Perhaps most significantly, the film tackles material which we might easily regard as perhaps the true birthplace of horror: the fairy tale.

Clive Barker, Guillermo del Toro and many other such erudite, eloquent gorehounds have argued (correctly, to my mind) that when you boil it down far enough, there really is no division between fantasy and horror. Del Toro has explored that territory in his films, Pan’s Labyrinth being a particularly potent example of this; and other films like Neil Jordan’s classic The Company of Wolves had delved into the terrain before. Tale of Tales inevitably invites comparison to both those films, but it’s something else entirely. Rather than taking an abstract approach to fairy tales, contrasting them with contemporary reality as del Toro and Jordan’s films did, Garrone (whose earlier work I must confess to being unfamiliar with) has embraced the format directly, in all its simplicity, beauty, and hideousness. The result is a truly haunting, fascinating and compelling piece of work.

The film adapts three tales (although it feels more like four) from the tales of Italian writer Giambattista Basile, apparently a forebear to the likes of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. The first key story casts Salma Hayek and John C Reilly as a King and Queen who are distraught over their inability to conceive a child, and in their desperation take the advice of a mysterious wise man who warns them that sacrifice will be necessary – and that the Queen must eat the heart of a sea monster. Sure enough, she soon bears a child, but of course there are some unforeseen complications of which I’ll say no more.

Meanwhile, Toby Jones is the monarch of a neighbouring kingdom, who is tasked with finding a suitable husband for his daughter (Stacy Martin), but is greatly distracted by his bond with a rather unusual pet – and when a suitor for his child is selected by means of a contest, the girl does not find the dashing romantic hero she had hoped for. Finally, our third tale casts Vincent Cassell as a lusty playboy king whose life of orgies and indulgence has left him jaded, and finds himself bewitched (figuratively speaking – an important distinction under the circumstances) by the singing voice of a peasant woman whose face he has never seen. He sets about wooing her in a somewhat forceful manner; being the king, he’s used to getting what he wants. But again, this female stranger is not quite what he imagines her to be.

Of course, fairy tales are always easy to surmise in terms of plot, but it’s often a bit trickier to discern quite what, if anything, they’re really trying to say. Sometimes the symbolism isn’t that hard to decipher, other times it all just feels utterly surreal. Fittingly, Tale of Tales toes this line, relaying the stories in as simple a manner as an early Disney movie – but, crucially, without ever diluting the darkness at their heart. As is surely self-evident from the 15 certificate, the comparisons to The Company of Wolves and Pan’s Labyrinth, and – oh yes – the picture above of Salma Hayek eating a heart, this most definitely isn’t a kid’s movie. The small-screen success of Game of Thrones has surely played a role in making adult audiences more open to the notion of fantastic material dealing with mature subject matter, although happily Tale of Tales doesn’t go quite so apeshit with the gore, profanity and nudity, although there are some eye-opening moments of the former and the latter, including an absolutely hilarious introductory scene for Cassell’s debauched monarch.

Anyone hoping for reassuring, non-challenging viewing which provides easy answers will not get what they’re looking for here. What you will find is a veritable feast for the senses, which thankfully doesn’t leave the intellect feeling undernourished. Above and beyond all else, Tale of Tales is the most visually striking film you’re likely to see all year, with a classic, painterly eye applied to more or less every single shot, and it leaves me hugely regretful to only be experiencing it for the first time on the small screen; no doubt it’s a hugely immersive experience at the cinema. It also boasts a wonderfully atmospheric soundtrack, and tremendous performances from the whole ensemble.

Definitely one we can expect to see on a lot of best of 2016 lists in about five months time, Tale of Tales is one of the few movies of the year so far which I can comfortably declare an unequivocal must see.

Tale of Tales is out on Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray on 8th August, from Curzon Artificial Eye.

By Ben Bussey

The label of ‘worst horror movie of all time’ is a strangely coveted one within cult fandom. Many self-professed lovers of what would typically be regarded as trash cinema will go out of their way to see that which is proclaimed to be the poorest known example of its craft, and director Wayne Berwick’s Microwave Massacre has long worn that badge of honour with pride. Initially released in 1983 having sat on the shelf untouched by distributors for several years (generally a reliable indication of badness in itself), the ultra low-brow, low budget mish-mash of comedy, horror and T&A movie has by all accounts become quite a cult favourite, although I must confess that I’d never seen it nor even been particularly aware of it prior to my review copy of this new Arrow Video Blu-ray coming through my door.

Having now seen it, I can’t agree with the ‘worst ever’ label (which I understand was plastered all over its initial DVD release from Anthem Pictures), but I will certainly concur that Microwave Massacre is a very, very bad film. And not necessarily the good-bad kind.

