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By Quin

When you get to the end of The Inhabitants, you may ask yourself, how did I get here? I didn’t mean to quote the Talking Heads, but I don’t know how else to say it. The movie I started watching felt like a different movie in almost every way 90 minutes later. Apart from a final shot that wants badly to throw away everything that was built up before it, the final hour of The Inhabitants is creepy, well acted, slowly paced and it keeps giving information as it is needed.

So, what of the first 30 minutes, you ask? Well, they are all setup and it’s all so rushed, like everybody just wants to hurry up and get to the good part. There’s a pre-opening credits bit where a couple is talking before they go to bed. But they don’t turn out the light until one of them says something to the effect of, “Gosh, I sure do wonder what those strange noises are.” And the other one says something like, “I sure can’t wait to go check out the witch museum.” It’s all shameless exposition that tells you very little, and it’s not enough to make you want to stick with it. The opening credits are shown super-imposed over what looks like grainy security camera footage, but here’s the kicker – it’s of the sleeping couple.

The home is actually an old bed and breakfast called The March Carriage. The owners, who are a silent old lady and her young niece, are selling the place. Dan and Jessica are a young couple who have come to look at the place. After some poorly written, superficial discussion about whether they can afford it or not, they smile and say, “We’ll take it.” Of course they will. The couple moves in, and for the next 20 minutes we see all the boring stuff that a young couple does when they move in to a new home. But as soon as Dan gets called away to Chicago for a business trip, the movie does something surprising – it gets good. Jessica has lots of quiet moments with her dog. She meets some of the locals, who give off a dangerous vibe. And there are some genuinely tense moments where she is walking around in dimly lit rooms, heading slowly toward a confrontation with evil.

At first, I saw everyone in this movie as just actors playing a part, but once Jessica is left alone in the house, she finally becomes a fully fleshed out character that begins a transformation. Jessica is played by Elise Couture and Michael Reed is Dan. They both start out as an annoyingly nice couple who say a lot of nothing with a smile. The quiet moments with Jessica leading up to the change that takes place in her, and Dan’s return as the concerned husband trying to figure out what happened to his wife are finally what make you start to care about these people. Once this all kicks in, the tone stays pretty somber and the horror never gets too loud. This isn’t a jump scare movie. It’s driven completely by atmosphere and the performance of the actors.

The Inhabitants was written and directed by brothers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen. They previously wrote the John Carpenter directed film The Ward, which brings me to a point I want to make. I think the Rasmussen Brothers are better directors than writers. If it wasn’t for the strong direction of The Inhabitants, the weak dialogue and story structure issues would have probably collapsed the whole thing.

I’m glad I saw The Inhabitants and I would recommend it if you like Ti West’s The Innkeepers. Don’t expect it to bring too many new ideas to the table, but expect to be pleasantly surprised by a movie that could have been forgettable. Having seen it, I’ll definitely take notice the next time the Rasmussen Brothers direct a movie.

The Inhabitants will be released from Gravitas Ventures on October 13th to multiple VOD platforms including iTunes, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play, Xbox LIVE, Sony Playstation, various cable providers, and more. The film is also currently available for pre-order on iTunes.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I’m almost certain anyone watching Aaaaaaaah! will struggle to recall a film with which to compare it. The best I can think of is Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, but in all honesty, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that film and that might just be because there’s a ‘gorilla’ in it. I can’t honestly say that Aaaaaaaah! is anything like any other film I’ve seen. The characters which populate Aaaaaaah! are recognisably human, but they behave in the manner of apes. If I was to try and boil down the film to its bare bones, I think I’d describe it as an avant-garde soap opera, but I don’t think that does it justice. Steve Oram’s directorial debut is an absurd, wild ride into human nature, and I’m not entirely sure it’s a film that has wholly complimentary things to say about us.

There’s something reassuringly lo-fi about the film: presumably shot in the home of someone Oram must get on with well enough to make that much of a mess, it’s a passion-project without a doubt. It’s to Oram’s credit then that he’s got such a large and enthusiastic cast. A whole host of familiar faces – from Oram himself, to Alice Lowe, to Noel Fielding, to Toyah Wilcox – take on anything from cameos to lead-roles, and the performers here give the unusual script the energy and enthusiasm it deserves. While the grunting and gesticulation could so easily have gone full-blown am-dram panto, it is instead executed with just the right level of seriousness that the story being told is remarkably compelling throughout.

