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Review by Quin

As much as it goes against my better judgement to call out or criticize another critic, especially in the opening paragraph of my review, I have something that I have to mention in order to illustrate an important point. Vampira and Me is a pretty small and cheaply made documentary by a guy who clearly has great respect and admiration for his subject. As of this point, the amount of articles written on Vampira and Me is extremely minimal. But when I was looking at them, one in particular jumped out at me – Luke Y. Thompson from nerdist.com wrote a short blurb on the film saying, “It will tell you a lot about Vampira from one point of view, and it is a nice tribute in that regard. But it is not a thorough journalistic study, and disappoints if one expects that.”

His point is made clear and it’s partly true, but what he is missing entirely is the whole point of the documentary. The film is clearly not intended as a journalistic study. This is about one man’s very personal, brief friendship and deep affection for a cult legend. After all, it is called Vampira and Me, not Vampira and Everybody. But having said all of that, even with documentary filmmaker R.H. Greene’s personal connection with Vampira and Thompson’s weird analysis of a film I’m not sure he actually watched all the way through – the film we are left with is a pretty straight forward, highly watchable, easy to follow documentary on a woman who has had a huge influence on several factions of various underground communities.

If you are looking for a more detailed documentary on a much wider topic, you may want to start with R.H. Greene’s previous film Schlock!: The Secret History of American Movies. It would actually make a great companion piece to Vampira and Me and I would hope they will someday be packaged together. Schlock! covers the exploitation films of the 1950’s and 60’s with interviews from Peter Bogdanovich and Roger Corman to Harry Novak and Doris Wishman. It was while making Schlock! that Greene met Maila Nurmi A.K.A. Vampira. He shot hours of interview footage with her, but only ended up using about 5 minutes of it in his documentary. He then decided that he would compile the footage to use in a documentary about the icon. She died in 2008. I’m not sure if her death came before or after Greene’s idea, but we now have a feature length documentary on Vampira. Hooray!

There is a certain phenomenon that takes place in my perception while listening to cult icons speak. Perhaps it’s because by their very nature, cult icons are not nearly as well known as the average super star, and therefore so much of their past is undocumented, but when I listen to some of these people talk my bullshit meter starts to flip the hell out. It’s like cult celebrities are the carnival barkers of people in the public eye. You may have gotten this feeling if you’ve ever gone to a horror convention – the feeling that you are being hustled out of 20 dollars so you can get a photo with someone or an autograph. Perhaps this isn’t entirely fair. For many, this is their livelihood. They make a large part of the money they live on by selling things to their fans on the convention circuit. But, c’mon, I know I’m not alone in thinking that sometimes it feels a little weird. The reason I mention my B.S. meter is because Vampira speaks with a certain manic energy. For instance, Greene asks her what kind of an effect The Vampira Show had, and she replies, “I think the world stood still.” My parents grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950’s and they didn’t even know who Vampira was until Tim Burton’s Ed Wood was released in 1994. The only thing that made the world stand still for my dad in the 50’s was Roy Rogers. Sorry, Vampira.

While a bit grandiose, she also sounds very worldly and educated, but so much of what she says sounds like it may have been embellished in her mind over the years. I have absolutely no way of knowing what the truth is, but I have never seen a picture of her with James Dean, Marlon Brando or Elvis Presley, all of which she is said to have been close friends with. Even the things that are documented and widely known about her are missing from public record. The horror hosting gig she had in the 50’s – the one that was later ripped off (quite well, I might add) by Elvira in the early 80’s – was not taped and only minutes of it exists today. So, we are left with her silent appearance in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, tons of photographs, a few friends who outlived her and now a detailed interview with the woman herself – by the time of this interview, she is in her late 70’s, missing some teeth on the bottom front row, she has more energy than ever, like she has to get it all out before she’s gone forever. This right here is the reason this documentary is so great.

