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Review by Nia Edwards-Behi

Clara (Gemma Arterton) and her daughter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are forced to begin a new life in a dreary seaside town after Clara murders a man who pursued them at their former dwelling. Clara, now selling herself on the street, takes advantage of down-and-out Noel (Daniel Mays), by taking over his ruined guest-house and transforming it into a brothel. As Clara earns their keep, Eleanor wanders the town, and meets Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), a sickly young man who finds himself instantly attracted to the quiet, mysterious Eleanor. Eleanor tries to stay away, as she is increasingly tempted to spill her secret.

Clara and Eleanor are more than 200 years old, and survive by drinking the blood of other humans. As the film progresses we learn more and more about the two women’s pasts, as Clara was forced into a life of prostitution by an unscrupulous army officer (Johnny Lee Miller), and finds an escape from her life through the apparently kinder soldier Davelle (Sam Riley). She reunites with Eleanor, whom she had given up to a better life at an orphanage, and the two have since been running for their lives.

It’s fair to say that Byzantium is not a cheery film. For all its colours and bright lights, the tone is sombre, and all its characters are miserable. However, that’s not to say that the film is without humour. There’s a fine thread of morbid, blacker-than-black humour in the film, usually stemming from Clara. However, this is a film imbued with misery – so not some three-act tale that trundles toward a tragic and sad ending. There isn’t any genuine happiness to be found, though there are facades, and there are moments of relief, or of rest, or of potential. This sense of sadness is constantly underlined by the film’s setting. Set in a nameless seaside town, it constantly rains, the pier is dilapidated and the streets and buildings grey and anonymous. There is some warmth to be found inside buildings, such as in the town’s college, but we get only glimpses at these spaces, and they are soon infected by the misery that surrounds Eleanor and Clara.

The mother-daughter pair central to the film is perhaps the first of its kind in what’s ostensibly a vampire film. Their relationship is tempestuous to say the least, the two women screaming at each other at times, yells of “I hate you!” from Eleanor befitting any teenage tantrum. Clara is fiercely protective of Eleanor, for reasons we see revealed as the film goes on. She is ruthless in her desire to keep her daughter safe and sheltered, while Eleanor wants nothing more than for her mother to give her a better life. They are diametrically contrasted: Clara is the whore, the profession forced upon her 200-odd years ago now, literally, in her blood; while Eleanor, raised in a strict orphanage knows nothing but modesty and the desire to be truthful and good. However, as we see them in the present both women are monsters, too, and equally as dangerous. Although Eleanor is figured as ‘the innocent’, and the death she doles out apparently merciful, she is much less in control of herself than Clara. Indeed, Clara lies and kills out of necessity, while Eleanor seems to kill out of boredom.

It’s notable that as ‘monsters’ Clara and Eleanor aren’t especially super-human, nor are they sub-human. They’re really still quite like all the mortals around them, only they’ve been allowed to step out of the realm of time. This is clearest when considering the human characters in the film. Noel is stricken by grief, and desperate as a result, and likewise Frank is stricken by disease. The two men are affected by time in a very different way to Clara and Eleanor, so while the women are frozen outside of it, the men are experiencing the ruthless way in which it passes. The apart-ness of the women is again emphasised through the film’s cinematography and direction. Again and again throughout the film the women are seen either as reflections in mirrors or they are distorted behind panes of glass.

For all its stunning visuals and cinematography – and it truly is jaw-droppingly stunning at times – this film is a character study, and it has the cast to pull it off. In the lead roles Arterton and Ronan are really superb. I’ve no doubt that Ronan will get a lot of the praise, for once more playing a young character older than her years, but Arterton steals the show as Clara. Much of the marketing of the film seems to have focused on the fact that she’s sexy (well duh), but the subtlety of her performance is wonderful. At times, and sometimes all at once, alluring, threatening, broken and hysterical, she entirely convinces as a 200 year old woman who seemingly saved herself from victimhood. It must be said that Landry Jones once again stands out, with a somewhat bizarre and yet for me entirely convincing performance as Frank. It’s interesting to note that he’s yet again playing a sickly character – following Antiviral – so it’ll be nice to see him tackle something different at some point too (as an aside, I’m quite sad he doesn’t seem to be reprising his role as Banshee in the upcoming X-Men sequel). The rest of the main cast – Mays, Riley and Miller – give impressive turns too, Riley perhaps the most short-changed of the lot with the least to do.