Don’t let that mislead you, though – the film might be relatively serious in its execution, but it is thoroughly, gloriously silly. Oram’s sublimely ridiculous film has got so much going on it’s truly hard to keep up. If you’re not laughing at the humour you may well find yourself laughing out of sheer confusion. There’s a distinct irreverence to the humour that will leave you scratching your head as to why you’re laughing, but laughing you will be. It’s certainly a film that will leave many cold – the humour’s hardly big or clever, but if, like me, you have much less refined tastes, Aaaaaaaah! should at the very least give you a laugh or several.

The bulk of humour might be silly but the satire hidden within the poo jokes and tea-bagging is biting. The humans of Aaaaaaaah! may have regressed to a simpler state of being, but they’re no less the vacuous, cruel and mundane sorts of characters that might be found in a more advanced society. Indeed, the mundanity of the lives of the characters in the film is both a source of what makes the film so interesting and so funny. Everyman characters sitting around the TV is hardly new social commentary, but pertinent it is, and it’s definitely funny when that TV show is as nonsensical as the programmes in Aaaaaaaah!

There’s a subtle nod to video culture here too, but Aaaaaaaah! is no rewindhouse flick. The film does play in glorious 4:3, however, and its videophile nods are as much in the generally anarchic nature of the film as its aesthetic. If you’ve ever watched any of the output from Lincoln Studios on YouTube then think of Aaaaaaaah! as slightly dialled back in terms of its look, but no less mind-boggling in its tone. There’s also an impressive soundtrack to the film, a mish-mash of prog, distortion and jingle-music, some of which is composed by Oram himself.

You might, at this point, be wondering why the hell Aaaaaaaah! is a film that’s playing horror festivals and getting reviewed on websites like this. It’s not just Oram’s genre credentials getting the film its due attention, but rather it’s because this is a film that genuinely pushes the boundaries of just what we might think of as ‘horror’ or ‘extreme’ cinema. While Aaaaaaaah! certainly isn’t a traditional genre-pic, it’s got just enough frightening content (I don’t mean jump scares, here) and just enough violence (ape-o a ape-o, if you will), that it challenges our preconceptions of any number of genres.

All in all, then, Aaaaaaaah! is a film I enjoyed watching immensely, as much for its sheer novelty and ambition as for the fact that it made me howl with laughter. That being said, I can imagine many people might find the film frustrating for many of the same reasons that I enjoyed it so much. If you like your films challenging, or silly, or ideally both, then Aaaaaaaah! is essential viewing.

Aaaaaaaah! screens at Mayhem Festival on Sunday 18th October, before its release via VOD on October 19th. Keep an eye out for further screenings and news of a DVD release later in the year.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

I confess that The Skull is a Cushing/Lee collaboration I knew very little about before receiving the screener of Eureka’s gorgeous new Blu-ray release for review. It’s an Amicus film that looks a lot like a Hammer film, boasting Freddie Francis at the helm, and Cushing and Lee in an astonishingly starry cast. There’s further pedigree too: the film adapts a (very) short story by Robert Bloch. The titular skull is the skull of one Marquis de Sade, and comes into the possession of curio collector Professor Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing), despite warnings from his friendly rival, Sir Matthew Phillips (Christopher Lee). Maitland is dubious of all warnings but soon finds himself spiralling into a murderous madness under the influence of de Sade’s skull.

The Marquis de Sade functions as a wonderful shorthand for decadent evil in The Skull, but there’s very little more debauched than murder in the film itself. The narrative is indeed particularly slight, and, as Vic Pratt outlines in his piece in the booklet that accompanies this release, the story it adapts is only 8 pages long, and Amicus head Milton Subotsky made little further embellishment. As a result the film sags on several occasions during its relatively brief runtime, however, Francis and Cushing save the day.

