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Review by Stephanie Scaife

The last time I can remember being properly scared by something I saw in the cinema was in 2002 when I saw Takashi Miike’s Audition, and subsequently I’ve concluded that this is a result of two things. First of all, it was right on the cusp of the internet really being used for information and social networking, so it was still entirely possible to view a film completely blind without even so much as a review or trailer crossing your path prior to seeing it; and secondly, it was perhaps the first truly extreme film I’d experienced on the big screen, and boy did it really run me through the ringer. Unfortunately for me this was twelve years ago, and I have now sort of given up on ever repeating such an experience. Sure, in the intervening years I would come across the likes of Gaspar Noe, Michael Haneke and Catherine Breillat whose films would immediately make me want to shower after viewing. To get another thing straight I’m not a completely unfeeling and cold hearted bitch, I still shed a tear whenever I watch Dumbo, so films are still capable of making me feel something… it’s just that scared apparently isn’t one of them.

When I heard about Ghost Stories I was very intrigued. They have done a stellar job with the marketing campaign, and the hush-hush secrecy around not divulging information about what happens in the show definitely works to its benefit. It is capitalising on the way that horror can work when the audience goes in knowing little or nothing of what will happen. This of course builds a great amount of tension, because as we all know what you imagine is always worse than the reality, so by the time everyone is finally sat in the auditorium they are wound as tightly as a spring, making the tension in the air palpable. I’d seen The Woman in Black a few years back and knew it was possible to pull off effective horror on stage, so I went in genuinely a bit creeped out and excited to perhaps see something different, and who knows, maybe even be a little scared.

After years of waiting I was really hoping to relive that moment I had last experienced back in 2002. So, did Ghost Stories scare me? The answer is a resounding no.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the appeal of mainstream horror (Insidious, The Conjuring etc.) and how these films play up to genre conventions in a predictable way because they aren’t aimed at horror fans, but instead at an audience unaware of the common tricks and tropes rolled out ad nauseam, who can still be easily tricked into the jump scares. I tend to watch a lot of movies at press screenings, on DVD or at film festivals, and when I do venture out to the cinema I employ my tactical selection process (early screenings on weekends, a week or so after release date) to avoid the kinds of people who annoy me, so I’ve avoided being too aware of what mainstream audiences are like when viewing horror. Recently, however, I was at a screening with a mixed group of press, competition winners and industry types and their families, and before the film we were shown the trailer for Insidious 2 (a film that I found to be dull and entirely groan worthy) and the audience freaked the fuck out… and it was only the trailer! I was genuinely shocked by the reaction and it seemed unbelievable that people could react so viscerally to something on the screen.

Now, when I saw the audience reaction clips on the Ghost Stories website (see the trailer below) I was pretty dubious, it seemed awfully hyperbolic, but after my recent Insidious 2 experience I was also slightly apprehensive at the prospect of spending two hours with a group of wailing morons. Unfortunately that’s exactly what did happen; people were screaming, hiding behind their hands and jumping out of their seats, for no good reason that I could understand. Although at one point the narrator did ask the audience how many of them genuinely believed in ghosts and at least half raised their hands – so clearly I was just surrounded by idiots.

So why am I telling you all of this? Well mostly it’s filler, all because we were asked not to talk about what happens during the play. I have seen some fairly positive reviews in the press and again I can’t help but wonder if it’s because theatre critics probably don’t spend most of their time watching horror films, so again fall into that category of being able to buy into the tried and tested conventions laid out on stage for us here. Admittedly there were some clever tricks and some smoke and mirrors type effects that worked well, and Scott Penrose did a mostly great job with the effects – in particular a scene with a night watchman whose office moved around on stage to give the perception of the space being much larger. Nick Manning’s sound design is also very effective and quite eerie in places.

The play is a sort of portmanteau series of ghost stories populated with wholly unlikeable characters that rely on cheap jokes, and each segment plays out in a near identical fashion. I had high hopes from Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, who are both clearly fans of the genre and whose previous work I’ve admired, but Ghost Stories feels like a narrative cop-out that uses predictability and unoriginality to play successfully to the masses. Perhaps I’m just too cynical and desensitised these days, but overall I was very disappointed and more than a little annoyed by the time I emerged.

Ghost Stories is currently on at the Arts Theatre in London’s West End – learn more at the official website.

Review by Quin

Did you know that Hollywood produces 2 billion haunted house movies each year? Okay, that’s a lie. But it seriously feels like it’s around half that sometimes. We all know that there are almost as many horror subgenres as there are species of bugs, however the haunted house subgenre is one that will always pique my curiosity and keep me coming back. Haunt is the latest such film to lure me through its doors and let me witness the particular things that go bump in the night in this old house – the Morello house.

