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Review by Quin

After doing a little research, I was shocked to find out that before this year there hadn’t ever been a proper full length film adaptation of the classic short story The Monkey’s Paw. There were a couple of filmed productions of the stage play from the 1920’s through the 40’s, but each one only runs about an hour in length and features the usual limitations of a stage play. Since its first publication in England in 1902, W.W. Jacobs short story The Monkey’s Paw has become a staple of horror. Which makes it all the more interesting that Jacobs was known for his comedic stories and wrote no other tales dealing with the macabre. Along with becoming a stage play, there are audio recordings of the short story read by both Christopher Lee and John Lithgow. The story was included in the 1972 anthology film Tales From the Crypt in the segment titled Wish You Were Here. It’s been referenced in everything from The X Files to Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. Bob Clark’s 1972 film Deathdream is based on it. The most famous retelling of the story is probably on the third season of The Simpsons in their annual Treehouse of Horror episodes.

The new 2013 version of The Monkey’s Paw was directed by Brett Simmons. He’s previously only done a film called Husk (it’s about killer scarecrows) which was actually based on his own short film. So, he’s already got a ton of experience turning shorter stories into longer ones. Luckily, he’s figured out it’s best to not stretch these things out too long. At around 90 minutes, this movie moves along really well. The Monkey’s Paw is set in the deep southern United States. As the movie goes along, it becomes more evident that it’s New Orleans- there are swamps and alligators, we see above ground crypts in the cemeteries, there are psychics and there is voodoo.

Moving the original location of the short story from London to Louisiana was a great choice. The local history really makes the premise all the more believable. How the paw made it to the south is up for discussion, but that hardly matters. We do get the back story on the paw and how it has been handed over from one man to the next. Early in the film via flashback comes the warning, “Don’t play with fate. Nothing good will come.” Flash forward to a man being fired – he’s drinking in a bar and pulls out the paw. He tells his buddies about it and asks if one of them wants to try it out. He informs them that whatever they wish for will come true. So one of them wishes that a sports car he saw in the parking lot belonged to him. After laughing it off, he tries to hand the paw back to the man, only to be told that once you start your wishes you have to make all three. He seems relieved to be free of this curse, as the other man’s curse is just beginning.

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Just like in the original story, each wish comes with a bad result. Something awful happens to the new wisher’s buddy. He winds up undead and goes on a slasher film-esque killing spree. Much of this is played with manic, comedic glee from actor Stephen Lang. He is one of maybe two familiar faces in the film. You might remember him as Col. Miles Quaritch in the 2009 mega hit Avatar. The other guy you’ll recognize is Charles S. Dutton who played Dillon in Alien 3. American audiences may also remember his 90’s sitcom Roc. In The Monkey’s Paw, he plays the sheriff. He’s really good in that role, but I feel like he’s one of those actors who always plays a cop. He also barely gets enough screen time here for his character to matter.

For a low budget film, this one is done really well. The cinematography is great. The New Orleans scenery is a nice backdrop, and the visual style of the film combines dark shadowy images with bright, warmly lit backgrounds. It makes the whole thing great to look at. The only problem I had was the version shown On Demand was full screen. On my wide screen television, this made the actors look squished. As of now, you can only get the film On Demand or from iTunes or Amazon. It also has a limited theatrical release that started October 8th – so that’s likely over. Hopefully when it’s released on DVD it will be widescreen. If you’re reading this, Brett Simmons, please make it so. But overall, this film is absolutely worth watching. If you are unfamiliar with The Monkey’s Paw, it’s a great introduction to the story I call The Gift of the Magi of horror. And if you haven’t seen it already, please take the time to find the Freddie Francis film Tales From the Crypt from 1972 with Ralph Richardson as The Crypt Keeper. It features the absolute best version of The Monkey’s Paw there is ever likely to be.

The Monkey’s Paw is available now from Chiller Films.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Long before the recent influx of portmanteau horror anthologies such as The ABCs of Death and V/H/S there was George A. Romero and Stephen King’s Creepshow, a homage to the E.C. horror comic books of the 1950s. It has long been a fan favourite and remains one of Romero’s biggest financial successes and his only film to ever reach #1 in the US box office. As with any anthology film, Creepshow is a real mixed bag of treats, but having not seen it since I was a kid I was surprised to find how well it has held up over the years, remaining incredibly watchable and very funny indeed, despite lacking in any genuine scares.

The first segment, Father’s Day, is perhaps the weakest of the five, although it is still amusing to see such a young Ed Harris, if nothing else. It centres around the Grantham family and their annual family dinner, the black sheep of the family Bedelia had many years earlier murdered her abusive father and after visiting his grave seems to have inadvertently reanimated his corpse. He’s now back and intent of having cake (is cake even associated with Father’s Day?) as well as wiping out his remaining descendants. It’s a pretty flimsy idea as a whole but there are a few nice effects shots, courtesy of Romero mainstay Tom Savini.