Byzantium is probably one of the best horror films I’ve seen so far this year; it’s a refreshingly detailed and rich horror film that at once plays with tradition while offering something new, so it’s quite a shame that it hasn’t had a better reception so far. It’s not often we’re treated to an intelligent and beautiful horror film that gets a mainstream release, so it’s a shame that it seems to have been squandered somewhat – seeming to have been snatched from cinemas as soon as it was released. I truly hope that by the time the film hits DVD it will find an appreciative audience, as it deserves to be seen and adored.

Review by Ben Bussey

Let’s not beat around the proverbial bush. What we have here is a classic case of a low budget straight-to-DVD movie cashing in on another similarly-themed major movie with a similar-sounding title (the film in this case having been retitled specifically to cash in further – Apocalypse Z was originally known as Zombie Massacre). This is done at least partially in the hopes of duping the less attentive consumer into thinking it really is the major movie in question. I know what you’re thinking: this must be from The Asylum, right? Wrong. It’s even worse… this is a Uwe Boll production. Shudder. In case you’re one of those fortunate souls who has never sat through a Boll movie, may I assure you that his reputation as the absolute worst hack imaginable is 100% warranted. The likes of Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne truly are abysmal on every level, displaying a bare-faced contempt for their audience that even Michael Bay would consider a bit much. Sure, we might breathe a sigh of relief to see that he isn’t the director of Apocalypse Z, this duty being shared by Luca Boni and Marco Ristori, but seeing Boll’s name so prominently featured on a movie which already looked almost certain to be piece of shit: I’m sure I can be forgiven for going into Apocalypse Z with very, very low expectations indeed.

It probably goes without saying that Apocalypse Z is indeed crap. Utterly derivative, terribly overwritten, blandly shot, thoroughly lacking in logic, with acting that ranges between the laughably OTT and the painfully incompetent. All that said… is it wrong of me to admit that I quite enjoyed it?

Assuming anyone needs a plot synopsis, here goes: our setting is a remote, sparsely populated town in the shadow of a nuclear power plant in Romania, where a US government science experiment has gone badly wrong, resulting in – would you believe – zombies. US government officials, who seem strangely European, decide their only option is to wipe the town off the map. So they send a jet and nuke it from a safe distance, right? Well, no: they send in a crack team of mercenaries to deliver the bomb in person. I guess it would have been a considerably shorter film if they hadn’t taken this course of action, as the bulk of the movie is spent following this team, all of whom we are told are, as ever, the absolute best in their field: one of them could shoot the head off a mouse from a mile away, while another could make a bomb out of a paper clip, or words to that effect. Then we have the ginger ninja, apparently the deadliest woman alive in hand-to-hand combat, though she looks suspiciously like she’s never held a sword in her life before. Leading the motley crew is a big Yankee grunt who looks like a crossbreed of Don Draper and Lou Ferrigno. Cue way too much dialogue, not nearly enough zombies, some rather feeble action sequences – and in the final scene, topless zombie women. (I freely admit the above screenshot is in no way representative of the bulk of Apocalypse Z, but it’s one of the film’s few relatively memorable images. And, y’know, tits. Anyway, it’s certainly no less representative than the official cover art.)

Oh, and in one brief and utterly gratuitous scene, Uwe Boll cameos as the US President, making about as much effort to seem American as Kevin Costner did to sound English in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

So yes, once again, Apocalypse Z is total unmitigated shite, hackneyed and ham-fisted in every respect – but as such, it’s perfectly undemanding fun. Call me crazy, but I found it a refreshing change to see a corny B-movie played largely straight, as opposed to all the ‘ironic’ pseudo-grindhouse we’ve been inundated with of late. The fact Apocalypse Z is more sincere in its efforts to fake a grandiose spectacle with clearly limited resources means it’s far closer to the true spirit of 80s trash. I wouldn’t suggest rushing out to buy it as soon as possible, but should it happen to cross your path you could do far worse than giving it a whirl. Yes, it’s shit, but it’s not shit shit.

Apocalypse Z is out on Region 2 DVD from 1st July, via Metrodome.

