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By Ben Bussey

It’s always admirable to see a debut feature from not only a first-time director but also a largely inexperienced cast and crew, particularly when the film in question is making a very concerted effort to break from the norm and present something unique and challenging. That having been said, when aiming to present a fresh, individual and uncompromising vision, it rather helps if the film and its makers actually have something interesting to say, and a compelling story to tell. Sadly, this is not the case in Tear Me Apart, the first film from director Alex Lightman and the bulk of his young cast. It’s a handsomely made film for certain, making good use of an enormously picturesque Cornish backdrop, and its minimalist take on post-apocalyptic drama is intriguing at first; but as it trudges along, initial intrigue soon gives way to tedium.

Alfie Stewart and Frazer Alexander play two adolescent brothers who live together in a cave on the seafront, in the wake of some sort of cataclysm which seemingly wiped out most of the world’s population – most significantly women, of whom it’s thought there are none left at all. The brothers live in wait for their father, who left them some time ago in search of civilization. Living entirely without electricity or technology (matches are the best it gets, and the brothers treat those like gold dust), their day to day life centres almost entirely on finding food; and, under the belief that all fruits and vegetables are poisonous, they spend their time casting nets into the surf for fish, and laying traps for animals in the nearby fields. None of this yields great results, and as such the younger brother (Stewart) tends to kill and eat any men that cross their path.

Things change when the brothers encounter something they never anticipated: a young woman (Jennie Eggleton). Initially bemused, the brothers proceed to take her prisoner and drag her back to their cave. Of course, having a third party in their midst – one who just might be the last female left in existence – has an inevitable impact on the group dynamic. But they don’t have too long to worry about the Yoko factor, as it soon comes to light that a group of elder ravagers is after them all.

On a technical and aesthetic level, there is plenty to admire about Tear Me Apart. While it’s readily apparent this was not a big budget production, it looks and sounds great. The coast of Cornwall was an excellent choice of location; it’s a beautiful, majestic landscape which immediately enhances the primal, back-to-nature theme at the heart of the story. While the film might easily be classed in the same bracket as Mad Max and its imitators, it’s laudable that Lightman and co chose not to fall back on standard post-apocalyptic cliches, keeping things very grounded and bare bones. There’s a similarly minimalist approach taken with the music, with an atmospheric acapella song used repeatedly throughout; equal parts soothing and sinister, which very much fits the mood Tear Me Apart is aiming for.

The problem is that, beyond this, there’s just very little going on in Tear Me Apart to maintain interest. In terms of plot and character there’s really nothing here we haven’t seen before, and there’s something depressingly backward in its sexual politics; in Eggleton’s Molly, we yet again have an idealised female embodying everything that is good, sent to redeem and enlighten the lost, fearful, violent males, who naturally wind up fighting for ownership of her. Where she has a name, they have none; where she is giving and warm, they are cold and selfish; where they live only on meat, she lives on fruit (it’s no accident that the first thing she does on meeting Stewart in a Garden of Eden-esque setting is to offer him an apple). Director Lightman and writer Tom Kerevan might have been aiming for a feminist-friendly subtext, with the implication that the loss of women reduces all men to savagery, but this is ultimately pushing tired, outmoded notions of the ‘fairer sex’ which we should be past by now. None of this is to suggest there’s anything inherently wrong with Eggleton’s performance; she does the best with what she’s given, but sadly that isn’t a lot.

As for the two young male leads; whilst Stewart and Alexander are clearly very capable actors, neither of them ever quite convince as hardened post-apocalyptic survivors (for one thing, there’s the question of how these modern primitives manage to stay perfectly clean-shaven with short, well-styled hair). While we often see the young men prowling and hunting in a somewhat animalistic fashion, there’s something very unnatural and stagey about these sequences, and no real sense of brutality or tension comes across. The cannibalism element has been emphasised in the PR – and pushed further in the production company’s choice of name, Cannibal Films – but it actually plays a very small role in the film itself, which is very low on bloodshed. Ultimately, when we have characters it’s hard to care about and no real sense of peril, there’s isn’t much left to be invested in as a viewer.

Lightman and the team at Cannibal Films are reportedly developing their follow-up feature right now, and I will be genuinely interested to see how that comes out; again, they clearly know what they’re doing on a technical level, which counts for a lot in the low-budget indie field. I just hope they come up with a more substantial story next time around, and breathe a bit more life into it than they managed here.

Tear Me Apart is released online on 17th June, from www.tearmeapartmovie.com.

