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By Nia Edwards-Behi

The Human Centipede franchise seems to roughly split people into three camps: love it, hate it, or, oh god, get it away from me, my eyes! my eyes! For the most part I’m firmly in the first camp. I enjoyed the first film as a relatively conventional ordeal horror film with a sick twist, and really rather loved the second film, having enjoyed its meta-relationship to the first film and, in all honesty, finding it really rather funny. HC3 is not as good as HC2, in my opinon. In less capable hands I would almost definitely have dismissed the film as purposefully hateful trash, shocking for the sake of it and not worth anyone’s time. I’m sure this is the sort of criticism that will be levelled at the film anyway, and while I can’t say I wholly disagree, I enjoyed HC3 a lot, and I think Tom Six is just about clever enough and talented enough to get away with it.

You probably know the premise: maniacal prison manager William ‘Bill’ Boss (Dieter Lasser) and his assistant Dwight Butler (Laurence Harvey) are struggling to run an institution filled with violent and rowdy criminals. The state governor (Eric Roberts) is on the verge of shutting the place down. Dwight eventually convinces Boss to implement his masterplan: using the films as inspiration, make the inmates part of a real-life human centipede.

This is a film of artifice: extremely hammy performances, over-saturated backdrops, dream sequences and, of course, the meta-narrative to end them all. This seems, to me, to be intentional, rather than a smart way of hiding a film’s flaws, but either way, it works. The over-played nature of the whole film detaches us somewhat from the fact that it is, at times, extremely unsavory. There is so much unsavory stuff here that it’s a hard task to take any of it seriously. The main point of contention is likely the incessant use of racial slurs by Bill Boss, but so many racial and ethnic groups are insulted in this way that, for me at least, this was less ‘offensive’ and more ‘social commentary’. By making Bill a prison manager he represents American authority, and all the hatefulness spouted by him becomes something much bigger. For me, this conceit works, but I’ve no doubt others will find Bill to be a lazy cypher. Take, for example, the film’s sole female character, Daisy (Bree Olsen). She is objectified, abused and belittled throughout the film – indeed an assault on her sets the tone for the whole film at the outset. While on the one hand deeply unpleasant, if we are to take Bill and his prison as a microcosm of American or Western society, then, well, it’s a fairly scathing caricature, right down to the casting of Olsen in the role (who, it must be said, gives one of the best performances of the film – take that as you will). Everyone and anyone is fair game in this film, and for me it’s effective as a rather extreme metaphorical device.

Having said that, I’m sure Six is less concerned with narrative metaphor than he is having a whale of a time taking the piss out of everyone – by which I mean, not the targets of Bill’s abuse in the film, but the people who will see a film like this and be offended first, and think, if at all, later. His own appearance in the film should be a hugely smug and indulgent cameo, but instead it works really well in the meta-context of the three films, and in relation to his own huge persona as the, dare I say, auteur behind these films. That he manages to even take the piss out of himself is almost endearing.

There is one main complaint that I have about the film, and that is that the prison centipede is a bit of a disappointment. A lot more time is spent talking about it than actually making it and seeing it, which, following the amount of time we spend with the centipede in HC2, feels like a bit of a let down. Understandably doing the same with a much bigger centipede was ambitious from the outset. The ‘human caterpillar’ goes only someway to make up for this, but there is at least plenty of ridiculous violence and gore to be found elsewhere in the film.

HC3 is hardly going to win over any new fans for Six or the franchise, but that’s hardly the point. If you enjoyed the previous films, then you’re bound to get a kick out of this one. The Human Centipede Trilogy is a nicely packaged series of sick laughs, and I hope it remains that way – any further layers of meta-narrative just won’t work, and it is element that best prevents the films from being boring. While I won’t look forward to a Human Centipede 4, I will very much look forward to seeing what Tom Six comes up with next.

By Jamie Brownlie

Dear God, Ben. What are you doing to me? My second review for the site and not only do you give me a found footage movie but found footage torture porn?

As I said above, this is the second movie review I’ve written for the fine folks at Brutal as Hell and the second I’ve written in the five years since I closed down my old site, BthroughZ. In that time I’e watched countless horror movies with the option of shutting them off when I got to the point of gouging my eyes out. Sadly, when you’re reviewing a movie you’ve got to watch the whole damn thing, no matter how shit stained it might be. When I wrote my aforementioned first review I tried to stay professional because it was my first time writing for the site and I wanted to give a good first impression. As my mother used to say, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.” Well, that’s over and done with so here comes the real me.

First things first: Fuck this movie, fuck the people who made this movie and fuck anyone who likes this movie. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about this turd.