Every haunted house story has a back story. Otherwise our brains wouldn’t know what we (I’m including the characters in this as well) were supposed to be looking for and we would probably shrug and pass it off as just another old creaky house. If that were the case, the movie would be about someone buying a house super cheap and then flipping it for a huge profit. But those are the makings of reality television, not horror. The back story on this particular property is shrouded in, yep you guessed it, death. The previous family had a handful of children who all met their demise in strange and unnatural ways. This left the mother of the family as the lone survivor because her husband died too. So, this older lady with the dead family sells her home to a new family, conveniently leaving a painting behind, so she can pop by and say hello and let everyone know how sad her life is. She also seems to want to make sure that the home’s tragic history is preserved.

If I sound like I’m being sarcastic or flippant, It’s really not intended, totally. This just so happens to be the interesting part of the film. The previous homeowner is played by the brilliant Australian actress Jacki Weaver. Early in her career she played one of the school girls in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock and more recently last year’s Park Chan-wook film Stoker. She’s one of those character actresses who is great in everything. In Haunt, she drops her Australian accent for a more wounded and fragile sounding American accent. And from her voice over near the beginning, she never once delivers a false note and gives the standout performance in the film. However, the acting from the entire cast is the strong aspect of Haunt. Which reminds me, the mom of the new family is played by former 80’s teen actress/heart throb Ione Skye. That sentence just made me feel really old.

Okay, back to the plot: the new family has three kids – two girls, and a boy who is so painfully shy and emo that it occasionally gets a little silly. He meets a neighbor played by Liana Liberato (a great young actress who was recently in Trust) …when they meet, she’s crying. Which is great for emo boy. He tries to find out what’s wrong, but she’s not going to say. They form a bond which is very similar to Eli and Oskar from Let the Right One In, and when she shows him this wooden box with wires and lightbulbs that can contact the dead, they unleash bad things to roam about the house and cause havoc.

There is pretty much nothing about Haunt that is original. Even the title evokes the 1963 film The Haunting, which is pretty much the grandaddy of all haunted house movies. The scares are routine but not too jumpy. What it does have going for it, apart from the great acting I mentioned before, is the eerie atmosphere. Atmosphere is the one thing that I think The Conjuring got right. The atmosphere here is very similar, but combine that with smarter characters that we care about and you have yourself a pretty good movie that most horror fans will enjoy. Just be prepared for a slow but thoughtful first half with quite a bit of talking. The second half, while still entertaining, is a bit more of a paint by the numbers ghost story that is so heavy on the mystery vibe, I kept waiting to see Shaggy and Scooby Doo.

Haunt is wrapping up it’s pre-theatrical VOD run and will hit theaters for a limited release in the US on March 7. While it’s definitely worth a watch, I would wait until after the theatrical run and rent it from Netflix. I think it’s one of those movies that is best enjoyed without having to fork over too much cash.

Review by Annie Riordan

“A-ha! The timeless wonder of the English countryside.” ~ Rik Mayall

True horror doesn’t always bloom within the darkest shadows of the night, nor does it require the ominous herald of a thunderstorm. Sometimes, the most harrowing sidesteps into horror occur beneath the bright light of midday, when there are no shadows in which to hide and everything is spotlit to the point of overexposure. We all think we’re safe out in the open, under the sunlight. Bad things don’t happen during the day, out in the open, where anyone can see. Surely, evil waits until sunset before throwing on a trench coat and fedora and furtively sneaking out into the alleys to conduct its sinister deeds.

Horseshit. The bulk of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place beneath a burning Texas sun. So too the climactic scene in The Wicker Man (1973 – bitch please, I refuse to even acknowledge that such a thing as a remake of that film ever even passed the zygote stage). And so begins the tale of Low, beneath a bright June sun in the lush green hills of England.

It seems straightforward enough, a classic fairy tale set-up really. Pretty young girl, all alone, opens the wooden gate to an ominously named park and ventures within. Is she taking a shortcut to Granny’s house? Will she happen upon a gingerbread cottage? Well no, of course not. This is the 21st century after all. But as she strolls over hill and dale, lost in a melancholy world of her own, a wolf does indeed cross her path. Granted, he’s a wolf in geek’s clothing. His name is Edward and at first glance he seems about as menacing as a frosted fairy cake. He’s 40ish, bookish, terminally nerdy in his button down shirt and spotless khakis. Nevertheless, our pretty young Alice immediately senses that this guy is one dark, wormy rabbit hole that she’d rather not fall down into. Wise girl, she obeys her instincts and turns abruptly on her heel. But Edward, a sharp wolf indeed despite his dorky exterior, smells blood and follows, overtaking Alice on the wooded path.

Immediately attracted to the dark and tragic girl, Edward forces her to accompany him on a deeply disturbing gambol through the woods, seeing her not as a hostage but rather a kindred spirit. Edward has done things – terrible, bloody, unforgivable things – but he knows Alice will understand. Because Alice has come out into the bright June sunshine to commit her own terrible deed and bury a dark secret that Edward will ultimately expose.

Straightforward and simple. So the story seems at first. But as it unfolds, it becomes hideously intricate, almost allegorical. But who exactly is Jacob and who is the angel here?