By Tristan Bishop

There are many things intrinsic to British culture that have been imported from overseas – The Royal Family, the Patron Saint Of England – but primary among the significance to us Brits is the humble kebab, now so ingrained in our culture that it’s almost impossible to conceive of a night out on the lash without a visit to the kebab shop, so it’s almost surprising that it has taken so long for British filmmakers to cotton on. In fact, given the frequent media scare stories about huge salt and fat levels, not to mention all kinds of dodgy meats in our lamb doners, it’s even more surprising that the horror genre has taken until now to get its teeth into this particular pitta. Of course, the plot is a loose riff around the Sweeney Todd story, but K-Shop exceeds all expectations, and those expecting a low-brow gross-out horror comedy may be rather surprised.

Salah (Ziad Abaza) is a young man of immigrant descent whose father owns a kebab shop in a seaside town. When his father is taken ill, Salah finds his university studies affected whilst he helps out with the shop. His father dreams of opening a gourmet restaurant and keeps a hand-written book containing a business plan and recipes, with his eye on a vacant local property. However, tragedy strikes when the father is beaten up by a trio of drunken troublemakers and dies. Salah attempts to keep his father’s business going, but when he accidentally kills a difficult customer (who is trying to help himself to the food), he discovers that a great way to dispose of human flesh is by turning it into kebab meat (bones and clothes are later thrown into the sea).

More accidents occur, and as Salah starts to lose his grip on reality, accidents become intentional murders, and Salah starts to win awards for his world-class ‘lamb’ kebabs. However, he has not escaped attention, and a weed-smoking half Turkish teenager who takes a job at his shop starts to put together what is going on, and, worse still, a local celebrity and nightclub owner (an excellent, slimy turn by Scot Williams), who may have a few dodgy secrets of his own, starts to be become interested in what is happening in the local fast food joint.

K-Shop contains a lot of footage (most of it apparently shot guerrilla-style on the streets of Bournemouth) akin to one of those police documentaries about Brits-on-the-piss: public vomiting, sex, urination, fighting etc. This gives a sense of a town whose economy is based on night time revels, of which of course the kebab shop is a key ingredient; and it certainly helps to make the audience more amenable to Salah’s plight – at least, until he starts chopping up the bodies.

On the whole, however, the film is remarkably non-judgemental. Director Dan Pringle certainly shows a lot of sympathy for his main character, an intelligent outsider in an alien culture, and whilst the film has a lot to say about the excesses of British culture (Williams’ character is famous for being the first Big Brother contestant to have had sex on live British TV), and the way in which we view immigrants, it never feels preachy or particularly heavy-handed, so credit must be given to Pringle and his performers for creating something which works so well as a human drama.

Special notice must also be given to the score, which sounds at times like a lost My Bloody Valentine (the band, not the film) album, and achieves a remarkable sense of dislocation with heavy reverb and distortion, which mirrors Salah’s disintegrating mental state as he lashes at the inebriated, threatening world around him.

K-Shop is not without flaws. Even at just shy of two hours, it feels like some important moments have been edited out; what seems to be a developing romantic subplot feels curiously abandoned later on. But it is a remarkably impressive first feature, and one which manages to raise a smile with jet black humour whilst prodding the viewer to question their own behaviours.

K-Shop is in UK cinemas 22nd July, from Bulldog Film Distribution.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I confess that the name Emilio P. Miraglia didn’t mean much to me before Arrow announced their boxset dedicated to his two Gothic giallos, but the titles were familiar: The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. Miraglia’s name isn’t the only one connecting these films, with staples of the genre Bruno Nicolai and Marina Malfatti, amongst others, featuring in both films. But it’s without a doubt Miraglia who’s celebrated here, and it’s a real pleasure to get the chance to see these two films together, and to learn a bit more about perhaps an undervalued director.

The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave is an immensely stylish giallo (all the best ones are, aren’t they?), and as ever I find myself a lot more forgiving of the film’s meandering plot, hugely unlikeable protagonist and one-too-many twists because of just how great the whole thing looks and sounds. The film starts off slow – we’re introduced to the aristocrat Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen), recently released from a mental institution following the death of the wife, Evelyn. He’s a perverted serial killer: he seduces red-headed women before murdering them in kinky sex-games, all because he found Evelyn in the arms of another man before her untimely death. But Alan wants to mend his ways and thinks marriage ought to do the trick – and so he marries blonde Gladys (Marina Malfatti), and moves back into the sprawling mansion he had left to rot after the death of his wife. Soon enough, both Alan and Gladys are haunted by strange goings on in the mansion, and Alan’s mental state becomes increasingly unstable once again.

Though ostensibly set in the UK, there’s nothing very British about the film (except for the accents in the dub and the occasional mention of tea) – this could be a textbook style-guide for would-be giallo makers. The costumes alone make the film worth watching, from Gladys’ increasingly bizarre get ups (all with plunging necklines, of course), to Alan’s dashing red suede suit. But more importantly, the film is shot really magnificently. From an opening Vaseline-on-the-lens effect to portray insanity, to dream-like flashbacks and jarring angles during murder scenes, Evelyn is a really rich visual experience. Perhaps the most memorable scene of the film, the attempted murder of stripper Susan (Erika Blanc), best sums up the real visual feats of the film. Arrow’s release of the film rightly pays due attention to Erika Blanc, and the two interviews with the actress included in the set are an absolute delight – the newer of the two is only 9 minutes long, but it’s hugely entertaining.

