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By Quin

David Gregory has very few feature film credits on his resume. Perhaps the most well-known is a segment in the anthology film The Theater Bizarre from 2011. Almost every other title in his long list of credits are documentary shorts. It turns out that he is responsible for so many of those Making Of documentaries that you get on the extras of a DVD. His feature length documentary Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau is basically a longer Making Of documentary, but it’s one of the best. And the thing that makes it so surprising is that it’s the Making Of documentary you never knew you wanted to see – but, trust me, you want to see this. You need to see this.

In the early 90’s, fresh off of Hardware and Dust Devil, Richard Stanley began preparing a screen adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The Island of Dr. Moreau. He had been a huge fan of the book, and while he liked the Charles Laughton adaptation with Bela Lugosi titled Island of Lost Souls, he points out how much that version deviated from the book. He also completely rails against the 1977 version with Burt Lancaster, amusingly talking about the misleading movie poster that featured a woman to cat transformation that doesn’t even happen in the film. The misleading poster art is obviously an age old problem that we still see today. Now, Richard Stanley is almost 50. He looks like an older, heavier version of the man he was in the 90’s, even with the same wardrobe. As he sits in a study in front of a shelf of books, he smokes cigarettes and speaks while brown saliva forms in the corners of his mouth. We get to hear directly from him – as well as some of the people he briefly worked with – as to why his vision never made it to the screen and he was quickly replaced by veteran director John Frankenheimer (best known as the director of 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate.)

I have only seen The Island of Dr. Moreau once, and I must say that is enough. It’s widely considered to be a terrible film. This documentary goes into great detail to explain what went wrong, even beyond the involvement of Richard Stanley, which incidentally only lasted a few days into shooting in Cairns, Australia. In addition to the history, this film attempts to weave and perpetuate a mythology around the film that, over time, could make it as infamous as films like Poltergeist or Twilight Zone: The Movie. Some of this stuff is documented and agreed upon by those who are interviewed – New Line Cinema’s Bob Shaye, actors Rob Morrow and Fairuza Balk, as well as many other actors and members of the Australian crew. Some of the more bizarre stories are recalled by Richard Stanley and I take them all at face value. He talks about a friend of his named Skip, who performed some kind of ritual with blood and incantations that was supposed to make everything go according to his plan during film production. He also blames an injury that this friend had as the thing that unraveled the magic spell and caused the chaos leading to his dismissal.

Most of the people interviewed in the film actually seem to feel bad for Richard Stanley. Fairuza Balk says that they were friends and that she didn’t understand why things got so messed up. Some are diplomatic – like Bob Shaye. He clearly thinks Stanley is a weirdo. This is obvious when he talks about an early meeting where refreshments were offered. Stanley requested coffee with four or five sugars. Shaye saw that as a warning of a guy who might be trouble.

It’s worth mentioning the people who are not interviewed in this film. Producer Mike De Luca is only represented as an animated figure and the film doesn’t make him look very good. The most bad-mouthed is probably Val Kilmer and he’s not in this movie. The other three who are missing are all dead – 2 foot tall actor Nelson De La Rosa, the once great Marlon Brando and director John Frankenheimer. It would be nice if they could have defended themselves, because they all get some strong accusations thrown their way. But when you see the final outcome of the film and take into consideration all of the things the people who were there had seen, it’s hard to not believe it all.

In about May or June of 1996, I was at a horror convention in Los Angeles where they were promoting the release of The Island of Dr. Moreau. I was much less critical in those days and it was easy for me to get excited about new movies coming out. John Frankenheimer was actually at this convention and I’m pretty sure Stan Winston was with him. They showed a reel of behind the scenes footage of the making of the film. I remember most of it being about the makeup effects, showcasing all Stan Winston’s designs. This was the first time I saw the Pig Woman. Perhaps if I had been older and wiser, I would have noticed from the film reel that something fishy was going on. But they were there to drum up interest and sell tickets. There were smiles and there was gushing about how great it was that Marlon Brando was in the film. There was no mention of the hell they had just gone through, and there was definitely no mention of a Mr. Richard Stanley.

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau is now available on iTunes from Severin Films. It is also streaming on Netflix.

By Ben Bussey

All it takes is one memorable moment. I’ve no doubt I would have no recollection of the original 1990 airing of BBC miniseries The Green Man were it not for having inadvertently caught the opening scene of the first episode – and being left profoundly shocked and haunted by it. I would have been 10 years old at the time, and had at that point never seen The Evil Dead (which just that same year was re-released to VHS with over a minute of cuts), but based on the Chinese whispers I’d picked up on I imagined it to play out along the same lines as The Green Man’s prologue: a woman wanders through woodland under pale moonlight, faint demonic whispers echo in the wind, the trees themselves seem to show signs of life – then, almost out of nowhere, the trees come alive completely, hauling the hapless young lady screaming into the air, before branches come bursting out through her stomach in a massive gush of gore.

I don’t know if the channel got abruptly changed, or an overbearing parental palm swept over my eyes, but I recall nothing further of The Green Man beyond that point (aside from seeing letters of complaint in the next week’s Radio Times and Points of View) – and, in what seems to be a very rare occurrence, I find on revisiting this scene now that it’s actually even nastier than I remember it being. And it’s all the more jarring as, moments later, we cut to Albert Finney washing and dressing up all fancy to the sound of big band jazz in the beginning of what would seem in most respects a conventional, down to earth BBC drama.

The Green Man is a very strange show, which seems to suffer from something of an identity crisis. As I’ve never read the 1969 Kingsley Amis book which was the the basis for this three-part series from screenwriter Malcolm Bradbury and director Elijah Moshinsky, I don’t know how much of this comes from the original text, but what we seem to have here is, for the most part, very standard BBC 1 post-9pm viewing of the era: all very middle-aged, middle class, picturesque and inoffensive. And yet along with this we have some bizarre horror movie elements, as well as a bit of Jilly Cooper-era smut; yes, even more potentially traumatic than the opening woodland disembowelment is the sight of Albert Finney having sex. It’s an odd blend that never quite sits right, and smacks of an eagerness to come off a bit daring and risque, yet at the same time remaining anxious not to alienate the tea-sipping grandparents in the audience. No great surprise, then, that for all its dabbling in dark and interesting ideas, it ultimately hammers home a bland, judgemental, conservative morality.

