It’s 1888 and Victorian London is gripped by a series of brutal murders. Prostitutes are found mutilated and the city is rife with rumours as to who the killer might be. A group called the All Ladies Ghost Hunting Society has their own specific theory as to the murderer’s identity, believing it all to be the work of a ghost. Millie (Cathy Wippell) is particularly keen on bringing the reign of terror to an end and enlists the help of her friend Tamworth (Tom Stourton) to document the Society’s ongoing investigations on his cutting edge innovation – a moving image machine…
Just when you think there’s nothing new which can be brought to the found footage genre, director Joseph Archer and writer Cathy Wippell take us back to an unexpected era in Snapshot (2026), coupled with a visual style which is both a boon and what must have been its own, enforced technical nightmare, the circle in the middle of the screen throwing sharp focus onto the detail it captures while leaving so much around the edges tantalisingly undocumented.
Snapshot features a group of smart, strong, female characters whose struggles in this bygone era are as depressingly relevant as today, viewed by most men as providing either a good wife or a convenient, disposable, sexual partner. The police don’t seem to be particularly competent – or indeed, interested – when it comes to solving this disturbing string of murders, especially as the victims are seen to be of ill-repute and the newspapers of the time compete to publish the most salacious story to a drooling public, facts be damned.
A tour guide, showing a bunch of blokes the various sites where the killings have occurred, is told to cut the chitchat and show them “where she got bumped.” Charming, you might think but take a moment to consider how death is often reported, and speculated upon, now. There are also several darkly comic, vox pop asides in which Tamworth records the theories of a series of a generally clueless male population pretending what a ghastly business it all is while still gleefully pontificating on who the killer might be.
In contrast to the mainly grubby, sparingly-glimpsed male supporting cast, Snapshot turns its lens on a fascinating sisterhood, each of them rebelling against polite society in their own unique ways, be it Millie’s reluctance to be married off to someone wealthy but dull, Nadia Lamin’s Madame Evelyn, who has built her own business on simple male lust and Molly O’Brien (Lydia Helen), a fearless, fearsome force of nature for whom the term “side hustle” could have been invented way back in the late nineteenth century.
Snapshot is never satisfied with playing the greatest hits of the found footage subgenre and anyone expecting the usual creeping about and sudden, loud jump scares may wonder why this has been replaced by a study of how women can raise themselves up, only to be constantly living in fear of being torn down, disgraced, or worse, courtesy of behavioural rules constructed by a patriarchy that obviously wouldn’t indulge in this sort of behaviour in these more enlightened times (stares directly into pinhole camera for full sarcastic effect). The final act, when matters take a surprisingly dark turn, ups both the gruesomeness and the tragedy as the killings hit close to home and Millie’s loosening grip on her sanity sends her into a spiral.
Visually, Snapshot is a feast, the sepia tones capturing both the beauty and grime of England’s capital city. The dialogue has a taste of the olde worlde about it while still feeling modern enough for it not to get bogged down in any of that bodice-ripping vocab, and the quieter sequences in which the characters discuss their lives are as vital as the building suspense. In terms of gore, it’s never gratuitous, but the lingering camerawork as the image machine glides unblinkingly around a bloody corpse is effective and disturbing.
Setting the tale in the Jack The Ripper era is a clever concept, as that period of English history comes inbuilt with its own set of archetypes and numerous portrayals in both novels and movies. Most audience members will arrive with their own set of expectations and Snapshot delights in undermining most of those. Even the initially jolly, pub singalong to Two Lovely Black Eyes turns on a shilling into something far more chilling and the tune resonates throughout the rest of the runtime, right to the disquieting final shot.
From a synopsis which immediately suggests a black and white Blair Witch Project, Snapshot tears up the found footage rulebook to deliver a fascinating genre blender in which the concerns of the past line up with those of the present. Questions about unreliable – or just plain inaccurate – reporting are raised, as is the chaos of multiple media outlets all trying to be the one who shouts the loudest. This extends to the ordering and editing of Tamworth’s footage itself. Has it been assembled to present a particular narrative, and are all those inserted frames of carnage a means of hooking the watcher at the expense of the truth?
Horror fans may feel like Snapshot only flirts with the truly nasty side of the crimewave gripping the seedier side of London, but viewed as a skilfully-penned drama with elements of psychological suspenser and serial killer thriller, those detours into the darkest corners of the human mind land all the better. It’s a consistently impressive labour of love from Archer and Wippell and brings a hitherto untapped level of depth to a subgenre that always seems to be about to breathe its last. You’ll want to see this more than once – and you’ll need to.
Snapshot (2026) featured at this year’s Spirit of Independence in Sheffield, UK.
When the father of Mick Courtney (Richard Glover) and Drew Courtney (Jonathan Broke) passes away, these two estranged brothers are brought together in order to scatter their father’s ashes in a place he held dear – the Lake District. Forced to endure each other’s company on a weekend trip there, will they manage to put aside their differences long enough to fulfil their dad’s dying wish?
The synopsis of writer/director Mick Hardman’s comedy drama would suggest a gentle, feelgood ramble and there’s a fair amount of that going on, but there are some spikier edges to the story, such as Mick’s opening voicemail to Drew recounting his current relationship woes and how his situation has him thinking of ending it all, only for Drew to get bored of the voicemail just before that vital piece of information. It’s a perfect introduction to the dynamic between the siblings, given further detail courtesy of an expletive-peppered conversation at the house of their understanding – but only to a point – mum Irene (Fiona Mulvaney).
Even though Mick’s view of his deceased pop is that he always invested more time and love in Drew, his reluctance to head anywhere out of London is, of course overcome and they held north on a not especially cheery six and a half hour car journey to spend what both expect to be a not especially cheery couple of days in the middle of nowhere, albeit in a lovely cottage with friendly neighbour Eve (Rachel Barry) nearby to help out, even if she does think there’s something very wrong with Mick after an awkward first meeting.
Favouring a steady-paced and character-based humour over contrived situations, The Old Man rests on the strength of the performances of its two leads and both Glover and Broke are a joy, adept at playing the comedic elements with a naturalistic flair. That’s not to say that when the emotion hits, you won’t be pretending you have something in your eye. This tugs at the heart strings without the need for grandstanding and the low key moments are all the more affecting for its small cast’s subtle work.
Mick Courtney proves to be one of cinema’s curmudgeons par excellence, annoyed at various aspects of his brother’s more settled lifestyle while completely failing to control any of his own circumstances, beyond engineering the opportunity to go for a pint. As matters progress, however, it’s revealed that Drew isn’t quite the pillar of the community he seems and Mick has far more complexity that being a grumpy bloke. The template of this deems that they grow closer together, everyone learns something, blah blah blah, but there’s an edge to The Old Man which suggests that either of them may abandon the trip at any point, even though there’s a grudging love which is displayed through all of the bickering.