The film is surprisingly expressionistic, and almost psychedelic. As the film goes on and De Sade’s skull holds increasing power over Maitland, so the dialogue dies down and the garishness of the action that unfolds increases. Francis repeatedly employs a skulls-eye-view effect which should, I suppose, be a bit naff, but actually works to great effect: particularly when Maitland is then framed within one of the skull’s eyes. The garish lighting of the film is enjoyable too, and again Pratt notes the similarity here to the sort of lighting used by Mario Bava.

The highlight of the film is a terrifying nightmare sequence, in which Maitland is escorted from his home late at night by two policemen, who take him to the home of the man who sold him the skull. Not only does it demonstrate Francis’ immense talents as director, but Cushing’s powerhouse performance in the film. He’s able to steal the show in the many dialogue-light sequences, and none demonstrate this as much as a scene in which he is forced to play Russian Roulette. If you’ve never quite seen someone truly act with their eyes, then this is a masterclass. Christopher Lee delivers a commanding performance but while his role starts off interesting it becomes clear that he’s little more than Mr. Exposition. Elsewhere Patrick Wymark is suitably sly as the black market dealer who sells Maitland the skull, and Patrick Magee plays the police surgeon with an almost unnecessary, but enjoyable, sense of dread.

It’s a shame that the narrative of The Skull was not given a bit more care and attention, as the resulting film is both strangely impressive and disappointing at the same time. Rather than emerging as a truly memorable and classic Cushing and Lee collaboration for Amicus, it feels more like a showcase for the talents of Cushing and Francis than a fully-formed film. That being said, if there’s a way to watch it, Blu-ray is it, and the package Eureka’s put together is lovely, including in addition to the film lengthy interviews with Jonathan Rigby and Kim Newman. This is a release worth adding to your collection on the strength of Cushing’s performance and Francis’ direction, but if you’re not otherwise much a fan of old British horror, then the film as whole might leave you cold.

Eureka release The Skull in dual format DVD Blu-ray on 26th October – pre-order here.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

We Are Still Here is Ted Geoghegan’s directorial debut and it’s a film that demonstrates some considerable strengths. It’s clear that Geoghegan’s a man with respect for the horror genre as the film offers a haunted house narrative with a degree of intelligence and reverence that it doesn’t always receive. Anne (Barbara Crampton) and Paul (Andrew Sensenig) move into a new house in rural, snow-bound New England to heal and start anew following the sudden death of their son. It’s not long before the couple receives an ominous welcome from their neighbour Dave (Monte Markham) and Anne feels a presence in the house. Believing this to be the spirit of her son trying to make contact, she invites her friends May (Lisa Marie) and Jacob (Larry Fessenden), who are both mediums, to try and get to the root of things. Soon enough it becomes apparent that the presence in the house is not as friendly as Anne might have hoped, and neither are the neighbours.

We’ve often pondered, here at Brutal as Hell, the pros and cons of having particular expectations about a film before seeing it. Perhaps we’ve made our minds up that a film’s going to be terrible before seeing it, or we’ve been so excited for a film that it’s ended up an absolute disappointment. There are all sorts of shades in between, and one of those shades is comparing a film to either another film or to the work of a filmmaker. There’s nothing more off-putting to me than seeing a film hailed as ‘the new’ whatever, or a director as the new someone-else, rather than their own person. Things are not always so extreme, and sometimes just a mention of something can plant a seed of expectation that changes the kilter of one’s appreciation of a film. As such, then, I’m frustrated to say I didn’t enjoy We Are Still Here as much as I think it technically deserved. It’s illogical, I know, but having seen the name Lucio Fulci described as an influence and a comparison in other writing about the film (and I had made sure not to read into too much detail about it!) the film I got was not the film I was expecting.

Now, that’s a criticism of my own faculties, rather than that of the film. There certainly are things that I disliked about the film, or rather that I thought were weaker than the whole, but overall the film is very well made. Geoghegan’s camerawork is delightful, especially when it quite subtly assumes a POV of whatever ghosts or ghouls inhabit the house Anne and Paul have moved into. Crampton and Sensenig are wonderful as the central couple, and my god it’s refreshing to have a middle-aged couple at the centre of their film, and a couple who have lost a grown-up child at that. These little differences in the generic set up make a world of difference and demonstrate the thought that’s been put into the scenario. The horror stuff is extremely well done too – there are a few more jump scares than I think the film needed, but otherwise it builds tension wonderfully and features really great ghost make-up work. The gore, when it comes, is entertaining and brilliantly done, but perhaps not quite in-line with the tone of the rest of the film.