Review by Comix

Who would you want to spend the Apocalypse with? I mean, really? The clouds are darkening, Old Man Scratch is rapping at your window, and all the righteous are being catapulted into Heaven like a bra slingshot launching water balloons and wouldn’t you know it, you got left behind. Would you choose your significant other, that beautiful individual who you can’t imagine spending eternity without, or perhaps your enemy, so you can spend what little time you have kicking them into pits of fire? Such is the premise of the hilarious new film, This is the End, where are a group of friends are stuck together during the Armageddon and are pushed to the limits as they try endure each other’s company. Throw in weed, boredom, dwindling supplies, and hefty dose of demons, and you got yourself a 90-minute romp of a good time.

The movie centers around Seth Rogan and Jay Baruchel after they meet up for the first time in a couple of years and proceed to get thoroughly stoned. Soon, Seth suggests that they go James Franco’s house party and after a series of complaints, Jay unwillingly tags along. As the party continues to rage, with plenty of star-studded cameos, Jay steps out to buy some candy when shit suddenly hits the fan. Earthquakes and fires break out all over LA causing chaos in the streets. Freaking out, they beat feet back to the party only to watch the guests run out of the house in a panic and pretty much die in a pit of hellfire, leaving only them, Franco, Danny McBride, Jonah Hill, and Craig Robinson to survive. Kick in another hour of jokes, one liners, and improv, and you got yourself a ridiculous buddy movie slapped together with awkward pauses and dick jokes. Translation: my kind of movie.

I guess the real way to start this review is: if you’re a fan of Pineapple Express and Superbad, you will love this movie. I am a huge fan of both and since I really dig stoner comedies heavy in conversational humor, (like a British comedy but with more facial expressions and drugs), I got completely behind this movie. There’s this one scene where they just fake masturbate at each other while threatening whose stuff they’re going to cum on had me rolling. The demons, while playing second fiddle to the humor, were really well thought out and the action was on the ball. The movie didn’t fall into that pit where just because it’s a comedy, everything had to be funny down to making rubber looking monsters taking hits off a bong, but instead opted for real life Armageddon action as they scrounge for food and fight for survival.

The cinematography was very well done as well. I mean, it’s no Korean cop horror or anything, but it’s very relieving that in making a horror spoof, they didn’t opt out for the found footage style that they could have done with half the budget. They did a full cinematic film with all the big booms and CGI intact for you more particular movie fans. The soundtrack pretty much reflected the movie, mixing rap and pop music dropped in at particularly hilarious scenes when the tension gets too much. (The Backstreet Boys are in it, I know how all of you love the Backstreet Boys.) All in all, it’s a good movie. Definitely a good choice if you feel like laughing without investing too much of your emotions and want something to quote at parties.

This is the End is out now theatrically in the US and Canada, opens in the UK on 28th June, and much of the rest of the world in the weeks ahead.

Review by Nia Edwards-Behi

1968 was a damn good year for horror films. The US gave us the very modern Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead, while in the UK, we had period horror films The Devil Rides Out and Witchfinder General. In Japan, the horror film delved much further back in time. Thus 1968 was also the year of Kuroneko, or Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko (‘The Black Cat Inside the Bamboo Grove’). Directed by Kaneto Shindô, who had previously directed Onibaba, this film is a stunning example of classic art cinema not only doing horror, but doing it very, very right.

I’m ashamed to say that Kuroneko marks my first encounter with classical Japanese horror. I’ve never seen Onibaba or Kwaidan, and my knowledge of this era of filmmaking’s roots is minimal at best. However, as much as Kuroneko stands as an important film of a particular national filmmaking context, it stands on its own just as well. Kuroneko, set in medieval Japan, begins with a horrific act: a group of soldiers invade the home of two women, steal their food, rape them, leave them for dead and burn their home to the ground.

The bodies of the women lie still in their ruined home. A black cat appears, clambering over them and licking their wounds. The two women make a pact with the devil and return as feline, ghostly figures, luring unwitting samurai to an illusion of their former home, then seducing them, and killing them by sucking their blood. Elsewhere, a young farmer is made a samurai for fortuitously killing the enemy general. The new samurai – now named Gintoki – seeks out his mother and his wife, only to find their former home burned to the ground. His general orders him to find and destroy the ghosts that are killing his men in the region, and Gintoki soon realises what has become of his wife and his mother.