Comedian Jackie Vernon takes the lead as Donald, a construction worker who would seem to be going through a bit of a midlife crisis, thanks to that age-old problem: he married a woman he can no longer stand. The real meat of his frustration (not entirely a metaphor in this context) is his wife’s habit of attempting adventurous, exotic meals; the first scene sees Donald sit down to lunch with co-workers who don’t take him seriously, and while they chow down on standard meat sandwiches, Donald has what appears to be a full size raw crab in his lunch box. It’s much the same when he gets home in the evening, his wife always attempting some grandiose culinary experiment – cooked, of course, in their brand new over-sized luxury microwave. Naturally, the question of why Donald doesn’t consider preparing the meals himself never comes up, but one evening when he’s had all he can stands and he can’t stands no more, the mild-mannered schlub cracks, murders his wife, chops up her corpse and hides the remains in the freezer. But then, quite by accident, Donald winds up cooking a bit of his late wife for dinner, and finds to his astonishment that it’s the best meat he’s ever had – so soon enough, he’s on the prowl for other women with whom he can broaden his palate.

It’s not a bad central conceit at all, and if handled correctly it might have resulted in a great comedy horror; alas, there is almost nothing in Microwave Massacre that is handled well. It’s a jaw-droppingly amateurish production on pretty much every level: the writing, acting, direction, and gore FX are all absolutely terrible. The film tries to get around this by being in the joke, filling up its 75-minute running time with fourth-wall breaking looks to the camera and odd lines of dialogue which indicate that the filmmakers know very well how stupid the whole thing is. We often see similar tricks employed in Troma movies and the like, but they manage to hold our attention by keeping things loud, fast and bulging with histrionic performances, excessive gore and frequent gratuitous nudity.

Now, Microwave Massacre certainly has some of these things; the opening credits play out over a montage of an anonymous large-breasted woman walking down the street near the construction site, who is shortly relieved her top under staggeringly contrived circumstances, and the scene would appear to be set for a sex comedy that would do Russ Meyer proud. A few more tit shots ensue (in a manner which would actually seem to serve the plot, believe it or not), as well as the inevitable murder scenes, but unfortunately the lion’s share of the action is taken up by painfully inept dialogue sequences, in which the already limp writing is rendered even flatter by uniformally dreadful performances and an excess of pregnant pauses which make the film feel overlong, even though it runs at barely an hour and a quarter.

All this having been said – why, you may ask, do I not agree that this is the worst horror film ever made? The simple answer is, the makers of Microwave Massacre were clearly never even under any pretence of trying to make a good film. It’s stupid and sloppily made because that’s exactly the way they intended it to be, so in its own way it’s a resounding success; it’s only when a film sets out to be good yet fails miserably that it can really warrant being classed as one of the worst films ever.

That having been said – Microwave Massacre is indeed a complete piece of shit. Those with a deep appreciation for films which are truly terrible may well find it to their taste, but for me the joke wore thin very early on, and it’s not a movie I can ever see myself having any desire to revisit. Still, if you are up for it, Arrow have done their usual sterling work – far more than the film deserves, in this instance – with a nice-looking transfer, and extras including new interviews with surviving members of the cast and crew.

Arrow Video release Microwave Massacre to dual format DVD and Blu-ray on 15th August.

By Tristan Bishop

Dear old Michael Winner. Loathed by serious film critics and restaurant owners worldwide, and engendering responses in the public ranging from revulsion to fascination, Winner was undoubtedly an original – an opinionated playboy whose films often seemed more like excuses for him to hang out with his Hollywood heroes than personal works of art. In later years, when the films dried up, Winner came into his element as a media personality, becoming known as much for his insurance adverts and his frankly batshit Twitter account as any of his artistic endeavours.

Despite this, many of Winner’s films do actually stand up reasonably well, especially his 60’s British films (mostly starring his long-time friend Oliver Reed), which swung between madcap comedy and kitchen sink drama, and the series of American films he made with Charles Bronson: Chato’s Land (1972), The Mechanic (also 1972, and remade in recent years with Jason Statham failing to approximate Bronson’s stony-faced magnetism), The Stone Killer (1973); and what must surely be his crowning achievement, 1974’s Death Wish, a grim and gritty tale which launched an entire subgenre of vigilante films. Sadly, the next 20 years saw Winner’s fortunes suffer from diminishing returns (culminating in 1999’s Parting Shots, starring an obviously ‘unwell’ Chris Rea). 1983’s The Wicked Lady comes from around halfway through this period, and, aside from camp value, has little to recommend it for rediscovery.