I think that’s where the film fell flat for me. There’s a lot of character stuff in this film, and while for the most part it works, for me May and Jacob made it tedious. I didn’t care for their characters, finding them neither wholly compelling or believable (like Anne and Paul) nor larger-than-life enough to be real comic relief. Instead they were just that annoying level of kooky that made me a bit bored whenever they were one screen. It also doesn’t help that I’ve reached the point where the casting of Larry Fessenden is in itself a bit of a distraction, as it feels like I’ve seen him in a million films this year already. Whenever May and Jacob were on screen, then, I felt like I was somewhat taken out of the film. For all its character stuff, then, the gore at the film’s climax, goes all out, but while Fulci’s gore is lingered on adoringly, the fast editing of We Are Still Here gave proceedings a very different feel. I don’t think Fulci ever spent so much care and attention on his characters, either, so it’s almost like the filmmakers’ priorities are in reverse. That’s as close as I can get to the reason for my overall underwhelmed response to the film.

While the narrative has enough twists to keep it engaging, it’s also quite slight. I can’t help but feel had I enjoyed the scenes with May and Jacob more, this slightness wouldn’t have been quite so noticeable, but as such I was yearning for a bit more meat to proceedings. I’m aware it doesn’t make much sense for me to say that a film which is technically better than a lot of Fulci’s output isn’t as good as the film its drawing a lot of inspiration from – The House by the Cemetery – but that’s ultimately how I felt upon watching the film. As such, I would actually heartily recommend We Are Still Here, which, despite my misgivings, is an impressive debut, but I would urge you all to push Lucio Fulci as far away from your minds as possible!

We Are Still Here is available in the UK for digital download on 12th October, and DVD on 19th October, from Studiocanal. (A Blu-ray edition is available exclusively from The Hut.)

Attention, any and all filmmakers contemplating making a shark movie. Here are some key points to consider. How much money do you have? Is the budget there to create believable shark effects and attack sequences? If not, do you have any directorial tricks up your sleeve to convey suspense without convincing creature work? Or failing all that, do you have a remotely compelling human story to tell? And if by some chance you have the means to hire a big name action star in the lead, can you at least give him something badass to do, like wrestling sharks or some shit?

Someone really should have had the makers of Shark Lake answer these questions prior to them starting work on this misguided, tedious, worthless piece of shit. Unfortunately, if these questions were asked, all parties concerned said, “who cares, let’s make the movie anyway.”

A sleepwalking Dolph takes on the role of Clint Gray, a rough, tough black market dealer of exotic animals who comes a cropper of the law and gets sent down for five years, leaving his infant daughter to be adopted by Sara Malakul Lane’s police officer Meredith Hernandez. (Yeah, I’m wondering if there might be professional regulations against that sort of thing too, but let’s not overthink anything here; it’s quite clear the filmmakers didn’t.) However, what no one knew was that Clint had a certain deadly animal stashed away in a certain body of water, which – drum roll please – was pregnant. So once Clint walks out of jail, it soon turns out there’s something nasty in the water.

It’s a perfectly good B-movie premise. Unfortunately, all these cut-price SyFy Channel type modern monster movies seem to have lost any sense of what constitutes a good B-movie. If it’s badly written, badly directed and badly acted, lacking any real tension – well, fine. It’s still possible to be entertaining. There just needs to be some sense of fun. If all else fails, pile on the three Bs – but oh wait, no, they’re not going to do that as these types of movies are generally intended to go straight to TV, where (despite this being the age of Game of Thrones and so on) such things are apparently still frowned upon. Still, surely they’ll at least go the trouble of making something that actually looks like a movie, right? Decent camerawork, lighting and editing? Some sense of cinematic scope…? Please?

Please believe it gives me no pleasure whatsoever not to be able to recommend a shark movie with Dolph Lundgren in it, but Shark Lake is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with low budget direct to DVD filmmaking today. Shame on everyone involved. Yes, even you Dolph.

Shark Lake is out on VOD and in cinemas in the US on October 2nd.