To be honest, I don’t even care if what she says is true. I don’t want this article to sound at all like I’m speaking ill of the dead. I will always be a huge fan. She was an amazing lady and her stories are fun to listen to. For most of the time she is on screen, she looks very proper and serious, but occasionally she flashes a devilish grin and you get a look through the wrinkles and can see the young ghoulish beauty is still in there. Now she is immortal.

Vampira and Me is available to buy or rent as a digital download from iTunes and Amazon, as well as Region 1 DVD from Cinema Epoch.

Review by Ben Bussey

“You got kind of a dark side, don’t you?” Bruce Wayne asks Selina Kyle; to which she replies, “no darker than yours, Bruce.” Yes, quote fans, that exchange comes right out of 1992’s Batman Returns – which remains one of, if not the most twisted and weird superhero movie ever to reach a mass audience. By the early 90s, the world (or the grown-ups in it, at least) were starting to look at these comic book characters in a somewhat different way than before; not haphazardly dismissing them as harmless fun for kids, but seriously asking just what kind of a person would put on a costume and head out onto the streets to beat up bad guys every night: and the answer, typically, is a person with pretty monumental issues. Out of this thought process arose the mightiest of what became known as the ‘graphic novels,’ Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, leaving generations of subsequent comic book fans in no doubt that every costume-clad do-gooder is hiding a whirlwind of emotional trauma and sexual deviancy underneath all that spandex.

That said, whilst superhero movies have pretty much dominated the blockbuster market since the turn of the century, the bulk of them – even those that have delved into the dark side – have remained on the family-friendly side. Even less commonplace than R-rated superhero movies have been microbudget, independent takes on the genre. We’ve had Jason Trost’s All Superheroes Must Die, which for the most part I was pretty impressed with last year – and now we have Sparks, co-directed and adapted from his own graphic novel by Christopher Folino. The PR campaign has emphasised the movie’s common ground with Watchmen and Sin City, as it’s a noir-ish period piece taking us back to the roaring 30s which first saw the superhero rise to prominence – but with a more late 80s-esque unflinching eye for the shadowy underside of it all.

It would have been an ambitious undertaking even on a blockbuster budget – and as such, there’s plenty about Sparks that is very impressive indeed. Unfortunately, there’s also no avoiding a sense that Folino and co. may have bitten off just a little more than they can chew, without breaking much new ground in the process.

In common with Watchmen, much of the story is told in flashback whilst we build toward a final showdown in the ‘present.’ A bleeding man rushes into a newspaper office in the dead of night, declaring he wants to report his own murder. This, we soon learn, is Ian Sparks (Chase Williamson of John Dies at the End), a disgraced former super who it seems is the prime suspect in a series of murders. However, Sparks is determined to get his entire story out there – and so he starts at the very beginning, leaving no stone unturned in a history which includes a radioactive meteor, a catastrophic train crash/chemical spill, a legion of masked crimefighters who, in most instances, prove every bit as dodgy as the bad guys they put down – and a romantic entanglement with fellow super Lady Heavenly (Ashley Bell) which gets a wee bit screwed up.

The tonal difficulties are evident from the get-go. Considering the apparent urgency of our titular hero’s situation, you’d think he’d be keen to get straight to the essentials – yet Sparks seems set on retelling his life story down to the littlest details, in a manner that often feels a bit meandering. Then there are the various twists and turns that are thrown our way… I’ll avoid specifics so as to avoid spoilers, but the bulk of these revelations are either so opaque as to leave the viewer wondering if they missed something, or so blindingly obvious you’ll wonder why it’s considered a twist at all. (The trailer alone gives away what’s meant to be a big climactic surprise – something which I thought was readily apparent almost from the start.)

Still, these are the minus points – but there remain plenty of things which work in Sparks’ favour. The low budget isn’t a great hinderance; while it’s full colour, the visual aesthetic is indeed pretty close to the Sin City movie, and as such the use of fairly obvious greenscreening and CGI is worked to the film’s advantage, promoting a cartoonish, other-worldly quality which is entirely appropriate to the material. Another major plus point is the cast, as Folino and co-director Todd Burrows have a number of seasoned pros at their disposal including Clancy Brown, William Katt, Clint Howard and Jake Busey. The younger, slightly greener leads fare pretty well too; this isn’t quite the slam-dunk for Chase Williamson that John Dies at the End was, but he handles himself well enough in this more old-fashioned all-action role (though I wonder if he’s in danger of getting typecast as the hero who retells his story in flashback to a journalist…) Ashley Bell also does a fine job conveying a golden age superheroine.