It’s not difficult to figure out what’s going on here, but figuring out where it’s going and how it will all end is another matter entirely. The tension screws up tighter than a stressed out virgin. Several unforeseen plot twists pop up like a sharp punch to the face. The film is a mere one hour long, but it’s an exhausting hour: tense, nerve-wracking and emotionally draining thanks in no small part to the powerful performances delivered by David Keyes as the ultimately pitiable and pathetic Edward and Amy Comper as Alice, an empty, broken vessel of a girl forced to glue herself back together. In less capable hands, this story might have fallen to pieces, another farfetched slasher story with asinine motivations and zero character development. Keyes and Comper not only sell it but make you give an actual shit about both of them in the process – not an easy task.

Horror tales told in the dark are all very well and good, but a multitude of sins (and flaws) can be hidden in the shadows. Beneath the bright summer sun, Low plummets to the depths of the human soul at the lowest point in our characters lives and turns a million megawatt spotlight on it, exposing the infinitesimal workings of pain and suffering in the harshest detail.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of another severely underrated and brightly lit psychological horror film whilst watching Low, and that would be Adam Rehmeier’s “Jonas” and not just because David Keyes bears a stunning resemblance to Gregg Gilmore. Somebody run these films on a double bill. I see a future for a “Sunwashed Horror Fest” in the near future.

Low is released to Region 1 DVD and VOD on March 25th 2014, from BrinkVision.

Review by Quin

I hear that Dustin Mills has quite the following. His 2013 film The Ballad of Skinless Pete (now called Skinless) received a glowing review at Brutal As Hell. While he’s only been a director for a relatively short time, I went into his latest feature, Kill That Bitch, cold. Cold because I had not seen any of his previous films, but also cold because I found the title completely off-putting. But I did what any good horror fan would do and watched it anyway, because we watch everything. And as a film critic, I have to admit that it’s sometimes way more fun to write about the bad stuff. Not that I’m ever hoping that something will be bad. I tend to be ridiculously optimistic when it comes to horror movies. I expect to like everything and therefore I’m constantly disappointed. Well, after watching Kill That Bitch, at a digital screening with a cyber audience chatting feverishly, I have to do something I’ve never done. I’m going to tell you that I really disliked it, but I’m also going to recommend it.

The film opens in black and white. We hear a baby crying and there’s a bloody woman laying on the floor. A door opens and we see a man with a knife. Title page, then switch to color – what follows seems like endless scenes of nude women looking at their phones. Some get texts, some get calls. A few find time to draw or play in the flower garden. I mean, most of this feels like a bad Playboy video from the 90’s. There’s even some soft light and generic, mellow tunes playing. Even with all of the pretty naked ladies, it’s very yawn-inducing. However, this is a horror movie; remember the title? See all these pretty naked ladies? Well, somebody is killing them. But he’s nice enough to warn them by texting them first – while giving us at home a clue as to whom he might be, because his black book is bigger than that of The Fonz from Happy Days.

Kill That Bitch is a tricky film for a reviewer. It constantly borrows its imagery, making it almost completely unoriginal. The killer is always seen wearing what can be described as a cheap imitation plague mask: it looks like one of those kid’s halloween costume masks with a rubber band to hold it on. Over the eyes he wears Bono’s fly sunglasses from U2’s Zoo TV tour in 1992. But the trickiest thing of all is that it contains the dreaded deus ex machina plot device; but out of respect for Dustin Mills, that is all I will say about that.

Kill That Bitch may or may not be the movie for you. It certainly wasn’t for me. Even though I really didn’t like it and found it deeply flawed, totally unfocused, all over the place and borderline incoherent at times, it maintains a weird charm that I know some of you will love. It also really delivers the gratuitous nudity and the brutal violence. Many of you will love that as well. Its use of practical effects in a few places is great, and hearing that there was no CGI used in the film is very impressive. The film is full of weird details and weird dialogue. There’s a scene where a woman takes a book off a shelf, turns around three times and then sits down. When told to take a bath a woman actually says, “But it takes all my smells away and it takes forever to get them back.”

The reason why I am recommending this movie is not based on my viewing experience, but getting to see this at a digital viewing on the internet with a chatroom, this movie got a great reception from everybody. A few people were poking fun at it, but it was in an MST3K or Rocky Horror kinda way. These people loved this movie. Even with all of the technical difficulties that the site had, the fun being had in the chatroom was infectious. Director Dustin Mills was in there too, talking to people and answering questions. He was definitely enjoying the positive response and good for him. So, if you do end up liking this movie, I can tell you that you’ll want to buy it instead of renting it. You’ll need to watch it repeatedly to pick apart the details and make it a little less deus ex machina-eeeeeeeek.

Kill That Bitch is available now on DVD, or to rent or buy online from Indiereign.

Kill That Bitch 2013 Official Red Band Trailer 1 from Dustin Mills on Vimeo.