The film boasts several memorable and excessive death scenes, not least of all the scene in which an unconscious and wheel-chair bound woman is literally thrown into a cage of foxes. The drawn-out narrative is punctuated with enough imaginative violence that my attention never really strayed from what I was watching. That’s especially true as Gladys seems to catch Alan’s psychosis, but of course, nothing is ever really as it seems in a giallo, and that’s particularly true here. A flurry of twists emerges in the closing ten minutes or so, and the film would probably have been a great deal improved had these developments been spread a bit more evenly throughout the film. That said, even if it’s not an out-right classic of the genre, it’s still a hugely enjoyable film.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times establishes itself as something of an uber-giallo within minutes of opening: creepy kids, a broken doll, a sing-song tune…and throw on top of that a spooky family curse and the ground-work is laid for another twisting narrative. Within quarter of an hour of the film, I was already a bit lost, and it seems I’m not alone – in one of the special features, Stephen Thrower says much the same, and speculates that perhaps that’s intentional. Having established two sisters in the film’s opening scene – set a decade or so prior to the main events of the film – a third sister is thrown into the mix, keeping things nice and confusing.

Sisters Kitty (Barbara Bouchet) and Franziska (Marina Malfatti) mourn the loss of their grandfather, and the bizarre circumstances of his death cause them to recall a family curse he would tell them about – that of the Red Queen, an ancestor who returns every 100 years to kill seven people. More people die and a number of suspects become apparent, but suspicion falls in particular on a third sister, Evelyn, who is said to have moved to America. As the death toll rises, a sense of guilt from Kitty and Franziska’s past becomes harder to supress, and the truth bubbles to the surface.

The figure of the Red Queen is an absolutely marvellous riff on the usual giallo killer. The black gloves are still in place, but instead of a trench coat our killer now wears an elaborate red cape, less Little Red and more the wolf. Again, Miraglia stages absolutely wonderful death scenes – Lenore’s death in the back of a van being particularly brutal. The most memorable sequence, for me, is the nightmare sequence in which the Red Queen runs toward the camera, before hovering over Kitty, who lies in bed, and stabbing her. The fact that most of the murder victims work at the same fashion house as Kitty and her lover Martin (Ugo Pagliai) makes for the perfect set up to again have elaborate fashions on display, and lends an expert air of stylishness to proceedings.

The fashion-house setting also sets up the myriad love triangles and affairs and broken relationships that seem to be going throughout the film, padding out time between murders. Luckily, it’s quite entertaining, thanks to excellent performances, perhaps notably from Sybil Danning as the scheming model Lulu. Stephen Thrower describes both films contained in this box set as being a mixture of giallo and gothic, and he rightly notes that the contrast is more noticeable in this film – while The Night Evelyn Came From the Grave is more overtly gothic in its narrative, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times makes more jarring moves from modern fashion house to crumbling, cobweb-riddled basements. That’s not to say it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t always make for the most coherent of narratives (I know, I know, gialli are basically never coherent anyway).

All in all, I’m not sure I could pick between the films which I prefer, but Evelyn feels like the more satisfying film. Red Queen features an incredibly elaborate and watery climax, and yet somehow it feels like things just don’t quite wrap up well enough, which is a shame. In all honesty though, it doesn’t detract from what’s been a very entertaining 90 minutes. If I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, if a giallo looks and sounds good, then chances are I’m probably going to love it.

This collection from Arrow is a wonderful testament to an over-looked director – these are the only two gialli he made, and it seems like not much else is known about him, apart from the few other films he made. There are some wonderful archive special features included in the set, from NoShame Films’ Region 1 release of the films, including interviews with production designer Lorenzo Baraldi, which are a fascinating insight to the Italian film business of the time. There’s also the short but very sweet ‘If I Met Emilio Miraglia Today’, in which his collaborators show some real affection for the man (and gives us another chance to indulge in some Erica Blanc entertainment). The combination of old and new features, along with the excellent presentations, as ever, of the films themselves, make this set an absolute must for fans of the giallo.

Arrow Video release the Killer Dames boxset (dual format DVD & Blu-ray) on 30th May.

By Karolina Gruschka

The Aborsky Produktion Oltre La Follia by Luigi Zanuso, is a celebration of the abject. Introduced by the film’s promotion as “a surreal Porno/horror impregnated with the artistic/conceptual vision of the author”, Oltre La Follia displays death, (moral) decay, abject identities and various body fluids and functions in an explicit manner. The hour long feature divides into eight episodes which are conjured up by the auteur – Luigi Zanuso – in a state of nightmarish jouissance. Each section is introduced with a philosophical quote about madness, taken from Zanuso himself or Erasmo da Rotterdam.