The potential romantic interest isn’t your standard one, either, with Eve introduced as a damaged but nonetheless strong presence whose quirks give what’s often a throwaway role some genuine heft. Eve’s interactions with Mick have that funny/sad quality which makes them a highlight of the film and as such are carefully rationed, shifting the emphasis to Mick’s increasing heartbreak at being the one his father ignored and Drew’s increasing frustration with his home life.
However, things are never allowed to get too heavy and, very much like Mick’s musings, any point at which the wallowing looks like it’s about to overwhelm the tone is curtailed by some amusing mini-crisis or zinger in the dialogue. The running joke about the ashes and their dubious container, both of which befall various disasters on a fairly regular basis, is particularly comical and reflects the ramshackle nature of their mission.
Considering the rapid nature of the location shoot and the small number of crew involved, the views of the Lake District are expertly composed and look rather gorgeous, which contrasts well with Mick’s impromptu rendition of a certain, well-known sitcom theme that fits the bill as his version of a eulogy. The Old Man is full of scenes which celebrate beauty and ridiculousness at the same time, and the back and forth between Mick and Drew never seems anything less than credible. It’s easy to understand why they can both get on each other’s nerves and how ill-equipped they are, at least in the earlier scenes, to bury the hatchet. The development of their relationship across the piece is steadily, convincingly built and the ultimate resolution is an audience pleaser without being overly neat.
It may sound twee to say that The Old Man is a lovely film, but it is a lovely film and, as someone who primarily covers horror movies, I do not believe “twee” is in my reviewing vocabulary. This is warm, well-written and poignant, but before you think it’s perfect Sunday afternoon fare, what Sunday afternoon movie drops the c-bomb? Not only that, but it’s also a perfectly judged one. Mick and Drew may be reluctant to spend time with each other, but I was delighted to be in their company for an hour and a half. We need British movies like this, bringing a share of bittersweet, relatable situations that don’t need operatic levels of drama or baroque plot twists. Get ready to be won over.
The Old Man (2026) featured as part of this year’s Spirit of Independence Film Festival in Sheffield, UK.
Veteran cop Teddy Sharpe (Lou Diamond Phillips) attempts to keep law and order as the senior officer representing the Tribal Force of the Thunderstone reservation. His methods are not always convention and he’s often at odds with local Sheriff Darius Humphrey (Nick Stahl) because Teddy understands the social and economic issues which plague the generally impoverished community. As Teddy looks to mentor new recruit Sandra (Dana Namerode), clouds gather on the horizon as recently paroled gang leader Richie Blacklance (Elisha Pratt) has returned home with a few scores to settle and cares little about igniting a turf war with his rivals…
Originally titled Keep Quiet, which is more in line with various plot points in Zach Montague’s script, the grittier promise of the Gangland monicker is more or less kept across its runtime, from the distinctly non-PC introduction of the grizzled Sharpe to its controlled blasts of down and dirty violence. There’s the classic clash of cultures, although it’s the youngster who is the procedure-driven, by the book officer and the old stager who’s prone to going off the range. At one point, Sandra is appalled that Teddy doesn’t arrest a couple of ne’er do wells who are clearly up to no good, but Teddy explains the knock-on effect of how a stint in the cells will ultimately make things worse. He’s also not one for the term “Indigenous” because that terminology will never fly in a settlement such as Thunderstone.
Much of the set-up of Vincent Grashaw’s film will be familiar to fans of thrillers. Subjects such as police brutality, the lure of the criminal lifestyle, the familial bonds of both the gangs and law enforcement are all dealt with here, as is the bad guy returning to wreak havoc on his old stomping ground. Most of the major players here have their own tragic backstory, Sharpe blaming himself for not spotting a dreadful series of crimes years before and Sandra attempting to escape her own personal shame from a previous, city-based precinct.
And yet, for all of its recognisable genre trappings, Gangland scores for a number of reasons. Grashaw’s direction is unobtrusive but effective, bringing out the very best in his cast. Lou Diamond Phillips has never been better, giving a superb performance as an outwardly weary type with a line in tough love and dry humour which conceals a drive to do the right thing which could be the end of him. Montague’s dialogue assists immensely in adding complexity to Sharpe, but the top liner’s star power and a talent that caught the attention in Young Guns is honed to such perfection, you’ll forget he ever was Chavez.
Namerode is given a number of opportunities to shine too, providing the necessary contrast to her trainer and slotting neatly into the role of the outsider whom you fervently hope will learn quickly enough not to get shot (I’m not divulging whether or not this happens). Pratt exudes menace and cold blooded practicality as a very nasty piece of work indeed, but in his quieter moments there are glimpses of the love he has for his family. Even the smaller roles are given the necessary consideration, with Lane Factor and Irene Bedard making their mark as Richie’s nephew and grandmother respectively.
Perhaps the only one who gets a little short changed is Nick Stahl’s boorish Humphrey, given dialogue and behaviour which means that you know he’s going to be a rotten apple from the off and thus has him veer closer to the archetype than the rest. Still, Stahl is does a fine job of being utterly horrible and the generally downbeat tone of Gangland means that any kind of comeuppance for him is by no means guaranteed.
Agreeably paced, which allows for vital character detail and a few welcome, episodic diversions to flesh out the daily routine of the Tribal Force, Gangland has a resounding sense of place. This is bolstered by Brandon Waddell’s splendid cinematography which captures squalor and beauty sitting side by side. Although there’s a welcome focus on relationships over chases and shootouts, it never loses sight of the fact that it’s a thriller and sets about delivering a suspenseful final act which hits all of the right emotional and action beats.
Swerving the sensational and portraying the contemporary issues which affect an almost abandoned section of society which clings to a different time, Gangland works as both a gripping procedural and a meaningful, precise vision of an America that’s far from the big cities and where the law is never as cut and dried as it’s written. In addition to all of that, there’s the opportunity to enjoy an hour and three quarters of Lou Diamond Phillips in irresistible, career best form. Keep Quiet? Definitely not. Spread the word about this one.
Gangland (2025) appeared at this year’s Spirit of Independence Film Festival in Sheffield, UK.
Unlucky in love Drew (Drew Sinclair) wanders into a pub and finds the gaff empty except for Johnny (Nathan Geering), who announces that the place is closed and that Drew should find an alternative establishment to enjoy his refreshment. However, it turns out that Drew is meeting someone there for a first date and attempts to hang around for a bit, hoping that he might be allowed to stay. This turns out to be an extremely bad decision on Drew’s part, because the boozer is the stage for a series of appointments as various martial arts assassins are scheduled to turn up on the hour, every hour, intent on killing Johnny…
Writer/director/star Nathan Geering’s film opens with a caption informing that The Lock-In is a love letter to old school kung fu movies and so it proves to be, except that this is likely to be the first kung fu movie set in the exotic locales of Rotherham and almost certainly the first to use the word “mardy” in its screenplay. Very early on it transpires that Nathan has escaped a family of trained killers headed up by The Father (genre royalty Keith Vitale) and is trying to live a peaceful existence. However, you don’t just leave this family, hence the regular supply of skilled nutters staking their claim to be the one who finally took out Johnny.