I can’t be too hard on a film which radiates such clear passion for its genre and the era it pays tribute to – but even so, I can’t deny the many glaring flaws. As such, I can only consider Sparks a well-meaning failure, but a worthy one nonetheless.

Sparks is out now on Region 1, and is released to Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray on 7th April, from Image Entertainment.

Review by Tristan Bishop

88 Films have gotten a fair bit of stick round these parts for their ‘Grindhouse Collection’ releases – Mostly due to the fact that nearly all the films released under that banner never saw a big screen at all, let alone one of the legendary grindhouses. The Corpse Grinders redresses the balance however – This is a film that played grindhouses, drive-ins and everything else in-between. In fact, The Corpse Grinders made an awful lot of money on release, which is probably as much to do with that amazing title as much as the content of the film.

Having said that, however – check this plot out. People are being attacked all over town by normally peaceful domestic cats. A doctor and nurse (who are also lovers) start to investigate the attacks, and the trail soon leads them to the door of Lotus Cat Foods (“For cats who like people”). It transpires that Lotus Cat Foods have hit upon the idea of a special ingredient in their products – namely human flesh. The managers (who only employ elderly or disabled workers) are getting fresh supplies from a local gravedigger and his English wife (who resemble the titular characters of Roald Dahl’s The Twits), but soon take to dispatching and grinding down intruders with their corpse grinding apparatus – a wonderfully shonky machine that looks like it took all of half an hour to put together.

Director (and producer, and editor, and music director) Ted V Mikels is a bit of a legend in trash cinema – not only for such lurid and entertaining films as The Astro Zombies (1969), Blood Orgy Of The She Devils (1972) and The Doll Squad (1974 – now widely held to be the uncredited inspiration for Charlie’s Angels), but also for his personal life and personality – He once lived in a castle with a group of women, and has one of the greatest moustaches ever to grace a face. He’s still cranking them out too; in fact a belated sequel to The Corpse Grinders was made back in 2000.

The Corpse Grinders was obviously influenced by Herschell Gordon Lewis (whose early gore films made a large profit), sharing Lewis’s camp sensibilities, colourful imagery and shoddy sets. One aspect of Lewis’s films The Corpse Grinders doesn’t share, however, is the outrageous gore: there are a few moments of violence here (warning to moggy lovers – a cat autopsy, albeit obviously fake, is the strongest scene in the film), but the grinding machine itself is bloodless – the bodies go in (or in some shots obviously behind!) one end, and sausage meat comes out the other. Thankfully the script and performances are a level above Lewis’s usual standard, with some extremely grotesque characters giving the whole thing the feel of a twisted satire on capitalism, and there’s some brilliantly unnecessary coloured gel lighting that puts one in mind of Mario Bava’s heyday. It’s still inarguably Z-grade material (music cues well up threateningly during tensionless moments, and one actor portraying a deaf woman seems to be making up sign language as she goes along), but it’s way better than you might expect from a film that once nestled at number 2 on IMDB’s bottom 100 list, and in these days when any idiot with a camcorder is pitching their gritty found footage suckfest it makes you learn for the days when people bothered to make films fun.

88 Films’ disc comes complete with a snappy ‘making of’ featurette; basically Mikels being interviewed on camera, which is very interesting if you’re into the ‘make-do’ world of low budget film-making. There’s also a feature length commentary from Mikels which I’ll admit I skipped through, but the guy has an impressive memory for names and details. The print used looks like it might have come straight from one of the grindhouses mentioned in the banner it is being released under – plenty of splices, cigarette burns and scratches, but otherwise looks pleasingly colourful for a film of its age and lineage. If you’re looking for a vintage gore film, you should probably pass on this, but for anyone interested in golden area of independent exploitation, you’ll have a blast with this release.