The Wicked Lady is actually a remake of one of the largely forgotten ‘Gainsborough melodramas’, a series of British costume dramas from the 1940s (which included in their number Fanny By Gaslight, a 1944 effort which, frankly, I am only mentioning for the giggles). Faye Dunaway (who seems a little too old to be playing the part) stars as the titular Lady Barbara Skelton, who arrives at the home of her sister Caroline (Glynnis Barber – aka Makepeace from Dempsey & Makepeace) after being invited to be bridesmaid for her wedding to Sir Ralph (Denholm Elliott). Being a wicked lady, however, Barbara is soon seducing Sir Ralph herself and steals his hand in marriage. However, despite her new-found wealth, Barbara is soon bored, and when she gambles away a piece of her mother’s jewellery, she takes inspiration from the famous highwayman Jerry Jackson (Alan Bates), and, disguising herself as him, takes to robbery to get it back. Finding the criminal act to be an exhilarating experience, Barbara eventually teams up with Jackson whilst seeking to protect her identity.

Well, make no bones about it; this is far more a dog’s dinner than a Winner’s dinner. Far from the grimy feel of the Bronson films, here Winner attempted something approaching a ‘proper’ film, along the lines of a golden age swashbuckler. But, of course, the old adage of the leopard being unable to change its spots rings true here: this is the sort of frothy adventure where cupboard doors being opened reveal scantily clad couples ‘at it’. One wonders whether Winner had Ken Russell’s The Devils in mind here – an opening shot with a decomposing corpse certainly seems to reference that film – but sadly where Russell was a master of deploying opulent debauchery to make wider points, Winner appears to be shoehorning his excesses in with the hope of keeping the audience awake. This strategy does work on occasion – most notably the standout scene, in which Dunaway engages in a whip battle with a topless woman, which is pretty impressive in its levels of audacity; but mostly you will find yourself drifting off unless you have a very high tolerance for trashy costume drama.

The cast mostly acquit themselves with little embarrassment – unsurprising when you have such talents as Prunella Scales and John flipping Gielgud in relatively minor roles, but Dunaway’s lead performance is a thing of wonder. Not in a good way, you understand, as here the Hollywood legend breaks ranks, ignores the fact that the rest of the cast are wisely playing it straight, and goes for full-on pantomime dame, with wide eyes flashing. It’s frankly hilarious, and fans of grand dames chewing on the scenery will definitely get their money’s worth with this. It’s just a shame that there’s so little else to enjoy here, and as such the film can only be recommended for those looking for a camp giggle.

The Wicked Lady is available now on DVD from Second Sight.

By Ben Bussey

The new wave of anthology horror has tended to be a little haphazard; take the none-more-random ABCs of Death movies, or the Dread Central-produced Zombieworld and Monster Land, which literally strung together entirely unrelated short films. It’s nice, then, to see portmanteau movies which harken back to the great days of the subgenre with a loose but clearly identifiable unifying element. Southbound does just this, by setting its nightmarish tales along the same stretch of bleak, unidentifiable desert highway, situated somewhere between the middle of nowhere and the bowels of Hell, with Larry Fessenden on Crypt Keeper duty as a radio DJ.

Directed by V/H/S trilogy veterans Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin and David Bruckner, plus The Pact II’s Patrick Hovarth, Southbound follows the rules of the best anthology horrors by presenting us with five distinct tales each dealing with a distinct brand of threat and menace, from demonic entities, to sinister cults, to the considerably more grounded horror of what to do if your home comes under attack, or if you accidentally hit someone with your car. As with any anthology movie, there are some stories which feel a little insubstantial, and others which you’d half like to see play out at greater length and in more detail – but they’re all succinct enough to keep boredom from ever setting in.

Just so I don’t spoil all the surprises for the uninitiated reader, I’ll avoid going into specifics on the individual stories (that’s always the dilemna when reviewing an anthology movie: whether to break it up story by story, or give a more general overview). Suffice to say, Southbound is the most fun I’ve had with a portmanteau for a while. As the tales are unified by setting if not theme, there’s a similar aesthetic overlying the entire enterprise, and not unlike Trick’r’Treat (or other non-horror anthology movies, like Pulp Fiction or Go) the tales sometimes overlap in surprising and effective ways.

Southbound also contrasts nicely with a lot of contemporary anthology horror movies because it never seems that the filmmakers are trying to out-fucked-up each other. Anyone who’s ever seen the V/H/S or ABCs of Death films will most likely struggle to recall much in terms of story detail, instead reflecting on a wall-to-wall cacophony of naked bodies and bodily fluids of all description. Nothing wrong with any of that, of course, but when it’s piled on in such abundance it can get a little numbing. No danger of that with Southbound; all concerned here are far more concerned with building atmosphere and tension, with the real shocker moments coming through unexpected plot developments and moments of surrealism. As such, it’s no surprise the film has been likened to The Twilight Zone. Of course, this is not to say that gore’s off the table completely; there are a few suitably grisly moments which certainly earn that 18 certificate. Sex never really enters the picture though, and one gratuitous bra shot is as close as we get to nudity. (Oh, what are you complaining about? You’re on the internet, it’s not like you can’t find tits anywhere.)