Of course, Drew’s wheedling persistence buys himself enough time to scope out the place before his date shows, then traps him in a seemingly never-ending fight for survival. I say “seemingly never-ending” because for folks who may not enjoy watching a procession of folks getting punched, kicked, glassed, hit with pool cues, gouged, stabbed, broken and generally getting battered, The Lock-In runs just four minutes shy of two hours and although there are pauses for the Drew/Johnny double act to develop, there’s a lot of acrobatic thumping on display here as the bodies pile up. I’m talking literally. There’s actually a pile of bodies in one of the rooms, which is inevitably added to as the latest challenger fails to dispatch their target.
This could have been realised with straight-faced, brutal violence, but given the clumsy, naïve nature of Drew and the increasing annoyance at Johnny at having this passenger along for the ride, The Lock-In wisely, ahem, locks into action comedy mode. It plays up the laughs as the audience finds out more of Drew’s disastrous dating background and how spectacularly unprepared he is to deal with any of the increasingly dangerous situation, even if he does possess a green belt in judo.
For a film with a trim budget, the action, choreographed by Geering, is engaging and has enough variety to keep fight fans coming back for more. For instance, one opponent’s weapon is her deadly pigtails; another couple attempts to salsa Johnny to death. It’s daft, sure, but the impressive athleticism and stunt work is a match for productions with far higher budgets and there’s plenty of nods to subgenre staples to reward fans of 1970s/1980s martial arts flicks, without those references getting in the way for folks who haven’t so much as seen Enter The Dragon.
The Lock-In does fall into that first feature syndrome of loading the proceedings with as many ideas as possible, which means there’s not only the main plot, but flashbacks to previous missions and an extended encore in a scrapyard (with the emphasis on “scrap”) and by the end credits there’s the slight feeling that this could have lost a couple of confrontations and been the tighter for it. However, there are numerous crowd-pleasing moments, particularly a standout flashback sequence in which Johnny battles his way up several levels of a building to confront a piano playing psychopath.
It’s heartening that my home county of South Yorkshire is now on the kung fu movie map and Nathan Geering’s enthusiasm for this type of movie is evident in every frame of The Lock-In, pushing the ambition of low-budget filmmaking way, way beyond expected levels. There’s even a ruckus up at several thousand feet between two skydivers, filmed for real as they slap each other around while plummeting towards the deck. It’s that kind of insanity which powers the film and, coupled with comedic exchanges which hit the mark more often than not, you can’t help but smile at the sheer audacity of the project. Also, what other movie of this type would refer to an enemy fighter as a “bugger”? Get thi sen along to this alehouse for a few rounds of break-fu and don’t forget the shandy for Drew.
The Lock-In featured at this year’s Spirit of Independence Film Festival in Sheffield, UK.
What starts out as a quiet Saturday for Sandra (Nerea Barros), her husband Liam (Willam Miller) and their children Emma (Alma Bruno) and Lucía (Claudia Lilley) slowly turns into a nightmare, as the worldwide outbreak of a virulent disease reaches their sleepy, suburban neighbourhood…
We’re in infected/undead territory once again, which is not necessarily a bad thing if you’re into the subgenre as much as I am. I would argue that, although this particular horror space is somewhat overcrowed, there’s always room for a fresh vision and writer/director Manu Pons leans more into the human drama generated by such a potential mass extinction event, rather than unrelenting, blazing zombie action.
The opening doesn’t even focus on the featured family’s dynamics, but heads to an educational establishment where two students discuss their project on the subject of plagues, punctuated by the odd, flippant comment from their peers but mainly giving the viewer a quick Pandemic 101, nodding to the Black Death and suggesting newer, more technological variants on rapidly transmitted epidemics. It’s at that point we’d expect to follow that class – or at least the presenters of the talk – into a situation where their schoolwork becomes terrifying reality, but we’re off to join the breakfast rituals of Sandra and co, where the conversation also turns to plagues and the Black Death gets a further namecheck. Would you like thoughts of agonising death with your pancakes?
As much as the first act sets up the tense situation between Sandra and Liam, with their kids in the middle of two folks possibly looking to go separate ways, the overload of foreshadowing and the leisurely pace at which the story ambles along even before any of these folks decide to leave the house feels a bit of a patience tester, especially for those who may have seen the trailer and are waiting for tense face-offs and desperate escapes from hordes of drooling ghouls.
It’s a good half hour before Sandra and Liam head to the supermarket and start to get the inkling that something is very, very wrong and although there’s a fabulous, throwaway line from the increasingly irritated Sandra – “The end of the f***ing world, just what I needed right now” – The First Day (2026) still takes further time in unveiling the threat, at which point it switches to an increasingly fraught race against time to find a way of fleeing a hopeless looking situation and keeping the family unit together.
The First Day feels like a very good episode of an hour long, standalone horror series stretched out to ninety-one minutes, so most of the suspenseful moments have the air taken out of them by long stretches where the viewer knows something bad is going to happen, but is kept waiting by the resolutely deliberate pace of the piece. It’s frustrating because when this is good, it’s very good, with smart, unshowy touches, such as the TV not being able to pick up a signal, a distant explosion reflected in a window or a baby’s dummy dripping blood replacing big scale destruction and gore.
Where The First Day does score is in its performances, specifically that of Nerea Barros, who’s set up as the role which would often degenerate into the kick-arse action babe in less considered takes. Her scenes with Miller occasionally stray into the warring couple tropes we’ve seen many times before, but the resolution of their relationship problems provides a gut punch which carries across the final, surprisingly downbeat act, as matters gets darker with each plot turn and that cute kid who was introduced about twenty minutes in? Not so cute anymore.
As something that is clearly attempting to bring something to the (doomy breakfast) table, The First Day shifts focus away from charging, slobbering maniacs and gory eviscerations to examine the strain on family bonds. The languid tempo of the screenplay is akin to the classic, shuffling masses of Romero’s canon rather than the more fleet of foot afflicted seen here and the eventual, brief scrap between the clean and contaminated may come far too late in the day but if you look at Pons’ film as a drama which inevitably slides into horror the lack of splashy effects doesn’t matter and the brutality comes from the emotional toll taken on the protagonists. Of course, you could argue that 28 Days Later: The Bone Temple manages to deliver on both counts but The First Day is still sporadically impactful on a fraction of the budget. However, as mentioned previously, a fairly high level of patience may be required.
On October 19th, 2003, in the town of One Season, Jack (Jack Rawlinson) goes for a swim and disappears beneath the waves. Three weeks later, he returns without an explanation and no knowledge of what has happened to him in the intervening time. Four years on, Jack is eking out a reclusive existence, but the unresolved mystery of a wave of missing teenagers still hangs over the place and the past is about to catch up with Jack, whether he likes it or not…
From the team of Myles McEwen and Ripley Stevens, who provided last year’s Spirit Of Independence opener Nightfall: A Paranormal Investigation, Haunted is another delve into small town, supernatural Australian strangeness and, although its structure is similar to Nightfall’s, with the main action being spread over seven days, this sophomore feature is more avant garde than its predecessor, relying less on a structural template for chills and pushing the expected shocks into the shadows of a story about the devastating effects of loss.