The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill is next and it is also the only segment from the film that I really remembered from when I first saw it years ago. It’s often touted as the worst film of the five due to a rather over the top performance from King himself as Jordy, an unfortunate and dim-witted man who happens upon a meteor that has crash landed into his backyard and decides that the answer to paying off his $200 bank loan is to sell the rock to the local university. Unfortunately the meteor has other plans, namely infecting Jordy with some sort of green fungus that takes over his body, house and presumably the world. Now it’d be fair to say that King isn’t going to be bothering the Academy for any best actor nods anytime soon, but there’s something so sweet and tragic about Jordy and so bizarre about this particularly short and mossy vignette that I think it’s one of the highlights of the film.

The third segment, Something to Tide You Over, stars Leslie Nielsen as Richard Vickers, a wealthy man who takes some fairly elaborate and disturbing revenge on his wife and her lover after he discovers the truth about their affair. Gaylen Ross and Ted Danson star as the fateful lovers who fall foul of Vickers sadistic game whereby he buries them up to the neck in sand where they must await a slow and painful drowning as the tide slowly comes in. I’m only really familiar with Nielsen’s comedic films such as The Naked Gun and Airplane, so it was something of a surprise to see him play a character that is altogether more sinister. Something to Tide You Over is perhaps the most surreal and original of the segments, although it is let down slightly by the ending that is very broad and also sort of similar to that of Father’s Day.

The Crate is the longest of the five segments and is based on a short story already written by King, not something specifically written for the film, which may also explain why it’s perhaps the strongest of the bunch narratively speaking. Hal Holbrook stars as Henry Northup, a university professor and the long suffering husband of Wilma Northup (Adrienne Barbeau), an abusive alcoholic that he longs to be rid of. As luck would have it a mysterious crate is found at the university containing a bizarre yeti like creature that likes nothing more than to chow down on human flesh, Henry soon comes to realise that this creature may be his ticket to a peaceful life and he attempts to lure Wilma into its grasp. Both Holbrook and Barbeau are fantastic, she especially as the vitriolic and perpetually disappointed wife and Savini excels himself once more with the animatronic yeti monster.

The final chapter, They’re Creeping Up on You, certainly lives up to its name. The fantastic E.G. Marshall is Upson Pratt a Howard Hughes alike shut-in that suffers from mysophobia and lives in a hermetically sealed apartment in New York City. His worst fears become a reality when thousands of cockroaches begin to invade his apartment, driving him insane and eventually leading to his rather gruesome demise. By genuinely having the cockroaches on set, it makes your skin crawl in a way that could never happen with CGI or special effects and although it must’ve been an absolute bugger to shoot, it really pays off and it certainly has a major does of the ick factor.

There is also an overarching story that binds the film together as a whole, establishing each part as a chapter within a comic book, these scenes perfectly segue into each of the short films that make up the anthology and the animation in particular looks great, especially on this Blu-ray edition. One of my favourite things about Creepshow, even if it is silly and a bit dated, is that it is so clear in establishing what it aspires to be – a tongue in cheek homage to 1950’s comic books. The portmanteau film is difficult to pull off as it is inconsistent and by its very nature lacking in the time to really establish characters or a sense of narrative, but Creepshow works by using some very simple and effective ideas and by never trying to be anything particularly subversive or clever.

Although the Blu-ray looks good, there are no new special features here that weren’t on the 2007 DVD release. But if you haven’t already got that then this is well worth the investment, particularly for the feature length documentary Just Desserts: The Making of Creepshow, which in many ways is better than the actual film itself, with interviews and amusing anecdotes from all concerned (with the exception of King) it was a joy to watch.

Creepshow is available on Blu-ray now, from Second Sight.

Review by Quin

Let me just say right away, this movie has very little in common with the BBC game show hosted by Graham Norton. It does however share its inspiration. They are both based on the popular game most of us have either played at a party or with a group of friends. In this game, a question is asked – beginning with the phrase “Would you rather?” and the person answering must be truthful. Perhaps this calls my honesty in to question, but I always thought it was easy to lie and give the answer that was the least embarrassing. Let’s face it, for someone like me, playing Would You Rather was a lot easier and more comfortable than Truth or Dare? or Seven minutes in Heaven. But I guess those games are taken to varying levels depending on the age group and amount of adult supervision. I could see all of them as the basis for horror films; I had to look this up, but Truth or Dare? is actually a horror film from 1986 that starred an 8 year old A.J. McLean – he went on to become a Backstreet Boy. I’m sure someone will get around to making Seven Minutes in Heaven into a horror film eventually, probably also starring future boy band members.

But enough about imaginary movies, we have a real one to discuss. Iris (played by Brittany Snow) takes care of her brother who has leukemia. She is running out of options when she meets deep pocketed philanthropist Shepard Lambrick (played by the amazing Jeffrey Combs, looking a lot like a younger, scrawnier Burt Reynolds.) He invites her to come to his estate to compete with some others in a game. If she wins, her brother’s cancer treatment will be completely paid for and his name will go to the top of every list and therefore they will have nothing to worry about ever again. Sounds great, right? Well, as the title suggests, the game being played is Would You Rather. But in Lambrick’s version, people are tortured and then they die. Whoever doesn’t die will win.