Ed and Susan (Jim Roof and Shannon Malone, respectively) are your standard suburban couple. Your standard suburban couple who happen to run a snuff film business. If that wasn’t enough, Ed has the lofty goal of making the very first ‘triple feature’ snuff film, a snuff film with three murders. If you’re going to go, go big, I guess. This film is the documentation of that endeavor.

Seeing as I write for a site called Brutal as Hell, it should come as no shock to anyone that I love violent, fucked-up movies. I love movies where guys get stabbed in the eye with icicles, movies where men carrying push lawnmowers wade into rooms full of zombies, and movies where masked, unstoppable maniacs slaughter scantily clad co-eds with power tools and lawn care implements. What I don’t love is torture porn. Yes, I liked the first Saw movie and I love the Collector/Collection series, but movies that exist for no purpose other than to show and glorify the prolonged suffering and degradation of my fellow man, I just don’t get and I’ll never understand the mindset of those who call themselves fans of the genre.

– Spoilers Abound (because, fuck this movie) –

Ed and Susan are driven, I’ll give them that. Under the guise of amateur porn makers, they troll the streets of their city looking for attractive young boys and girls they can film having a threesome and then slaughter. However, when regular teens turn out to be too smart to fall for their nefarious scheme, they turn to those far more desperate, homeless kids. Enter Crystal, Clutch and Jamie, three young squat dwellers willing to do anything to make enough money to get off the street. Promised $500 each, they return to Ed and Susan’s cage, as he refers to it at the beginning of the movie, to make Ed’s opus of depravity. Unsurprisingly, things don’t go to plan as Crystal decides she can’t fuck on film, Clutch experiences some erectile issues and Susan’s addiction to poisoning random people all get in the way. This all might sound sort of humorous, and at points early in the film some things are played for laughs, but it’s not. It’s all been done before and, honestly, it’s all rather boring.

As much as I hate to say it, technically, the film is actually fairly well done. Since it’s found footage, it’s obviously shot on video (not that everything today isn’t). That said, it’s well shot on video. Everything looks great. The gore is (sadly) realistic and done well enough to make this desensitized horror hound morally uncomfortable. Likewise, the acting is adequately performed by all those involved, particularly the unfortunate Crystal as she’s dismembered, disemboweled and force fed her own body fat. The sound is not the best and at times seems like it was patterned after the Max Headroom signal intrusion.* Truthfully, aside from the one of two sound issues, from a technical and performance standpoint, the film is better than most of its ilk.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just a bad audience for this kind of film. Personally, if I was watching it for my own entertainment and not to review, I’d have shut it off 15 minutes in. It’s not that I can’t stomach movies like this; I’ve sat through both Cannibal Holocaust and August Underground, two films that dwarf this in terms of torture, depravity and realism. It’s just that I’ve seen it all before and I don’t need to see it again.

For all of its shocking themes it fails to deliver at strange moments. The nudity of the porn shoot, of which there is very little, is blurred as if they were afraid to show it. They feature a scene in which Ed masturbates to DVDs of his past kills but once more they blur it out. Not that I wanted to see Ed ‘yanky his wanky’ but for a film that seems to pride itself on its extremeness (if that’s actually a word) those scenes seem like a cop out. If you’re going to try to show how depraved a guy is by showing a full frontal view of him jacking off to murder scenes, don’t blur it. Shoot it from the side, shoot it from behind, just don’t puss out at the last second and blur it. Another case in point: they show Crystal’s stomach being slit open in close-up, but then show Ed hammering on her arm with a mallet in a less shocking or ‘artsy’ style. Maybe they were trying to show how fancy they were, but after just seeing poor Crystal force fed her own guts in ultra-realism, it seemed an odd choice.

Besides the technical competency of the film and those that made it, there’s not much I can recommend about it. So yeah, fuck this movie, fuck the people who made this movie and fuck anyone who likes this it.

Oh, and Ben, if you the next movie you send me could have some scantily clad co-eds or maybe the words massacre, sleepover or cheerleader in the title, that would be awesome. Thanks.

* For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, follow this link.

The House With 100 Eyes is available on Region 1 DVD from 16th June 2015 (pre-orders open now), from Artsploitation Films.

THE HOUSE WITH 100 EYES | Official Trailer | Artsploitation Films from artsploitation on Vimeo.

By Ben Bussey

British genre cinema has long had a problem with finding its own voice. Beyond the work of a few key filmmakers leading the way – say, Danny Boyle, Edgar Wright, Neil Marshall, and I suppose once upon a time Guy Ritchie – the bulk of the UK’s attempts to produce anything that wasn’t a sugar-coated rom-com, a prim and proper period piece or a ne’er-more-miserable kitchen sink drama have ended up mediocre at best, or painfully bad at worst. The key issue, it seems to me, is that so often our horror/action/thriller output puts on affectations of American cinema, and almost as an afterthought tries to shoehorn in some hints of UK sensibility, and invariably it comes off hugely unnatural and forced. Balancing a high-octane concept with a distinctly British identity has proved a very tricky balancing act to pull off.