By Tristan Bishop

When we think of genre film from Australia we tend to think of arid outback conditions and the brutal ways of living they can engender – a long tradition of films, from Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout (1970) to Russell Mulcahy’s Razorback (1984), from Mad Max to Wolf Creek, film-makers have used the huge swathes of open land to their advantage, often with themes of culture clash, as outsiders literally struggle to survive in a sometimes lawless wilderness. The Passage (somewhat blandly changed from its original title, Lemon Tree Passage, which to be fair sounds more like a coming-of-age tale than a horror film), takes a different approach, being an exploration of a real (sub)urban myth set in a populated area of New South Wales (Lemon Tree Passage being the name of the town where the story occurs), and the familiar ‘Ozploitation’ themes of isolation and outsiders vs. locals are jettisoned in favour of what is, at heart, an old-fashioned small-town ghost story.

Three American teens, Maya (Jessica Tovey of Home & Away fame), Amelia (Pippa Black, of Neighbours fame) and Amelia’s brother Toby (Tim Pocock – aka the young Scott Summers in X-Men : Origins) are backpacking in Australia. They meet locals Oscar (Andrew Ryan) and Geordie (Tom Phillipps – another Neighbours alumnus) who offer them a place to crash. After the group do the standard young-people-in-a-horror-film stuff – drinking beer, smoking weed, flirting hideously, they begin to tell ghost stories. Oscar starts to tell them about a certain road in the town of Lemon Tree Passage, where legend has it that a motorcyclist had a fatal crash, and that he now haunts the road, and is visible as a spooky light to anyone who drives down the road above a certain speed. Of course, being intoxicated young people, they decide to check for themselves, and, lo and behold, the spooky light is visible. Visible to everyone but Maya, that is, who instead develops a nosebleed. However not everyone is convinced, thinking that the spooky light might well just be a broken street light, and in a fit of drunken stupidity, Oscar elects to stand in the dark next to where the light appears and film it as the others drive past. However, when they do this, the light is visible to everyone but Oscar, who suddenly vanishes. As the others rally together to try and find him, they (eventually) come face-to-face with the true nature of the haunting at Lemon Tree Passage.

The idea of using a real life local ghost story for a film is an intriguing one for sure – especially one as odd as this, so I was hoping for a tale rich in local colour and atmosphere. Unfortunately the local angle turns out to a bit under-cooked – As mentioned above, Australia has a long tradition of genre film which plays on the landscapes and myths of the country, so, whilst in some ways it can be seen as a refreshing change from the norm, in other ways, aside from a few accents, this could be any standard US horror film, and that seems like a shame. This is exacerbated by more than half of the characters being ‘American’ (the actors are actually all Australian) – a totally pointless decision as there’s never any element of culture clash, aside from a scene in which the Aussies teach the Americans to speak Australian (apparently you need to swear more!). We’re used to international productions dropping US actors in to boost the changes of sales in The States, of course, but seeing as the actors themselves aren’t even American, this left me scratching my head.

Thankfully the film does have merit beyond this – it looks great for one, as the production values are way more impressive than you would expect from a small-scale ghost story – including some very impressive CGI effects. Director/co-writer/editor David James Campbell (making his first feature here, after working in commercials and shorts) has an obvious talent for a scare too, and there are a handful of moments here that I’ll admit gave me an unexpected shiver (watching it alone in the dark probably helped too), but, unfortunately, as the story unravels, so does the film, and by the end I went from scratching my head to being disappointed with what one can only assume was supposed to be a shocking denouement, but actually turned out to feel a bit cheap. Nonetheless, there are certainly highlights along the way, and The Passage should be commended for them, it’s just frustrating that it falls so close to being something genuinely interesting.

The Passage is released to DVD on 5th October, from Metrodome.

By Ben Bussey

There was a time when I considered Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City my absolute favourite film of the 2000s. I’m no longer quite that fond of it, but I do still appreciate its heightened comic book noir aesthetic, its brash balls-out masculinity, and its effortless sense of cool which has always seemed to come so naturally to Rodriguez. However, once the long overdue sequel Sin City: A Dame To Kill For finally arrived last year, I struggled to muster up any interest. All the early images and trailers indicated it was just going to be the same thing all over again – and well it might, given Miller’s comic book series isn’t exactly known for its nuanced storytelling and diverse visual style. They kept it simple, and that which once seemed bold, groundbreaking and supercool now just seems a bit old hat.