Review by Ben Bussey

You know – it’s entirely possible that, once True Blood ends, Stephen Moyer has a bright future ahead of him as an actor. The man clearly has skill; you can’t blag playing a leading role on a hugely popular TV show for upwards of five years. Well, okay, maybe you can, but I certainly don’t think that’s been the case for Moyer. The thing that’s great about his performance on that show is, indeed, the thing that’s great about the show overall; the way that time and again it manages to successfully walk the line between the dark, heavy and serious, and the jaw-droppingly outlandish and ridiculous, somehow always getting that tricky tone just right.

This film, whether we call it by its original title The Barrens, or its new British DVD title Devil in the Woods (really, Kaleidoscope?), also attempts to tiptoe along that tightrope… but in this instance, we see what happens when you get your footing completely wrong and plummet into the bogs of laughable, outright absurdity below.

Moyer plays Richard, a suburban dad taking his wife, teenage daughter and young son for a few days camping in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, partly as a family bonding experience, but also to scatter his father’s ashes, as they spent a lot of time there in Richard’s youth. However, the place isn’t quite as Richard remembers, as it’s filled with noisy campers, emo boys with an eye on his daughter – and apparently having had a couple of bear attacks of late. However, it soon becomes clear that Richard really did need to get away from it all, as he seems to be suffering some rather severe anxiety issues to the point that he becomes paranoid and delusional. So when – as is the norm in these situations – bad things start to happen, is it just a case of Richard having a total nervous breakdown, or are they under attack from the monster of local folklore, the Jersey Devil? Or could it be a bit of both…?

As TV to movie transitions go, Moyer’s efforts here are less reminscent of George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn than they are of Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. And I’ve got to say, to an extent it helps. This is a painfully dull, seen-it-all-before backwoods horror that is lifted out of being utterly mundane and forgettable thanks to an absolutely batshit insane central turn from an actor who (from what I’ve seen of his work at least) has never given a performance quite like this before. The fact that Moyer uses his natural English accent rather than the Southern drawl he puts on for Bill Compton was, for me at least, a factor in what makes his performance so disorientating; it makes him seem that bit more at odds with everything else that’s going on. Still, not unlike some of the other legendary performances of this ilk – say, Nic Cage in The Wicker Man remake, or Mark Wahlberg in The Happening (oh yes, I went there) – I have to wonder whether or not the actor is in on the joke. Moyer’s histrionics reach levels that even Joe Pilato in Day of the Dead would have considered a bit much, and I find it hard to believe that any actor of real skill (which, I must again stress, Moyer most certainly is) doesn’t recognise that they have gone that far out there.

On the other hand, I rather fear the writer-director has approached this whole endeavour with a deadly serious attitude. Really now, Darren Lynn Bousman – enough. We know you love doing your madcap Goth musicals, and there are plenty among us who love you for doing them; is it really necessary for you to alternate between making those, and revisiting tired-out horror tropes such as you do here? Or were you really hoping to condemn yourself to perpetual straight-to-DVD status as soon as you ended your run on the Saw movies? There’s nothing about this that makes me think Bousman was aiming for laughs. My gut feeling is he was trying to get out of Moyer what Kubrick got out of Jack Nicholson – but, as should by now be apparent, he didn’t even manage to get what Kubrick got out of Tom Cruise.

(Yeesh… I’ve referenced From Dusk Till Dawn, Showgirls, The Wicker Man, The Happening, Day of the Dead, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut. I, too, may be overdoing it somewhat. Although when you think about it, that’s kind of in-keeping with the overall theme of this review. Or something. Look, we have to do something to get some joy out of reviewing bad movies like this, okay?)

Well, what else can I say about The Barrens/Devil in the Woods/that which we call a piece of shit by any other name would smell as bad…? I suppose it isn’t completely without redeeming qualities. The creature FX aren’t that bad, and if you like the frantic, overdone visual style of Bousman’s earlier (clearly higher-budgeted) movies, then there are brief moments of that to be found here. And I suppose some of the supporting players turn in some reasonable performances. But ultimately, this is just a turd, and – as the saying goes – there’s just no polishing it. The best it might get is to become a so-bad-it’s-good favourite, and a funny footnote on the careers of Moyer and Bousman; failing that, it can just sink into the murky depths of obscurity with the rest of the lifeless, brainless, half-baked direct-to-DVD garbage.

Devil in the Woods is released on Region 2 DVD on 2nd March, from Kaleidoscope Entertainment.

Review by Quin

If I had a million dollars to just give away, I would be asking you all to find me a review of the 2012 Swedish horror film Wither that does not mention a certain 80’s classic about a group of young people spending a weekend in a cabin. The person who finds the review would of course get the money. I do not have a million dollars and I also don’t think that review exists. Writing it yourself would be against the rules, by the way. But this little hypothetical giveaway will never happen, at least not in this universe. Maybe in a parallel one where I am filthy rich, in which case, good luck to you. I actually had a brief moment where I had decided I was going to ignore this aforementioned film in my review – just to be different. Then I remembered, the purpose of a film critic is to describe the viewing experience the best way they can, and to talk about the feelings that the film gives them as well as their response to those feelings. So I determined I would be doing you all an incredible disservice if I made no mention of this film. But you have to pay attention. I’m only going to say it once and then we are going to move on with this review. Are you ready? It’s Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. There. Now that we have that out of the way, I will let you draw your own comparisons based on what I write.