Happily, more British sensibilities seem to have snuck in through the back door in Hollywood of late, thanks in no small part to the huge success of TV’s Game of Thrones, whose grim, brutally hard-edged take on the oft-maligned sword and sorcery genre has brought the landscapes and accents of the United Kingdom back into the cinematic spotlight. The popularity of the show doubtless had a key role to play in Britain’s Vertigo Films producing 2013’s Hammer of the Gods, an ambitious but ultimately somewhat lacklustre Vikings-versus-Saxons action movie (read my review here). While that film didn’t necessarily set the world on fire, it seems the key team behind it – producers Rupert Preston and Huberta Von Liel, and writer Matthew Read – were happy enough with the results that they decided to give that brand of historical action another shot. The result is Sword of Vengeance, and I’m happy to report that, while director Jim Weedon’s film isn’t exactly a game-changer, it’s a definite improvement on Hammer of the Gods in every respect. Indeed, we might note the producers behind this also had a hand in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising, a similarly brutal but considerably more cerebral Viking movie; Sword of Vengeance (while not technically a Viking film at all) would seem to be aiming for somewhere in the middle of these two approaches, and it hits its mark pretty well.

The setting is Northern England in the aftermath of that historic conflict that all British schoolchildren remember from the year alone: 1066, the Battle of Hastings. In the wake of their victory, the Normans are slowly but surely battering the bulk of England into submission, but, as was ever so, they find themselves facing stiffer resistance than expected from the Northerners (and given the North/South divide in England seems more pronounced than ever right now since the recent general election, this feels like a timely narrative indeed). One key anonymous, taciturn figure (Stanley Weber) has given them particular grief, slaughtering several Normans after refusing to pay a tax for crossing common ground. Soon thereafter he takes refuge in what at first seems to be an abandoned Saxon village – but promptly finds himself taken prisoner for stealing their food. However, it’s not long before a Norman attack comes, seeking retribution for the murdered soldiers – at which point the mysterious ‘Shadow Walker’ breaks free and protects his captors in an impressively kick-ass fashion. Recognising him as a man of honour and a valuable ally, the Saxons welcome the stranger into their fold – but there may be more to him than they realise.

As is probably evident from the title alone – which, yes, they’ve lifted from the first movie of Japan’s iconic Lone Wolf and Cub series, knowingly or not – this is a pretty simple story, and you won’t need to be a scholar of the Norman era to figure out who the Shadow Walker really is (not that I have any idea how historically accurate any of it is, but I’d suspect that wasn’t an especially high priority).

What sets Sword of Vengeance apart – again, particularly by comparison with the disappointing Hammer of the Gods – is the execution. There are distinct overtones of John Carpenter here, owing partly to the electronic soundtrack, but even more so in that the film takes the classic Carpenter approach of transposing a traditional western format into an ostensibly seperate genre/time setting. Weber’s character is, after all, a Man with No Name, and happily the script (written by Julian Unthank from Matthew Read’s story) has the good sense to keep his dialogue to a minimum. Indeed, dialogue in general is fairly sparse, leaving the narrative to be conveyed largely by action and camerawork – a smart move indeed, as so often an overabundance of chatter can sour such films as this (again, that was absolutely true of Hammer of the Gods). The colour scheme keeps things similarly muted; there’s a very cold, grey look to proceedings which feels very much in-keeping with a bleak British winter.

The real meat of the matter is, of course, the action, and director Weedon handles it all pretty well. While the set pieces aren’t necessarily anything too out of the ordinary, they’re all very well shot and choreographed, the Shadow Walker’s underhanded swordplay being particularly notable; once again, haven’t the foggiest how historically accurate, or even how practical such an approach would be, but it looks cool, and this after all is the key concern. Sword of Vengeance is also another of those films that stands testament to how much filmmakers can get away with under a 15 certificate these days, as it’s really quite brutal at times with a fair few graphic gore shots. Also, as is hinted at in the trailer below, we do have one of your classic cheesy fireside sex scenes, but this is over pretty quickly, nor does the love story element ever threaten to overwhelm the manliness of proceedings.

I’m certainly not about to list Jim Weedon alongside the aforementioned Boyle, Wright, Marshall et al just yet, but Sword of Vengeance does leave me optimistic that he might yet prove to have a bit more in him of value. This is indeed a step in the right direction toward a distinctly British breed of action movie, and more of its ilk would definitely be welcome.