So, if the makers of Sin City can’t make the style work a second time, it isn’t especially surprising that a low budget Florida production from a first-time director struggles with it too. Sad to say, Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce is a movie which is fighting uphill struggles on just about every level. Aiming for a fun VHS action vibe, but completely lacking the wherewithal to pull it off, this is an incoherent mess of a movie which takes no time at all to descend into pure tedium.

Michael McCarthy takes the lead as Ronan Pierce, a renegade cop with a propensity for overwrought voiceover and excessive force. Indeed, renegade doesn’t so much cover it; this guy makes The Punisher seem moderate. And like The Punisher before him, he has personal reasons to be so hard on the criminals he’s so intent on taking down, as they murdered his infant daughter and abducted his wife: just another day at the office for these human trafficking, organ harvesting, drug dealing, kiddie-fiddling kitten eaters. (Well, maybe not the last thing, but this film goes to such pains to show us how vile these villains are, we wouldn’t put it past them.) Pierce wants to kill them all, so… he does. And that’s about the long and short of it.

Sounds like simple fun, and handled better it might have been. Unfortunately there’s barely one aspect of this film that’s handled correctly. It looks and sounds like shit, with murky photography and dim lighting making a great deal of the action almost impossible to follow – a situation not helped by similarly muffled sound. The script is a garbled mess, throwing in excessive backstory and voiceover at awkward intervals, making the action even harder to follow. The performances, with very few exceptions, are atrocious; Michael McCarthy (also co-writer and producer, as well as the director’s brother) might have been a good fit for a back-up goon character with two or three lines, but he’s hopelessly out of his depth in the lead, and like many of his co-stars he doesn’t seem to understand that conveying intensity does not hinge on screaming and shouting nigh-on every single line of dialogue. Jordan Elizabeth isn’t so bad, but is laboured with a pretty half-baked damsel in distress/would-be femme fatale role; Kane Hodder pops up for about two minutes just so they can put his name on the cover art, and isn’t around long enough to have any impact. The only performance that really works is that of Harry Aspinwall, who does a good job as the psychotic big boss that Pierce must make his way up to; alas, Aspinwall’s efforts don’t so much elevate the film as make you feel bad for him being laboured with a film which is so shitty in every other department.

If they were trying to give Fury that air of Rodriguez-esque effortless cool, they failed; if they were trying to give it a heightened, deliberately OTT feel in the hopes of being funny, they failed. Basically, Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce is a failure in every respect, and not worth a moment’s consideration.

Fury: The Tales of Ronan Pierce is released to Blu-Ray, DVD and VOD in the UK on 12th October.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

A lone man, Stanley (Mark Lewis Jones), works diligently at a well near his secluded property. He hears the sound of a car horn, and following it, finds a crashed car. He finds a young couple at the vehicle, which is part-submerged in the nearby river: the defensive Iwan (Dyfan Dwyfor) and the injured Sara (Annes Elwy). The youths are housed by Stanley and though capably cared for their secrets and the secrets of the house begin to unravel to life-changing effect.

As a Welsh-speaker, I have in the past often bemoaned the general lack of genre filmmaking in my language. The Passing in some ways then does not entirely fulfil my desire to see more of such things, being, as it is, in the form of a more traditional Welsh mode of storytelling. However, this is absolutely and commendably a step in the right direction, and I can only hope that the film leads to more risk-taking in terms of the financing and producing of Welsh-language genre projects. It’s heartening to see The Passing get its world premiere at a genre festival as prestigious as Fantastic Fest, and that makes me very proud, simply by extension.

The Passing is a dark melodrama with a supernatural garnish, and as such it’s definitely not a film for the strictest of gorehounds. There is a sense of dread throughout, the seclusion of the house within its rural setting as claustrophobic as the interior of the dilapidated, cobweb-ridden building. By far the film’s primary strength is its exceptionally beautiful look: director Gareth Bryn and his team have managed to make damp, rainy Wales look as gorgeous as it does on a day of bright sunshine. But crucially they manage to do so without ever making it seem entirely inviting: there is definite darkness to this tempting landscape.