At its core, Kuroneko is a rape-revenge tale, its victims damned by their ordeal and their revenge futile. The women never seem to truly revel in their vengeance against the samurai, which is made all the more poignant and clear when the Gintoki emerges – they are now doomed to destroy their loved one. Gintoki’s wife, Shige, further dooms herself by breaking her oath, briefly reuniting with Gintoki before being eternally damned. His mother, Yone, accepts her oath, but never once appears happy with her lot. The sense of futility and of remorse pervades the film; the only character seeming to be remotely satisfied in the film is samurai governor Raiko, who is very much presented as a character to be scorned.

This sense of remorse and regret is beautifully reflected in the expressionist cinematography. The sets are sparse and the lighting stark. The way in which Yone and Shige move through these spaces emphasises their emptiness, while this use of wire work is further explored when Yone and Gintoki are forced to fight. These ghosts are graceful, completely unlike their jerky modern counter-parts. Shinto’ s use of long-shots further constructs this sense of open, empty space. The film begins on a long shot of the bamboo grove, the relative silence disturbed by samurai emerging through the bamboo. What they do to the women inside the house is noisy, violent, and disruptive. We leave that scene to return to the calm of the bamboo grove. Shindô takes us away from what’s really happening, but then in the rest of the film these broad, empty spaces are not places of safety, but places of fear and places of death.

I suppose Kuroneko felt slow in parts, particularly the middle portion which sees Ginteki and Shige reunited (the ‘romance’ section, I guess!). The film does not use a sense of pacing that I’m familiar with, and I suspect that this would not have stood out so much if I was more familiar with classical Japanese cinema. The film also has a traditionally unsatisfactory ending, perhaps, but we are left at the film’s close with a striking image that is, in fact, preferable to a more straight-forward resolution. The film is art cinema in many senses of the word, but it’s also frightening and moving. That its legacy seems to be sequels to remakes of more recent ghost stories from Japan is somewhat disheartening, but to return to a film like this is truly a treat.

Kuroneko is out now on Blu-Ray and DVD from Eureka Entertainment.

Review by Tristan Bishop

We’ve all seen those ghost hunting TV programmes – the ones with a presenter, camera crew and an overacting ‘medium’ like the disgraced Derek Acorah (I shall be careful here as, whilst I write this, a report is on the news about a psychic winning damages from a paper for calling her a fake) running around the dark being scared by distant noises and attempting to contact the dead? Yeah, those ones. You’ve probably seen a couple of low budget horror films that do exactly the same thing, too, most likely with a found footage spin. It’s entirely possible that you’ve been bored to tears by them too – I know I have. So when I popped the disc for Entity in, my initial thoughts – well – weren’t great.

The film starts with a TV crew and a psychic called Ruth (Dervla Kirwin – yup, the barmaid from Ballykissangel!) who are filming in a remote Siberian forest. Along to help them out is their guide Yuri (Branko Tomovic), a man with ‘hidden agenda’ stamped all across his forehead. Ruth starts seeing and communicating with the spirits of the dead, as some kind of mass killing has occurred there. Soon enough she senses that something is leading her to what Yuri describes as an abandoned factory through a forest. The team heads on to investigate, and, sure enough, the factory is there, although not what it appears to be. In fact, it appears that the facility was once used to hold, experiment on and torture fellow psychics. Ruth soon learns that there was one inmate who possessed immense power, and goes to try and contact him, which turns out to not be the best idea, as this spirit is malevolent, and may be able to manifest physically…

First things first, Entity is not quite a found footage film – there are several scenes shown as shot by the cameras of the on-screen film crew, but these are balanced against traditional camerawork, and there is no wraparound gubbins about this being footage discovered etc etc. At first I was unsure, as I, like an increasing number of horror fans, am getting sick to the back teeth of found footage films and the paucity of plotting and scripting and using the ‘immediacy’ of the shaky video footage as a shortcut to scares (as well as usefully side stepping the need to have in-focus scares, and therefore keeping budgets dirt cheap). However, first-time director Steve Stone actually makes it work in the context of the film – the set-ups are mostly traditional shots, with the ‘found’ footage interjecting to add a level of reality to some of the scares, and to amp up tension where required. Additionally, the sound design on this film is pretty impressive – from high pitched whining to unnerve the audience during the tension building scenes, to some truly scary demonic moans and cacophonous voices nearer the end of the film. I viewed the film whilst wearing headphones in the dark, although I imagine this will work even better should you ever get the chance to see it on a big screen. The editing also impresses, and it’s obvious Steve Stone has worked very hard to scare us in the audio/visual department.