Not only does Haunted skip back and forth between two timelines, but it also blends the potentially ghostly happenings with conspiracy theories from an online source called Channel 333 which focuses on the possibility that, because of all the weird events in One Season, the town is genuinely cursed. It’s an idea that isn’t overdeveloped as the story moves on, but there’s always the suggestion that it’s a place that’s slightly out of time and ripe for various dreadful things to befall its unsuspecting residents.
Much of the action centres on following Jack around on his daily routine and there are lengthy passages where Rawlinson is left to carry the weight of the film but he does so admirably, showing Jack’s heartbreakingly closed-off approach to life with a deal of subtlety. Fate deems that his path crosses with that of Dave (Joseph Baronio), the friend who was with Jack when he vanished and who is now in a job that has him show up at the run down building where Jack has taken up residence, as the surrounding area is soon to be redeveloped. The awkward reunion between Jack and Dave is nicely played and their sporadic meetings thereafter are resonant, with economical but poignant dialogue that demonstrates just how terrible blokes are at dealing with psychological issues.
If the first act of Haunted hints that most of the proceedings will be left to the imagination, a couple of plot swerves drop the viewer into some very gnarly territory indeed as a middle section reveal switches the pace and tone, throwing a different perspective on to the earlier speculation about some of One Season’s chequered history. In other movies, this run of scenes would end the movie but here in Haunted, it’s another ghastly coincidence in Jack’s seemingly endless stretch as a magnet for tragedy.
The jumps between spectral mystery, crime thriller and psychodrama may have some thinking that Haunted is searching for an identity of which it isn’t sure – however, that feeds into Jack’s search for meaning in a world he feels he’s outside of. The obvious reveals about how Jack may have changed following his reappearance don’t materialise and the sudden escalation in various aspects of the tale show that One Season moves on with or without him.
Similar to Nightfall, it’s only when we reach the last act where Haunted moves into slightly more conventional horror territory and, like that movie, there’s an extended showdown as Jack is confronted with a situation that makes him face up to how much he feels his life is actually worth. If anything, the climax is a little too long, but if you’ve seen Nightfall, this follow-up pulls out an ending you may not be expecting, considering what’s gone before. This ushers in another tonal shift which leads to a closing scene that I felt was thoroughly earned, but might pull the rug from under those who were craving something much darker.
Still, Haunted is another fine piece of work from Myles McEwen and Ripley Stevens, all the more so for eschewing that second film syndrome of going bigger, louder and flashier. It’s still unnerving in all of the right places, with its eerie setting and use of silence only contributing to the unsettling ambience. Even the sheep seem to be in on it, the one which Jack notices staring back at him in an alarming way. Anyone thinking this filmmaking team is about to head in a more mainstream direction with their latest could not be more wrong and I was left wondering if they’re planning a third chiller which is even more esoteric than this.
Haunted opens this year’s Spirit of Independence Film Festival in Sheffield. For more details, please click here.
In 1983, the Director Of Public Prosecutions published its first list of movies which were tagged with the tabloid-friendly label of Video Nasties. These cinematic outliers were deemed to have to power to deprave and corrupt and, if the title in question had been successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, any dealer stocking it could be fined or jailed. In one case, involving Romano Scavolini’s Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, one of its distributors was sentenced to eighteen months in prison (eventually reduced to six months on appeal, but sheesh).
It was a heady time, driven by moral outrage, framed as a battle for the very soul of the United Kingdom, and the seventy-two films that appeared at one time or another on that DPP list attained a level of notoriety their filmmakers never expected (unless, arguably, you were Umberto Lenzi). Thirty-nine remained banned, thirty-three were dropped from the list. All of them became must see items, of course.
As the memory of those crazy days fades and those of us who lived through the Nasties era scratch our heads and wonder what all of that hysteria was about, did those movies actually threaten the fabric of society as we knew it? Let’s take a look at another…
NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980, dir. James C. Wasson)
*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
Professor Bill Nugent (Michael Cutt) takes four of his students on an anthropological field trip into the woods of Northern California with the goal of proving the existence of Bigfoot. Also tagging along is Carla Thomas (Shannon Cooper), a young woman whose father was found dead in those aforementioned woods and suspects his murder was carried out by the legendary creature. It didn’t just do for Carla’s dad, either, as several other brutal, unsolved killings have been attributed to the hulking brute, despite local police dismissing this theory as nothing but a hoax. Of course, the expedition is going to go horrendously wrong…
The initial UK video release of Night Of The Demon, courtesy of Iver Film Services (“The professionals at Pinewood”), featured a rather uninspiring cover picture of a moonlit night, so it’s strange that anyone gave this a second glance when it came to calling the video cops for offensive content. Ah, hold on, what was the text on that front cover? “Warning – this film contains scenes of extreme and explicit violence”. Yeah, fair enough, that would do it.
James C. Wasson’s flick stayed on the DPP list for the duration and only resurfaced in 1994, when the BBFC imposed a minute and forty-one seconds of cuts to various violent moments along the way, including some intestine flinging and, in a flashback that most viewers will remember, a biker stops for a roadside wee and has his dick ripped off in glorious colour. In subsequent years, British channel Zone Horror broadcast the uncut version and in 2022 it landed itself a decent Blu-ray treatment complete with second disc of extras.
The story kicks off in a hospital, as a masked, doped up, seriously injured Nugent proves surprisingly clear in the speech department, considering it’s been mentioned that the bottom half of his face has been burned off. Still, let’s not allow medical facts to get in the way of a preamble, as our narrator is told to begin at the beginning – that’s actual dialogue – and warns that those horror stories you heard about in the forest are true. On with the gory slaughter!
At this point, I feel it necessary to point out that as gruesome as the killings are, they’re undermined slightly by the strawberry sauce colour of the blood and often undercut further by the low wattage emoting on display. Following the pecker punishment dished out to the biker, he staggers back towards his transport saying “No!” and “Oh no!” as he sprays the surrounding area with claret, seemingly in about as much pain as he would be had he banged his elbow.
As Nugent’s party takes a while to make their way through the wilderness and uncover the clues leading them to a woman known as Crazy Wanda, their trek is broken up with previous tales of Bigfoot’s killing spree, which amounts to a series of ridiculous shorts as it bumps off not only our unfortunate motorcyclist, but a couple in a van, two Girl Scouts (in apparel bearing the legend “Girl Scouts”) and a woodsman who gets offed with his own axe.