Finney, on impeccable form as ever (he’s another of those great old British actors seemingly incapable of giving a bad performance, even when, as here, the material may leave a bit to be desired), takes the lead as Maurice Allington, landlord of the eponymous Green Man, a country inn and hotel on the outskirts of Cambridge. His well-worn, Sean Connery-esque white tux and smooth talking charm just barely disguise the fact that he’s a high-functioning alcoholic fighting nervous exhaustion and anxiety, washing down anti-depressants with a bottle of scotch a day. Living with him in The Green Man are his aged father, his wife, his teenage daughter – and, it seems, a couple of ghosts. A key sales point of the inn is its allegedly haunted history, which Maurice has theatrically retold to swathes of guests over the years. But as his nightmares begin to spill over into his waking hours, Maurice realises there may be more truth to those old wives’ tales than he had previously believed.

I find it rather odd that Simply Media have opted to emblazon the back cover of this DVD edition with the bold heading, “He’ll leave you SCREAMING… with laughter!”, with the below synopsis describing the series as “part sex farce, part supernatural thriller.” While there are comedic elements for sure – and, again, Finney brings his usual, seemingly effortless wit – The Green Man is hardly laugh out loud material; indeed, I’m pretty sure I didn’t laugh once, aside from at the painfully misjudged dramatic guitar solo played over a montage in the final episode. As for the sex farce angle: one facet of Finney’s character which the show struggles with is that, on top of being a paranoid delusional alcoholic, he’s also a compulsive womaniser, and apparently quite a successful one; throughout the first episode he unsubtly woos the wife of a close friend, who proves receptive – despite the fact that, y’know, he looks like Albert Finney. There’s also a large amount of screentime given to an ultimately rather inconsequential subplot about Maurice trying to coax his wife and mistress into a threesome. That this story thread is so heavily emphasised despite how little bearing it has on the main narrative and how quickly it is discarded once the deed itself sort-of comes to pass, it just feels profoundly misjudged, and again indicative of a desire to hook viewers with the promise of something a bit raunchy – which ultimately it isn’t. It all feels a bit Daily Mail, leering voyeuristically at other people’s more adventurous sex lives but ultimately condemning them as immoral and pathetic, which all feels very two-faced And, of course, there’s no missing the fact that Finney looks like Finney, whilst his co-stars Linda Marlowe and Sarah Berger are somewhat younger-looking and certainly more physically fit, so there’s a bit of those old double standards at play.

On top of all this, the ghost story which should almost certainly provide the main thrust of the story almost feels like an afterthought. Josie Lawrence, instantly recognisable to 90s kids as a staple player on improvisational comedy series Whose Line Is It Anyway, is laboured with an utterly two-dimensional role as Maurice’s daughter-in-law who, rather conveniently, happens to be a new age hippy with an in-depth knowledge of the paranormal; and, as such, she pops up any time we need a bit of exposition. Some of the supernatural stuff is handled quite well – the aforementioned opening scene, Michael Culver’s performance and look as principal ghost Underhill – but then there are some odd choices such as a scene in which Finney comes under attack from a very poorly realised phantom bat. In a standard, Hammer-type Gothic horror, such moments would no doubt be part of the fun, but in a drama that is largely played straight it just feels incongruous and silly.

Perhaps with a bit of the fat trimmed, The Green Man might have made for decent enough feature film; or, perhaps with a bit more fleshing out, it might have wound up more satisfying as a four or five episode series. But as a two and a half hour three-part miniseries it just feels awkward; overlong in some places, rushed in others, and more concerned with keeping its leading man front and centre than crafting a fully realised story world. Okay, so if you’re going to keep a leading man front and centre throughout, you can do a hell of a lot worse than to give the part to Albert Finney – but even so, it would have been nice if the same level of care and attention had been given to every facet of The Green Man. All in all, it hardly ranks as one of the great horror highlights of TV history, but as a time capsule of the BBC on the cusp of the 1990s it’s an interesting historical artifact.

Oh, and the pagan icon of the title barely gets a look in, if you were wondering.

The Green Man is released to Region 2 DVD on 5th October, from Simply Media.

By Ben Bussey

Talk about the early days of Hammer Horror, and we all know the usual suspects: 1955’s Quatermass XPeriment paved the way, 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein blew the doors open, 1958’s Dracula proved they were here to stay. However, one film that is rather less well-remembered – indeed, one film which I must confess to having been totally unaware of before getting word of its Blu-ray release from Eureka – is 1959’s The Man Who Could Cheat Death. It’s something of an oddity for Hammer’s breakthrough period; while it carries distinct overtones of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde as well as The Picture of Dorian Grey – either of which would have been a totally logical choice for Hammer to film at the time – it’s instead a loose remake of a comparatively forgotten 1945 Paramount picture, The Man in Half Moon Street, which was itself a loose adaptation of Barré Lyndon’s comparatively forgotten stage play. Factor in that Peter Cushing doesn’t appear and Christopher Lee only gets a supporting role, and it’s small wonder The Man Who Could Cheat Death has faded into obscurity, even with Hammer stalwarts director Terence Fisher and screenwriter Jimmy Sangster on board.

This is a shame, however, as there’s a great deal to appreciate here. It might relay a less familiar story with some less familiar players, but The Man Who Could Cheat Death hits plenty of the right notes for the lurid brand of Gothic melodrama Hammer have always been known and loved for, and any admirers of the company’s work would do well not to pass it by.