Unfortunately there are a couple of areas were Entity really falls down. Firstly, Stone not only directed, but scripted, and, sad to say, this doesn’t appear to be where his talents lie – the dialogue is flat and perfunctory, giving us no sense of character and therefore no-one to care about or to root for, and therefore by the (rather predictable) ending we don’t feel as exhilarated as we should. This is not helped by some of the actors who, aside from the professional turns by Kirwin and Charlotte Riley (who plays the presenter of the show), give some terrible performances.

Despite the failings, however, Entity works most of the time. The sole purpose of the film is to scare us, and it pulls out every trick it can to do so. I’ll even admit to having the hairs on my arms stand up a few times as the characters rushed about in that oppressive location with the soundtrack manipulating me. So if you want a spooky timewaster, go for it; I just hope Stone’s next project will have the budget for a good script and solid cast.

Entity is released to Region 2 DVD on 24th June, from Metrodome. For an alternate (and rather more enthusiastic) take, see Nia’s review.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Jim Van Bebber’s The Manson Family is a labour of love if ever there was one, taking him approximately fifteen years to complete, shooting on weekends and days off for over ten years, then taking a further five years to edit due to a constant lack of funds. So what started out in 1988 and was shown in various incomplete forms during the mid 90s was finally released on DVD and in cinemas in 2003, with an R-rated cut in the US also screening with a running time reduced by over 11 minutes, and unrated versions doing the festival circuit. It should come as no surprise that this film gained notoriety and a cult following before it was even properly released. Now on its 10th anniversary we are being treated to a Blu-ray release.

The Manson Family is a mixed bag, a combination of grainy pseudo stock footage, talking heads and segments set in the present, all of which make this bizarre film difficult to describe. I think a fictionalised docu-drama is the best I can come up with, but that still doesn’t necessarily honour the film and its batshit crazy intentions. The actors are by turn both compelling and crude, the sprawling time frame of the shoot even adding to its authenticity as you see them at different stages in their lives for real. The stock footage is expertly crafted by Van Bebber; without prior knowledge you’d swear on your life that you were watching an exploitation film from the 60s, something akin to Herschell Gordon Lewis. Right down to the faked graininess of the film and the tomato ketchup gore effects, this is an example of someone working very hard to create the look of something cheap and sleazy, and boy does it show. The now notorious dog-sacrifice-orgy-cum-crucifixion scene is truly a sight to behold, though whether or not you actually want to see such a thing is another matter…

There is no real narrative structure to the film; it bounces back and forwards in time, to the present day where a newscaster is working on a documentary about Manson and a group of naked, drug addled kids plan a homage killing (these prove to be the weakest segments). The talking heads are an interesting touch, although I discovered that these are not from any genuine accounts by the people involved as Van Bebber thought the real life perpetrators would soften their stories or attempt to justify their actions, making this purely a work of fiction. The strongest scenes are those set around the formation of the family and in the run up to the infamous Tate murders; the psychedelic surrealism, and soundtrack that incorporates Manson’s own music, create a real feel for the era and create a visual feast that is both trippy and fascinating to watch, at least initially.

I was surprised to find mostly positive reviews of The Manson Family online, as although this is a truly unique piece of filmmaking and unlike anything else I’ve seen before I also found it became tedious very quickly and offered no real insight into the events that transpired. The violence is schlocky, the acting is at times very amateurish and the endless orgies and drug taking quickly become tiresome. That’s not to say that it isn’t a remarkable achievement and that it doesn’t warrant watching, especially for fans of cult cinema, but for me what started off as a curiosity quickly became boring and by the end I was mostly just glad it was over.

The Manson Family 10th Anniversary Blu-ray is out now from Severin Films.