The van sequence is particularly amusing in that it’s splatter free, but it creates an opportunity to crowbar in some T&A as the imaginatively named Van Lover and Van Lover (I’m quoting the end credits here) get not very hot or heavy before the monster drags the bloke out of the back of the vehicle and then hauls him onto the roof for no other reason than to have the terrified lass hear all of the external banging (as opposed to the unsexy internal banging) and then die of fright, as her beau takes what seems like ten minutes to slide his face a tiny bit down one of the windows.
Nugent’s description of these deaths appears to lean towards terms such as “horribly mutilated”, but in general there’s not a great deal of horrible mutilation going on until the climax of the movie, at which point the pieces fall into place as to Crazy Wanda’s role in the proceedings and Nugent’s posse, plus the Prof himself, are trapped in a cabin which is set upon by Bigfoot. This leading to sweeping reductions in the remaining cast as folks are on the receiving end of saw blade, pitchfork, broken glass and hot plate violence.
At the time of Night Of The Demon’s release, there weren’t all that many movies featuring the potential existence of Bigfoot, let alone one that leaned into mean-spirited violence with such abandon. The wobbly thesping doesn’t do the drama any favours, but there are still a few genuinely disturbing moments, particularly during the Crazy Wanda backstory, gleaned from a spot of hypnosis which turns out to be one of Nugent’s many talents. It’s a shame that, when it comes to his list of skills, realising he’s wandering into a death trap wasn’t one of them.
As for the monster, the design has just enough of the uncanny about it to be disconcerting while still possessing recognisably human qualities. It’s a bit of a shame that it doesn’t look all that convincing up close, but most of the mayhem from the hairy executioner is observed at a distance, which throws the focus on the destruction of the many idiots who blunder across its path, rather than an unnerving but practically-limited face design which doesn’t move much. There’s also a red-tinged “Demon Vision” POV which looks a bit like the opening titles of the ITV Thriller series without the fish-eye lens, but there are no Devil Hunter-style eyesight problems hindering the pursuit of the next unlucky victim.
Undemanding slasher fans might get a kick out of this urban legend retooled as body count pic, especially as Nugent’s newbies are by turns bland and stupid enough to not trouble the viewer one bit if they become sasquatch fodder. They blather on about nothing much and then react to dire threats by moping about and showing so little initiative that it’s amazing they didn’t wander off a cliff long before their confrontation with the backwoods beast. There’s even a spark of coy romance, as a couple of characters brush fingers across a chess piece. Look, they’re touching fingers! They’re talking about going to Hawaii! Isn’t that cute? Well, maybe to some, but at that moment I couldn’t wait for Bigfoot to show up and put both them and the audience out of their misery.
To be fair, there’s no sentimentality when it comes to how the plot deals with most of the characters in Night Of The Demon and that includes someone like Carla, who would normally survive to the end having already lost someone to the Big Bad. Spoiler: not here, although she dies in relatively unspectacular fashion. It’s Crazy Wanda who gets the pass at the end, sitting placidly in her rocking chair as everyone else in her cabin gets taken out or, in the case of Nugent, given a crispy coating and ending up being declared criminally insane, as his detailed account is dismissed as the ramblings of a madman.
Considering the claims made on behalf on some video fodder in the 1980s, at least Night Of The Demon makes good on its promise of explicit violence and it’s not difficult to see why the BBFC wasn’t keen on allowing the unexpurgated version to foul the rental shop shelves given the rampant hysteria of the time. Nowadays, as with a number of the Nasties, it’s puzzling to see what all of the fuss was about. The bloodthirsty bits mostly come across as daft, not helped by some of the least convincing reactions to being grievously injured you’re likely to see. My personal favourite is the “AH! OH! WHOA!” combo as Van Lover 1 is killed in rubbish fashion.
Night Of The Demon is sporadically, effectively weird, but the performances and frequently clunky writing ultimately scupper what could otherwise have been a minor indie treat, especially as this plumps for a cryptid menace rather than the era’s penchant for yet another nutcase with a knife. The Stuart Hardy score, which veers between light jazz flute arrangements and unorthodox, honking stabs of synth, matches the overall feeling of familiar, almost banal ground being covered in the main, but frequently giving way to something odder and darker. Even the end credits are peculiar; a mix of fonts and caption styles which use various, inconsistent portions of the screen – only the top third in one case, which makes me wonder if they ran out of folks to shout out or remembered a few of them at the last minute. But hey, we’re not here to pick holes in closing titles and if it’s gore you’re after, this may provide fleeting satisfaction. However, keep in mind that extreme violence of a 1980 vintage may not be the extreme violence you would expect of today.
In 1983, the Director Of Public Prosecutions published its first list of movies which were tagged with the tabloid-friendly label of Video Nasties. These cinematic outliers were deemed to have to power to deprave and corrupt and, if the title in question had been successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, any dealer stocking it could be fined or jailed. In one case, involving Romano Scavolini’s Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, one of its distributors was sentenced to eighteen months in prison (eventually reduced to six months on appeal, but sheesh).
It was a heady time, driven by moral outrage, framed as a battle for the very soul of the United Kingdom, and the seventy-two films that appeared at one time or another on that DPP list attained a level of notoriety their filmmakers never expected (unless, arguably, you were Umberto Lenzi). Thirty-nine remained banned, thirty-three were dropped from the list. All of them became must see items, of course.
As the memory of those crazy days fades and those of us who lived through the Nasties era scratch our heads and wonder what all of that hysteria was about, did those movies actually threaten the fabric of society as we knew it? Let’s take a look at one of them…
MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978, dir. Jack Weis)
*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
In New Orleans, a serial killer is picking up women to sacrifice to an Aztec goddess and it’s up to the crack Louisiana law enforcement team of Detective Sergeant Frank Abraham (Curt Dawson) and Detective Sergeant Mayer (Ronald Tanet) to stop the slaughter. Over the course of their investigation, Abraham hooks up with kind-of witness and reluctant lady of the night Sherry (Gwen Arment). Surprise! It’s looking as though she could be next on the murderer’s hit list…
Marketed as an “American Splatter Movie” on VHS by an offshoot of Derann Film Services called Goldstar, it was blindingly obvious what the fate of Mardi Gras Massacre would be once the BBFC got hold of it and, regardless of the stonkingly awful effects and shoddy filmmaking techniques, it received the inevitable ban and would not get a reprieve until 2022, when the uncut version was finally made available on disc. It’s since played in full on television, which gives you an idea of just how shocking it’s considered in these more enlightened times.
The opening ten minutes gives you a fair idea as to what this movie’s M.O. is going to be as a well-dressed john called, ahem, John (William Metzo) calls in at a bar and makes enquiries as to the evilest hooker he can take home. Directed to a woman called Shirley, he negotiates a price of two hundred dollars and the two head for his swanky (well, as swanky as the production budget will allow) apartment, which has its own bespoke sacrificial space.
After showing his apparent kink by tying up Shirley and giving her a massage, things go awry for the poor lass fairly quickly. John disappears behind a curtain and then reappears wearing a weird mask and carrying a ceremonial knife, before going through the process of offering the victim to his goddess. Firstly, he stabs the hand which accepted the money, then he stabs one of the feet which brought her to his place before finally cutting out the source of her evil – her heart – and placing it on an altar.