Wither has a plot we’ve seen hundreds, maybe even thousands of times before. A group of young people go away for a weekend stay at a cabin in the woods. Woah, Déjà vu. The cabin in which they are staying is said to have been abandoned for about five years, so the only clear and good decision for these people to make is to get in the car and make use of the place. I mean, someone should be using it, right? It’s only collecting dust…or is it? Well, duh. This is a horror movie and of course you know what’s going to happen. To paraphrase the great film critic Roger Ebert (Or maybe he was quoting Pauline Kael, I can’t remember) it’s not what the film is about that’s important, it’s how it’s about it. Here we have a well acted and well made movie that is never boring and turns familiar territory into something exciting and even poignant at times. So it should be forgiven that the cabin has a trap door leading to the cellar; or that the inhabitants become “not themselves” one by one. The film also has the usual assortment of characters, thankfully not teens this time, but there is a creepy hunter who roams the woods nearby. He’s played mysterious at first, and then we grow to like him. The actor is a guy named Johannes Bost. He is mostly known for his comedic roles and apparently he’s a close personal friend of Mick Jagger.

In the opening sequence, the cinematography had a Ridley Scott Black Hawk Down/Gladiator era sort of look to it. I think it has to do with the frames per second and a bunch of technical junk that I could look up and bore you with, but I won’t. I just know it has a distinctive look that is choppy, but when there is a lot of fast moving action the image is clearer. Thankfully, this was only used in that opening scene. It would have gotten annoying and distracting if it had gone on any longer.

I mentioned before that the film is in Swedish. Sometimes the translation seemed a little awkward and I had to pause to re-read a few lines to understand the context. They also move extremely fast, and with the intense and inventive visuals on the screen, this isn’t the kind of movie you want to spend the whole time reading. You can easily watch Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and read the subtitles while glancing back and forth at the images. Withered is no Bergman film, but I think that’s probably obvious. The story is uncomplicated and it moves fast. You won’t spend a lot of time wondering what it all means. But something that the movie won’t tell you – the original Swedish title of the film is Vittra, which is a mythological creature in Scandinavian mythology. They’re typically described as pixies or elves, and there are no such sprites in Wither. At least not like what you would see in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I hope I have convinced you to see Wither. It’s a tricky thing to talk about how unoriginal the story is, while urging you to see it anyway because the movie is awesome. I bet most of you will get a kick out if it because there is so much blood. It get’s smeared on the walls, caked and coagulated all over the actors in a way that enhances and completes the composition of the shots. Also, the second half of the movie is almost all action with so much screaming. If it were up to me I would replace the remake of that movie I said I wasn’t going to mention again, with this one. It does some of the same things, but much better. If I haven’t convinced you to see Wither, I tried – perhaps you only slumbered here while these words did appear.

Wither is available now in the US from Artsploitation Films.

Review by Ben Bussey

Ah… herein lies a tale. A few years back, when I met my esteemed BAH colleague Keri O’Shea for the first time in a face-to-face/actual human interaction capacity, the conversation perhaps unsurprisingly veered to our favourite horror movies. As memory serves, I waxed lyrical about The Monster Squad, and how my pre-teen obsession with that film sparked a love for the classic monsters which remains to this day, not to mention how it inspired my lingering enthusiasm for 80s horror movies with often bewilderingly similar titles: Night of the Creeps, Night of the Demons, Demons… then Keri mentioned The Creeps. I had to admit I wasn’t familiar with that particular movie, but from the title alone it seemed to be in-keeping with the theme. When Keri proceeded to inform me it featured Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman and the Mummy reborn as dwarfs… well, I knew I had to see it.

And, in the years since, I have never quite forgiven Keri for this.

Okay, that might be a somewhat harsh reaction to something as (pun intended) slight as this film. The problem isn’t that The Creeps is extraordinarily silly; that’s obviously a given. It’s not the low production value; that’s also a given, particularly when you learn this is a Charles Band movie. It’s not that it contains rather un-PC elements which, dependent on your point of view, might be considered a tad bit offensive; once again, that’s pretty much a given, and honestly, anyone who finds themselves truly offended by this movie needs to reassess their priorities.

The main problem with The Creeps is simply this: it’s boring. It takes a central conceit which had the potential to be great for shits-and-giggles, and squanders it on a tedious, half-baked potboiler that feels like it was sketched out over the course of an evening; a film that’s so light on action, so crudely shot and edited, and so heavy on extraneous dialogue that it manages to feel slow and overlong even at barely 70 minutes in length.

That was how I felt on first viewing, anyway – so it was with some trepidation that I approached this new DVD edition from 88 Films (and I must note, not for the first time, my dislike of them calling it their ‘Grindhouse’ collection – as a straight to video release from 1997, The Creeps is nothing of the sort, and much the same is true of pretty much all the Full Moon titles which 88 Films have released under this heading). On revisiting The Creeps, I can honestly say that most of my intial assessment rings true – but at the same time, I can’t deny that this silly, cheap, trashy little movie is not without its charm, and – believe it or not – it does touch on some quite interesting ideas.