Inside Lambrick’s home, we meet his servant staff and his son. We also meet those that Iris will be competing against. Lambrick’s right hand man does all of his dirty work – and he looks exactly like Erich von Stroheim in Sunset Boulevard. Jonny Coyne plays him with flashes of humanity between the bursts of brutality. You really get the feeling that he is just doing his job, which makes it that much more disturbing. Among the players of the game are a couple of familiar faces. Longtime character actor John Heard plays a recovering alcoholic who speaks up almost immediately in regard to the unfairness of the rules of Lambrick’s game. Former adult film star Sasha Grey plays Amy. She holds her own in this film, but her acting chops were much better in Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. Also, there is a scene in Would You Rather where she has to hold her breath for a really long time. If you’ve seen any of her older films, you know she can hold her breath just fine. So a little bit of your belief must be suspended.

Would You Rather is the first feature film directed by David Guy Levy and it was written by Steffen Schlachtenhaufen, who has an extended list of credits working on visual effects. Surprisingly, it’s a pretty darn good start for both of them. The direction is solid throughout and manages to avoid the things that could have pushed this into exploitation or torture porn, while at the same time maintaining a level of tension that is extremely uncomfortable. The writing suffers slightly in the setup. We are introduced to the characters in a way that lets us know what is going to happen at the end. However, the choice to give us more than a couple likeable characters was a breath of fresh air and something that is so often left out of horror. This elevates the level of taste and allows us to get emotionally involved. We even get to see the human side of the bad guys. Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear throughout who you should root for, but the villains aren’t complete monsters. It’s Jeffrey Combs for crying out loud. He does such a good job of playing cheesy and hammy, but here he is way more sinister with an air about him that shows us he really thinks he’s doing a good thing for these people, all while still providing much of the comic relief. Some of which makes you chuckle and the other stuff makes you wince.

The DVD is worth checking out for the thorough and insightful commentary from the director and writer. They do discuss in detail how they wanted to avoid torture porn, instead opting for more Hitchcockian suspense. As well as the reality show dynamic they got going with the assortment of characters who are in the competition. There is also a poster art gallery, which made me wonder why they chose the poster they did for the American release. They clearly had some wonderful designs. A couple of which reminded me of a creepy version of the Gosford Park movie poster. But they went with the photo of SPOILER ALERT: a pivotal part of the climax- albeit an act we never actually see on screen. This is perhaps the studio trying to sell a smart and well made movie to people who just want to see slicin’ up eyeballs. Ah ha ha ho! This movie is so much more than that.

Would You Rather is out now on Region 1 DVD from IFC Midnight.

Review by Stephanie Scaife

It’s difficult to find something new to say about Halloween, a film that has been so widely seen and written about over the years, but here we are with the 35th Anniversary edition on Blu-ray. This seems rather excessive given the other various versions on both DVD and an earlier Blu-ray, but as we all know the franchise has legions of voracious fans and film studios are never one to miss the opportunity to make a quick buck. This time it’s the turn of Anchor Bay Entertainment, and they’ve done a very good job with the brand new HD transfer, supervised by the original cinematographer Dean Cundey.

Halloween is widely regarded as being one of the best and most noticeably influential horror films ever made, and perhaps with good (and bad) reason too. Following on from the likes of Psycho and Peeping Tom, both of which use the voyeurism of the killer to suitably creepy effect, Halloween took things to a new level and in the process created its very own sub-genre, the slasher film. Without Halloween we would have no Friday the 13th, no A Nightmare on Elm Street and no Scream, and its unexpected popularity ensured that it was one of the highest grossing independent films of the period that it has subsequently been endlessly copied, ripped off and been paid homage to over the years. Genre tropes that we now take for granted; the final girl and the punishment of death for indulging in sex or drugs that have been done so often and so badly that they are more often than not sigh-inducing, eyeroll-worthy aspects of what has become, after the rape-revenge narrative, one of the more derided and oftentimes misogynistic horror sub-genres.

It’s easy to forget its humble beginnings, but Halloween serves as a constant reminder that when done properly, the slasher film can be a wonderful thing indeed. It is also a prime example of the less is more principle, we see Myers in the shadows and at a distance, a constant unsettling presence and threat without being so present and in your face that it lessens the scare factor, a lesson many contemporary horror films could do with paying more attention to.

I’ve seen Halloween many times over the years and it still holds up with age and repeat viewings, thanks in large part to the direction and the way it’s been shot. Dean Cundey was one of the first camera operators to use a Steadicam (or more specifically the Panaglide) and the opening sequence remains as striking today as it did upon first viewing. As we see the murder committed by Michael Myers from his point of view, in a continuous shot (with reportedly only two cuts) that follows him though his house until he stabs his naked sister post-coitus; well, it’s certainly implied that she’s just had sex with her boyfriend, although if that’s the case it’s also the quickest sex scene ever. A fantastic crane shot then reveals the murderer to be a dead-eyed child wearing a clown suit in this fantastic prologue to the film, emphasised by John Carpenter’s now iconic synth score. I won’t go though the plot of the film, as I think we all pretty much know what happens, but I will say that its simplicity adds to what makes it so perfect. It isn’t inundated with convoluted plot points and exposition, and instead what we’re given is a masterclass in filmmaking and some great performances from Jamie Lee Curtis (in her first feature film role) and the always excellent Donald Pleasence.