Okay, so I know I said I’d avoid specifics on the stories, but I will say this much… David Bruckner’s hit-and-almost-run story is to my mind the most effective story, whilst Patrick Hovarth’s is probably the most throwaway, but all of them look and sound great, with strong performances throughout (as well as Fessenden, other actors with notable horror credentials include more V/H/S veterans in Chad Villella and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, and Fabianne Therese of Starry Eyes and John Dies at the End). But Radio Silence’s opening and closing stories are the ones that boast the most memorable imagery of the film. It’s faintly ironic that this is a production of the same core team behind V/H/S, as the winged skeletal phantoms we see here (remarkable CGI work, given this clearly wasn’t an especially big-budget affair) are clearly reminiscent of the spectral figure from the posters for the ABCs of Death movies…

Southbound is released to DVD, Blu-ray and digital download on 8th August, from Studiocanal.

By Keri O’Shea

Saw has a lot to answer for, doesn’t it? Since it appeared a little over a decade ago, it’s had a long-lasting and far-reaching impact on horror – for good, and for ill. Saw showed us that a horror story could be effective and gripping whilst being incredibly economical with characters and settings; by the by, and this is something that the team behind Saw can’t have predicted and shouldn’t be blamed for, it has convinced an army of low-budget filmmakers that they can do the same – that a horror story can unfold in a single room, with a small number of characters, and if Saw can do it – so can they! Here’s the rub – that confidence is often very, very misplaced. Which brings us to Captive (2015). Captive’s DVD release is proudly emblazoned with an (unattributed) cover quote which describes the film as a “cult gem in the same vein as Saw”. I don’t know who said that and I’d like to ask them a few things, but it would be more accurate to say that Captive is a brazen and mystifying attempt to re-frame Saw on a shoestring budget, and one which fails on every single score.

The plot hardly needs describing, given the above, but I’ll give it a whirl: we start with a room full of dead bodies, though with a couple of people left alive who are communicating with a mysterious someone via mobile phone (sound familiar?). They’ve decided to disguise their voice so thoroughly you can barely make out what they’re saying, which could have put a crimp in the plot, but basically it’s something about the people who are left having to follow commands to kill one another, which perhaps clues you in to why there are so many corpses in this particular dimly-lit room. You know where we’re going from here – yes, back in time, where we see some folks in HAZMAT gear dragging the inmates into the room, where they duly wake up and start wondering why they’re there. Whoever has put them there wants them to work out why they’ve been chosen, as well as spicing things up by getting them to bump one another off from time to time.

Oh, and there’s another element to the plot, too: apparently this is set in the future, a future where people are still using analogue alarm clocks and wearing clothes which are utterly in keeping with the current times, but yeah, this is the future, and the inmates have a virus. A virus! This manifestly contributes no originality to the film as a whole, but allows some very limited SFX at least, because viruses in these films always justify contact lenses/colouring in the eyes during post-production.

I don’t honestly enjoy tearing a film to shreds: I’d much prefer to be able to find something good to say about a film if someone’s bothered to get it made in the first place, but I can honestly think of nothing complimentary to say about Captive other than that the cast seem to be genuinely trying to inject some life into the film – even to the point of near-parodic scenery-chewing – and might have got somewhere, had they been given a script which didn’t ask them to repeatedly yell “We have to get out of here!” and other such ‘no shit, Sherlock’ moments throughout. The camera-work is dire (laughably filming through a HAZMAT mask to represent the point-of-view of the mysterious experimenters; using a zoom shot which then goes out of focus), the actors are not adequately miked up (everything echoes throughout) and the editing is a series of clunky physical jerks which can’t hide the fact that this plot is far, far too thin for a feature-length, especially considering it’s already been done more than once, and properly.

Indie cinema can be superb. It can be a space for resilient and resourceful filmmakers to tell stories without any of the pressures of big studios who demand tried-and-tested cinematic conventions; it can be innovative, refreshing and life-affirming. Or, it can be a cheap and nasty waste of time stemming from incomprehensible motivation and, in the case of the horror genre, startlingly cynical laziness – and it seems director and writer Stephen Patrick Kenny has form in this respect. There is nothing about Captive I can possibly recommend to anyone who enjoys film.

Captive is available on DVD now.

By Ben Bussey

The late, great British auteur Ken Russell was never one for doing things by halves. As such, when he crossed the pond to give Hollywood a whirl in the early 1980s, no way was he about to leave his abrasive, in your face attitude behind. Russell’s time in the US was brief and by all accounts troubled, but the two films he made in that time – 1980’s Altered States, and the film in question here, 1984’s Crimes of Passion – stand up today among the filmmaker’s most revered and interesting work, deeply deserving of their enduring cult status.