Sword of Vengeance is in UK cinemas and on VOD from 29th May, then comes to DVD on 1st June, from Entertainment One.

By Jamie Brownlie

The comments on a DVD cover can be very distracting. A reference to a movie we love can set our expectations high, higher than they have any right to be. They can also make us give pause as we hit play on the DVD player. For me, the cover of They Will Outlive Us All managed to do both. The single comment on the front of the case compares it to both Evil Dead and Cabin Fever, two movies I couldn’t have more opposing feelings about. Luckily (or unluckily, as your tastes may be) it doesn’t exactly bring to mind either of them.

New York City is fucked. It’s 2016 and in the years since Hurricane Sandy the city has been hammered by more than a dozen hurricanes. Margot (Jessi Gotta, who also co-wrote and produced) and Daniel (Nat Cassidy) live in the middle of the shit storm. The city is essentially dead. Running water isn’t guaranteed, there’s government mandated curfews and on top of all that, there’s been a series of strange and unexplained deaths in their apartment building. All the roommates want to do is drink, smoke dope and watch horror movies, but the vermin in the building have other plans.

Where do I begin with this movie? I’m having a hard time coming up with anything to say about it. It’s not a bad movie, that would make the review process easy. Anyone can point out the flaws in something. The problem is that it’s also not a great movie. And while the good outweighs the bad, the overall quality, unfortunately, lies somewhere in the troublesome middle.

This is a true micro-budget film, with all the good and bad that comes with the term. No budget means bad special effects, of which there are very few. The first mutant bug doesn’t hit the screen until around the 30 minute mark, which in a 73 minute film is a fairly late arrival. When it does arrive it is a hilarious sight to see. Happily, being a comedic horror with very, very few horror elements, it actually works for the movie. I mean, what’s more comedic than a huge, largely static, plastic cockroach with a poorly mechanized head? Not much, really.

Thankfully, a lot of the other micro-budget shortcomings are absent from the film. The sound is great – all the dialog is clear and crisp and the horrible background music you find in many low budget films is largely absent. Also, the film looks good and is well lit and shot. Even the scenes shot in a darker environment are well lit, avoiding one of the more annoying low budget pitfalls.

The story itself is unfortunately decidedly middle of the road. While the setting is new, the journey covers well explored territory. The mutant vermin idea, whether rats, bats, bugs or slugs, has been done more times than I can or care to count. A quick Google search will bring up countless articles and lists of creepy-crawly themed horror movies, most of which do it better than this one. Fortunately, as I said, the story is middle of the road, so with the bad there definitely comes some good. Gotta does a good job with the writing, managing to keep the dialog witty and fast with more than a few laugh out loud scenes. Some of the comedic scenes fall flat but the majority work more often than not.

Jessi Gotta and Nat Cassidy do a solid job in what is essentially a two person movie. Neither are going to be winning any Oscars anytime soon, but both are charismatic and quirky enough to make them watchable in a film like this. Plus, Jessi Gotta is a cute redhead and I’m a sucker for a cute redhead. Gingers may not have souls but they do have my heart. Yes, I’m shallow. Sue me.

As to the Evil Dead and Cabin Fever references on the DVD cover: There are two scenes/shots that are very Raimi-esque in style. Director Patrick Shearer is obviously a Raimi fan and borrows (re: steals) Raimi’s techniques with good, if slightly derivative, effect. As for the Cabin Fever reference? I think it’s a reach but there is the smallest amount of body horror that might, and I stress might, be seen as similar to Cabin Fever, but it’s a reach.

All in all, The Will Outlive Us All isn’t a bad movie and you could do far, far worse when it comes to micro-budget fare. If you’re fond of micro-budget fare, which I am, it’s worth a watch but I’d be hesitant to recommend it as a DVD purchase. I will say, however, that I think Jessi Gotta has tremendous potential and I look forward to seeing what she does next.

They Will Outlive Us All is available now on DVD and VOD in the US, from Wild Eye Releasing.

By Quin

I have this natural impulse to begin this review by stating that Shadow Zombie isn’t for everybody. But isn’t that every film that gets reviewed at Brutal as Hell? Obviously the bulk of what we cover seems to be horror and the rest are still brutal in one way or another – so, it goes without saying that these films aren’t for everyone. It’s usually the range in tone and subject matter that would be the deciding factor whether or not a certain film is for you. That being said, Shadow Zombie is my kind of movie. I really loved it, but it didn’t start out that way. The slow start mixed with the uncomfortable feelings I got from watching Kim Filth go about his day, made me think this was just going to be another Harmony Korine copy. While it’s fair to make the comparison, by the end I was grateful I got the chance to see this film.