I will accept that the above description may sound utterly horrific, but when you see the action played out on screen and you witness the abysmal effects work – set to an incongruous disco soundtrack – then the main point of offence is more likely to be that you’ve given up your evening to watch dross like this. The actress involved doesn’t seem especially terrified about her plight, but that’s fair considering she’s clearly breathing after she’s been bumped off.
The ritual/crappy body effect sequence is Mardi Gras Massacre’s central trick and it does not deviate from any of its spirit-crushing detail when it’s repeated twice during the runtime. Yep, considering you’re promised a massacre, you get a grand total of three in the ceremonial kill column, plus one bloodless blade to the guts as John is ambushed by a hapless pimp attempting to steal his money. I think it’s a blade to the guts, but that scrap is filmed in such an undetailed and confusing way that it’s only my best guess.
Considering the fact that Weis’ unenticing mix of slashing and sleuthing plods on for over an hour and a half, there must be something to fill the gaps between the unconvincing gore scenes and has this movie got the subplot for you, as Frank and Sherry navigate their fledging, badly written, astonishingly dull relationship. They go for dinner, they get their own slushy montage, they smooch, they fight, they break up. All the while, the investigation doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and Frank’s oppo Mayer represents the viewer by calmly suggesting that his partner is an arsehole.
Good call, Mayer, for Frank is a gigantic arsehole, looking down on Sherry’s profession even though he’s hardly squeaky clean. If the writing were better, it may have been an insight into Frank’s inability to deal with seeing the worst of humanity day after day. As it is, I’d had more than enough of him well before he decides to slap Sherry because she talked back to him. Having wasted a good third of the movie following around this pathetic excuse for a bloke, I wanted John to switch things up and start sacrificing dickheads instead. This, unfortunately, does not happen.
The eviscerations are nowhere near the most gruesome parts of the movie. That’s reserved for some of the least sexy exotic dancing you’re ever seen as scantily clad women hoof in and out of terribly framed shots and provide further padding for a story that’s already bursting with inessential content. Flubbed lines are left in, some performers are clearly so aware of the camera that their avoidance of its gaze becomes hilarious and that’s before we even get to the technical aspects of this film, with flat, static camerawork and editing of both picture and sound which appears to have been carried out with a pair of safety scissors.
The title isn’t even accurate, either, as John’s “three must die” plans for Fat Tuesday are thwarted by a late in the day rescue courtesy of Frank, who finally decides to pull his finger out and do some actual cop work, although he’s given the vital details of John’s location by a helpful Big Easy barkeep rather than joining any of the numerous dots. Our Aztec goddess worshipper’s plans are foiled and he ends up in the drink following a chase that’s both low on speed and destruction. A search of the water only succeeds in locating that weird mask and John is nowhere to be found. Spooky, huh? Well, no. How about a complete bloody waste of time?
Weis’ previous movie, 1976’s Crypt Of Dark Secrets – also horror, also set in Louisiana – sees a murdered Vietnam vet resurrected by a witch before time-honoured revenge is taken and, although it’s not great by any stretch of the imagination, it’s several notches up on Mardi Gras Massacre if you have a hankering for more of this auteur’s filmography. The swamp setting and the fantasy elements of Crypt work far better than the urban backdrop of this one, hampered by not only the lack of urgency in driving the plot forward, but a dearth of procedural elements beyond some rudimentary questioning of witnesses and a late in the day pounding of the beat, once the forces of law and order have finally realised the killer is likely to strike again – well, duh.
Weis did manage to snag some actual carnival footage and insert his leads into some of the crowds, which adds a little flavour to the final act, but it’s far too little, far too late. It’s also clear that the ultimate pursuit through the supposedly teeming streets was filmed at a totally different time in empty locations. So much of Mardi Gras Massacre feels like filler that, after the first slaying, it’s possibly to tune out at almost any point and pick it up later having missed nothing of any consequence. You could comfortably enjoy a restorative nap during the second act, it’s that lacking in incident.
As a grindhouse quickie, Mardi Gras Massacre isn’t possessed of the imagination, the wackiness or the grimy business that are the stock-in-trade of so many zero budgeted efforts. There’s one idea here and it’s stretched to way beyond breaking point, before the first half of the flick is up. The censor-baiting effects work, as laughable as it is, gave it a level of notoriety it absolutely did not deserve. To anyone being lured in by its previous ban and “Splatter Movie” tag, allow me to advise you that your ninety-six minutes is better invested in thousands upon thousands of other movies. Or, indeed, watching paint dry. If you do decide to go against this advice, you’ll just end up hating Frank Abraham and possibly yourself.
In 1983, the Director Of Public Prosecutions published its first list of movies which were tagged with the tabloid-friendly label of Video Nasties. These cinematic outliers were deemed to have to power to deprave and corrupt and, if the title in question had been successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, any dealer stocking it could be fined or jailed. In one case, involving Romano Scavolini’s Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, one of its distributors was sentenced to eighteen months in prison (eventually reduced to six months on appeal, but sheesh).
It was a heady time, driven by moral outrage, framed as a battle for the very soul of the United Kingdom, and the seventy-two films that appeared at one time or another on that DPP list attained a level of notoriety their filmmakers never expected (unless, arguably, you were Umberto Lenzi). Thirty-nine remained banned, thirty-three were dropped from the list. All of them became must see items, of course.
As the memory of those crazy days fades and those of us who lived through the Nasties era scratch our heads and wonder what all of that hysteria was about, did those movies actually threaten the fabric of society as we knew it? Let’s take a look at another…
I MISS YOU, HUGS AND KISSES (1978, dir. Murray Markowitz)
*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
When wealthy businessman Charles Kruschen (Donald Pilon) comes home to find his wife Magdalene (Elke Sommer) brutally murdered, he finds himself subsequently accused of the crime and is then put on trial for the killing. However, as the ongoing proceedings in court seemingly reveal a web of deception on both sides, is Charles actually guilty? And is his best friend Gershen (Chuck Shamata) an ally or an enemy?
One of the more unexpected entries on the DPP’s list, I Miss You, Hugs And Kisses (which will henceforth be abbreviated to IMYHAK) nonetheless earns its place in video infamy courtesy of some squishy strikes to Sommer’s bonce – played a number of times from slightly different angles – and the kidnap/attack of a young woman which redefines the word “unnecessary.” At the time, Canadian movies were beginning to break from the shackles of their hitherto worthy content and Cronenberg’s early boundary breakers in terms of sci-fi/horror grue more than likely emboldened those with an eye on overseas markets.