The film’s three leads give wonderful performances, and while the two youngest cast members certainly hold their own next to a towering Mark Lewis Jones, it is his performance that genuinely captivates. He has the physique of a Leatherface yet the personality of a Norman Bates, but at no point in the film does the character of Stanley feel like cliché or pastiche. Credit for that must go to Jones – as his dialogue is sparse, it could have been so easy to have made the role a more sinister, lumbering man-in-the-woods part. Instead, we are presented with a potentially threatening but genuinely sympathetic character, particularly as the film progresses. The film features a crucial opening five minutes – it’s a montage of Stanley’s day-to-day life, which a weaker film might have presented in a much shorter sequence. Instead, Bryn deliberately shows us the lonely man’s hard life at a leisurely pace: working at a well, tending to chickens, eating alone. It’s a powerful opening that helps establish the tone for the rest of the film.

That slow, deliberate pace continues for the duration of the film, and it may indeed lose the attention of some. The tone of the film is very, dare I say it, Welsh. Bryn, and writer/producer Ed Talfan will be known to more than just Welsh TV-viewers by now, due to the huge and continuing success of Y Gwyll/Hinterland. But while that is a Welsh drama in Nordic noir mode, The Passing is certainly a feature film with the tone of many a Welsh (melo)drama. I don’t strictly mean that as a criticism, either, but in that regard it might seem overly familiar to those who have seen a few Welsh dramas, or somewhat leaden for those who haven’t, or who don’t enjoy a slow pace.* There certainly were moments where my attention threatened to drift elsewhere, but it was always retained, usually by the lush visuals of the film or by some new narrative turn.

And what a narrative it is. I am immensely curious to see how the film goes down with non-Welsh audiences. For me to say too much is to risk spoiling the film, and for me to say nothing on this is to risk not really talking about the film at all. So, I suppose, I won’t call this a spoiler warning, but read on at your own peril.

The supernatural element of the film is, in some ways, obvious, if you are a viewer familiar with the recent cultural history being invoked by the film. I really can’t say how obvious this is for anyone unfamiliar with such historical moments, and when I started writing this review I intended on being a bit more explanatory, but I think it’s best I don’t explain it away. I want to see what people find for themselves in the film. As such I can’t really fully explain the extent to which I believe the film’s impressive visuals are an extremely vital part of its success, above and beyond just looking pretty. The supernatural element of the film is perhaps not subtle, then, but it is extremely well-done. It is absolutely to the credit of Bryn and Talfan that they have made a beautiful film which invokes this particular cultural memory without making it heavy-handedly political, which it absolutely could have (and perhaps in a different context should have) been. The film’s climax is one of its strongest scenes, and is genuinely moving.

Although the film is a three-hander, as the film progresses Sara seems to emerge as the primary protagonist, but for me it is Stanley who remains the core of the film. I think I might even have enjoyed a version of the film in a more abstract mode, just about him, with the story of his visitors being less intrusive on his world. But, that would make much less watchable film no doubt, and as such The Passing just about manages a better balance of melodrama and esoteric recollections of history. If you get a chance to see the film, please seek it out – and please, let me know what you think!

*If you’ve ever seen the 1990 TV drama Nel – which I can only presume the majority, if not all, reading this haven’t – that’s the sort of tone I mean. I make the comparison as someone who enjoyed watching Nel, too, even though I had to watch it at school. Twice. (Hopefully, as a result of that viewing context, I’m not vastly misremembering it.)

In his 1977 book Exo-Psychology, the notorious Dr Timothy Leary – having a decade earlier told the world to Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out – attempted to coin another enduring catchphrase in SMI²LE, an acronym which equates as follows: “SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension).” This, Leary proposed, was the future of mankind: that the brightest and boldest would depart from this dying rock to start a new way of life, and enter a higher state of consciousness, in outer space.

However, three years before Leary published these ideas, director John Boorman had already explored them in a fictional capacity in Zardoz. Both Boorman’s film and Leary’s ideas have been the subject of much mockery over the decades since, but both in their own way reflect the mixed-up place radical thinkers of the world were in after the fallout of the 60s dream. The key difference is, while Leary dreamed of a cosmic utopia, Boorman thought it through that bit further. Assuming the dreams of the era came true – mankind abolished government, explored space, achieved supreme consciousness, psychic powers and immortality – what then? What would become of those who would literally want for nothing ever again? And what, for that matter, would become of those left behind who were not granted those same privileges?