Episode one takes place in a red room; performer Rosario Gallardo pleasures herself surrounded by on lookers and serves up her lower region’s bodily fluids in glasses to those ‘guests’.Episode two is set in the dining room; performer Michelle is biting, licking, stabbing, slapping and masturbating with offal while masked men observe (and get off).

Episode three shows Michelle having a nightmarish vision within Zanuso’s nightmare. In episode four a predator like and red-eyed Michelle is involved in a gory ‘three girls and a dead cow’ sequence. Episode five shows four couples having outer- and intercourse with each other; their moments of pleasure leading not only to the loss of body fluids but also to the loss of life.

In episode six Michelle’s dinner party has grown darker and more absurd as she wears goggles made from eyeballs and inserts eyeballs into her vagina. In episode seven Michelle wears a super-massive strap-on and dominates one of the men. While she sodomizes him, another guy and then a pig head fuck her. Last but not least, episode eight displays Zanuso conducting an orchestra of mannequins.

I must admit that Oltra La Follia is my first ‘porn’. So far, I had only seen sexually explicit material in the shape of the odd graphic internet pop-up or a random scene whilst zapping through TV channels at night. Although porn graphically displays sexual organs and sexual activity with the intention of sexually arousing the viewer, I find that it has the opposite effect on me. The genre magnifies a real and natural act to such an extent that it transforms it into something ludicrous and repulsive. Oltre La Follia, too, is farcical and disgusting, yet with the difference being that the director intended to generate those responses. Luigi Zanuso mentions in an interview (which will be available as a DVD feature) that he approached the production with the goal “to see the absurd” by letting “madness itself speak[…]”. Creating this material is his way of looking at and addressing the crazy nature of the world, which is also inherent to our selves.

Further to visceral disgust, Oltre La Follia evokes moral disgust – an affect responding to people or conduct that transgress social norms. A great deal of the movie contains dead animals which are being (ab)used as part of the sexual activity, touching and penetrating various orifices of the human body. The press release indicates that this is a “protest” against the “killing of innocent animals” in our “corrupt and decadent society;” however, Oltre La Follia does exactly as what it condemns. As an animal lover (not the perverted kind … just saying) I found those scenes extremely disrespectful.

Contradiction appears to be a theme that runs steadily through the production. In his movie, Zanuso approaches realism (real sex, real bodies and real meat) by means of surrealist mediation. The unconscious wandering mind, irrationality; qualities in opposition to corporeality, though one could argue that surrealism is the interior counterpart to the ‘outer’ reality. What is more, Oltre La Follia is a cross between the two binary fields of artistic vision (creativity, conceptual approach) and pornography (sex for sex’s sake, focus on the material act). On the one hand Zanuso is trying to counter his dissatisfaction with existing porn; on the other, he is creating a work with a foul and absurd aesthetic. As a consequence the film becomes somewhat stuck in purgatory, being too visionary and philosophical for common porn as well as too generic for a piece of performance art. Zanuso, however, is aware that his filmmaking style only appeals to a very niche audience, stating in the aforementioned interview that “some people can appreciate this movies”. It seems to me that he shoots films not for an audience, but guided by an urge to “express the madness”. Consequently, Oltre La Follia won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Did I like it? I believe that this movie not only goes beyond madness but also beyond questions such as whether it is a good film or not. What I am saying is that Oltre La Follia is probably more likely to interest somebody who appreciates ventures into different sensibilities.

After running the film festival circuit, Oltre La Follia will be released on DVD and include the feature, an interview with Zanuso, an interview with one actor, two short films and the teaser trailer.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: far too often, microbudget indie horror filmmakers seem content to do little more than half-heartedly rehash tired old tropes in a manner that demands little of themselves and even less of their audiences. It makes me very happy to say that this is most emphatically not the case with Harvest Lake. At a glance it would appear to be something we’ve all seen before – generic title, bunch of young pretty people at a cabin in the woods – but I can assure you, there’s never been a cabin in the woods horror movie quite like this one before. And I truly hope other indie horror filmmakers are taking note, as – while it isn’t an unequivocal success in every respect – I get the feeling this could prove to be, in its own way, something of a game-changer.

We open on an anonymous man and woman in an idyllic woodland lakeside setting. It would appear they’re there on a romantic getaway, given they proceed to go at it like rabbits right then and there; yet given their complete silence and the strange, hypnotic expressions on their faces, it’s readily apparent that things might not quite be right with the couple, a feeling that intensifies as they step into the waters of the lake, and promptly disappear beneath the surface.