These days it’s unfortunate that watching Halloween just sort of makes me feel a little sad that Carpenter, a man of many talents has become so inconsistent over the years, In the Mouth of Madness (1994) being the last interesting, if flawed item on his resume. Still, having been responsible for Halloween and The Thing surely counteracts the numerous terrible films he’s made in recent years. I mean, it’s not every day someone comes along that creates a genre as well as one of the best body horrors every made, not to mention the unparalleled beard porn provided by Kurt Russell.

The Blu-ray package is unfortunately rather weak; besides the film looking and sounding fantastic there’s little else of note. I found the disc menu to be slightly confusing to navigate and the bonus features are nothing to write home about. We get a documentary entitled The Night She Came Home, that is essentially 50 minutes of Jamie Lee Curtis signing autographs and bemoaning the appeal of the horror genre, along with a new commentary with Curtis and Carpenter that treads a lot of the same ground covered by their last commentary as well as more Curtis bemoaning the horror genre, along with a few TV spots and trailers. It sadly omits the fantastic documentary Halloween: A Cut above the Rest, which can be found on previous editions. Overall, this is a marginally better investment than the last Blu-ray release of the film, as it certainly looks the best it’s ever looked; but I’m sure that won’t stop us getting a 40th anniversary edition in another five years time…

The 35th anniversary Blu-Ray Steelbook edition of Halloween is on sale now, from Anchor Bay.

Review by Tristan Bishop

Night time. A young woman pulls up her car and gets out. She walks to her front door, puts the keys in the lock and walks in. A man appears. He stabs her to death.

“My name is Allen”, a voice-over tells us, “And this is what I do.”

It’s an arresting opening to The 7th Day, a new serial killer film from director Jason Koch. This is Jason’s first feature – but, unlike some other first-time film-makers whose work I have had the misfortune to suffer through recently, Koch obviously has a passion for the darker side of cinema, having served time as a special FX artist on films like V/H/S 2 (2013) and Troma’s Return To Nuke ‘Em High Vol 1 (2013). This passion certainly comes across in The 7th Day, as it feels like ‘one for the fans’ rather than an attempt at jumping on a commercial bandwagon.

Allen, our ‘hero’, washes dishes in a local bar, is the owner of a terribly unkempt beard, and, in his spare time, is a murderer, necrophile and cannibal. The film is almost entirely narrated by Allen as he goes about his business, and we soon realise his monologue is an ‘interview’ he is performing in his mind (occasionally we see the imagined reporter – who looks rather like the zombified Dr Freudstein from Fulci’s House By The Cemetery, shoving a microphone into frame). It soon becomes clear that the interview is Allen’s way of processing and excusing his transgressions, and as reality starts to intrude on Allen’s life, his fantasy world starts to fall apart.

If you hadn’t already twigged, The 7th Day is a pretty grim ride – it starts off almost like a black comedy, as Allen’s ‘interview’ is so self-deluding (especially about his relations with women), and the first few murders are pretty bloodless, but soon the camera is dwelling on the finer details of Allen’s hobby, and it becomes more akin to the films of Jorge Buttgereit, who I would hazard a guess is the main influence here. I was also reminded of the razor-sharp Belgium serial killer film Man Bites Dog (1992), although this does not quite hit the same satirical heights as that masterpiece. Koch’s experience as a special FX and make-up man is very much in evidence here, as convincing gore is ladled on, viscera fills the screen, and the film often looks far better than the (presumably) minuscule budget might have you expect.

Unfortunately there are ways that the budget shows – the performances are fairly unconvincing, and Mark S Sanders as Allen doesn’t really have the magnetism required to carry the entire film. However the script occasionally throws up a thought-provoking line, the cinematography by Stephen Rubac is impressive, and Koch is obviously a talented director (although perhaps he should focus on that and get someone else in to edit his next film).

To sum up, this is not a film for everyone – it’s certainly not much ‘fun’, unless feeling slightly queasy is your idea of a Friday night good time, but it’s gruesome, occasionally philosophical about the nature of murder and the media, and it’s only 75 mins long. Jason Koch is definitely a name to keep an eye on, and with a little more money and the right cast and crew he might just come up with something terrific.

Dire Wit Films aim to release The 7th Day on DVD in February 2014.