TMF Trailer 2013 RedBand from Severin Films on Vimeo.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

I will to admit having extremely low expectations of World War Z when I went into this screening, despite the unexpected appearance of the one and only Mr. Brad Pitt to introduce the film and big it up to the audience. The troubled production had been widely reported with the release date being pushed back, reports of multiple re-writes (5 writers in total are credited on IMDb), a last minute re-shoot of the ending, a budget in excess of $200million, not to mention a public falling out between its star and the director Marc Forster. Was I right to be concerned? Well unfortunately, the answer is yes.

The opening sequence of the film gave me a glimmer of hope; it starts off by introducing us to Gerry Lane (Pitt), his wife Karen (Mireille Enos) and their two children. Gerry has seemingly quit his never specified but obviously important and dangerous job for the UN to become a stay at home Dad. This however is all about to change as a ferocious zombie outbreak is quickly taking over the world and he is called back into work by his old boss Thierry (Fana Mokoena). We get some exhilarating action set pieces as Gerry and his family escape Philadelphia and are airlifted to safety aboard a US navy vessel; the sheer force and speed with which we see the population of a large city like Philadelphia (despite these scenes actually being shot in Glasgow) turn into a rampaging horde of very fast zombies is a sight to behold and it really is edge of your seat stuff.

Once aboard the naval vessel Gerry reluctantly agrees to go back to work after realising that this will be the only way to keep his family protected. Although of course you’d hope that stopping the zombie outbreak threatening to wipe out all of mankind might also have a part in his decision. Either way, here starts a bizarre and oftentimes incoherent wild goose chase that sees Gerry hop from South Korea to Cardiff by way of Israel in his bid to get to the root of the outbreak. This was where the film started to lose me; we get no real characterization, not even of Gerry who is on screen almost every second of the film, and the host of temporary sidekicks he accumulates are poorly developed and their motivations often under explained, leaving you with nobody to truly care about. Everyone concerned also seems awfully quick jump into action with little or no information; this includes a mad rush to South Korea in response to a single email with the word “zombie” in it, shortly followed by a sojourn to Israel after being told by a crazy ex-CIA man (played by David Morse in a role that you feel there was perhaps a lot more to than we are given in the final cut) that the city went on lock down before the epidemic spread, meaning that they must have known something was going on… and on it goes until Gerry finds himself in Cardiff with Peter Capaldi and a host of other British TV actors. I should hasten to add that I absolutely love Peter Capaldi and not even he could prove the saving grace.

That’s not to say that I can’t generally overlook plot-holes and questionable character motivations, especially in a silly action flick, but crucially where the major flaw lies for me is in the cynical lack of gore and violence to ensure a PG-13 rating. Blood is conspicuous by its absence, the foe being reduced to a faceless mass of danger which could essentially have been anything, and in the process ensures that this is a thriller rather than a horror film, and the scares are minimal at best.

The production troubles are apparent in the characters and storylines that appear then don’t seem to go anywhere, and the tacked on ending feels exactly that. The ending is in itself quite effective and it gives us a taste of the tension first created in the opening sequence, but it feels alien to the rest of the film as a whole. There is also an over reliance on convenience throughout the film that is particularly noticeable when everything comes together just a little too well, without there ever being any real sense of danger surrounding Gerry and his family.

This may be apparent by now, but I should also mention this what we have here bears little resemblance to the source material. The first draft of the script by J. Michael Straczynski apparently remained faithful to Max Brooks’ satirical novel, but what went into the Hollywood machine has come out as something completely different that instead gives us a definite hero and doesn’t offend anyone in the process, ensuring a large international market (in the book the virus originates from illegal organ trading in China). It’s a shame really, as the book had a lot of potential to be made into something intelligent and scary, but this really is quite simply a daft summer blockbuster that can only really be enjoyed if you leave your brain at the door, but for me the experience was frustrating and only exasperated further by the 3D-induced headache I’d developed an hour in.

World War Z is on general release on 21st June, from Paramount.

Review by Kit Rathenar

CAUTION: NSFW Photos below.

“Don’t you know it’s the eighties?!”

Believe me when I say that between the music, the costumes, the haircuts, the cars, and the cinematography, I COULD TELL. I came away from David DeCoteau’s 1989 flick Dr Alien fairly certain that it was objectively dreadful, but not quite sure whether I’d loved it or hated it.