The Corpse Grinders is available now on Region 2 DVD from 88 Films.

Review by Ben Bussey

Let’s hear it for metaphor, fuelling the fires of the horror genre for time immemorial. Nothing validates a tawdry spectacle of murder and monstrosity better than some nice hints of symbolism; the sense that this gruesome slice of cheap thrills has an underlying social message, relevant to the contemporary audience… and if it can relate to zombies, then even better. Consumerism makes us mindless zombies; technology makes us mindless zombies; believing the lies of our governments makes us mindless zombies; and so on and so forth. Of course, you only need watch Dawn of the Dead back to back with Diary of the Dead (not that I am suggesting anyone put themselves through that ordeal) to realise there’s a difference between filmmakers utilising allegory because they really have something to say, and simply doing it out of a desperate wish to capture the zeitgeist.

Take a wild guess where Antisocial fits into this equation.

A zombie movie about social networking was inevitable, I suppose. The odd thing about Antisocial is how close it plays this theme to its chest for the most part. I mean, it’s right there in the title. The opening scenes show a couple of high school girls doing an innocuous vlog which gradually, mysteriously turns into a bloodbath. Not long thereafter we meet our heroine Sam (Michelle Mylett) whose boyfriend unceremoniously dumps by her via videochat, seconds later updating his relationship status to single on ‘The Social Redroom’ – no prizes for guessing what site that’s meant to represent. That’s pretty much all we get for the first twenty five minutes or so: online communication BAD, actual human contact GOOD.

But then, once Sam piles into her platonic-but-obviously-not-really male friend’s house with his college buddies for a planned epic New Year’s Eve bash, the shit hits the fan, and the world outside descends into chaos as a global pandemic hits, turning millions into eightball-eyed homicidal maniacs in mere hours. (Or so we’re told, anyway; the budget clearly wasn’t there to show any of this.) Obviously this Social Redroom site has something to do with it, and I don’t consider it a spoiler to say so – yet the movie is so coy about this, acting like it’s going to come as some great shock when it’s revealed in the final act. Alas, by sidestepping its one relatively unique feature for the bulk of its running time, Antisocial simply winds up drawing attention to what a painfully generic low-budget horror movie it really is.

Making his feature directorial debut, Cody Calahan doesn’t do much to make himself stand apart here. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the overall look and feel of the film, there’s nothing particularly eye-catching about it either. Likewise the script, from Calahan and Chad Archibald; the small ensemble which gradually turns in on itself isn’t the worst of its kind we’ve ever seen, but there’s absolutely nothing special about it either. With the material they’re given, I don’t think the cast ever had a chance to give anything but mundane performances. The worst part of all is how utterly humourless an enterprise Antisocial is; it takes itself way too seriously from the word go, and winds up utterly joyless because of it.

Now, in all fairness, things do go uphill ever so slightly in the final scenes, once inevitably the outside world finds its way in, and the survivors decide on a perhaps unforeseen response… but as much as this more OTT finale should up the shits and giggles factor, it’s hard to care when everything up to that point has been dull as dishwater. Oh, and as for any deep, heartfelt social commentary on the broader ramifications of social networking…? Forget about it. It’s an angle, nothing more, and so far as I can tell the film has absolutely nothing to say on the subject that we haven’t heard umpteen times already.

I guess Antisocial could have been worse – they could have called it Status Update of the Dead, for one thing. Then again, given the rage virus angle, perhaps 28 Updates Later would have been more appropriate. Either way, I’m certainly not about to click the like button on this one.

Antisocial is out on Region 2 DVD and Blu-ray on 14th April 2014, from Monster Pictures.

Review by Ben Bussey

The above image is included just to ensure we are all well aware that this film is a product of the early 1990s.