Review by Ben Bussey

There’s something so nice about Curse of Chucky. Sure, it’s a nasty little movie full of duplicitous back-stabbers, some of whom do end up literally getting stabbed, or dying in some other hideous and spectacular fashion – but it still can’t help bringing that warm and fuzzy feeling. It’s the sixth instalment in the Child’s Play series (released within spitting distance of the original film’s twenty-fifth anniversary) – and it isn’t a remake, or lazy cash grab direct-to-DVD movie done purely so a greedy studio can hold onto the rights. Well, okay, it has gone straight to DVD, and I know I’m not alone in saying I’m a little surprised and irritated by that decision, but my point remains: unlike pretty much every other treatment of the great 80s horror franchises that we have seen in the last decade, this is not a cynical movie made for cynical reasons, signed off by some indifferent studio exec to some wannabe hot-shot up-and-coming director with a view to a massive opening weekend and very little concern about anything else. No, this is a film made by people who love the characters and want to explore their storyworld further in an interesting and exciting way. And it’s reassuring to see that the filmmakers do feel this way – as they’re the very people who created Child’s Play in the first place.

Let’s be honest, now… how many of us have quietly cursed John Carpenter under our breath time and again this past decade? The way he’s been perfectly content to take the money and sit back unconcerned as so many of his masterworks were soullessly rehashed? No, the remakes of Halloween, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing (yes, itself a remake, let’s not start that one again) do not in any way invalidate the brilliance Carpenter’s original movies, and given how much joy the man has brought us we can’t begrudge him wanting to be cosy in his twilight years, but even so – it’s hard not be pained by that sense of complete indifference as Hollywood bean-counters wipe their overpaid asses on his legacy.

As such, it’s also hard not to break out in applause for Don Mancini and David Kirschner. How many offers must these guys have had? How easy would it have been for them to simply sign away the franchise they created, and watch Chucky suffer the same treatment as Jason, Freddy, Pinhead et al? Frankly, once upon a time I might have expected nothing less of them, given how repetitive the Child’s Play movies became with Parts 2 and 3. But no. They held on to their baby. They tried different approaches, some of which worked (see Bride of Chucky), some of which didn’t (see Seed of Chucky). And now they’ve gone back to basics in pretty much the best possible way: rebooting without rebooting, recapturing the spirit of the movie that started it all but not just retracing their steps.

I’m almost surprised they didn’t bring back the Child’s Play title. Calling it Curse of Chucky implies it’ll follow on from the more comedic Bride and Seed, but that really isn’t the case at all; in terms of tone and content this really harks back to the original. Unless I’m very much mistaken, Curse of Chucky was originally conceived as a remake (don’t quote me, but I recall reports to that effect a few years back), and it could very easily have played out as such. One of the strengths of the Child’s Play movies – and one the advantages to them having filled out the series gradually, as opposed to splurging them out on a Friday the 13th/Saw-style assembly line – is that each film largely works on a standalone basis. If you go in knowing nothing more than the fact that it’s about a possessed toy who kills people, that’s absolutely fine. So it is that Curse of Chucky opens as though it could be any movie, with wheelchair-bound twentysomething Nica (Fiona Dourif) suffering quietly through life with her emotionally troubled, apron-string tugging mother (Chantal Quesnelle). Then all of a sudden, a mysterious parcel arrives, with some old doll inside. Neither mother nor daughter thinks much of it – but then only one of them makes it through the night alive.

Next day Nica finds herself with a full house, as her similarly overbearing sister (Danielle Bisutti) shows up, with her husband (Brennan Elliot), daughter (Summer H Howell), and their live-in nanny (Maitland McConnell) in tow, plus a priest (A Martinez) along to do whatever men in his position are supposed to under these circumstances. As is perhaps the norm, what is meant to be a healthy mourning period winds up anything but, with all manner of tensions popping up between all parties – and, wouldn’t you know it, strange things start happening, particularly once little Alice starts getting chummy with Chucky.

I’m torn between two key feelings as regards Curse of Chucky going straight to DVD: on the one hand, I feel it’s a terrible disservice to a movie that deserves more, and which had the potential do okay at the box office; on the other hand, perhaps it’s long since time we cast aside the stigma of straight to DVD releases. After all, the bulk of the best horror movies these days rarely play the big screen outside of festivals, as has of course been the case here (Steph caught it at FrightFest). They don’t all have to wind up like the Lost Boys or From Dusk Till Dawn sequels; there is room for really intelligent filmmaking in this arena. And that’s very much what Don Mancini has delivered here. Curse of Chucky looks great, and is shot in a very interesting way which I daresay highlights what a student of cinema Mancini really is. Indeed, perhaps I was wrong earlier to suggest this film doesn’t carry on in the spirit of Bride and Seed, for in its own way it’s equally self-referential and loaded with nods to other films; but the vital difference here is that, by and large, Mancini isn’t playing it for laughs.

From the moment Chucky enters the picture, lying apparently lifeless in a cardboard box, the dread starts to build; yes, we all know damn well the doll’s going to come to life, but we don’t know when. Until that moment, Chucky is just an object in the background, but one which draws our attention, and the film effectively builds suspense as we wait on tenderhooks for him to make his first move. In the meantime we get to know the characters in this creepy old house, and happily they prove as intriguing as their surroundings, and Mancini captures both cast and setting quite beautifully with a camera that’s smoothly, almost imperceptibly on the move at all times.