You see, the central macguffin which creates these miniature monsters is a machine they call an ‘archetype generator,’ built by mad scientist Bill Moynihan. The typical put-upon nerd, he wants to create his own monsters to take revenge on anyone that ever pantsed him in the hallway or hung a ‘kick me’ sign on his back, and to this end he steals rare original manuscripts of the classic horror novels to bring forth the beasts of fantasy into reality. (What’s that you say? The Wolfman and The Mummy weren’t based on 19th century novels? Shush now.) However, librarian Anna (Rhonda Griffin) gets wise to his nefarious plan with the help of bumbling amateur private eye David (Justin Lauer), and together they manage to remove the manuscripts from the machine just in the nick of time – hence, because the process did not complete, the monsters wound up only half-size.

Yes, it’s a funny idea. It’s just a shame that it takes an often painfully slow and unfunny thirty minutes for The Creeps to reach this point. Nor do things get moving too steadily from that point, as Phi Fondacaro’s Dracula is quite given to long and pondersome monologues too. The only real effort to spice things up comes when it transpires that, to complete the ritual and reach full size, the monsters need a human sacrifice – preferably a naked young woman.

Here’s where it gets particularly un-PC, as we ultimately see the little monsters tie a woman down to a table, strip her naked and fondle her while, bound and gagged, she screams… and the MPAA gave this a PG-13 on release. That is mind-boggling. No, it’s not quite on a par with Re-Animator’s head scene, but it’s clearly not a sight for pre-teen eyes. It does seem a bit much that the BBFC felt necessary to slap the film with an 18, as beyond this scene it’s pretty mild stuff, but given the BBFC’s stance on sexual violence I’m not in the least surprised. (In any case, the 18 certificate is more than warranted by the utterly unrelated bonus film 88 Films have slapped on the DVD – a vintage trailer compiltion entitled The Best of Sex and Violence, hosted by an endearingly droll and aged John Carradine.)

In all seriousness, though, the archetype generator is a nice idea, and it does lead to some quite heart-warming dialogue on what it is to be a legend; how a figure of the imagination can live forever. Whether anyone picks up a film of this nature looking for philosophical diversion is another matter, though. Anyway you look at it The Creeps is a let-down, far too small-scale (again, pun intended) to reach the kind of trashy heights it might have with so wonderfully oddball a premise. But if you’ve got a liking for that very particular Full Moon brand of low-brow, low-budget entertainment, there are worse ways to waste a little time.

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

Review by Stephanie Scaife

I never know exactly what I think about Lars von Trier. On one hand he’s a master provocateur and prankster that you should never take too seriously, but on the other hand he is a truly unique filmmaker who gets away with making some of the toughest, most thought-provoking films you’re ever likely to see. Love him or hate him, it’s almost entirely impossible not to at least respect his irreverence. Now in all honestly I’m not his biggest fan; I think that Breaking the Waves is a work of genius and I enjoyed his miniseries The Kingdom, but other than that I have respected his work but never really loved it. With Nymphomaniac, though, I really bought into the hype – the trailers, the poster campaign, the bizarre casting decisions, the fact that he had seemingly made a 5-hour pornographic film about sex… I just couldn’t resist and took the first opportunity that came along to see the double-bill. In the end, Nymphomaniac will be released in two 2-hour segments, with an hour cut out of von Trier’s preferred version (from my understanding it’s mostly a lot more talking and not so much explicit content that’s been removed).

Nymphomaniac is about Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a self-proclaimed nymphomaniac who is discovered bloody and unconscious by the asexual Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård). Seligman takes her in, gives her tea and a place to rest and in return she tells him her story, portrayed on screen in a series of chapters covering various different periods of her life. Joe tells Seligman about her various conquests and sexual dalliances, which he in turn takes at face value and relates them to things he can understand (fly fishing, Fibonacci numbers etc.) in a very non-judgemental way. In fact, Joe is full of condemnation for her own acts and seems surprised at his acceptance, making her ever-worsening chapters the possible tales of an unreliable narrator simply out to shock (remind you of anyone?)

Nymphomaniac is entirely unexpected and I both loved it and hated it. I’m fairly convinced this was von Trier’s intention all along. The first thing you notice about the film is that it is very, very funny, and yes it way surpasses the 6 laugh rule, making it far more amusing than just about any mainstream comedy I’ve seen in recent years. Secondly, it’s really not as erotic or explicit as you’d think despite it being unrelentingly about and obsessed with sex, which incidentally is oftentimes portrayed as surprisingly dull. Lastly, yes it is just about as infuriating as anything else von Trier has ever done and I was constantly aware that I was watching one of his films, never sure what he was going to do next. This tension both works and doesn’t work on a number of different levels, because it certainly adds an air of the unpredictable but also because you are always trying to figure out whether or not he’s fucking with you or being serious, it’s equally infuriating. Much has been made of Shia LaBeouf and his bizarre accent, but as the film is set in a non-specific place in a non-specific time where everyone has a weird accent I’m not entirely sure what the problem is, despite it being mildly distracting, which a lot of the film is incidentally. I feel that this particular aspect has been picked up on mostly due to LaBeouf’s recent presence in the media. It is intentionally unusual and the use of a familiar, yet alien environment works to Nymphomaniac’s advantage for much of the film, successfully creating an otherness.