From here we cut to X number of miles away, where we meet our core ensemble of twenty-somethings – lovebirds Ben and Cat (Dan Nye and Tristan Risk), Jennifer (Ellie Church) and Josh (Jason Crowe) – who are heading out to those very same woods in celebration of Ben’s birthday. It’s a familiar scene: the couple can hardly keep their hands off one another, whilst the single female seems more inhibited, and they even have a token gay friend in Josh. On arrival at the cabin, Cat demonstrates her impetuousness even more by inviting a complete stranger, Mark (Kevin Roach), to join them at their party that evening. However, after the four friends head down to the lake and recline in the sun for a while, something seems to come over them all… and for once, that might not entirely be a euphemism, as that same sexual trance that fell over the anonymous strangers in the first scene starts to get its hooks into the new arrivals. It seems there is something in these woods, some inhuman entity which wants any human being that ventures into its territory, and has an interesting method of trapping its prey: by making them, as one character puts it, “horny as fuck.”

It’s an intriguing set up. Surely no one would deny that sex appeal has always been a key sales point of low-budget horror, generally in the form of the scantily clad woman running screaming from the big phallic weapon; yet Harvest Lake, for the most part, sidelines violence completely, and makes sex the real focal point. Certainly, this isn’t the only time a horror movie has done this; Cronenberg’s Shivers comes to mind, and that’s a film with which Harvest Lake does share some common thematic ground. But where Cronenberg presented us with an urban sexual revolution by way of a parasitic infection, Schirmer’s film shows its protagonists descending into unbridled sexual abandon as they become (as the poster tagline puts it) ‘one with nature;’ and in both films, we’re left to question whether or not what’s happening to them is necessarily a bad thing.

To make one further comparison with Shivers; that film was very concerned with reflecting the sexual politics of the time, and this is also true of Harvest Lake. Seeing that it’s a film written and directed by a man, and featuring two actresses who are known to have appeared naked on film before, you’d be forgiven for anticipating an old-fashioned male pornographic fantasy. And to an extent, you’d be correct, as both Tristan Risk and Ellie Church spend the bulk of the film wearing very little; Risk in particular sports bikini bottoms which leave so little to the imagination, she might as well have literally slapped a fig leaf on there. However, whilst there’s no shortage of voyeuristic shots of the women, Schirmer makes a point of treating his male cast much the same, addressing the usual inequality directly when Risk demands Nye change out of his board shorts into skin-tight Speedos.

Crucially, while the film’s characters seem at a glance to be nothing but slasher movie archetypes, Harvest Lake is altogether more progressive in its outlook. Risk may seem the unabashed harlot who would ordinarily be lined up for the meat cleaver, but the film never condemns the character for her voracious sexual appetite; Church, while the ‘good girl’ by default, is in no danger of being mistaken for a nun; and Nye, who would initially seem the textbook jock, is far from the standard emotionally retarded ball of testosterone. Perhaps most notable is Jason Crowe’s character; while at first he seems little more than the usual token gay, there to act swishy and crack camp one-liners, he proves to be a far more nuanced and interesting character than gay men are typically allowed to be in (for want of a better word) straight horror. Things take a particularly unexpected turn with Kevin Roach’s character, who – despite the not-entirely convincing circumstances of his introduction – is also signposted to be something quite different from what he turns out to be.

We might question how well this largely progressive, pro-sex attitude sits with the supernatural threat which is also sexual in nature. There are also a few moments of more conventional threat and violence which feel a little out of place, briefly derailing the film into more standard terrain. But again, this is a film that’s interested primarily in pushing boundaries, challenging preconceptions, and leaving you unsure as to what the fuck it was you just saw – and in this, Harvest Lake most definitely hits its target. It’s clear it was made for a small budget, but for the most part this really isn’t a hindrance at all; the special effects may have a very lo-fi feel, but surely this is preferable to the kind of cut-price CGI we see all too much of.

We need more indie horror movies like Harvest Lake. By that, I don’t mean more Lovecraftian erotica in the woods; I mean films which take a stab at rewriting the rule book, and presenting a truly different brand of horror. In doing just this, Harvest Lake has definitely raised the bar for the microbudget market, and is easily one of the most unique, interesting and memorable new releases thus far in 2016.

Harvest Lake will make its European premiere at the Nocturna Madrid International Fantastic Film Festival. It’s available on limited edition Blu-ray, and on demand via the Vimeo embed below: this is only in certain regions at present, but will be worldwide from May 30th. 

Harvest Lake from Bandit Motion Pictures on Vimeo.

Review by Quin

Roger Sewhcomar’s no-budget crowd funded film Do You Like My Basement? Is one of those titles that you will probably either love or hate. On one hand, it’s a bit whimsical and gives a wink at the horror genre; on the other hand, for those who like their horror mean and nasty, that title’s probably a bit too jokey. When I ran across it on iTunes, I had never heard of it before and I must admit, the title made me chuckle. The title combined with the “Horror Comedy” tag I found when looking it up on Amazon, didn’t quite prepare me for what I was going to see. The film has been released in the UK as both The Basement and The Cellar (for the remainder of this review I’ll refer to it as The Basement). Perhaps this leaves it just ambiguous enough so the viewer isn’t expecting as much going in to it. It’s mean and nasty horror disguised as a comedy, containing elements of both, but the film never quite does anything original with either.