Kim Filth plays a guy named Kim. He lives in a small town area of Louisiana. He walks around trying to sell pot to skaters and makes conversation with the locals he comes in contact with. He is a tall guy with a skinny frame. His eyes are sunken and his teeth are rotten. He is seen snorting drugs – painkillers to be exact. He also regularly rubs white makeup on his face and smears in a little black over his lips and under his eyes. When he’s wearing the makeup, he calls himself Shadow Zombie. There are a few conversations where he explains his character to people. It’s pretty clear right away that his intention isn’t to frighten people. He’s just a lonely guy trying assert himself into the world. By playing this character, he feels like he serves a purpose.

One night, Kim is walking through a neighborhood and sees a woman in clown makeup drive by. He watches her park her car and walk into a house. The next time he sees her, she’s not dressed as a clown. In fact she’s a nurse and comes to the house to take care of an elderly man living there. When he approaches her and asks if she’s the clown, she smiles and replies that she is. She mentions that she knows him from a few years ago. She used to see his band play locally. This connection brings them together and when Kim tells her about Shadow Zombie, they decide to dress up as the clown and Shadow Zombie and go roller skating together. Eventually their relationship takes a dark turn and each of their pasts are revealed.

The title Shadow Zombie might be a good selling point, since there are still plenty of people who want to see zombie movies. Here, it’s a little misleading. There are no walking dead, there is no brain eating. In fact the way Kim describes Shadow Zombie isn’t very zombie-like. For those of you tired of zombies, this should be a relief. It should also be said that this isn’t even much of a horror movie. It has supernatural elements and a wonderful feeling of dread that hangs over the whole thing, but apart from a few well-done, yet surreal gore effects, this is a love story and a search for self discovery. For a movie with some genuinely disturbing imagery, it’s often very sweet and touching.

Director Jorge Torres-Torres has created a film that feels real and gritty. IMDb lists it as a documentary, which isn’t quite true. The press notes say the film is made in a documentary style. Torres-Torres has used unknown actors, and films them in a way that looks like they’re probably improvising. There are many scenes of bored young people basically doing nothing and just about to get into trouble. This is where the Harmony Korine comparison came in for me. If you can, watch this back to back with Trash Humpers – but that won’t be easy, and it’s probably ill advised. Jorge Torres-Torres is listed as a producer on a film I reviewed and enjoyed a while back called Toad Road. Again, it’s this almost mumble-core style but even more lo-fi and it very much fits in the Shadow Zombie universe.

Do check out Shadow Zombie. Watch it late at night when you’re feeling sleepy. It will most likely not let you drift off, but it will put you in a trance. It will also make you feel something. If you aren’t repulsed and disgusted, perhaps you’ll see the warmth and the heart that I saw in it. If I’m the only one – I’m okay with that.

Shadow Zombie is available now on VOD and Limited Edition DVD in the US from BrinkVision.

Review by Quin

When I first heard the Grim Sleeper had been arrested, I immediately went to Google maps to see what his house looked like and where it was located. Living in Los Angeles county all my life, I know the area well, but there are still some areas that seem foreign and distant. South L.A. isn’t a place where I’ve spent much time, but its edge is pretty close. When I located his address, I noticed a well kept house and yard. The house looked old but it was painted bright green – sort of a dull spearmint green. It really stood out from the other places in the neighborhood. Standing on the sidewalk were two men with blurred faces – clearly having friendly conversation. Could one of these men be suspected serial murderer Lonnie Franklin Jr? Well, apparently British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield and I think alike and begin our research the same way. His new documentary, which is being released in the US through HBO Films, begins with an areal shot of Los Angeles taken from Google. The camera zooms in and we then see street view until we get to the green house and the two men with blurred faces. I had hoped that this detail would be addressed, but Nick Broomfield got to it right out of the gate. From that moment, he had my undivided attention.

Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in 2010, for several murders of crack addicted prostitutes that went as far back as 1985. His arrest was made possible when his son Christopher (who is a dead ringer for hip hop artist Tyler, The Creator) was arrested and his DNA was matched with saliva found on the victims. It wasn’t his, but he was related to the person whose DNA was found. I have no idea how all of this works, but it’s pretty darn amazing. The guy is behind bars, awaiting a trial that’s supposed to start June 30th of this year.