Anton Diffring takes the lead as Dr. Georges Bonnet, a brilliant physician as well as a sculptor, who’s the toast of 1890s Paris – and, it seems, quite the heartbreaker. As we meet him at the unveiling of his latest sculpture – a female bust (in both senses) – he quietly, some might say callously informs his latest ‘model’ that he won’t see her any more. Around the same moment, another of his previous ‘models,’ Janine Du Bois (Hazel Court of The Curse of Frankenstein), shows up unexpectedly – and though she’s in the company of another quite dashing young doctor, Pierre Gerrard (trusty old Chris Lee), it’s readily apparent that things between her and Georges are far from resolved. A love triangle of sorts ensues, which might prove problematic enough for all involved, but it’s made even trickier by the deep, dark secret that Georges is hiding: namely, the fact that he’s a great deal older he looks, his pioneering research having kept him young for an unnaturally long time – and if he doesn’t have a specific operation in the days ahead, the years are going to come catching up very quickly indeed.

With its foggy, turn of the century city setting and brilliant but troubled young (or, in fact, not so young) anti-hero, The Man Who Could Cheat Death pretty well ticks all the boxes for your classic mad scientist yarn, and while it’s perhaps not so compelling a concept as Jekyll and Hyde, the story is still utilised to suitably grotesque and saucy ends, by the standards of the day at least. Diffring’s Georges must consume a frothing potion at regular intervals in order to keep his escalated ageing process at bay – but if he’s a little late he temporarily goes into a homicidal rage, turns green, and somehow can burn off the flesh of whoever’s unfortunate enough to be nearby with a touch alone (which doesn’t necessarily make much sense, but is a nice effect nonetheless). His motives behind keeping himself alive indefinitely come into question as his old friend and collaborator, Arnold Marlé’s Ludwig Weiss, comes into the picture. It’s fascinating to see two men with such a large age gap playing friends on an equal footing without any sense of father-son relationship (though perhaps a vague hint of homoeroticism), and Diffring and Marlé convey this brilliantly. As is perhaps reflective of its stage origins, this is an unusually dialogue-based affair by Hammer standards, and – as again befits any great mad scientist tale – there are many heated and intriguing debates as to whether our forever young doctor is really concerned with the betterment of mankind, or his own selfish indulgence.

One key element of that indulgence, alluded to in a perhaps surprisingly frank manner for the time, is of course Georges’ sexual appetites. There’s no getting around how voluptuous Hazel Court is, and the way they dress her in this it’s screamingly obvious Hammer were counting on the audience noticing. While of course there are no full-on sex scenes – Hammer, and the cinema in general, weren’t quite that liberal yet – the mutual desires of Georges and Janine are readily apparent, and the lack of intimacy issues between this pointedly unwed couple are made clear when she poses topless for him in a sculpting scene. Curiously, in an interview on the disc’s extras Kim Newman claims that one of Hammer’s near-mythic continental versions feature Hazel Court’s uncensored nudity has never been found, although a quick Google brings up photos that would suggest otherwise. It’s also curious to note from Marcus Hearn’s trusty tome Hammer Glamour that Court herself became a sculptress after retiring from acting.

Kim Newman also remarks in the aforementioned interview that The Man Who Could Cheat Death would most likely have a stronger reputation today if only Peter Cushing was in it, as Anton Diffring’s role had originally been intended for him. Newman’s probably right; if the film was a required point of call for Cushing completists, it would almost certainly be much better known. Even so, I struggle to envisage Cushing in the role; the legendarily proper English gentleman never seemed at ease conveying sexual desire, and that’s a fairly vital component of what makes Diffring’s performance work. Yes, Diffring does get a bit hammy – you can almost see the teeth marks in the scenery at times – but this is melodrama after all. This leaves our beloved Christopher Lee to bring up the rear as the fundamentally decent supporting man, and though those roles tend to be rather more bland and forgettable, Lee was of course incapable of being anything other than magnetic. Does leave one rather wondering just why Hammer didn’t give him the lead, but then good guy roles were a tad less common for Lee, making his turn here that bit more special.

The disc boasts another insightful interview into the history and legacy of the film with Jonathan Rigby. All in all, this is a purchase Hammer aficionados won’t want to miss.

The Man Who Could Cheat Death is released in a dual format Blu-ray & DVD set on 21st September, from Eureka Entertainment.

By Svetlana Fedotov

Cartoon Network has always been known for innovative, fun, and fantastical cartoons that stay true to the epithet “all-ages.” From front-runners Adventure Time and Steven Universe, to the low-flying magical realism of Regular Show, they have been steadily pumping out cartoons that both adults and children can watch together. In the week of November 3-7 2014, viewers sat glued to their television sets as a new mini-series swept the network titled Over the Garden Wall. A dark fairy tale type work, it stayed true to its mini run by only having ten, fifteen minute episodes, but its impact lasted far longer than anticipated. Thanks to BOOM! Studios imprint, KaBoom, we can once again hop back in to the adventure that was started last fall.

The comic is set between episodes three and four of the original show and once again features our heroic leads, brothers Writ and Greg. Writ is smart, cautious, and a tad bit anxious while Greg, who wears a pot on his head and carries a frog, is as wild as he is spontaneous. In the show, Greg and Writ get lost in a forest called the Unknown and attempt to make their way home in the company of a bluebird named Beatrice. The comic picks up on their adventures, following after the third episode where the pair find themselves coming across a couple of strange little girls who just can’t seem to get their chores done. Threatening to tell their father (who shakes the house every time he yells), Writ is forced to do the chores himself but with unclear instructions, he just keeps getting everyone further into trouble.

I admit, the premise doesn’t sound like something that would fit into a horror website, but the overall concept of the show is perfectly tailored to the weird kid in all of us. The television series is absolutely dripping with that dark Grimms brother vibe that can only happen when a couple of oddball shaped children get lost in the woods. The creatures they come across are just as fantastical as they are, such as giant walking pumpkins that have barn dances at night and blood thirsty Aunties with a taste for blood, and even teaches little lessons, much like the fairy tales they are. Thanks to the limited run, the production was top notch as well, bringing big screen magic into small screen existence. By not having to stretch their budgets over an uncertain amount of time, the creative team was allowed to sink their money into a beautifully colored, smoothly animated work that pulled out all the stops. This show is a must-watch for not only animation fans, but fans of good stories.