Sure, we have smartphones, laptops and webcams all coming into play (and even a snippet midway when, yes, Chucky goes found footage), but all in all there’s something very old fashioned about Curse of Chucky, harking back to the very earliest days of the slasher – Bava’s Bay of Blood, for instance – when the stories were more along the lines of Agatha Christie murder mysteries with particularly gruesome death scenes. As time went on, this format naturally wound up with the Friday the 13th format of a gory kill every ten minutes or so. However, while Mancini doesn’t spare us the gore, he wisely doesn’t neglect to bring in surprises of other kinds, with various red herrings giving way to character developments we might not have anticipated.

It’s all pulled off wonderfully by the cast. Danielle Bisutti does beautifully as everyone’s worst nightmare of a sibling, Brennan Elliot is great as the husband who’s clearly had his fill of taking shit, Summer H Howell is the ideal innocent little girl – and of course, Brad Dourif picks it all up like it was only yesterday. Still, the clear star of the show is Fiona Dourif. Obviously the temptation is there to scream nepotism given who her father is (check the surnnames if you haven’t twigged yet), but there can be no doubt this is an actress of great charisma and gravitas, who I daresay has real scream queen potential. (Room for a little plug – fans of Ms Dourif might want to check out the Kickstarter for one of her next projects, the UK-based short film She.)

Yes, all in all I was very impressed with Curse of Chucky. Now, if only it had had the good sense to end about five minutes earlier… don’t worry, I’m not going to get into spoilers, but the narrative reaches its natural conclusion only for the film to carry on, for the sake of a couple of scenes which serve only to please existing fans of the series without in any way serving this specific story. It’s too bad that Mancini chose to leave things on such a self-indulgent note, given what a refreshingly lean and self contained film Curse of Chucky is for the most part. Still, such a minor offence can be excused given how well done everything else is. I’m half tempted to declare this the best movie in the Child’s Play series yet, but that might be premature – even so, I’d definitely say it’s straight up there in the top three, along with the original and Bride.

(It’s also a shame that the DVD is, in the words of the press release, ‘vanilla’ – but there look to be plenty of decent extras on the Blu-Ray.)

Curse of Chucky is released to Region 2 DVD, Blu-Ray & Ultraviolet on 21st October 2013, from Universal.

Review by Tristan Bishop

Any publicity is good publicity, so the saying goes, and Young, High and Dead certainly announced itself in an unusual way, catching the attention for all the wrong reasons. A few months back a press release and trailer surfaced, with the director taking great pains to tell us that one of the main characters gets raped in the film. Seriously. It gets mentioned three times in the space of a few sentences, with the director even stating ‘…the trailer, in which I fake rape (the actress in question).’ Troubling, to say the least, and not helped remotely by the accompanying rhetoric about how the director is ‘from the wrong side of the tracks’, and that the film ‘is not what the scene wants or needs, but at least it’s different’. So, just to recap, the director has a massive chip on his shoulder over his background, is worryingly obsessed with the rape of one of the actresses, and freely admits that his film is likely of no interest to the horror crowd. Somebody get this guy a job in marketing!

My colleagues at BAH were, it turns out, rather put off the film by this press release, because they are (by-and-large) sensible types who don’t suffer from some form of cinematic masochism, but yours truly is labouring under the idea that watching all the crap that no-one else will touch with a bargepole is actually performing a useful public service.

Young, High and Dead (not a bad title, it must be said; it certainly fires the imagination) starts with five young people making their way to a camping trip in the woods, fuelled by a toolbox full of drugs. The three guys are varying degrees of dickbag, and the girls are pretty and not given a hell of a lot of characterisation (this is a shame, as one of them is Hannah Tointon, who impressed in the excellent The Children in 2008). So far, so standard. This takes up the first half hour of the film, but is intercut with (thankfully implied) scenes of a man mutilating an imprisoned little girl. The next half hour is taken up entirely with the characters sitting around a campfire, taking enough drugs to make Tony Montana and Cheech Marin blush, and the cracks in their relationships appearing as they get more wasted and paranoid. Of course, in the final third the child-killer appears and mayhem ensues, but, to be honest, I’ll be extremely impressed if you last that long.

I’ll go through the good points of the film first, in the interests of balance. The animated intro is quirky and surprising, and there is a post-credits scene at the end which ties into an earlier situation and made me chuckle. Unfortunately what is sandwiched between these short moments is 90 minutes of utter tedium. The film has a turgid pace, no build-up (in fact the intercutting at the start serves only to confuse, let alone slightly nauseate), detestable characters, and a lo-fi handheld camera style that serves to make it look both cheap, and like a found footage film. Add to this mix some woeful editing during a silly climax and you’re left with something a little way from entertaining.

As for the much-trumpeted (by the director at least) rape scene, well, it is at least thankfully non-explicit, and the director is obviously attempting to make us ‘complicit’ in the act by it being filmed in extreme close-up POV, but it serves no purpose in the story at all, and, with a film this badly-made, any emotional impact is going to be negligible anyway. In fact, the biggest shock in the film is in the opening credits, which tell us that, although Luke Brady is credited as director and writer, there are an additional FOUR people credited as ‘co-director’. I have no idea what a ‘co-director’ is, but having four of the buggers certainly didn’t help matters here.