Nick Broomfield is a documentary filmmaker who has been either hit or miss with me. His best known film is the documentary Kurt and Courtney – a film that tries to get to the bottom of the allegation that Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain didn’t actually commit suicide, but was in fact murdered by his wife Courtney Love. To be frank, I thought this movie was a huge pile of horse shit. This film, as well as a couple others, have lead me to refer to Nick Broomfield as the British Michael Moore. I say this because Moore is notorious for employing methods to ensure he gets the results that he’s looking for. Broomfield has been known to do this as well. When he started making films in the 70s and 80s, he would pretty much stay behind the camera. Two of the best examples are Soldier Girls from 1981 and Chicken Ranch from 1983. In the early 90s, he decided to make himself the star of his films. The 1991 film The Leader, His Driver and the Driver’s Wife was when Broomfield became his own subject. It’s a fascinating film about the end of apartheid in South Africa, but there’s Nick in every shot with his headphones and boom mic which has sort of become part of his persona.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper isn’t Broomfield’s first documentary about a serial killer. He actually made two films with Aileen Wuornos (whose life was later turned into the biopic Monster). Both of these films are worth seeing, but if you read about what went on during the filmmaking, it just makes you think Nick Broomfield is a jerk who is just trying to make a name for himself. Luckily, all of the negativity that I had associated with Nick Broomfield went away when I saw Tales of the Grim Sleeper. Sure, he’s still front and center with his boom mic and headphones. He haphazardly trudges into harms way to find a tantalizing story. For an Englishman in the ghetto of South Central Los Angeles, it truly a site to behold. He makes friends with an ex-prostitute who promptly informs him that he needs to be a bit more inconspicuous.

You may be familiar with the old adage “Snitches get stitches.” This is a central theme in this film. Broomfield makes contact with some friends of Franklin. These guys seem like they could be the inspiration for Sweet Dick Willie and his two friends in Do the Right Thing. At first, they are tight lipped and unwilling to say anything that will incriminate their friend, but it doesn’t take long for all of them to change their tune. Nick Broomfield must have had quite an effect on everyone off camera, because snitches be damned, everybody sings like a canary when the camera is rolling.

The most important thing to note about this film is the way the LAPD investigates the murders. From the beginning, this wasn’t a widely publicized case, because it was a guy in a poor part of town, murdering prostitutes. If convicted, Lonnie Franklin may be the Jack the Ripper of Los Angeles. But, chances are, when the verdict is read, it won’t be the evening’s top story on the news. The murders committed are horrendous, but the fact that the police seem to think this was never a priority is the real story here.

Nick Broomfield has made the best film of his career with Tales of the Grim Sleeper. It’s smart and fascinating and I can’t help but wonder what an impact a film like this may have on a trial that hasn’t yet begun. It’s also worth noting that there is another film called The Grim Sleeper, which appears to be about the same subject matter (Starring Ghostbusters’ own Ernie Hudson as well as singer Macy Gray). I haven’t seen it and can’t tell you if it’s good or not, but this isn’t it.

Tales of the Grim Sleeper is available now from HBO Films and can be seen via HBO Now or HBO Go.

By Ben Bussey

Our old hero Joe Dante doesn’t seem to be having the best of luck with his new movies in recent years. His last feature, 2009’s kiddie horror The Hole, sat on the shelf for a couple of years before being largely (and unfairly) ignored by the mass audience. Half a decade on, his next movie Burying the Ex unfortunately arrives in the wake of another movie with a very similar premise: 2014’s Life After Beth. As at the time of writing I’ve still yet to see that Dane DeHaan/Aubrey Plaza movie (though our own Quin loved it), obviously I can’t remark on how similar the two films actually are, but I can say that Burying the Ex feels considerably closer in spirit to Dante’s overall body of work than The Hole did; though kid-friendly, there was a surprisingly dark tone to that film, with Dante’s signature anarchic humour in short supply. By contrast, if we turn a blind eye to the digital photography and occasional use of low-rent CGI, we might easily envisage Burying the Ex having come directly from Dante’s 80s heyday, with its larger than life characters, slapstick-flavoured gags, and slew of gratuitous nods to B-movie horror of years gone by. However, hand in hand with that, the gender politics of Burying the Ex might also have come directly out of the 1980s; subsequently I suspect not all modern viewers, specifically those with feminist leanings, will take too kindly to much of it – whilst on the other hand Gamergate-type guys will probably love it. I know that’s about as far from a recommendation we can get – but lest we get into a debate on ethics in zom-rom-coms, I should reassure both sides that if you can put politics to one side, Burying the Ex isn’t all bad news.

Any way you cut it up though, it’s hard not to read the premise of Burying the Ex as a pretty standard insecure male fantasy scenario. Our central protagonist, a horror-themed costume and memorabilia store clerk named Max, played by the likeable everyman type (read – very average looking but just handsome enough not to seem a total dweeb) Anton Yelchin, is in what at first seems like a happy, stable relationship with Evelyn, played by the somewhat better looking Ashley Greene. We’re introduced to her as Max casually attempts to kick out his half-brother Travis, the even more average-looking and slightly overweight Oliver Cooper, who has slept on the sofa following a three-way with two even-more considerably better looking anonymous women with jaw-droppingly nice arses. Yes, Burying the Ex plays its hand pretty fast: average joes get with smoking hot babes and all is right with the world, hooray for Hollywood.