Now, given that Crimes of Passion stars one of the most renowned blonde bombshells of the era, and deals with sexual subject matter, it’s not too hard to think of it as a forebear for the erotic thrillers Hollywood would produce in years to come: 9½ Weeks, Basic Instinct and so forth. This, however, is to overlook one key element: Russell. This is not a filmmaker who would ever be content to just present his audiences with something so safe as a simple turn-on. Indeed, Crimes of Passion is one of those movies for which the term ‘erotic’ seems inappropriate, and/or inadequate; this is a film which gets neck-deep in sleaze, as interested in the grotesque as the glamorous. Sex is the first thing on just about everyone’s mind, but as we all know, not everyone reacts to those impulses the same way: some embrace them, some repress them, some are left guilt-ridden balls of neuroses because of them, and others barely feel them at all. Crimes of Passion sets out to explore this territory in a very provocative manner, and the result is a film which is visceral, arresting, alarming, and amusing, and most definitely isn’t to all tastes.

John Laughlin is Bobby Grady, a struggling small businessman specialising in home security and surveillance. Not only is he not doing so well financially, his home life in general isn’t in the best place, his relationship with his wife Amy (Annie Potts) growing ever more tense, and devoid of physical intimacy. Anxious for extra cash, Grady accepts a private investigation job from a clothing manufacturer who suspects his new designer Joanna Crane (Kathleen Turner) of selling designs to competitors. However, on following her, Grady finds she’s wholly innocent of the charge, but has an altogether bigger secret: by night she’s a hooker, going by the name China Blue, donning a platinum blonde wig and whatever costumes might suit the fetishes of her john. Throwing herself into her work with vigour, Joanna becomes whatever they want her to be; but one particular regular, a psychotic street preacher (Anthony Perkins), develops a fixation on China Blue which threatens to become lethal.

I realise I’ve credited Ken Russell for pretty much all the film’s balls-out brashness thus far, but credit is of course also due to screenwriter Barry Sandler who dreamed up the whole thing. Given the film arrived around the time the ‘high concept’ approach was taking off in Hollywood, Crimes of Passion is not only bold in its subject matter and content, but also in terms of structure. While there is a clear linear narrative, the film overall is less interested in this than in presenting a series of character-based vignettes. For the bulk of the first act we’re presented with two entirely distinct worlds: the gaudy, neon-lit, make-up and body fluid-splattered domain of China Blue, and the white picket-fenced, beer and barbecue suburbia of the Gradys. But in both arenas, sexual frustration runs riot, the Gradys not getting nearly enough whilst China Blue overdoses nightly, clearly as desperate to fulfill a need as any of her clients. When these worlds finally collide, can real contentment be found somewhere between the two extremes?

There’s no question that the real heart of the film, and the root of its cult status – and, not for nothing, its past issues with the censors – are the China Blue sequences. There are many moments which, at face value, would seem to be all about shock value whilst doing almost nothing to advance the plot, but without which the film would no doubt feel empty and pedestrian: the ‘Miss Liberty’ intro, a faux-rape sequence, a limo backseat threesome, a brief encounter with a terminally ill senior citizen; and most notoriously the sadomasochistic cop sex scene, shot and edited in a delirious frenzy which recalls Russell’s most infamous sequence, the censored ‘rape of Christ’ from The Devils.

Most rewarding, however, are the scenes between Turner and Anthony Perkins. The Psycho actor was absolutely inspired casting as the (bogus?) Reverend Peter Shayne, and reportedly brought a great deal of himself to the part; as Sandler discusses in the extras, the role had originally been written as a bogus psychiatrist, but was amended at Perkins’ suggestion – and as Russell’s feelings about religious zealots were never a great secret, the director clearly relishes these moments. These dialogue-heavy scenes are handling beautifully, piled high with innuendo and classical references in a manner that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Russ Meyer movie, but with a heavy sense of underlying menace that takes the film into real horror territory at times.

All this being the case, it’s no accident that the Grady sequences feel a bit humdrum by comparison; but even so, there’s no denying these scenes prove a lot harder to digest. John Laughlin is well cast as a simple salt-of-the-earth blue collar guy, but he’s such an average Joe that, while it’s easy to see why he’d be drawn to Turner, it’s trickier to believe she’d be drawn to him. But the real casualty is Annie Potts. Okay, so we’re left under no illusions that husband and wife have grown apart, but Amy is presented as 100% unsympathetic: prudish, frigid, emasculating, demanding, dismissive, joyless. Their relationship is presented in such an imbalanced way that once Grady and China Blue come together (know what I mean nudge nudge), the whole thing smacks of mid-life crisis heterosexual male wish fulfillment; perhaps ironic, given screenwriter Sandler is gay.