Young, High and Dead isn’t the worst British horror film ever made (I can’t imagine I’ll ever see something as pointless and appalling as Black Shuck again in my life), but I’d place it very near the bottom of the pile. Still, apparently someone likes it, as the second (much less worrying, although still banging on about ‘being from the gutter’) press release mentions a sequel on the horizon, a proposition which even a bad film-loving masochist like myself would balk at.

Young, High & Dead is available to watch on demand in the UK here. It will be released to VOD in the US at Halloween.

(Note: director Luke Brady has responded to the criticism of his press release.)

Review by Stephanie Scaife

Caution: moderate spoilers and NSFW pictures of Mathilda May ahead.

Tobe Hooper has had a mixed and oftentimes disappointing career as a filmmaker; the highs of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, widely regarded as one of the best horror films ever made, and the lows of, well, just about everything else he’s ever done. Poltergeist proved to be a massive success, and although a large part of that may be due to the involvement of Spielberg it certainly must’ve paved the way for Lifeforce, a bizarre and self indulgent homage to the Hammer horror film, and more specifically Quatermass.

Based on the Colin Wilson novel The Space Vampires, Lifeforce was bankrolled by Cannon Films and suffered from running over schedule, as well as much tinkering and cutting in post production resulting in a heavily edited US theatrical cut that made little to no sense, and forwent most of the Henry Mancini score, arguably one of the best things about the film to begin with. Over the years it has largely been this version that has been available, but now thanks to Arrow Video we’ve been given a double Blu-ray set that contains both the US theatrical version along with the longer international cut that reinstates the soundtrack, the full opening sequence and, apparently, more naked Mathilda May.

I have to admit to only having a vague idea as to what Lifeforce was before I sat down to watch it recently. In my head and probably based from some of the posters I’d seen, the assumption I had made was that it was a cheap knock off of Alien, which is actually pretty far from the truth. In fact when I looked it up on IMDb, the synopsis given makes it sound like perhaps the best film ever made: “A race of space vampires arrive in London and infect the populace”. The end result, however, is a mix of the two. It’s easy to understand how it has become a cult favourite despite its obvious failings, because it makes up for these in droves with its sheer ambition and, again, naked Mathilda May.

The plot is about as convoluted as they come and it definitely lost me in places, but in these instances I think it is best just to go along for the ride and appreciate the sheer spectacle on show. In essence though Lifeforce is about a mysterious 150-mile long spaceship that is discovered in Halley’s Comet that contains the perfectly preserved bodies of three humanoid creatures who are recovered by Colonel Tom Carlsen (Steve Railsback) and the crew of his ship, the Churchill. On their return to earth the Churchill loses contact and is recovered with only the humanoids remaining intact, the only other survivor being Carlsen who turns up in an escape pod. They are taken to a research centre in London where it transpires that our three humanoids, one female (Mathilda May) and two male (Chris Jagger and Bill Malin) are space vampires that are also seemingly incapable of wearing clothes and who instead of sucking blood, like regular run of the mill vampires, drain their victim’s “life force”. The female vampire escapes and is traced to Yorkshire via a psychic link that she shares with Carlsen – whilst there Patrick Stewart pops up as the manager of the hospital, hamming it up a treat. This little sojourn into Yorkshire, however, is all an elaborate ruse to lure them out of London whilst the two male vampires turn the population into zombies. This all leads to a rather bizarre finale where St Paul’s Cathedral blows up and the female vampire is beamed back aboard her unfeasibly large spaceship.

Lifeforce really doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s so completely batshit insane that it’s impossible not to stare, transfixed with dropped jaw. You have to love Cannon films for producing things like Lifeforce, something that would never happen today (and perhaps with good reason too), and it is very much a fascinating oddity that any genre fan needs to see, because love it or hate it there really isn’t anything else quite like it. Arrow have of course gone the full hog with regards to packaging and extras: both the theatrical and international versions have been lovingly transferred into HD by Hooper himself, and there are multiple audio commentaries, making-of documentaries, interviews and everything else you’d expect that makes every Arrow purchase so desirable, even if the film in question isn’t up to much.

Lifeforce is available now on Blu-ray in the UK from Arrow Video.

Review by Ben Bussey

Caution: the following review of this thoroughly naughty movie contains thoroughly naughty images from some thoroughly naughty scenes, which are almost certainly NSFW depending on how lenient your employers are (assuming Brutal As Hell isn’t already barred by their safe-search settings and whatnot).

Still with us? Awesome…

This charming little family-friendly flick is all about a wholesome salt-of-the-earth everyman type by the name of Rex Romanski (Michael Reed). This charming all-American boy’s favourite past times include fucking, snorting cocaine, fucking, visiting porno movie theatres, more fucking, and having a good old boogie on down on the dance floor at the discotheque – generally followed by a bit more fucking. Quite how he finances this hedonistic lifestyle is never made clear, but hey, let’s not nit-pick.