So how does all this translate into comic form? Obviously, there is a bit of a setback going from an animated medium to a static one such as comics, but KaBoom does what it can bringing the work to paper. Luckily, unlike Adventure Time, OtGW doesn’t rely on wacky body movements to bring its animation to life, which makes the adaption much easier visually. The artist/writer team Pat McHale and Jim Campbell do a great job of capturing the original vibe of the show, bringing over the subtle color pallet and the round-headed weirdos that roam the forest. The story is fun and quirky and fits perfectly into the OtGW universe. I do recommend watching the show first, at least until episode three to catch up on who the boys are and where they’re going, but trust me, it’s worth the watch and the read.

Over the Garden Wall #1 is out now!

By Ben Bussey

Once again, our old pals Arrow Video have brought another Italian VHS era hit kicking and screaming into the digital age, and in so doing have brought to light yet more gaps in my own horror education. Time for a pretty significant confession: this is only the second Umberto Lenzi film I’ve ever seen, the other being not one of his notorious cannibal movies (I’ve really never been drawn to that genre) but his 1974 crime movie Almost Human. Prior to this review I had once before started watching Nightmare City, late at night whilst drunk and nodding off after barely half an hour; many would no doubt suggest this would be the ideal conditions under which to watch the film. In common with a lot of Italian output of the era, sophisticated storytelling and characterisation are not exactly at the forefront here. This is one of those delirious fever dream movies where the action is piled on thick and fast, and real world logic is put firmly to one side in favour of what-the-fuck logic, and all of it realised in that unmistakably Italian, cut-price fashion.

Hugo Stiglitz and his charismatic beard take the lead as a TV producer who finds himself present at the outbreak of a national crisis when a military plane unexpectedly lands at the airport, its passengers all in the grip of some kind of degenerative disease caused by atomic radiation which has turned them all into homicidal maniacs. So anxious to get the truth out that he forcibly interrupts the afternoon broadcast of dancing women in lycra, Stiglitz is enraged to find the higher-ups cutting him off for fear of spreading panic. Alas, it won’t take long for the panic to spread all on its own, as the homicidal madness proves infectious, and soon the only option is to run and/or fight.

In common with another 1980 Italian exploitation movie which Arrow released earlier this year, Contamination, Nightmare City is also one of those curious instances in which that which initially appears to be a basic rip-off of a much better known American movie is in fact a curious hodge-podge of different films, mixed up in such a way that it winds up feeling like something genuinely new and different – and, in its own way, influential. The thing is, Nightmare City would at a glance appear to be a fairly standard zombie movie in the Dawn of the Dead style, but on closer inspection plays pretty fast and loose with that format. These are zombies of a kind, but they’re pretty far removed from the Romero or Fulci model as they’re fast-moving, they use weapons, and they display clear evidence of intelligence. Because of this, Nightmare City is sometimes classed as being a long way ahead of its time – and Lenzi himself baldly declares in the extras that Danny Boyle ripped him off completely with 28 Days Later. I daresay he’s giving himself just a smidgen too much credit there, but even so there’s no denying the faster-paced, larger scale action movie vibe of Nightmare City is a refreshing break from the norm for the era.

Still, the use of the word ‘city’ in the title is just a wee bit disingenuous (I know, Italian horror misleading us, whatever next eh?) given that only the early portion of the action takes place in urban areas, spreading into the countryside pretty quickly. Guess it’s easier to shoot in such places. Anyway, it’s of little concern given that Nightmare City piles on all the stuff you hope for from VHS era horror: loads of lengthy attack sequences loaded with a variety of excessive and cartoonish deaths, with plenty of heads going splat, eyeballs getting impaled and even a bit of breast-slashing. And, as that last example should make apparent, there’s a bit of old gratuitous nudity as well. It all leads up to a magnificently grandiose final showdown at a fairground, working in machine guns, a helicopter and a rollercoaster (we might ponder whether the makers of Zombieland have seen this one too) – followed by a downright stupid conclusion which manages to leave you both furious they went out on such a dumb note, yet also unable to imagine it ending any other way.

Among the extras we have an interview with Eli Roth, in which the director extols the virtues of Lenzi in his usual fratboy-ish idiom: all-out action, insane violence, cute girls, all of it set to a great soundtrack. Nightmare City does a fine job delivering all of these, and, as ever, Arrow Video have done a fine job bringing it all onto disc, even going so far as to offer two different transfers of the film, a new 2K restoration of the film from the original camera negative and an alternative HD transfer from the 35mm reversal dupe negative, as the original negative suffered some irreversible chemical damage (obviously I have no idea what any of that really means; basically there’s some discolouration in a few scenes, nothing that in any way spoils the film – hell, plenty of neo-grindhouse filmmakers today would gladly add the exact same effect on purpose). Go ahead and give it a spin; being drunk and/or half-asleep is optional.

Nightmare City is available now dual format DVD and Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

By Ben Bussey

While I don’t want to suggest that my own personal horror movie knowledge and experience is representative of everyone (perish the thought), The Town That Dreaded Sundown is one of those films I’ve long been aware of but never actually seen, and I get the impression that’s true of quite a lot of us. As is remarked on the Blu-ray commentary track from historians Justin Beaham and Jim Presley, Charles B Pierce’s film hasn’t had too many video or DVD releases, yet has managed to maintain a strong reputation over almost four decades. Given that it landed in 1976 and centres on a masked maniac out to get young couples on lover’s lane, it’s often cited as one of the original slasher films, helping hone the format that John Carpenter would perfect with Halloween two years later, and innumerable imitators would latch onto very soon thereafter.