Even so, Crimes of Passion is a fascinating and engrossing piece of work; a must-have for existing devotees of Russell, and a fine entry point for anyone hitherto unfamiliar with the director’s work. As ever, Arrow Video have done a fine job on the disc. We’ve got two cuts of the film; the original theatrical cut presented by Russell in its uncensored form, and a slightly extended director’s cut (as ever in these cases, these are moments which add a little more context, but don’t significantly change or improve the film overall). We also have the aforementioned interview with Barry Sandler, plus an equally in-depth discussion with Rick Wakeman, whose brash synth-driven score is a vital element to the film’s none more out-there, none more 80s vibe. We also have the full version of the music video featured in the film, the unforgettably screechy It’s A Lovely Life. Interestingly, Wakeman notes in his interview that the song had been recorded in a key that was too high for vocalist Maggie Bell, and with more time at their disposal they might have re-recorded it; but it’s hard to imagine the song serving the film quite so well were it not as ear-piercingly shrill and melodramatic. Once again, this is a Ken Russell film; understatement isn’t an option.

Crimes of Passion is out now on dual format DVD and Blu-ray, from Arrow Video.

By Keri O’Shea

Most horror fans who have delved beyond the physical jerk-invoking shitfests being screened every Halloween will probably have an idea who Debbie Rochon is; add in a soft spot for low budget indie cinema, and chances are you’ll have seen more than a few offerings from her very extensive CV, especially if you’ve ever sat through a Troma movie or two. As of yet, however, despite many years in the business, she hasn’t been on the other side of the camera. Model Hunger (2016) is Rochon’s directorial debut, then – and it’s not more than a few frames before you can safely say that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…

In that rather Troma-esque, overblown but twee style, all over-pronounced lines and omnipresent musical score, we start off with a troupe (correct plural?) of cheerleaders at practice, working hard to conceal the fact that they’re all actually and as-standard in their twenties. At the end of their session, their head honcho sends them out to ‘raise more money than last year’ for their charity of choice. The neighbourhood they head to is not much cop: the first guy to open his door seems to be hard of hearing, ha ha, but then they try a door down the street and meet Ginny (Lynn Lowry).

At first Ginny seems sweet, if the rather unlikely ‘little old lady’ that she’s apparently meant to present: t’isn’t long, though, before we can hear her inner thoughts (a staple of this film) and they are none too complimentary to the young ladies sat in her lounge now laughing at her ‘favourite show’, one of the film’s most baffling inclusions and something which features throughout – a shopping channel show where scream queen Suzi Lorraine, wearing a fat suit, rails against the indignities heaped upon ‘real women’ and tries to sell plus size clothes via a glamorous model, or rather an obese man in drag – an obese man who continually eats, as does Suzi, obviously. Hmm. Anyway, come some internal monologue about the shallowness of youth and beauty, it’s then time for the girls to be drugged, kidnapped and very soon afterwards hacked up for chow. As all of this happens in the first few minutes, I think I’m safe on the spoilers front: the film very much shows its trump hand early, albeit it then making us wait for anything much else in terms of plot.

However, another familiar indie horror face is moving into the area – step up one Deb (Tiffany Shepis) and her husband Sal (Carmine Capobianco), who have just taken a house on the street. Debbie is depressed and, after a fashion, recuperating – mainly by calling her husband an asshole repeatedly, and having traumatic dreams of family, though beyond this, very little context for Deb’s character is offered – a waste, and the reason for something of an imbalance between the two female leads.

Where Shepis is kept on the down-low, with very little to do for large parts of the film, there’s an attempt made to position Lowry as many things all at once. Whilst Ginny as a character definitely has some entertainingly deranged, sneering moments, though some of this may be due to recalling her understated performance in arguably one of her best-known roles in Shivers, overall her role in Model Hunger is confused, alternating between dear old lady (both being called this by others, and calling herself such), then hey presto! She’s a bat-wielding maniac, and then also an increasingly irate mouthpiece for the indignities of the beauty industry. Oh, and she has a sexy lingerie scene too. These latter elements, I think, would all have been easier to believe if we weren’t first asked to see Ginnie as an infirm old dear, which, despite being nearly seventy in real life, she doesn’t appear to be, whatever chintz she’s given to wear here.

As for the press release’s feted showdown between Shepis and Lowry, this largely consists of Deb growing ever more suspicious of her prim-and-proper neighbour, especially when people seem to be forever going into Ginny’s house but never resurfacing, before later – much, much later – deciding to investigate. If the film has a central core, it seems to be Ginny, trying to come to terms with her former life as a model and the fact that her body shape was just slightly too curvy for the fashion of the day. This translates to a hatred of other women, it seems, though the cannibal element is never explained. Presumably we’re entitled, even invited to join the dots and see it as a literal representation of how adverse beauty norms chew us women up and spit us out, or something – and certainly, other reviewers have praised the film for its commentary on the ‘male gaze’ and ‘unrealistic body expectations’, maybe because they don’t feel confident to contradict it. Well, all I’ll say is that this is an effective a critique of Western beauty standards as Redneck Zombies is of the North/South divide in modern America. There’s a lot here I can’t buy, basically, something which comes from the risk indie horror takes when it pays lip service to a serious theme like body image.