I realise to my alarm that 90s retro seems to be a thing now, and it occurs to me that some younger readers might need to have some misconceptions put right. Much as how we young folk back then liked to imagine that everyone in the 1960s practiced free love, dropped acid, protested war and was a generally groovy person with radical values, I fear that kids today might be under similar illusions about the early 90s; that everyone cast off the artifice and “greed is good” philosophy of the 80s, and became a free-thinking, flannel-wearing, coffee-drinking headbanger. This is, of course, absolute bollocks. The grunge scene, if we have to call it that, may well have started life as a genuine grassroots movement against the mainstream, but all that really happened was the mainstream rapidly appropriated it – without really having the first clue what it was all about.

So, you’re asking – is this in some way what Bad Channels is all about? Well… no. It’s about aliens who take over a small town American radio station in order to hijack the airwaves, send out a signal which psychically manipulates young women, then teleports them into tiny glass jars having shrunk them to about eight inches in size. And it’s every bit as sophisticated as it sounds.

Don’t worry, I’m getting to the damn point; which is, as most of us agree, the early 90s were not a great time for horror movies. Sure, there were some good ones here and there, but on the whole the genre just didn’t seem to be working, particularly in the US – and the more I think about it, the more I suspect that cultural shift in America had something to do with it. There are all kinds of reasons the genre had absolutely flourished in the 80s – the boom in video and cable/satellite television, breakthroughs in special make-up effects, and an overall taste for the tasteless: tits, gore, neon lighting and power ballads reigned supreme. Companies like Full Moon well born and bred in this era. But how could horror filmmakers reconcile those crass, tawdry, politically incorrect sensibilities in an era which was casting aside those values in the hope of reconnecting with something more earthy and ‘real?’ Answer – for the most part, they didn’t, and wouldn’t until (like it or not) the post-modern irony of Scream breathed new life into the genre in 1996.

Now, Bad Channels doesn’t necessarily embody everything that was wrong with early 90s horror, but it does highlight some of the key problems people like Full Moon faced, and how they tried and failed to overcome them. For the most part it’s pretty standard Full Moon fare, clearly produced for peanuts on whatever sets were available – with the bulk of the action in this case taking place in a little radio station in the desert, outside of a town which, based on what we see, consists of nothing more than a roadside diner, a hospital and a high school gym. The plot’s simple enough, though (again in standard Full Moon fashion) it’s weighed down by a long and unnecessarily verbose build-up, in which we learn that notorious ‘shock jock’ Dan O’Dare (Paul Hipp, whose character name I assume is a pun on the old Eagle comic space hero) has taken residence on Buttfuck Nowhere FM in a last ditch effort to save his career with a publicity-seeking 3-day marathon show. Meanwhile, Lisa Cummings (Martha Quinn), the obligatory wannabe cable news anchor looking for her first big story, is dismayed to be sent to cover O’Dare’s stunt – until she sees a UFO arrive nearby. But when the aliens really do take over, Dan’s listeners obviously just think it’s part of the show…

So far, so Roger Corman in his sleep. Then it all gets really batshit, with the aforementioned centrepiece scenes in which a succession of young women are hypnotised by music, and ultimately kidnapped by the aliens. It’s with these that Bad Channels crosses over pretty much into full-blown musical territory, as the bands the ladies hear over the airwaves come to life before their eyes, compelling them to dance like women possessed, which it seems is an essential part of shrinking them to Barbie doll proportions and dropping them in a jar like Doctor Pretorious. (I dunno, ask Charles Band about it, the whole damn thing is said to be his idea – although the film was actually directed by Ted Nicolau.) The thing is, these musical interludes are so painfully at odds with everything else that’s going on. First up we have screaming glam metallers Fair Game doing some hideous screaming glam metal, yet with strangely atypical lyrics about government corruption (early 90s, I guess); next we have the grungers pictured above, DMT, doing a painfully lazy and obvious recreation of the Teen Spirit video, with a considerably less catchy song about wanking (‘Touching Myself Again’); and finally there’s some prototype Insane Clown Posse types called Sykotik Sinfoney doing a mock-happy tune about being bipolar. Oh, and did I mention there’s also original music from Blue Oyster Cult…? I guess the idea here was to appear relevant, maybr even (gulp) edgy, to the young early 90s audience. I think we can safely say they weren’t especially successful in this.