I’m not even sure whether its own director loved it or hated it, to be perfectly honest. Possibly best described as a heartwarming teen coming-of-age comedy with added boobs and aliens, this is without doubt one of the corniest, worst acted, and most cringe-inducingly scripted films I’ve seen in years – and yet at the very least, I’ll say I got a heck of a laugh out of it. The plot follows hapless freshman Wesley (Billy Jayne, here billed as Billy Jacoby), who has no confidence, no style and no luck with girls. When he volunteers to help stunning substitute biology teacher Ms Xenobia (replacement for unfortunate regular teacher Mr Ackerman, who is in traction after his car was run off the road by a UFO during the opening credits) with an after-class project for extra credit, he isn’t expecting to be injected with a sex serum that turns him into a magnet for lust-crazed girls. This is all the narrative excuse this film needs for a series of spills, thrills(-ish), sight gags, pop culture jokes and eighties high school movie cliches as Wesley tries to fight off the wrong girls, win the heart of the right one, and find out what’s happened to him in the hope of reversing all the parts of it that he doesn’t like. The results are, of course, predictably bedlam.

Much of Dr Alien is simply formulaic – a knockoff of every American high school comedy you’ve ever seen, think Teen Wolf and all its kind for a frame of reference – but it descends just that little bit further into sheer bizarreness than most. Ms Xenobia, alien in disguise, and her Igor-esque sidekick Drax seem to have wandered in from a low-end production of the Rocky Horror Show and conduct themselves accordingly, Raymond O’Connor in particularly hamming it up magnificently as Drax. And while there’s enough female flesh in here to provide wank material for a small army of adolescent boys, for some reason Dr Alien randomly ends on a ridiculously schmaltzy, heartwarming sentimental note, complete with pro-teenage moral. It’s enough to make you want to watch it with your parents, if it weren’t for the fact that that would mean having to look at boobs with them.

Personally I’m not really susceptible to boobs anyway, and I’m chary of any film that relies on them to cover its other shortcomings. But my personal Kryptonite is eighties hair metal, and so instead Dr Alien scores with me for having Wesley randomly end up fronting a band. Gotta love that habit eighties directors had of letting a band do an entire song in mid-movie just to add an extra four minutes to the running time, because for me on this occasion those four minutes are my payoff for all the titty shots and terrible acting I had to sit through to get there. Admittedly the effect is slightly spoiled by Wesley’s abysmal performing chops – Sammi Curr the boy is not, even if he’s clearly trying very hard to be – but the song itself, a cover of Lancelot’s “Killer Machine”, is a belter. So yes, just to show that even a terrible film can still do okay as long as it scratches the audience where they itch, Dr Alien gets a few points from me purely for the musical interlude – and the sappy ending, because I secretly like that kind of thing. I wouldn’t actually recommend this film unless you’re a serious connoisseur of eighties cheesiness, but for a feelgood (and mildly porny) popcorn movie at a party where everyone was already drunk, it wouldn’t be a terrible choice.

However, you actually get two films for the price of one on this particular release, the 88 Films Region 2 edition. The other, hiding in the bonus features, is a Charles-Band-devised, Harry-Hurwitz-directed pseudo-documentary called Auditions, dating from 1978. The premise of this is that the makers of a fairytale-themed porn movie supposedly filmed their auditions to find the world’s sexiest man, the world’s sexiest woman, and the most unusual novelty act, and give us the highlights – and a few lowlights – of the events that occurred. The quality of both footage and sound is fairly ropey but even so, this film is going to stick with me in a way that Dr Alien assuredly won’t. There’s a deep surreality to the experience of watching from a wholly dispassionate viewpoint as a sequence of interchangeable and stereotypically seventies men and women, directed by a disembodied directorial voice, strip off, answer revealing questions about their sex and fantasy lives, and participate in sex-scene auditions including a selection of S&M fantasy sequences. It’s a peek into the inner workings of one of Hollywood’s seedier dream machines which for the most part is anything but erotic simply because everything that’s going on is so matter-of-fact, and yet its appeal lies instead in the glimpses of truly odd, sometimes disturbing, sometimes touching humanity that flash through it. Definitely one for which I think every viewer will come away with a different favourite scene or character, as there’s nothing more personal than sexuality and this film very much showcases that fact. However, I defy anyone not to at least enjoy the moments of comedy gold that are scattered through this: the recurring presence of E Eddie Edwards, the world’s most annoying talent agent who can’t take a hint and turns up repeatedly in a Pythonesque fashion that’s only enhanced by his resemblance to John Cleese, is genius, as is the beautiful subversion of the traditional porn-movie “handyman” setup when the studio’s house electrician finds himself dragged into an impromptu audition after coming in to fix a light on-set.