As for the film being split into two parts, they aren’t worth the cost of two cinema tickets, and although the first is better than the second they do feel like two halves of the same film. If anything, a better option would have been to cut it down to 3-hours and release it as one film with the optional director’s cut on DVD. I was totally with Nymphomaniac for about three quarters of the running time, but by the end, through a combination of exhaustion and the film taking a somewhat unexpected nose dive into the realms of melodramatic erotic thriller, I was ready for it to be over a good half hour before it was. However, the film is at its strongest when it is with young Joe (Stacy Martin); Uma Thurman pretty much steals the show in her 5 minutes of screen time, and later on Jamie Bell is wonderfully dangerous as K, a male dominatrix. Towards the end, and particularly with the introduction of P (Mia Goth), I started to lose interest and struggle with the direction the film took with regards to believability (if such a thing even exists in von Trier’s universe). Although I feel the film has a fairly strong feminist message in terms of embracing a woman’s right to disregard traditional views on love and relationships and embrace her sexuality, its questionable stance on race and a later comment on paedophilia is wilfully provocative in a way that could be interpreted as either making us question our own views and prejudices on each subject, or merely being there simply to piss the viewer off.

What is most frustrating – and again perhaps entirely intentional and self-aware – is that if this film had been made by just about anyone else I would be heralding it a masterpiece, but because it is von Trier I’m left feeling exhilarated, amused, frustrated and honestly, like a bit of a mug for even sitting though it to begin with. What von Trier has done is take his funniest and most accessible film to date, and by slapping a title on it like Nymphomaniac, making it almost unwatchably long and by injecting real sex, he has made it completely inaccessible. I’m really not sure if the joke is on him or on us.

Review by Ben Bussey

Before anyone says it: no, this is not an all-star John Grisham adaptation, and at no point does Samuel L Jackson shout, “yes they deserved to die and I hope they burn in hell!” Having said that, Sam the Man’s famous quote from that 90s courtroom drama does have a certain resonance in this no-budget, T&A-fuelled neo-grindhouse romp from writer-director Brian Williams, making his feature debut here. See, this is a movie about a woman named Sara, played by Ellie Church, an eye-catching pixie-cut blonde with a nice, big, impressive pirate ship tattoo (you didn’t think the sentence was going to end that way, did you?) Beset with a mysterious affliction, Sara is told she has only 24 hours to live, and all she wants to do with her few remaining moments on God’s green earth is to cut loose, indulge her hitherto forbidden appetites, and – above all else – get her gory freak on against those that have wronged her, and/or anyone she just might happen to feel deserves it.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I tend to approach these grindhouse/rewindhouse movies with a degree of trepidation. So many low-to-no budget productions nowadays take this approach, affecting an old school edge with a wink to the camera in the hopes of making their material seem cool, when more often than not it’s pretty bog standard (see the recent Bounty Killer, or last year’s Bring Me the Head of the Machine Gun Woman. I mean, I don’t recommend you actually see them, I’m just saying they’re good examples of bad neo-grindhouse).

Is Time To Kill necessarily a more sincere, heartfelt, accurate recreation of genuine old school exploitation? Well, I can tell you this much for sure: it keeps things way, way simpler. You could pretty much fit the entire plot on a postcard, and not too much of the refreshingly lean 70 minute running time is devoted to exploring its finer details. Here’s what you can expect for most of the movie: tits, ass, more tits and ass, a bit of gore, some trippy drug scenes, with a few more asses and tits thrown in for good measure. Whilst the title and opening scenes might seem to set Time To Kill up as a good and nasty revenge movie, once it gets going it’s really a good and sleazy skin flick. Perhaps that’s not what everyone is looking for – but for anyone with a healthy (or perhaps less than healthy) appreciation for the female form – particularly when it’s covered in nothing more than skimpy panties and tattoos – then you might just find this to be a nipple-licking good time.

Still, there’s no denying Time To Kill makes for a pretty schizophrenic viewing experience. Abandon hope all ye who enter here expecting linear narrative logic, character development and all that jive. Brian Williams clearly isn’t very interested in this, preferring to fill the bulk of the running time with stripteases, girl-on-girl action and druggy scenes. Christ, he even literally stops the story dead in its tracks midway for an ‘intermission’ sequence with some amusing fake cinema commercials. However, running converse to this we have vivid glimpses of a tragic backstory that has led Sara to her current situation, and a number of quite long-winded dialogue scenes thick with rather bleak philosophical musings on the nature of life, the universe and everything. The opening scene, for example, features one of Time To Kill’s key selling points with a cameo from Debbie Rochon – but it’s ultimately a pretty throwaway scene which adds little to proceedings and doesn’t really feel like it belongs. More scenes of this nature pop up amidst all the drugs and derriere; it’s an awkward balancing act which I don’t think the film ever gets quite right.