What makes Bad Channels all the more of an oddity is – beyond the music and the aliens (which are, needless to say, very low quality), there’s almost nothing to sell it. Most alarming of all, it’s all very PG-13: there’s the odd F-bomb, but no gore (what little action there is winding up very cartoonish) and no nudity (even with the hypnotised dancing girls). Subsequently, just about the only way I can recommend Bad Channels is – again – as an example of what a strange place the horror genre was in the early 90s. Still, it’s not without a few laughs, and has more than passing entertainment value just for the sheer what-the-fuckness of it all.

Bad Channels is out on Region 2 DVD on 17th March, from 88 Films.

Review by Annie Riordan

Yesterday was my birthday. Today is “recovering from a severe blueberry vodka hangover” day, so suffice it to say that I am in even less interested in mincing words right now than usual. I didn’t much care for Dark House. Granted, it was nowhere near as abysmal as the malodorous bucketful of warthog diarrhea that was the 2009 film of the same name but it’s a couple of steep flights down from Salva’s previous films, exempli gratia Powder and Jeepers Creepers. I admit to liking, if not actually enjoying, Powder. Jeepers Creepers was fun, if not terribly brilliant and, at times, downright stupid. However, Dark House takes itself WAAAAAY too seriously, and as the story it has to tell is at times both childishly weak and stuffed full of ostentatious symbolism, it comes off rather like a kindergarten class’s interpretation of a Bertolt Brecht play.

So anyway, we have Nick Di Santo.

Just let that name sink in for a second or two. This is what I meant by “ostentatious symbolism” and it goes for the entire cast of characters, so pay attention.

Nick Di Santo is practically an orphan. He never knew his father and his mother is locked up in a local loony bin and has been ever since some awful tragedy happened more than a decade ago. What that tragedy was is unclear – not because the characters don’t really talk about it, but because the sound on the VOD copy I got was fucking awful. A lot of mumbling at the bottom of a coal mine, interspersed with jarringly crystalline moments of overdramatic incidental music. I spent much of the film with my fingers poised over the volume keys, trying in vain to sort out a plot and save my eardrums from the sound wave equivalent of a scud missile attack.

Anyway, his crazy momma (played by a very well preserved Lesley-Anne Down) summons him to the booby hatch on the eve of his 23rd birthday and proceeds to tell him… well, not much, really. At least nothing I could clearly make out. Seems she’s been having some intense conversations with the heat vent in the floorboard and it’s time Nick knew who his dad was/is. Except she never tells him and Nick storms out in a huff and later that night, Lesley-Ann is immolated by the angry heating vent and takes half the funny farm with her.

Oh and I forgot to mention that Nick is sorta psychic, in that he can tell how people are going to die just by touching them. So don’t let him touch you. He knew mom was going to be burned blacker than a Cajun barbecue, but what he didn’t know was that mom left a will behind and Nick has inherited a house he didn’t know existed, but which he’s been drawing since childhood.

So pack up the pregnant girlfriend (whose name is Eve, for fucks sake) and best buddy Ryan (not sure where that came from – was there an Apostle named Ryan?) and drive out into the cornfields of Western Bumblefuck, looking for a house that the walleyed locals say no longer stands. There was a flood, you see, and it done gone washed the house clean away, just like Noah’s ark. It’s one o’ them urban legends and there ain’t no need for ya’ll to go pokin’ yer big city noses around where theys not wanted.

Ugh, god help us all.

One minor car accident later and Nick, Eve and Ryan have joined forces with a team of land surveyors named Sam, Chris and Lillith, whose names are not only blatantly obvious to anyone with even a casual acquaintance with demonology, but whose willingness to join in the search for the house despite the fact that they don’t know these guys from Adam (a-ha, see what I did there?) should be just a tad suspect.