Of course, The Town That Dreaded Sundown’s status within the horror genre has now been properly cemented in the only way the current generation seems to know how, by getting a remake. This also came to home entertainment earlier this month, and I had initially intended for this to be a double bill review of both versions. However, the online screener copy I was given access to was of almost unwatchable picture quality with a distractingly large watermark, on top of which the film itself seemed little more than yet another bog-standard mainstream slasher with a clever-dick metatextual edge; as such, I only managed about twenty minutes before throwing in the towel.

Still, even though the remake may have been, judging by the little I saw, every bit as prosaic and predictable as we might fear, I really can’t say the same of the original. While it’s not hard to see how this film may have influenced the burgeoning slasher genre – in particular, the sack head mask been imitated more than once, most notably as Jason’s original look in Friday the 13th Part II – The Town That Dreaded Sundown really isn’t a horror movie in the strictest sense, but more of a police procedural, given a particular edge given that it’s based around a real series of murders, and was shot in the very town where those murders took place. The resulting film is a curious mix of fairly standard detective movie, something you could imagine catching on a sleepy weekday afternoon on television, but peppered with murder and stalking sequences of an intensity that’s still quite striking today.

Blurring fact and fantasy, the film is presented in a semi-documentary format with intermittent narration, following the Sheriff’s Department of Texarkana in the years after World War II, as a series of seemingly unmotivated attacks against seemingly unrelated people occur, resulting in murder. What makes the whole thing so sinister is not only that the murders really occurred, but that they were never solved. If you’re hoping for resolution, the reassurance that the hard work of the police force always pays off, you can forget it; all we have here is a portrait of a law enforcers clutching at straws, knowing full well they have little to go on, and knowing full well that the killer will almost certainly strike again. This just lends that extra sting to the harshness of the murder sequences; the film really lingers on the terror and anguish of the victims in a manner reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but with progressively more bizarre means of dispatch that would seem to foreshadow the more cartoonish route slashers would take in the 80s, notably the use of a trombone. Dependent on your point of view, this might make the whole endeavour reek of sleaze, given that it was indeed modeled on a real serial killer case; for me, it makes matters that bit too close to the bone for the film to really be enjoyable. Either way, it means the film’s occasional lapses into vaguely slapstick humour, with director Pierce himself hamming it up as a bumbling, dim-witted deputy, feel all the more misguided; the comedy cops routine didn’t fit in The Last House on the Left, and it doesn’t fit here either.

So all in all, The Town That Dreaded Sundown is one of those movies which I can find plenty of respect for, but ultimately don’t feel a great deal of affection toward. I guess I just like my slasher movies ridiculous, and my true crime movies straight-faced and respectful, and this ultimately doesn’t fit in either way. Still, existing admirers of the film will certainly want to pick up this dual format edition from Eureka, boasting both Blu-ray and DVD copies of the film along with the aforementioned historical commentary, shedding a lot of light on the facts of the case and how closely (or not) the film adheres to these, plus new interviews with actors Andrew Prine and Dawn Wells and cinematographer James Robertson, plus a limited edition collector’s booklet from critic Mike Sutton (which wasn’t included with my screener).

The Town That Dreaded Sundown dual format edition is available now  from Eureka Entertainment.

By Nia Edwards-Behi

Where do you start on a film like Videodrome? It’s a definitive work of one of modern cinema’s most interesting auteurs, a body horror ur-text, an iconic and a quotable cult film classic; it’s one of those films that everybody’s seen. Well, I hadn’t. The images associated with Videodrome make it one of those films that seem familiar even when you haven’t watched it fully, something which can be a frustrating aspect of visiting a classic for the first time. Regardless, my immediate thought when the film ended was ‘I’d like to watch that again’, a thought I only ever really consider to be a very good thing.

Max Renn (James Woods) runs a soft-sleaze TV station and is running out of ideas. Luckily, Videodrome lands in his lap, a torture show one of his techies finds coming out of, allegedly, Malaysia. Max orders the pirating of the programme, and makes an appearance on a TV chat-show to defend his station’s violent and sexual output, alongside radio psychologist Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry) and academic Brian O’Blivion (Jack Creley), who appears only via TV set. Max and Nicki start dating, and Nicki convinces Max to show her a tape of a Videodrome. She finds the programme to be arousing, and when Max finds out and tells her that the signal for the show comes from Pittsburgh, not Malaysia, she decides she’s going to go audition for the programme. When Nicki disappears, Max tries to track her down, and in doing so uncovers the truth behind Videodrome, and with it, a series of increasingly disturbing and violent hallucinations.

It almost feels superfluous to say that Arrow have put together an incredible package here, but they really have. The special edition Blu-ray set includes a mountain of extras, including archive documentaries and TV specials, brand new interviews and commentaries. Most excitingly, it features a whole disc of Cronenberg’s early works Transfer (1966), From the Drain (1967), Stereo (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970). These are all presented in lovingly transferred and restored versions which really look great. The short films Transfer and From The Drain endearingly feature many of the pitfalls of first-time filmmaking – dodgy acting, rubbish sound-recording – but otherwise bear the tell-tale signs of ideas that would flourish in Cronenberg’s later work. There’s also an excellent, though brief, to-camera discussion from Kim Newman, who contextualises these early works alongside the early works of other filmmakers, such as De Palma, and Cronenberg’s later body of work.

But we’re here for the main feature: Videodrome. What an exceptionally topical film! For a film so heavily concerned with a particular medium, especially one which is treated so nostalgically now, its narrative concerns are breathtakingly modern. Given how quickly technology develops, this 32-year old film manages to tread surprisingly relevant ground. There are lines of dialogue in the film that absolutely reflect a present internet age: “Soon we will all have special names. Names designed to cause the cathode ray to resonate.” Videodrome brings together various individuals, trains of thought and topical issues in a way that surely contributes to its enduring relevance.