Here’s something I’m amazed I still have to write: It’s another found footage movie – but more accurately a first person POV film. It follows Stanley Farmer and his attempts to cast and begin filming his very own reality-style horror film. He posts an ad online asking for someone who is willing to portray “real fear” and that “all types are wanted.” Most of the film consists of auditions where he asks questions that get progressively creepy and the actors are eventually escorted to the basement for a screen test. Each type of actor portrayed in the film is different and reflects many of the stereotypes we have seen before in horror. It’s possible that this was intended as satire, but it mostly registers as tired characterization of the people in typical slasher films. One positive though – The Basement does utilize a racially diverse cast. There is even a scene with subtitles.

As you can probably guess, Stanley is not right in the head and his main objective is making a horror movie that is all very real. At one point, a young actress tells Stanley, “I’ve never been to a casting session quite like this before.” To which he replies, “There’s never been a film like this before.” For a horror fan like Stanley, it’s weird that he obviously hasn’t seen Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Man Bites Dog, Tony, How to be a Serial Killer or Peeping Tom, because yes Stanley (and yes writer/director Roger Sewhcomar, I’m looking at you) there have been movies like this before and they were all so much better.

Using the found footage trope, viewers are treated to a brief flashback from early in Stanley’s life. While on vacation as a kid with his family, a man films him in front of the Tower of London. There are some clues in the interactions that take place that suggest why Stanley may have become homicidal. But I think the Tower of London location was no mistake and it creates a huge missed opportunity that should have been taken. Some might call Richard III Britain’s first serial killer (If you’ve read the play, I don’t think that’s too far a stretch). His family and friends were his victims and The Tower of London was the crime scene. Using some imagery from Olivier’s Richard III would have been effective in place of the WWII era fascist iconography the film ultimately goes with. Before you remind me of the 1995 film version of Richard III with Sir Ian McKellen, yes I do realize that film compares the last king of the House of York to the same historical figure. However, when you watch McKellen’s masterful interpretation of words written by Shakespeare, there lies all the difference. Charlie Floyd, the actor who portrays Stanley (Who we never get a clear view of, but he sounds a lot like Liam Neeson if he had an English accent) is no Sir Ian McKellen and writer/director Roger Sewhcomar is no Richard Loncraine and of course he is no Will Shakespeare (Duh!).

As I mentioned earlier, The Basement was another product of a Kickstarter campaign. The film’s website (which is actually promoted within the film) www.doyoulikemybasementmovie.com is probably where most of the budget went and the site is now defunct. But, the Kickstarter page is still up where it collected $5,100.00 which sounds about right. This movie looks like 5,000 bucks. If I had been a backer, I’d be asking for my money back. The Kickstarter page describes the project as “…a dark comic horror film which asks: How can a blood soaked basement still make you smile?” Well, I’ve seen it and I didn’t smile. If you do, then I’m so very sorry for you.

Do You Like My Basement? is available for digital download from Virgil Films and Entertainment.

By Keri O’Shea

It’s kind of hard not to get lost for words when you find yourself reviewing an – albeit beautifully re-released – piece of classic 80s schlock like Bride of Re-Animator. It’s one of those things where I think that if you wanted to see it, you probably will have gotten around to it at some point over the past twenty five years or so, and if you have zero interest in it, well, I don’t know if these words will change your mind. The fact stands, though, that there is a steady and committed market for what the likes of Arrow are doing – which is, providing definitive versions of films we probably encountered first on VHS, but now want to own in a form which is the complete antithesis of the modern online movie, package-free viewing experience. In that, Arrow know their market and they are without compare in what they’ve been able to do in recent years.

But what if you hadn’t gotten around to seeing this film in any of its incarnations – what would you need to know about it? I think what struck me on this particular revisit was actually how hard the film works, sometimes rather fruitlessly, to build up to its lunatic crescendo, when diehards who enjoyed Re-Animator probably would have happily taken a little less plot to get us there.

The film picks up some months after the ‘massacre’ which occurred at the hospital under the jurisdiction of one Dr Herbert West, played as deadpan as ever by Jeffrey Combs (indeed the whole film would dissolve as messily as one of Screaming Mad George’s creations, if Combs played for laughs. Rinse and repeat for any number of lowbrow horror and exploitation films.) Alongside his long-suffering sidekick, the anti-Igor Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) West has somehow dodged any dodgy implications about his involvement with the scene of the crime by getting seconded to…Peru? It seems that when the going gets tough, the tough end up in South America, stitching people back together in the midst of a civil conflict. West is astonishingly undeterred from still trying out a bit of his Re-Agent on their ‘patients’ and, well. The man is as stubborn as a mule. Every time it’s administered, the subjects get so apoplectic that they have to be offed again immediately. However, a combination of factors, not least of which is a reanimated lizard which fills West with renewed optimism (yep, you heard) sees the two men soon back on American shores, back where they left off.