Rex’s disco ball is in full spin when he gets a new lady in his sights by the name of Rita Marie (Ruth Sullivan). A swinging time is had – but alas, it isn’t long until shit gets sour. When Rex tries his luck with porn star queen Amoreena Jones (Sarah Nicklin) the very next night, it becomes clear that Rita isn’t quite on the same page with Rex’s free-livin’, free-lovin’ ways – and sadly, it seems Rex just fucked-and-left the wrong disco chick, as Rita is a vengeful witch, with diabolic powers up the caboose and a burning jealousy to boot. Soon enough, blood will be gushing, along with all those other bodily fluids.

So what we’ve basically got here is 80-odd minutes of disco fever, garish clothing and day-glo wigs, peppered with black magic, zombie women, moments of horrific violence – and, just in case I hadn’t already made this clear, lots and lots of sex and nudity. All of it is dished up in very much the grindhouse/rewindhouse manner, with the requisite superimposed scratches, obviously overdubbed dialogue and blatant use of crudely-constructed miniatures for exterior shots.

But more than that – brace yourselves for this, now… The Disco Exorcist is also a genuinely well-written, well-made, well-acted film, which tells a compelling story and crafts compelling characters. Trust me, I was as surprised as you are.

Director Richard Griffin may have piled on the vintage contrivances in much the same manner as many of his microbudget contemporaries, but he’s clearly remembered a few key things that others have forgotten. Firstly, he’s managed a level of authenticity that goes way beyond most, almost to the extent that it really could be a lost movie from the era. As tongue in cheek as it all is, there are no pointed references, no clever-clever winks to the camera. Vitally, for all its absurdity, it never lapses into outright lampoon territory as, say, Black Dynamite unfortunately does in the final act. Quite the contrary, in fact: one of the real surprises of The Disco Exorcist is that it’s genuinely quite effective as a horror movie. There’s very real dramatic build-up from Rex and Rita’s first meeting up to her first violent outburst, as she gradually goes from seeming like a perfectly nice lady to being the scariest bitch around. Then there are the scenes which cut between Rex and Amoreena getting it on to Rita performing her black magic rituals, edited in such a way that we’re sometimes not sure what’s going on in which location. It’s a great midnight movie effect, giving it all a bad trip feel that’s entirely appropriate to the 70s era – but, as camp as it is, it’s still played to genuinely sinister effect.

Oh, did I mention sex again? I suppose I did. Yes, once again, there is a hell of a lot of sex in The Disco Exorcist. You may note the quote from Twitch’s Bryan White in the trailer below, remarking how dangerously close this is to a porno – and he’s not wrong. Now, I wasn’t keeping count or anything (honest), but there must be something sexual going on in at least every other scene, whether it’s the opening striptease, leading into Rex’s introductory three-way, to his night with Rita, to watching one of Amoreena’s pornos, to having sex with Amoreena, to starring in a porno with Amoreena and two other women… and so it goes until the literal orgy of death climax (hurhur). Prudes shouldn’t give this a rental, obviously. And yes, these are proper sex scenes. Remember how annoyed you were with the likes of Planet Terror, Machete and Bitch Slap, when none of the leads actually got naked and it always cut away before they got to business? No such worries with The Disco Exorcist. There are enough thrusting buttocks, bouncing boobies and grinding hips on show here to make you dizzy – and it’s fairly balanced in male/female ratio, given that Michael Reed’s Rex is balls deep in the bulk of the action. It does seem a little odd, then, that Sarah Nicklin must have gone into this with a no-nipples clause, given her jubblies are strategically covered in all her many scenes of rumpy-pumpy. But hey – her body, her business.

But once again, The Disco Exorcist doesn’t skimp on the horror either. We’ve got some good old fashioned witchcraft scenes – bit of Ruth Sullivan writhing around naked and covered in blood on top of a pentagram, and a nice spot of woodland necromancy, all of which is shot in a surprisingly beautiful way. Then, of course, there’s plenty of full-on gore too: decapitations, ripped out hearts – and, yes, a bit of mangled man-meat… (crosses legs). Sure, there’s no mistaking this is a low budget production, but it’s all pretty well realised nonetheless.

But above all else – The Disco Exorcist is really damn funny. Writer Tony Nunes piles on the corny 70-isms in the dialogue, all cool cats and hot chicks aplenty. The disco ensemble scenes are often reminiscent of the party sequences in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; a constant barrage of absurd and exaggerated conversation which somehow falls just the right side of pastiche. It’s having fun with the tropes of the era without making fun of them, and thereby avoiding the air of smugness that films of this ilk often reek of. All The Disco Exorcist comes out reeking of is weed, incense, lubricant and Hai Karate. Yup, that’s one pungent cocktail, and just right for the witching hour. It’s raunchy, raucous, and a ridiculous amount of fun.

The Disco Exorcist is out now Region 2 DVD from Monster Pictures.