Then again – perhaps I just wasn’t fucked up enough when I sat down to watch this. Yes, as should probably be obvious by this point, Time to Kill is textbook midnight movie fare, custom designed be enjoyed in the wee small hours whilst under the influence of something or other. While it’s as dripping with artifice as any neo-grindhouse, it has a greater sense of style than many, cannily working its clearly miniscule budget to its advantage. Williams takes something of a pop-culture collage approach on both a visual and audial level, with judicious choices of music to fit different sequences: as well as the obligatory video nasty-era synths accompanying the revenge scenes, we have a Russ Meyer-esque barnyard frolic set to 60s psychedelic pop, a very hands-on lapdance set to sleazy ska, a bad trip set to stoner rock, and so on.

As something akin to a series of music videos, then, Time To Kill definitely works. As a movie? Well – once again, that depends on your proclivities. But when all is said and done it’s one of those real indie B-movies with just enough charm to forgive its failings; indeed, without those very failings it probably wouldn’t have quite the same charm. Neo-grindhouse may indeed be getting played out, but if filmmakers do intend to keep treading that path, they might pick up a few lessons from Time To Kill.

Time to Kill will have its world premiere this March at Horrorhound Weekend in Cincinnati, and not long thereafter it will be released on a limited edition VHS. Learn more at the Time to Kill Facebook page.

NSFW Trailer, by the way.

Review by Ben Bussey

Let’s start with the good news. It’s rare indeed that elderly actors and actresses get to be the focal point of modern films in general; let alone low budget comedy horrors. In setting the action in a retirement home and showing proceedings largely from the perspective of the residents, in particular the new arrival Rose (Dawn Wells), director/co-writer Jason Lockhart and co-writer/producer/actress Jacqui Holland have created something fairly bold and unusual with Silent But Deadly. Sure, we’ve had Bubba Ho-Tep, but that cast the somewhat younger Bruce Campbell under old-man make-up, and emphasised his alienation amidst the crumbling octogenarians. We almost never see old people presented simply as people; Silent But Deadly absolutely deserves credit for making efforts to redress that balance, challenging the manner in which society by and large tries to sweep the elderly under the carpet.

But that, as I said, was the good news. The bad news is, Silent But Deadly is a comedy horror movie which – no two ways about it – simply isn’t funny or scary in the slightest.

The plot isn’t too hard to surmise. Dumped in a gaudy retirement home by her apathetic career-oriented daughter, Rose finds herself taking the room of a previous tenant, who – though the overwhelmingly camp manager Dale (John Tartaglia) denies it – was brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. While befriending her new neighbours, Rose very quickly tires of being treated like a baby by Dale and the site’s ‘entertainment manger’ Kitty (the aforementioned Jacqui Holland) – but at the same time, she soon comes to fear that everyone in the retirement home could be in grave danger, quite literally.

Once again, movies which keep the focus on the elderly are few and far between, which probably explains how this clearly low budget production was able to attract so many recognisable actors of retirement age. Amomgst others we have David Proval, the esteemed Italian-American character actor famed for dropping Dracula out of a plane in The Monster Squad and getting shot by Tony Soprano’s sister; Martin Kove, best known as John Kreese in The Karate Kid, cannily cast here as a delusional Vietnam veteran; and Lee Meriwether, who played Catwoman against Adam West’s Batman. Old pros one and all, they do their utmost with what’s been given to them, and to be fair there are some moments that raise a giggle; we don’t even see subplots involving senior citizens contracting herpes, and I can’t be entirely down on a film which has a central conflict between two old women named Fanny and Wang.

Alas, Silent But Deadly falls flat on almost every other level. The slasher movie elements are underemphasised to the point we almost forget about them, and the identity and goal of the killer is almost instantly predictable. The scenes shifting the focus onto the younger players Tartaglia and Holland feel a bit forced and unnecessary; Tartaglia’s excessive swishiness and Holland’s exaggerated dumb blonde routine get tedious very quickly. It’s almost as though these elements were thrown in for fear of losing younger viewers altogether, given that we would assume a youthful audience is more likely to be drawn to a comedy horror movie than elderly viewers.

At the end of the day, it’s hard to say who Silent But Deadly is really intended for. Both as a horror and a comedy, it’s far too tame for modern sensibilities; whatever the title might imply, the humour for the most part isn’t especially crude, so anyone anticipating gross-out gags galore will be let down (originally it was entitled Hotel Arthiritis). And while it may touch on serious concerns about the treatment of the elderly it shies away from really tackling them head-on, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. Once again, Silent But Deadly deserves credit for trying something different, but with real laughs and scares so very thin on the ground that simply isn’t enough to warrant praise.

Silent But Deadly is available on DVD and VOD from 25th February 2014.