And so, West is back to borrowing body parts, renewing his energies for extra-curricular activities at the house he shares with Cain, when one of the body parts – his rival Dr Hill’s head, to be exact – gets reanimated once more, aided and abetted by a curious mortician by the name of Graves (Mel Stewart), who has a go with some Re-Agent himself. As if all of this wasn’t enough of a crowd, the Police have reopened their investigation on West and Cain. There’s also a new love interest for Cain, but to be honest, she’s a bit extraneous…

So, as anyone would do in the circumstances, our housemates begin working on their magnum opus – a woman comprised out of all the good bits they could find at work, such as a ballerina’s feet, a prostitute’s legs, the head of a terminally ill woman whom Cain was treating, oh and remember Megan, Barbara Crampton’s character in the first film? West hung onto her heart for just such an occasion. The sad thing is that there is so much else going on in this film, that the reveal of their own, suitably grisly spin on the Bride of Frankenstein motif, itself feels a bit stitched on at the end. This is a shame as the female creature looks impressive, and a few ideas are almost-explored in her inclusion which don’t really go anywhere (such as whether it’s Megan, or poor Gloria who’s coming to the fore here). I know that the classic Elsa Lanchester creature is only on the screen for a few moments, given the fact that she, too, gives a film its name – but there is still a sense that the whole proceedings are driving towards her incarnation, even given some gloriously weird asides. Well, to bring us back to the more modern movie, I guess that’s what you get when you feel that you need to stitch bat’s wings to a severed head and have it fluttering around the place!

Ultimately, Bride of Re-Animator is fun, but it does drown in its jumble of different elements and this is easier to see a fair few years down the line. Yuzna hasn’t done a bad job here, although it’s far from his best work, but I do feel that just as Cain decries West’s work as “morbid doodling”, this is essentially exactly what you could say about the film as a whole. Still, completists, nostalgics and general gore fiends will (and should) be impressed at the exhaustive work which has been done by Arrow on releasing a complete print, even if this means some minor differences in quality in places. Yet again, this seems to be a definitive version of an old beloved horror film, so if you haven’t done so already, find a spot on your shelf for it.

Bride of Re-Animator is available to purchase now from Arrow Video.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

A blend of slasher and ghost story, Dark Signal is a competently made but uninspiring and frustrating film. It opens with a young woman being murdered by a serial killer. Elsewhere, strapped-for-cash mother Kate (Joanna Ignaczewska) joins her boyfriend, Nick, in an endeavour to steal back £40,000 he’s owed by a client. Kate is tasked with waiting in the car as getaway driver, but soon enough she realises things aren’t going to plan. Meanwhile, at a remote radio station, Laurie (Siwan Morris) and her producer Ben (Gareth David Lloyd) are about to start their final show for the station. Their special guest is a psychic, Carla (Cinzia Monreale), and while on air she believes she’s made contact with the dead. While sceptical Laurie butts heads with Ben and Carla, it soon becomes clear that their ghostly contact might just help them find out the truth about the serial killer terrorising the area.

The film certainly looks handsome enough, for the most part. Edward Evers-Swindell is confident with his direction, which only falls apart when a sense of action is required, particularly at the film’s climax. Evers-Swindell makes the most of the stunning North Walian landscape, although truth be told, soaring aerial shots of the region don’t really seem to otherwise befit the look or feel of the film. Gorgeous shots of brooding mountains are one thing, but the film doesn’t otherwise have a strong sense of place at all.*

Where the film suffers most is in the narrative and the script. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to blend two sub-genres of horror, but for the bulk of the film they’re entirely separate, and when the would-be slasher part of the story collides with the ghost story, it’s not satisfying at all. Quite a long time is spent without much really happening, and not much is done in this time to establish the characters – and none are especially likeable, so when the time comes that we need to care about them, any action lacks impact. Neither the ghost nor the killer make all that much sense, either, and you can certainly forget about an adequate sense of motivation. The film’s ghostly aspects are played out like a mid-00s remake of a J-Horror classic – that is to say, utterly unimaginatively – and the masked murderer doesn’t fare much better. Throw in a horribly consistent use of stingers to tell you when to jump, and the film is less terrifying and more irritating.