Markowitz’s previous directorial effort, Recommendation For Mercy, also mined controversial courtroom territory and also based its story on real life events. IMYHAK’s inspiration is the case of Peter Demeter, a Hungarian-born émigré to Canada who became a real estate developer. He married Austrian model Christine Ferrari. The couple had a daughter before the marriage hit trouble and Christine was discovered bludgeoned to death in the family garage. Here, Charles flees Hungary and settles in Toronto where becomes a property developer. He marries European model Magdalene. The couple has a daughter before the marriage hits trouble and…well, there you go.
Setting the scene by having Magdalene being bloodily dispatched, the opening credits then play over a shot of her blood and brain matter spilling across the garage floor to first-time composer Howard Shore’s rather decent score. See? Even Academy Award winners can get their starts in disreputable filth such as this. To be fair, most of this isn’t disreputable; neither is it filth. There’s nudity, but there’s a feeling of embarrassment that it’s included, which is very much at odds with the one glaring, grating bit of business involving stabbing and sex in close proximity, which I’m sure didn’t help it one little bit when the BBFC hauled it in. Oh, and there’s a short but button-pressing visit to one of Charles and Gershen’s early jobs in a slaughterhouse. The censors really loved seeing that kind of stuff at the time.
Having said that, were those sequences even included in the original video release of IMYHAK? I never saw this one on tape but, judging by anecdotal evidence, it seems as though the VHS showed signs of being cut in various places. What is for certain is that the re-release, going under an alternative title of Drop Dead Dearest, was missing a minute and six seconds of the most offensive bits, throwing the focus on to the judicial shenanigans and the machinations of Sommer, Pilon, Shamata et al.
Sommer gets the only pre-title credit, but the bulk of the film follows Pilon, and to a lesser extent Shamata, as they work out whether or not the increasingly cruel and calculating Magdalene can be put out of her misery while making it look like an accident, leading to some red-filtered fantasy sequences in which the wayward wife has a concrete block dropped on her head, is bumped off in a hit and run and falls foul of an electrocution in a pool. Whereas these vignettes sound like they’d up the ante in terms of exploitation value, they’re bloodless and, to be honest, a bit daft.
It all kicks off with Charles already in the dock, meaning the bulk of the tale is told in flashback, initially serving up a warning to our accused from his deceased father about picking a woman as you would an apple. Beware, because some are rotten, apparently. Wow, way to go, screenplay. Yes, there’s a general absence of nice, upstanding folk in this, but there appears to be a particular venom reserved for the female of the species, here portrayed as either doting bimbos transfixed by the love of much older men or duplicitous harridans out to take their unfortunate spouses for everything they’ve got.
While the piece has to cast some form of doubt on Charles’ guilt to feed into the drama and have the audience question the reliability of its many narrators, it tends to lean into sympathy for its main protagonist more than it possibly should. The casting of Pilon helps, though, because he seems a wrong ‘un from early on and Shamata is adept at channelling that unsightly, weaselly weakness which Canucksploiter William Fruet used to great effect a couple of years before in the DPP botherer – but ultimately not outright ban material – that was Death Weekend.
Despite the odd bit of grue and occasional, very bad language – the c-word gets a couple of airings – IMYHAK often feels like a Lifetime TV time flier with all of that extra salacious material bolted on in the most perfunctory of manners. Technically, however, it shows far more in the way of competence than a lot of its fellow Nasties, the writing is decent if unremarkable and the performances are solid throughout. Of course, all of those things still didn’t save it from getting its distributors into trouble.
Considering the notoriety and continuing popularity of many of its banned stablemates, IMYHAK is still one of the more obscure titles on the Section 2 catalogue. I don’t remember ever seeing it on the rental shop shelves and doesn’t seem to be the subject of much discussion to this day. The packaging of the Intercity Video tape leans into the mildly titillating as it features Sommer in a wet T-shirt, but there’s nothing else to suggest the upset it would clearly cause whoever it was to dob it in. It certainly didn’t have a front cover featuring some hungry cannibal tucking into intestines, so the offended had to put some work in before declaring it sick and depraved.
The IMDb entry for this suggests that it would pass with an uncut 15 certificate now, but I’m not so sure – I’m guessing whoever wrote that nodded off during the murder/necrophilia bit. These days it might seem weak beer on the whole and the multiple fantasy demises of Sommer are more likely to raise some unintentional chuckles, but there’s still something undeniably weird about the genre and tonal shifts deployed in its sub-ninety minute runtime. There are details which hint that Markowitz was looking to give his subject a little more heft than your standard, law based, movie of the week – the first act’s historical context and downbeat, verbose ending being the best examples of this – but the tawdry moments weaken that argument. You probably won’t be questioning if justice was served as the end credits roll, but you’ll be thinking about the incongruously grubby business on display.
In 1983, the Director of Public Prosecutions published its first list of movies which were tagged with the tabloid-friendly label of Video Nasties. These cinematic outliers were deemed to have to power to deprave and corrupt and, if the title in question had been successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, any dealer stocking it could be fined or jailed. In one case, involving Romano Scavolini’s Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, one of its distributors was sentenced to eighteen months in prison (eventually reduced to six months on appeal, but sheesh).
It was a heady time, driven by moral outrage, framed as a battle for the very soul of the United Kingdom, and the seventy-two films that appeared at one time or another on that DPP list attained a level of notoriety their filmmakers never expected (unless, arguably, you were Umberto Lenzi). Thirty-nine remained banned, thirty-three were dropped from the list. All of them became must see items, of course.
As the memory of those crazy days fades and those of us who lived through the Nasties era scratch our heads and wonder what all of that hysteria was about, did those movies actually threaten the fabric of society as we knew it? Let’s take a look at another of them…
THE DEVIL HUNTER (1980, dir. Jess Franco)
Model and actress Laura Crawford (played by model and actress Ursula Buchfellner, here credited as Ursula Fellner) is kidnapped by unscrupulous types and squirrelled away in the jungle, where her captors await a sizeable ransom. As Laura is a bankable star, a mission is mounted to bring her back her alive, with adventurer Peter Weston (Al Cliver) given the task. Unfortunately, the jungle is also home to a tribe of cannibals who have a penchant for sacrificing young women to their Devil God (Burt Altman) and Laura’s the type who fits their menu rather nicely…
Jess Franco wasn’t a big fan of cannibal movies; however, they were good for the box office during a short period in the late 1970s/early 1980s and a filmmaker as prolific as Franco didn’t often turn down work – unless it happened to be Zombie Lake, which That’s Nasty! will most likely wade into further down the line. For anyone approaching this one expecting the same level of gruesomeness as such notorious censor upsetters as Cannibal Holocaust or Cannibal Ferox, my guess is those people will be a) disappointed and b) bewildered, though I’m not quite sure in what order.
The Cinehollywood UK VHS release of The Devil Hunter is a much-prized artefact these days, with copies valued at hundreds of pounds at the very least. It stayed on the DPP’s “Final 39” list of movies which were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act and, with modern eyes, this film being deemed to possess the power to deprave and corrupt would appear to be a pretty daft decision. However, if we rewind a few decades and put ourselves in the shoes of an unsuspecting home audience which wasn’t versed in either low budget horror or Jess Franco movies, the cause of the consternation is less baffling.