Your best bet, should you find yourself watching Model Hunger, is to leave any expectations of social commentary at the door. To focus on the positives: the SFX are practical, with plenty here for those who come out in a cold sweat at the thought of CGI; there’s some splatter, some flesh-eating, some recognisable indie movie faces, and that rough-and-ready feel which will be just as recognisable and familiar to plenty of viewers. Beyond that, however, like the body type being rejected over and over in the movie, this is all just a bit thin.

Model Hunger is available from July 12th 2016.

By Marc Patterson

Around these parts we’re big fans of short horror films. Creating a perfect anthology of shorts is a significant challenge to any producer. There’s a real art to the curation of shorts into a masterful anthology. One needs to consider the broad theme, the mood, and what overarching story (if any) there will be. Then one needs to mix in just enough diversity to fit the fickle needs of an audience, while at the same time staying true to the vision.

It came as no surprise that our long time friends at Dread Central jumped into the ring as the latest horror fan site turned filmmaker. In fact, it made me pause and wonder what kind of splattery masterpiece our staff might create. I envisioned a horde of Fulci-esqe zombies, being beat down by a samurai wielding Asami, against a Hammer inspired backdrop, released only on limited edition VHS. Then, I winced at the thought and went back to mowing my lawn.

Regardless, whenever fans of horror can hold the reigns I expect good things to happen. Using a film submission competition, Dread Central compiled what they felt were the best in category shorts to round out their anthology, Monsterland.

With that said, let’s dive into the shorts, one-by-one, and break this disc down.

The feature opens with a framing short by Dread Central’s Andrew Kasch, and the amazing horror fiction writer John Skipp. It’s a monster apocalypse. The city skies are raining horror, and the streets have gone mad. In the midst a lone survivor stumbles into a movie theater to take refuge. He seems to have gone quite mad, and instead of hunkering down for his next battle round against the conquering beasts he grabs a bowl of popcorn and settles in for some end-times entertainment.

The first short Don’t Go Into The Water is directed by Corey Norman and felt more like an extended clip from something larger, rather than a complete film on its own. Essentially, it’s the story of a group of skinny dipping twenty-somethings go for a boozy swim and encounter an evil under the water that takes them out one, by one. While unoriginal in concept, it felt like the director had much more to say than what was actually on screen.

The Grey Matter, directed by the McCoubrey Brothers, might stand as my favorite of the lot. An office worker with a giant, bloody, hole in the back of his head – which he doesn’t seem to make much of – attempts to land a date with an attractive co-worker. In the meantime he’s getting advice from a worm-like creature. I’m not sure the film needed the added plot device, as what follows really makes the film payoff in dividends. This was a well-shot, well-written, short that could be blown up into a great feature flick.

Curiosity Kills, directed by Sander Maran, is the third short of the anthology. Shot from the childish, almost playful, perspective of a young boy, it tells the story of how the boy creates a killer rat from his father’s radioactive laboratory kit. While the short clearly had talent behind it, I found myself itching for the fast forward button. Further, it felt much too kitschy for this anthology, and didn’t fit the overall vibe of what was being presented to this point.

Hag stands out as one of the best features in this anthology. Directed by Erik Gardner this short is packed with atmosphere and great storytelling. The sickeningly beautiful visuals and the solid acting make this one short worth the upward hike it took to get to this point. The story is centered on a sleepwalking woman and her husband who is being haunted by his dreams. How the two come together amongst their marital strife makes for sharp storytelling.

Monster Man is a tepid animated short that I honestly zipped through. I’ll say no more.

The standout short that made me feel like I was watching a much higher production feature was House Call. It is undisputedly, hands down, the winner for best in class. Graham Denman has crafted a tense drama that tells the story of a desperate man, who believing that he’s turning into a vampire, pays a late night visit to his dentist. As silly as the premise seems, the acting and the ominous atmosphere make this one worth the cost of admission alone.

Jack Field’s Happy Memories is – in a word – bizarre. There was a cupcake looking puppet creature, even more twisted puppetry, and a torture sequence. I’m honestly not sure what the hell I watched, but now that someone mentioned cupcakes, I’m hungry.

The next feature, Stay at Home Dad, is directed by Andrew Kasch and John Skipp. Troma alumni Trent Haaga lends a hand in the FX department to help craft a comical and gory short about a stay at home dad who grows a giant rack to breast feed their young daughter. While the film is quite polished, it wasn’t exactly my cup of gore.