Dark Signal does manage to deliver a fairly interesting twist, but unfortunately it’s soon buried under the weight of tying up lots of other loose ends. A lot of ‘character stuff’ is only introduced late in the film, and I daresay the film would at least have been more compelling had these character backgrounds been drip-fed a little better throughout the entirety of the film’s runtime. It’s a shame, because there’s a good cast here – both Siwan Morris and Gareth David Lloyd (again) are wasted. Joanna Iganczewska fares even less well, and I’m not sure if her quite irritating performance is down to her under-developed character or her own acting skills. The film also, bafflingly, features Cinzia Monreale as, of course, a psychic, and fares much better with her character. She’s definitely a highlight of the film, and not just for cult recognition!

In fairness, there are a few narrative details which impress – the plot by a PR man to rob a footballer’s mansion is a wonderfully North East Walian touch, for example – so maybe there are glimmers of hope in the film. Overall though, Dark Signal’s a dud.

*Don’t even get me started on the official blurb that describes the film as taking place in ‘deep in the heart of the isolated Welsh valleys’. Yes, I know any mountain range has valleys, but the Welsh valleys are in the South, boyo, and this here film’s very much set in the North.

Dark Signal will be released to UK DVD and download (iTunes, Google, Amazon, PlayStation and B+K on Sky Store) on 30th May, from Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment.

By Quin

The Unraveling is the first film written and directed by Thomas Jakobsen. However, he does have a huge list of post-production and editing related credits on IMDB for his work on stand-up comedy specials – quite a few good ones actually, like Mike Birbiglia, Aziz Ansari and Jim Jefferies just to name a few. His co-writer on this one is Justin S. Monroe. Together they have conceived a somewhat engaging suspense tale with a heavy handed dose of morality. The objective seems to be throwing off the viewer and then smacking them with a twist, but if you watch closely, you might figure it all out way before you’re supposed to. However, I wouldn’t be doing you any favors If I didn’t warn you about an ending that might make you angry. For me, it felt like a cheap attempt at making a social and moral statement. Out of respect for all involved in this film, I certainly will avoid any major spoilers, but the structure of this movie requires that I reveal some.

The non-spoilery part is this: the film opens with a guy waking up after a drug-fueled evening next to a woman and a bald guy. The woman is distraught and in bad shape. The man attends to the woman by taking the blanket from the bald guy and giving it to her. When he removes the blanket he notices a big wad of cash next to the guy, who is very passed out. He grabs the money, leaves the girl and returns home. Upon arriving, we meet his pregnant fiancé. She expresses how disappointed she is that he can stay out so long without calling to check in. He lies and says that he had to work extra time, but the good news is he was finally given all that back pay he was owed by his boss. This comes to exactly $6,000. We all know the money belongs to the bald guy. It’s also revealed quite early that Mike (that’s the guy with the wife and the stolen money) has had problems with drugs. Everyone around him thinks he’s clean, but he’s not. The pursuit of drugs is what is making him stay out late, lying to his wife. Now stolen money is about to make his life even worse. Too bad for Mike, Stephen King’s Quitter’s Inc. is only for cigarette smokers. Good thing for his fiancé, she can keep her pinky.

Now we come to one of the tricky parts in recapping this story. I’ll jump ahead slightly and tell you that the movie soon turns into – a ‘group of guys in the woods stalked by a killer’ movie. This is where I slowly eased in and found myself very much along for the ride. The purpose of this wooded testosterone-heavy excursion is to celebrate Mike’s ending bachelorhood. The guys are sitting around the fire, drinking 45-year old Scotch, but Mike keeps finding ways to sneak away and snort his drugs. It could be assumed that Mike’s experience on the trip is possibly similar to Catherine Deneuve’s lonely weekend in Repulsion, until one of the guys ends up dead. It then feels a little closer to Deliverance meets Trainspotting. Is the bald guy after his money? Is there something supernatural going on? Is Mike crazy and imagining it all? After all, the film is called The Unraveling, and that is meant to imply a few different things. Mike’s life is clearly unraveled and now maybe his sanity is too.

The action in the woods is where this film really shines. The direction keeps things moving and the viewer can easily make sense of where things are on screen in a spacial sense. Not completely unlike the dark house in Halloween when Jamie Lee Curtis is up and down the stairs and all over the place, the action in The Unraveling rarely stops (except for flashbacks that begin to piece together what lead to Mike’s drunken stupor). At just under 90 minutes, the film moves along at a nice pace and doesn’t drag. Unfortunately, it relies heavily on overused horror/suspense tropes. Every beat is hit right when you think it will be. It’s like listening to a cover of a well-known song that leaves you just wanting to listen to the original. And speaking of music, The Unraveling is polluted with the most generic yet emotionally manipulative score I may have ever heard in a lower budget suspense film.

Right around the time the group arrives in the woods (before the action starts), the interactions among the characters started to give me an uneasy feeling that I was being preached to- like some big sermon was beginning. My suspicions were correct, but not necessarily in a religious sense; you can decide on that yourself how you interpret it all. But the message in the film is unmistakable. I don’t typically respond to message films disguised as genre films. It’s about as manipulative as that ridiculous score.