So yeah, they find the house, it’s a real dump and there’s some icky guy living there with a shotgun and a mullet and it’s hard to say which is scarier. Also, he’s played by Tobin Bell AKA Jigsaw and he seems to know exactly what’s going on but won’t tell anyone, just grumbles some cryptic shit and warns everyone to get out. And then these other guys show up who look like Native Americans in trench coats, and they all have this weird, hunched over side shuffle, like silverback gorillas with severe Labyrinthitis, and they start throwing axes and killing stuff. And they try to drive away but they keep ending up back at the house and hey look it that, it’s night time so we’d better spend the night IN THE SCARY HOUSE. And for some reason it’s imperative that we get down into the basement because that’s where all the answers are, but we never do and I still don’t know what the fuck happened because I couldn’t hear a goddamned thing that any of the characters were mumbling through their mouth holes apparently stuffed full of mud, Elmer’s glue and Laffy Taffy. And frankly, I don’t care. It ended. OR DID IT?! Because god knows, it’s not a complete horror movie unless you come full Ouroboros Worm and take us right back to the very fucking beginning, which is NOT a very good place to start. Sister Maria was a lying bitch, okay?

So yeah, there it is. Dark House officially releases tomorrow, March 11th 2014. Feel free to watch it for yourselves and make your own decisions. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Review by Tristan Bishop

House Of Good And Evil, it seems, had an interesting production history, as none other than Clint Howard (brother of A-list director Ron Howard and the star of legendary video nasty Evilspeak) was originally slated to direct. Not only that, but veteran actor Tippi Hedren was going to star, pulling out for health reasons before filming began. It seems odd that such talent would be involved with such a small indie horror film, and after doing a little digging, the plot thickens a bit – apparently the film won several awards at film festivals, including The London International Film Festival 2013. After having watched the film (more on that to come) I found this slightly odd. It turns out that said festival DOES have a website, but there’s nothing on it. Suspicious. A cursory glance at IMDB forums reveals many spam accounts with names like ‘nzcvehhiea’ praising the film. Whether or not someone behind the scenes is telling fibs, this doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence.

The film, written and produced by Blu De Golyer and directed by David Mun, certainly grabs our attention with the opening scenes, with a woman being beaten (in shilouette), and then a woman (presumably the same one) miscarrying in a taxi. The woman is Maggie (Rachel Marie Lewis), and her firefighter husband Chris has bought them a house in the remote countryside, ostensibly so she can recover from her ordeal. Chris is away at work for long hours, and Maggie begins to hear ringing sounds from next door, which is all the stranger because Chris has told her there are no phonelines in the area. Maggie, in a weakened mental state, becomes obsessed by the sound and eventually breaks into her neighbour’s house, to find a dotty old lady (a fine performance from Marietta Marich) whose husband is also a firefighter. The women’s lives seem somehow intertwined, although all is maybe not as it seems. Is Maggie going mad? Is Chris hiding something? Will their fragile relationship survive?

I’ll be straight up about this. House Of Good And Evil is dull. It’s overlong (1 hour 50 mins), listlessly plotted, and is almost entirely devoid of anything remotely exciting until the last ten minutes or so. The film takes a massive gamble with stretching out a slight plotline over such length, especially with one location and, for the most part, one character, and it’s a gamble that fails miserably. There’s some potentially intriguing material here regarding abusive relationships, but it feels underexplored (despite the length!) Lewis starts off likeable enough, but a film with so much focus on a single character needs a great actor in that role – and her performance is nowhere near the brilliance of, say, Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion (1965), which is a truly disturbing example of the ‘woman descends into madness’ film. The most annoying aspect of House Of Good and Evil, however, is the insistence on scary music rising up during sequences when nothing remotely troubling is happening – almost like it was added as a fix when the producers realised they had a horror film containing almost no scary moments whatsoever.

I’ve said before – it allows feels a bit uncharitable to slag off independent films, especially when they try and do things at least slightly differently, but after wading through all the misinformation posted online about this film I began to feel less and less charitable. Dishonest promotion or not though, this one really isn’t worth your time.

House of Good and Evil comes to Region 1 DVD on April 1st from Phase4 Films.