This, at least, is one way of interpreting Zardoz. Another way is to say it’s just a bunch of hippies messing around with a big pile of a major film studio’s money, staging a madcap psychedelic happening full of naked people, giant floating stone heads, and Sean Connery tarted up in an orange mankini with a long black braid hanging over his shoulder like some prototype hybrid of Borat and Katniss Everdeen, whilst spewing some acid-drenched mumbo jumbo that might vaguely resemble a coherent narrative if you happened to be on acid at the time, and they were able to get away with it because, y’know, it was the 70s. There’s a lot to be said for both of those interpretations, I think. But one thing I categorically do not agree with is the charge that Zardoz is one of the very worst sci-fi movies, or indeed worst movies overall, ever made. It’s a product of its time, for sure, and even by the standards of the time it’s pretty out there, but it’s way too fascinating to be a dead loss.

Connery, clearly more anxious than ever to shake off the shackles of James Bond, takes the lead as Zed, an Exterminator for the god Zardoz in the year 2293. Coming down to his followers in the form of the aforementioned giant stone head, Zardoz’s teachings to his primitive followers are simple: the penis is evil, the gun is good, and in Zardoz’s name the Exterminators are charged with killing as many of the common Brutes as they can. However, Zed one day enters the mouth of Zardoz and is taken back from whence the great god came, only to find himself in an idyllic, half-pastoral half-hi-tech setting peopled by an immortal upper class who have lived there, free from the ravages of age and infirmity, for over 300 years. For Zed, this will lead to a total overhaul of everything he ever believed about his existence; for the Immortals, the arrival of this strange, mortal savage will send shockwaves through their sheltered community, bringing to a head tensions that have been bubbling up for literally centuries – and, along with it, the realisation that they no longer desire anything aside from death itself.

This was John Boorman’s follow-up film after breaking big with Deliverance, which was itself a very challenging film in different ways – and one of the key things which to my mind makes Zardoz impossible to dismiss is that it was a product of an era when neither major filmmakers nor studios shyed away from unconventional, risky material. But then, how great a risk would Zardoz have necessarily seemed in 1974? Stanley Kubrick had made 2001: A Space Odyssey only a few years prior, which is every bit as obtuse and esoteric. A more arthouse sensibility had permeated the mainstream since, and though this wouldn’t last long (Jaws opened the year after Zardoz), it did produce some very interesting films. Zardoz is of course also noteworthy as a key film in Boorman’s body of work, paving the way for further heightened, otherworldly visions in The Exorcist II, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest. None of these films are particularly down to earth, but if you get on their wavelength you may find they all have striking aesthetics, and some interesting things to say. Indeed, it may be that the main problem with Zardoz is that it’s trying to express a little too much, imagining future states of social order, ecology, sexuality, art, religion and more besides in the form of the futurist visions of the day. Still, certain key themes definitely ring true, notably the broadening of the gap between the rich and the poor: watching this in the same week that pustulent drug company profiteer Martin Shkreli decided to bump up the price of AIDS medicine Daraprim from $13 to $750 per pill, it doesn’t seem too unreasonable to envisage a future where only the richest can afford to stay young forever whilst the poor languish in agony and despair.

Obviously Zardoz isn’t a film for everyone, but then our old friends Arrow Video specialize in films that aren’t for everyone, and once again they’ve put together a package that confirmed fans shouldn’t hesitate to snap up. Not only does the film itself look and sound great, but they’ve also got interviews with many of the key players including Boorman, actress Sara Kestelman, production designer Anthony Pratt, special effects creator Gerry Johnston, camera operator Peter MacDonald, assistant director Simon Relph, hair stylist Colin Jamison, production manager Seamus Byrne, and assistant editor Alan Jones. There’s also an interesting ‘appreciation’ from another British director with a taste for the unorthodox, Ben Wheatley, a commentary track from Boorman, some trailers, and more besides.

Zardoz is available now on Blu-ray from Arrow Video.