In Videodrome we have something of an enfant terrible of cinema channelling his academic background in order to explore notions of media consumption, cultural taste and censorship. It’s no secret that the film’s academic character Professor Brian O’Blivion is heavily inspired by Marshall McLuhan; he’s the man who coined the phrase that ‘the medium is the message’, an idea that’s crucially central to Videodrome in a way, and central to the way it manages to be quite quietly indicting of censorious and dismissive media critics. Although we’re introduced to Videodrome as violent and sensationalist television programming, it is, ultimately a ‘signal’, and as Bianca O’Blivion says: “it can be delivered under a test pattern, anything.” Cronenberg was familiar enough with the sort of knee-jerk reactions that challenging films can receive by the time he made Videodrome, and he would surely continue to receive such reactions (not least of all with Crash, over a decade later). While I don’t think that Cronenberg is trying to say that either video or television is, as media, inherently potentially dangerous, I think he’s certainly saying that any medium can be made dangerous with a malicious enough intent behind it. It’s significant, then, that those with malicious intents here are not sleazy station owners, but rather institutionalised authorities. The censorious and the morally-superior are very much the villains of Videodrome.

Yeah, okay, we’re not here to talk about media theory, but it is a significant part of Videodrome which I find particularly interesting. There’s another significant element to Videodrome – a significantly Cronenbergian one at that – and that’s the suffusion of sexuality in the film. I admit I don’t entirely get Cronenberg’s focus on erotic obsession, but that probably says much more about me than it does about any of his films. There’s buckets of it in Videodrome, literally and symbolically, mostly centred on the figure of Nicki and on Max’s hallucinations. Those hallucinations become frighteningly real, of course, the Freudian slit in Max’s torso becoming the conduit for Videodrome’s total control of his life. I don’t particularly enjoy psychoanalysis enough to want to spell out that imagery, but the analysis is very much there for the taking. Being a Cronenberg classic, it’s not surprising that the body-horror imagery of Videodrome is perhaps its most memorable and iconic aspect. From TV-people to exploding bodies, the film’s bodily breakdowns range from subtle to explicit in various ways. One of my favourite moments is the fateful merging of the gun with Max’s hand, literally making him into Videodrome’s weapon. (This is of course something taken to extremes in Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo films, which I love, the first of which came just six years after Videodrome.)

My biggest impression of Videodrome is certainly by far the extent to which its narrative and themes are applicable today. Cronenberg created a film of immense insight, not only into the sociology of technology but of human nature, in a way; the way in which we use the tools we develop. If there’s one line of dialogue in the whole film that sums this up, for me, then it’s when Bianca speaks of her father. Now, we’re not all mad professors, by any stretch of the imagination, but what Brian O’Blivion eventually stands for is a victim of the Videodrome signal, but also, through Bianca – who is one of the most real-world grounded characters of the film, to me – represents the resistance to Videodrome. What Bianca says of her father is what I’m doing right now, it’s what so many of us do when we make use of the internet: “the monologue is his preferred mode of discourse.” Yikes. If the internet is the great democratising power idealists might purport it to be, then it’s certainly made monologuing into the abyss something of a free for all.

Released on the 17th of August 2015 (one week ago at the time of publication), Arrow Video’s dual format edition of Videodrome is already sold out & out of print! Second hand copies are currently available for exorbitant prices.

Review by Quin

In the time that Blood Punch has played at various film festivals and theater screenings, the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Unfortunately, theater runs must come to an end and films then live on in digital format for personal viewing. It’s no big secret that the theater experience is usually way different than the one at home. Some would argue that it’s better, given that your emotions feed off the energy of the crowd. However, there is something to be said for being able to have control of when you start and stop the film as well as not having the noise of whispering movie-goers and crinkling candy wrappers for the duration of the film. My only experience with Blood Punch was solo and beginning September 1, you too can view it on your own time when it hits VOD, Digital HD and DVD.

I know Blood Punch has been an audience favorite and it’s won festival awards, and while there is plenty to admire here, I must admit that I found the whole thing rather underwhelming, overlong and not quite as clever as it was intended to be. I want to make it clear that I don’t think this makes all of those festival goers wrong. It just goes to show that this is probably the kind of movie that should be seen with a late night packed audience of genre fans.

Drug addicted Milton is spending some time getting clean in a rehab center. One day during a meeting/counciling session he meets Skyler. She makes it clear to everyone that she is there to look for someone who can cook crystal meth. Skyler gets Milton interested by offering him a job where he only has to cook meth for one day and he’ll make a bunch of money. How can he say no? She’s gorgeous and she’s offering him everything he wants. The two take off together to a cabin in the woods where they will be joined by Skyler’s ex-cop boyfriend Russell. Right away, Russell seems a bit off and it’s not long before Milton’s day of cooking is looking like it might take a bit longer.

Blood Punch is constructed like a somewhat psychedelic and occasionally gory neo-noir. It definitely doesn’t have the look of the traditional noir films. Most of the film is set during the day. There is no notable use of shadows. While one of the main characters smokes constantly in mostly exterior locations, smoke dissipates before it has a chance to billow. The most noirish things here are the subject matter and the characters. Milton is about to get in over his head in crime related activities and a femme fatale is going to help him get there.

The acting is one of the things I liked the most about Blood Punch. It goes a little haywire because the assortment of characters don’t always seem like they should co-exist in the same universe. Milo Cawthorne and Olivia Tennet (who are married in real life) are great at sparring with each other as well as turning up the heat at times. Even though they feel like they are in a different movie, Cohen Holloway and Adelaide Kane as a drug dealing duo, have a couple of good scenes with some zany comedic moments. Ari Boyland has an amusing character to play, but unfortunately it gets repetitive quickly.

You’ll be happy to know that despite the meth cooking plot device and a character named Skyler, I can’t find much else in common with Breaking Bad. Comparing Blood Punch to Breaking Bad because of the meth is like comparing Corvette Summer to Star Wars because they both feature Mark Hamill.

I suppose the main reason this movie didn’t work for me was due to the various plot twists and the way the script plays with time. I found it all so predictable. The second act is incredibly strong, following a silly first act, but by the end of the movie I was bored again and ready for it all to be over. I would imagine if you’ve seen many noir films, you’ll probably feel the same way. For a similar, but much more rewarding time bending movie experience, I recommend Time Crimes (which is a modern classic) and as weird as it is for me to admit this, last year’s Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow is fantastic and so much fun. Perhaps Blood Punch is fun in a crowded movie theater, but I will certainly never know that first hand.