And most of all I can’t help but love the way this film has been sneaked onto this disc, as though the utterly disposable Dr Alien is a mere carrier – a relatively innocent movie that’s simply acting as a brown paper wrapper for something much more profoundly perverse. An homage, if you will, to the pre-internet age when we still had to be at least a little furtive about our porn stashes. Dr Alien is fine if you like that sort of thing, but it’s really Auditions that makes this DVD worth owning. Just be sure not to let your mum catch you with it…

Dr Alien is out now on Region 2 DVD from 88 Films.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Mild spoilers ahead.

The Hidden Face – or La cara oculta, Bunker or Inside as it’s variously been released – is a Columbian psychological thriller directed by Andrés Baiz (Satan), and although it appears to have been doing the festival circuit for a couple of years it’s only now making its UK debut directly onto DVD. It has some original ideas and I found it to be a fairly easy watch, but it’s ultimately let down by a number of rather gaping plot holes and a clichéd telling of an otherwise interesting tale.

The film starts with wealthy composer Adrian (Quim Gutierrez) watching a video in which his girlfriend Belen (Clara Lago) is explaining that she is leaving him and he is not to look for her. Although upset by this brutal dumping he almost immediately seeks solace in the arms of waitress Fabiana (Martina Garcia), who after a whirlwind romance soon moves into Adrian’s palatial home, despite the warnings from her cop ex-boyfriend that Adrian is a suspect in Belen’s disappearance. Things seem to be going pretty well for the new couple; that is until mysterious things start happening around the house such as voices in the pipes, unexplained ripples in the bath water and regular power cuts. This first half of the film plays like a straight up ghost story, and is effectively creepy in places, lulling the viewer to believe that Belen’s ghost is haunting the house after being murdered by Adrian. Then halfway through the story changes and becomes almost a different film entirely. We get a flashback to Belen viewing the house and being introduced to a secret hidden room, which we soon find out was built by the owner’s late husband who just happened to be a Nazi who fled to South America, and created the room as a place to hide should his location ever be discovered. Then we get the first half of the film again from the point of Belen, who as you may have guessed managed to get herself stuck in the Nazi bunker.

Now, I think my main issue with this film is the reveal as to how Belen ended up in the bunker in the first place. It’s frankly ridiculous. I won’t spoil it for you here but I was yelling “what are you doing you stupid woman?!” at my television screen. Speaking of the bunker, I also think it was a flaw not to give more information as to exactly how it came about and why nobody concerned seems at all worried or about the whole Nazi thing. There is also a major problem with judging the time frame of the film; I honestly have no idea if Belen was trapped in there for a week or for months, making it all rather confusing as to how she’s survived and exactly how quickly Adrian moved on after her disappearance because it seems like it’s the next day that Fabiana appears. Also repeating the story from a different point of view is a narrative device that is oftentimes simply a little dull, as you’re being forced to re-watch what you’ve literally just seen and it can be difficult to pull off successfully without simply highlighting yet more plot holes. The Hidden Face treads the line here and just about pulls it off, but not quite enough to stop it being frustrating.

This isn’t to say that there weren’t things I liked about The Hidden Face. The acting is pretty good and with all the primary characters turned up to eleven the melodrama flows thick and fast, but in a pleasing sort of a way that works well with this sort of overwrought subject matter. The film also tears along at a fair whack, making it difficult to lose interest and it almost convinces you that everything makes sense, like if they cram everything in as quickly as possible you won’t have the time to question what goes on, and it almost works. Ultimately I get the feeling that it’s going to prove forgettable (I already had to double check the title twice whilst writing this) and that there isn’t really much of an audience out there for it, but I guess if you can leave your brain at the door and just go along for the ride there are things here to appreciate.

Hidden Face is out now on Region 2 DVD, from Metrodome.

UPDATE – the release has actually been put back to 9th September 2013. Sorry!