But of course, Max’s situation isn’t ideal. As hot as Evelyn may be, and as great as we’re told the sex is, she’s also – portentous thunder – very high maintenance. She won’t let Max have any food in the house that isn’t vegan. She’s anally retentive about environmentalism, insisting he switch his old car for a hybrid, and killing the post-coital mood by pointing out the need for energy saving lightbulbs. She also demonstrates borderline-insane jealousy when she thinks Max is flirting with ice cream store owner Olivia (the – wouldn’t you know it – also very good looking Alexandra Daddario). Then, once Evelyn officially moves in with Max, she commits the cardinal sin of redecorating the whole apartment in – but of course – green, taking down and carelessly folding up Max’s pristine condition vintage Italian horror posters in the process, then making him feel like the bad guy when he dares complain. Anxious to break off the relationship but also suffering from a near-terminal case of being chickenshit, Max takes Travis’s advice and arranges to meet Evelyn in a very public place where he can tell her it’s over – but before he gets the chance, Evelyn’s hit by a bus and dies right then and there.

Months pass in which a grief-stricken Max barely leaves his home – but, on finally venturing outside, he once again crosses paths with Olivia. Aside from also being much prettier than he is, Oliva’s everything Evelyn wasn’t. Given she owns an ice cream store, she obviously isn’t a vegan; given that she named her store ‘Ice Scream’ and litters it with horror movie and punk rock memorabilia, she’s obviously way more on Max’s wavelength culturally. Alas, just as it looks like something real might be brewing between Max and Olivia, a rather significant complication arises: Evelyn returns from the grave, and drags herself straight back to Max’s life, in an even more possessive mood than she was before.

Yes, Burying the Ex perpetuates a great many movie relationship stereotypes: easy-going fun-loving male, uptight domineering bitch, free-spirited idealised pixie dream girl. If none of this sits well with you, it’s unlikely that Burying the Ex will win you over. It might well be argued that the real object of criticism is Max, given that his own cowardice over breaking up with Evelyn is responsible for the whole mess in the first place, but there’s never any doubt that Evelyn is the real object of fun here, the most frequently mined areas of mockery being her veganism and environmentalism. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that absolutely everybody is an ultra-green vegan these days (I know I don’t fit that description), but considering this film is aimed first and foremost at 21st century young people, I have to wonder whether Dante and writer Alan Trezza (also the writer, producer and director of a 2008 short on which this feature is based) are misjudging the tastes and proclivities of their audience just a touch. If Max’s own lifestyle choices were put up for similar scrutiny it might have balanced things out a bit, and made for a somewhat more interesting, perhaps even Judd Apatow-esque dissection of a modern relationship, by way of a zombie movie (also, given this is a comedy horror, it probably wouldn’t have hurt if it was a bit funnier too). Instead, Max is given an easy way out in Olivia, a mirror opposite for whom he need make no personal changes whatsoever. Alexandra Daddario is innately likeable, but the material really doesn’t do her any favours; she’s ultimately just another 2D love interest there to service (in more ways than one) the male protagonist, much as the also very likeable Greene is never allowed to be anything more than an obstacle to the lead.

Curiously though, the person I come out of this feeling the most sorry for is Anton Yelchin. Between this, the Fright Night remake and Odd Thomas, the guy just can’t seem to land a leading role in anything above average, and – despite my earlier disparaging remarks about how his looks pale in comparison with those of his female co-stars – I do actually have a lot of admiration for Yelchin as an actor, and there are brief moments here that seem to hint at what he might be capable of. In Evelyn’s (initial) death scene, for instance, his display of grief is genuinely powerful – yet Dante opts to cut away from it almost immediately, and once she returns it’s all just a macabre twist on a slamming door farce. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with farcical humour, but I would have liked to have seen something more – and, again, I’ve no doubt Yelchin, plus Greene and Daddario for that matter, have it in them to deliver a great deal more.

Still, I can’t say I disliked Burying the Ex completely. As I said, it does bring back a lot of Dante’s old school charm (and yes, of course there’s a cameo from a really, really old looking Dick Miller), and as simple, undemanding comedy horror goes there are plenty worse out there. However, there’s a fine line between evoking the past and just feeling thoroughly out of date, and Burying the Ex slumps right over it. Such a shame, as with a slightly better script this was a premise that might have made for something really great. Hmm, maybe it’s time I gave Life After Beth a look…

Burying the Ex is available on VOD and download in the US and UK from 19th June 2015.