Blood Punch will be available September 1 on Digital HD, VOD and DVD from Bluff Road Productions and Midnight Releasing.

By Ben Bussey

The zombie-war movie crossover may not be an entirely new idea, but in the vast majority of instances these tend to centre on Nazi zombies. In case that’s getting a bit old (panzer) hat, how does the idea of Napoleonic zombies grab you? That’s the key idea behind new British microbudget horror/wartime drama Fallen Soldiers, from first-time feature director Bill Thomas. Obviously this kind of period piece is going to prove an ambitious undertaking for any modern horror movie, let alone one made on so limited a budget as they clearly had on this one, but thanks to some fairly impressive performances and smart storytelling, Fallen Soldiers manages to be a pretty efficient representation of living dead horror in early 19th century wartime, even if it doesn’t necessarily wind up the most gripping film you’ll ever see.

Making a point of building intrigue from the get-go, much of the early part of the film is set within the confines of a horse-drawn carriage, as British soldier John Cross (Matthew Neal), caught behind enemy lines in Belgium, takes the carriages inhabitants hostage at gunpoint, demanding they take him to a British medical camp across the French border. Naturally, it doesn’t prove the most uneventful ride, and as a curious kinship seems to build up between Cross and his hostage Celine (Eve Pearson) he starts to let her in on the unbelievable story behind his dire situation, in particular the evidence that Napoleon’s forces might be using rather more than guns, bayonets and cannons in a bid to win the war.

Again, it’s clear from watching mere moments of Fallen Soldiers that this was a pretty cash-strapped production, meaning epic Napoleonic battle sequences are obviously off the table. Still, to a large extent these clearly limited resources are used effectively, and it’s obviously a huge help that Neal and Pearson are considerably better actors than tend to be cast in the lead roles of low-to-no budget horror movies, and the sets and costumes are also better than we might expect. The action criss-crosses at a pretty good pace between the hero’s current situation in the carriage and his reflections on a rescue effort that went wrong resulting in his own capture and, eventually, coming face to face with a seemingly supernatural evil. For the most part this present moment/flashback structure is effective. although we do also have a few flashbacks-within-flashbacks, which are maybe pushing it a little.

Still, while the set-up is initially intriguing and the central characters reasonably compelling, it doesn’t take too long for the cracks to show. It’s only natural that we would expect plentiful graphic gore from a zombie movie on any level, but Fallen Soldiers is just a little lacking in that department (the 18 certificate is hardly warranted by modern standards); and while most of the practical zombie make-up is perfectly decent, there is a bit of dreaded lo-fi CGI, notably in a number of fire-based moments, in which sequences which were clearly intended as dramatic wind up coming off laughable thanks to the sub-par digital FX. Many of the supporting performances also fall a  bit flat, and the rather sudden ending proves jarring and unsatisfactory.

All things considered, then, Fallen Soldiers may a cut above your standard, no-name, microbudget horror filling up the lower shelves of the supermarket DVD section, but it lacks that crucial spark to elevate the material that bit higher. Still, on this evidence director Bill Thomas has some potential, and I’d be keen to see what he and his crew could achieve with a little bit more money and a slightly sharper concept.

Fallen Soliders is available now on UK DVD and VOD from 101 Films.

Review by Quin

So you’re tired of found footage horror movies, and that is totally understandable. It’s gotten to the point where the people making them must realize that they are totally unnecessary. Even making a parody of one seems moot. Maybe I’ve championed them long enough. I have always thought that it’s the perfect genre for truly terrifying stories. The presentation of reality is sure to be scary, but I’m starting to think that it’s gone as far as it can. That is until I saw Creep. It may not revolutionize the genre, but it definitely goes about the tired old formulas in a different way. Depending on your point of view, you might see it as a horror movie, you might see it as a comedy. Netflix has a comedy tag attached to it, but Amazon has it listed as Drama, Horror. Personally, I think it has the tone of a suspenseful stage play. It has a kind of intimacy, due to the fact that there are only two people in the movie (not counting the voice of a third character) and there are really only two locations. There are also two objects introduced near the beginning, that will be referenced a few times and should be paid close attention to. One of these objects almost became the title of the movie, but the producers found that it would be too confusing to viewers.

First of all, I want to explain the title the film almost had. It doesn’t give away anything and I think it makes you way more curious to see what this film is all about. The title that almost was is Peach Fuzz. The name refers to a werewolf mask that belongs to one of the characters. The other important object to watch for is an axe. When you see it, the camera stops right on it and the character takes notice. Come on, this is a horror movie. The axe doesn’t have a name (that would be ridiculous), but if they had indeed called the film Peach Fuzz, it would have fit right on the shelf with all of the other Mark Duplass movies, with those ironic, weird, mumble-core titles like The Puffy Chair and Hump Day. Creep just sounds like every other horror movie out there, and I don’t think it’s going to help this movie find its audience.

Creep begins with Aaron in his car while his camera rolls. He explains that he is on his way to a mountain location to meet with a guy named Josef. Josef has hired Aaron via Craigslist for a film shoot of some sort and he’ll make a thousand bucks. All Aaron knows he has to do is show up with his camera and stay for 8 hours. The ad also mentions that the person hired should use discretion. Aaron doesn’t appear to think this ad is at all creepy. Perhaps he’s even a little creepy for thinking it’s a good idea to do this.

When Aaron arrives, no one is at the house to meet him. This is when he notices an axe stuck in a tree stump. While he waits in his car and figures out what to do, we are introduced to Josef with a clever and effective jump scare. I almost decided to not give that away, but I watched the movie a second time and jumped even higher. Josef immediately seems like a friendly guy. His friendliness and poor sense of acceptable boundaries coupled with Aaron’s general easygoingness and slight touch of naïveté set up the dynamic between the two that will propel the story into suspense. I won’t give away why or what Josef is having Aaron film for him, but you might get a hint if I tell you that this might be the first found footage film to reference the 1993 film My Life starring Michael Keaton, which is like the quintessential Hollywood tearjerker and – for all intents and purposes – a found footage film.