The final short, Hellyfish, is the short predominantly featured in the trailer. It’s a goofy film about a beach under siege from mutant jellyfish. Goofy and heavily doused in digital CGI this ended up being a lackluster way to wrap up what was generally a forgettable anthology.

With a title like Monsterland, I was expecting a consistent blend of macabre films, more along the lines of ABCs of Death or V/H/S. What we got instead was an amateurish mash-up, which while it contained a few bright spots, shifted heavily between themes creating an experience that was otherwise unsettling and indigestible.

My recommendation? Rent this one on streaming video. No need for a purchase as you likely won’t revisit.

Monsterland is out now on DVD and VOD from Dread Central and Ruthless Pictures.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I can’t say I’m overly familiar with the cheerleader subgenre (can we even call it that?) of exploitation filmmaking, but to say that The Swinging Cheerleaders lives up to my expectations of what a cheerleader film would be like is almost right. Luckily, it’s got those little Jack Hill flourishes that make it a bit more interesting than just the cat-fights, dumb jocks and leering coaches.

Mesa U undergrad Kate (Jo Johnston) successfully tries out for the cheerleading squad, which she intends to profile for the radical student paper as a symbol of female oppression. However, she soon finds herself developing friendships and sympathies for the squad and the football team, including Lisa (Rosanne Katon), Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith), and not least of all team star Buck (Ron Hajek), boyfriend of stuck up cheer squad leader Mary Ann (Colleen Camp). Although she opts to drop her article in favour of friendship, much to the disdain of her hippy boyfriend Ron (Ian Sander), Kate does uncover match-rigging amongst the teaching staff, and it’s up to her and her new friends to save the reputation of the Mesa U team.

What essentially makes The Swinging Cheerleaders a cut-above what you’d expect from any other all-American college movie is the interesting sub-plots afforded to its secondary characters. Jo Johnston is great as the central role of Kate, and her rather forced radical-feminism isn’t completely ridiculed nor pushed aside as she becomes more and more part of the squad culture. But, more interesting is, for example, Rainbeaux Smith’s Andrea, whose subplot about losing her virginity (or not) could have been a film of its own. Smith is, as you’d expect, really excellent in the role and it’s a subplot that isn’t played out with quite as much titillation as you’d expect (though that’s not to say it isn’t somewhat exploitative, obviously). Likewise, Rosanne Katon’s Lisa is given some meat to chew too – she’s a student having an affair with her professor, and there’s a wonderful scene in which she’s confronted by his rightly pissed off wife, which adds a bit of very unexpected social commentary. That the black professor is also the only ‘adult’ who finally stands up to the match fixing he’s a part of is very welcome too.

The film is naturally a low-budget affair, particularly evident from what appears to be the use of stock footage for the football games themselves (although at least the costume department does a good job of matching up the uniforms). Still, it’s an impressively made film, moreso considering it was shot in just 12 days. Perhaps what’s most striking about the film is how tame its sexploitation aspects are – Hill himself describes the film as a “Disney sex comedy” in one of the special features on this release, and that’s quite accurate. All the sex-scenes fade to black, and there only seems to be an almost quota-like handful of topless scenes early on in the film. I don’t think it detracts from the film at all, although it does make for slightly imbalanced viewing once the softsploitation stuff is out of the way.

That the film ends rather abruptly is presumably evidence of its low-budget and short shoot, but at least it manages to reconcile Kate with apparent arch-girl nemesis Mary Ann in its final seconds. Okay, they might be putting aside their differences for the good of the team, but it’s something. This release of the film includes some wonderful special features, including a brand new interview with Jack Hill, as well as a recording of a Q&A with Hill, Colleen Camp and Rosanne Katon from a screening of the film. Particularly enjoyable, to me, is an archive interview with the film’s DoP Alfred Taylor, who, it turns out is, Welsh! But moreso than that, his interview provides an interesting counter-point to Hill’s – while the American is in that Corman-esque mode of well-spoken and thoughtful, Taylor’s interview is a much more industrial and mechanical insight into the filmmaking process, and the added insights into his own career are just as fascinating. It’s great to have the chance to listen to professionals talk about films like this with both approaches, and so it’s credit to have them both included here.

All in all it’s hard to exactly recommend The Swinging Cheerleaders as a ‘genre’ film, per se, other than it having cheerleaders occasionally taking their tops off in it, but if you enjoy films about young people in the 70s, then there is a lot to recommend it (not least of all the enjoyment of look at what they’re all wearing). It’s not quite got the badassery of some of Jack Hill’s other films, but even so it’s an entertaining watch that’s worth spending 90 minutes with.

The Swinging Cheerleaders is available now on dual format DVD and Blu-ray, from Arrow Video.