By Ben Bussey

Such is the contemporary horror scene’s fascination with all things 70s and 80s, it’s easy to forget that our current strain of gore-strewn cinema has roots dating back further than that. Yes, messrs Romero, Hooper, Craven and co took the cheapie drive-in scary movie by the short and curlies and dragged it kicking and screaming to an altogether darker, nastier and crucially more sophisticated place, but the groundwork had been laid for them by earlier filmmakers who sought to win over less discerning audiences with hitherto unseen levels of grue, and considerably lower levels of sophistication. Now, I’m not about to claim expert knowledge of this era, but any horror fan worth their weight in corn syrup should know the name of Herschell Gordon Lewis, the director behind what are typically classed as the first bona fide splatter movies – and one modern director who most definitely knows and appreciates HGL’s work is Canadian low budget filmmaker Kevin Doherty. Though this is the first I’ve seen of his work, Doherty’s made four shorts and two more features in the past fifteen years, none of which would appear to be in quite the same spirit as this one. A heartfelt tribute to the earliest days of splatter, Lights Camera Blood! proves not only a hugely affectionate but also remarkably accurate recreation of 60s drive-in horror in all its gory glory.

The premise is pure HGL, and even feels in some respects like a thinly veiled yet highly fictionalised (or so you’d hope) biopic of the man himself. Mandalor (Alan McKenzie) is a walking cliche of a hack director: verbose, exclamatory, beret-clad – but also penniless, under the thumb of an oppressive producer, and ultimately not that talented. After the producer aggressively rejects his most recent attempt at a great horror movie, Mandalor and his cinematographer Rodney (Dan Baker-Moor) struggle to find a new approach. Hoping to add a little sex appeal, they persuade a dancer from a local burlesque house to screen test for them, but when things get a little out of hand the brow-beaten director finally sees red, both figuratively and literally – and soon enough they have a reel of a human body literally being hacked up and turned inside out. This footage, at last, gets the producer back on their side – and so Mandalor, and a rather more reluctant Rodney, set out to get more such footage for their next ‘gorrific’ feature.

At the time of writing, work is getting underway on Frankenstein Created Bikers, James Bickert’s Kickstarter-funded follow-up to Dear God No! (which, although I was unconvinced on its UK DVD release, I’ve since come to realise is probably the finest film made in the modern neo-grindhouse wave). One of Bickert’s big selling points is his insistence on shooting on film, pitching Frankenstein Created Bikers as probably the last horror film to be shot on 35mm. A sobering thought for sure – but sitting down to watch Lights Camera Blood!, I was sure Bickert couldn’t be alone. The cinematography seemed so authentic to the era, I was almost certain Doherty and co must have shot it on good old fashioned film. As such, I was truly quite surprised to learn Lights Camera Blood! was in fact shot in HD, with the old school look achieved via Final Cut and Adobe After Effects. Just goes to show it’s remarkable what can be achieved on readily available technology nowadays – but clearly not all practitioners have the same level of expertise and eye for detail as Doherty (also the director of photography and editor, along with Tim Doherty).

Nor is that where the visual treats and period-accurate details end. The film’s locations appear incredibly true to the era in terms of decor, from the garish wallpaper of Mandalor’s apartment set to the wood paneling on the walls of the producer’s office. The hair and clothing may occasionally give the game away, at times looking more like a costume shop’s hippy section than genuine 1960s apparel – but then there’s the one key component that really captures the heart (again, figuratively and literally) of HGL: the glorious bright red gore. Again in line with Lewis, the deaths themselves are relatively quick without too much emphasis on pain and anguish, but what happens to the corpses afterward is a different story, with numerous lengthy, lingering sequences of disembowelment, skinning, eyeball gouging and other such family-friendly activities. And if there’s so much as a frame of CG blood in here, I most definitely couldn’t spot it. All of it is so evocative of HGL, it almost seems an afterthought that Lights Camera Blood! is also littered with direct references to the master’s work; note Mandalor’s movie Brain Feast, a clear nod to Blood Feast, and a cape and hat costume very similar to that of the Wizard of Gore (and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if there are more I failed to pick up on).

If any criticism can be made of Lights Camera Blood!, it would probably be that it’s a bit of a one-joke affair, and could easily prompt the question of whether the viewer might not prefer to just watch an original HGL movie instead. Ultimately though, Lights Camera Blood! is one of those films so filled with affection for the genre that I just can’t help liking it. It’s wittily acted and written, well-paced, and demonstrates that modern microbudget horror can take a great many more shapes and forms than we might expect. I certainly hope we see more from Kevin Doherty and company in the near future.

Find out more at KevinDohertyFilms.ca.