Their film project starts out creepy almost immediately, then gets less weird and from then on goes back an forth. A few times during the day, Aaron decides he’s had enough and should probably go; but persuasive, charismatic and most likely sociopathic Josef keeps convincing him to stay, until things get real crazy when the whiskey and the werewolf mask come out.

There is so much more that comes after this that should have most people entertained and biting their nails, but hopefully I’ve said enough. Creep has weirdness and giggles, but the story will keep taking you in unexpected directions. Mark Duplass and Patrick Brice are so good together. They actually each have a Story By credit, but there doesn’t seem to be a script. Duplass has worked like this a lot and he’s the best at it. The improvisation while shooting seems to be somewhere between Larry David and Mike Leigh.

There is also a bit of good news for those of you who see this and like it – a sequel is definitely going to happen. I’m pretty sure I have an idea of where it might go, but there is no way I won’t see it. I’ve always thought Mark Duplass has a great combination of earnest sincerity and a used car salesman-like demeanor. It’s the perfect combo for possibly the first mumble-core horror villain in a series of sequels. We’ll see how the next one goes, but I certainly have high hopes. In the meantime, check Creep out.

Creep is available for digital download at iTunes or Amazon from The Orchard. It’s also streaming on Netflix in the US and the UK.

By Ben Bussey

When the first images and trailer from this slice of made-in-Taiwan horror first emerged, my kneejerk reaction was, zombies, martial arts punch-ups, hot Asian women – what could go wrong? This, alas, is one of those “I had to ask” moments. Turns out Zombie Fight Club gets a lot wrong. In fact, there’s very, very little it gets right. While there are snippets of what might have been a perfectly decent B-movie – or, in fact, at least two perfectly decent B-movies – that which has been dished up at the end is an incoherent mess suitably only for background viewing under heavy intoxication.

For the first half of the film, the title seems a very odd choice indeed, as director Joe Chien’s movie – apparently a sequel to his Zombie 108, which I haven’t seen, but this doesn’t seem to matter given it’s an extremely familiar set-up – bears little to no resemblance to David Fincher’s 1999 broadsheet-botherer, beyond a rather squalid visual aesthetic (they seem to have chosen a muted piss green colour scheme, which is rather off-putting). Instead, the film spends much of the opening act as an unabashed rip-off of The Raid, boasting a SWAT team dressed identically to the one in Gareth Evans’ film breaking into a very similar-looking residential building under similarly false pretences (although it takes a lot less time for the subterfuge to come to light). Not content with this, though, Chien also introduces us to a bunch of residents in the building, including a thirtysomething couple, a middle-aged teacher whose teenage daughter has a few friends around to celebrate her birthday, and a bunch of gangster rapper types crashing on a buddy and his girlfriend to host a drug-fuelled orgy.

Okay – I realise rap is a thing in Asia, reflected by the fact that one of these characters is played by a real-life rapper, MC Hotdog. I also realise that English is spoken alongside other native languages in Asian territories. It doesn’t change the fact that witnessing Taiwanese guys trying to dress and talk as though they’re straight outta Compton is, to this viewer at least, like listening to a particularly pained and vocal alley cat try to play an out of tune violin with its hind paws whilst dragging its rear claws down a blackboard. Only I imagine that wouldn’t stop being funny quite so quickly.

Obviously the plan is to deliver on all the basics with an abundance of the three Bs. So it is that pretty much all the women on screen spend all their time either in their underwear, not wearing much more than their underwear, getting manhandled by some sweaty sleazy guy, or some combination thereof. In the meantime they all remain totally two dimensional and lifeless, and once the shit hits the fan most of them don’t do a great deal more than scream, run, and continue to get manhandled in their underwear. Whilst I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise to anyone when I say I have no problem with seeing women in their underwear, there’s no mistaking a nasty, sadistic and misogynistic overtone to proceedings here, all of which only gets worse as the film ventures into its second half.

See, here’s the thing. Just as it seems the storyline has reached its breaking point, with all the threads within the apartment building having more or less met in the middle, the story all of a sudden just stops and skips forward to one year after the zombie apocalypse where the world seems to have turned into Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, with one group of survivors having established a sadistic dictatorship forcing other survivors to battle zombies for their amusement; yes, at last the title makes sense. Shame no one cared to make it an any way, shape or form a natural progression of the existing narrative. As sloppy storytelling goes, this really does take the biscuit. It seems Chien and co couldn’t decide what they wanted to do more – remake The Raid as a zombie movie, or do a crude pit-fighting movie with zombies – and decided to just do both in the same movie, without bothering to make the story flow or even make much sense.

Of course, none of this would matter at all if Zombie Fight Club delivered on its basic promise, and was actually fun to watch. Once again, it’s got zombies, it’s got fighting, it’s got foxy ladies not wearing much; all those things should add up to a fun way to burn 90 minutes. But it doesn’t work at all. The zombies look terrible thanks to an overabundance of bad CGI, which naturally follows through into the gore FX; and while there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with the fight choreography, it might help if we could actually see what was going on, as the whole film is so poorly lit and dingy-looking (and, as I mentioned, piss-toned) that we can’t even pass this off as simple eye candy. Worse yet, it’s for the most part utterly joyless, falling into the perilous trap of believing that being excessively mean-spirited translates as being hip and edgy. Sorry, but you have to provide a decent story, characters we can get invested in, and – if at all possible – give us something we haven’t seen before. As you’ve most likely ascertained by now, Zombie Fight Club fails miserably on all counts.

Frightfest attendees are advised to be elsewhere when Zombie Fight Club premieres on Discovery Screen 3, Friday 28th August. For the rest of us, Altitude release it to DVD on Monday the 31st.