Compared to some other Franco films, there is at least some gore here, but it’s realised in the cheapest way possible. The blood is more pink than red, the featured munching on humans ends up being fuzzy close ups of the Devil God chewing on stringy bits of offal in slow motion and there’s a brief disembowelling which is admittedly unpleasant, but also incredibly unconvincing. One of the bad guys has a quick glance down to where he’s about to fall and ends up in a trap full of pointy spikes. A few folks are shot, but display variable effects of having a bullet in them depending on the scene – sometimes they can hardly walk, sometimes they can jog, sometimes they can run, sometimes they forget their wound entirely and go in for a quick snog with one of your fellow crims, as is the case with Gisela Hahn’s Jane.
If the disagreeable spilling of guts wasn’t enough to upset folks, there’s naked flesh aplenty and a smattering of leering, sexual threat chucked in. In terms of capturing both the jungle surroundings and the attractive female cast members, Franco can’t wait to zoom in on the bush. Not so fast, though, as there’s male, full frontal nudity too, as the Devil God lumbers around in the buff, prodigious wanger on display. Totting up all of the possible reasons for offence, The Devil Hunter is very much case of being, ahem, more than the sum of its parts.
One of the companies which produced this head-spinner is Eurociné, who were responsible for the unrelentingly dreadful Cannibal Terror, previously given the That’s Nasty! treatment. It was shot back-to-back with a second Franco cannibal movie, White Cannibal Queen (also titled Cannibals), which also stars Al Cliver and is a source of confusion when folks attempt to remember which one is which. In addition to the double helping of Al, both stories feature blonde women falling into the clutches of a cannibal tribe (the blonde lass in White Cannibal Queen is played by Sabrina Siani). As an aide memoire, Al has the use of both arms in The Devil Hunter but only one in the other flick. Also, Franco muse Lina Romay appears in one of these, but it’s not this particular one. Are we clear? Good.
It’s a good thing we’re clear about something, because it wouldn’t be the plot of The Devil Hunter, which muddles around with the kidnappers trudging through the wilderness and then trying to negotiate with Weston, or kill him and his sidekick Jack. Jack is played by Franco regular Antonio Mayans, who was also in Cannibal Terror and went on to appear in White Cannibal Queen. Cliver was also in key DPP title Zombie Flesh Eaters, Hahn appeared in Contamination…some of these Euro performers should have been on first name terms with the BBFC.
Enough of that; back to the story. A story which is full of people who are, quite frankly, stupid, holding conversations which frequently don’t go anywhere or make the slightest lick of sense. Two of these idiots – Weston’s mate Jack and Werner Pochath’s baddie Chris – are actually scared of the jungle, which makes them a liability from the off. Pochath goes all in one eye-rolling madness from the start, getting hysterical about the heat and humidity before inexplicably calming down for a sec and leaning into the voyage of discovery, right before being killed off screen. His corpse is a marvel, only choosing to drip blood when someone is standing directly below it. Previously, Pochath was front and centre in psycho killer study Blood Lust, which didn’t attain Video Nasty notoriety, but did show up on the DPP’s Section 3 list of somewhat disreputable, but not society-destroying material.
The entire project feels lashed together on the fly, with characters seemingly having a memory wipe mid-scene. Take the admittedly grubby sequence in which head kidnapper Thomas (Antônio do Cabo given a post-production, cod, semi-posh English accent) is lusting over a bound Laura. Chris watches on with interest, then he’s told to get out, which he does, but then wanders back in after what seems like several minutes because the scene is still going on with no signs of cutting to anywhere else. By now, Thomas is pawing at his restrained captive, but Chris’ dialogue suggests he is totally unaware of what’s about to happen.
Elsewhere, folks argue, then switch to chit chat, then argue again. Weston asks for “two hundred thou” to retrieve Laura, his potential employers say there’s no way they can pay him that, he reiterates his price and they immediately cave, due to his mastery of the mercenary business. In the first few minutes, a reporter asks Laura of her opinion of men. Her response? “I have no opinion of men. I just love them.” The reporter’s response? “Oh, I see,” delivered with less emotion than if you’d heard those three words from a Speak and Spell.
As the runtime ticks towards the hour mark, Weston and Jack sneak onto a boat where a nearly naked Muriel Montossé supplies a convenient exposition dump for no other reason than: there needs to be a convenient exposition dump. And why not have the aforementioned plot drop delivered with a side order of female flesh? Also, Jack’s rather taken with the girl on the boat – even though she’s helping the bad guys – so a contrived shag is clearly on the cards. Their fun is interrupted by the Devil God, though. He’s got bored of waiting for the tribe to deliver his next meal, so he’s decided to swim out and interrupt Jack mid-bonk with neither he nor the yacht lass even noticing the nude, seven foot tall bloke with the weird eyes until he’s right next to them. Remember the disembowelling I referred to earlier? There you go.
Fair play to the Devil God for not only spotting the boat but getting all the way out to it, as all of his point of view shots in the movie are so blurry that this deity needs an optician. Stat. That could be something to do with the fact that his eyes are, for some reason, a practical effects piece made of plasticine and ping pong balls. This marvel of prosthetic work is viewed in close up far too often, which does not do it any favours and removes any fear which may have been generated by Altman’s imposing physique.
It’s also clear that the optical get-up is almost impossible to see out of, none more so than when the Devil God is swiping his way through the undergrowth like an athletic Mr. Magoo. He’s helped by having his various sacrificial meals tied to a tree, which means he can eventually blunder into them after staring at them from a distance for a while and ultimately deciding to meander in their general direction. Arguably, there is suspense, but it’s more of the “When is this bog-eyed weirdo going to get on with it?” type. And before there’s any accusation of being harsh on those of us without 20/20 vision, I’ll freely admit that I’m also a bog-eyed weirdo. I can’t see for shit.
All of the above suggests that The Devil Hunter is one to avoid but, unlike Cannibal Terror, this is one for the bad movie buff to sit back and soak up. The dubbing is often hilarious, with Jack’s incongruous US Deep South approximation and do Cabo’s haughty Brit stylings taking the awards. The dialogue appears to have been generated by computer, the performances veer between hysterical and apathetic, the effects are risible and, at a hundred and two minutes in length, the tale is bogged down in needless, often action-free face-offs and a long middle stretch in which Buchfellner runs around for an age as the various interested parties try to track her down.
I’m not going to pretend this isn’t going to be a patience tester for many of you, but there’s something oddly addictive about watching a piece of work that feels like it’s about to come off the rails at any moment. That said, the opening sequence, juxtaposing Laura’s media meet-and-greet and subsequent beach frolics with a native woman being caught and prepared for slaughter, shows there’s at least some thought that’s gone into this. Franco knows how to frame those picturesque locations, the soundtrack is surprisingly avant garde and jarring, Fellner is traffic-stoppingly attractive and the clifftop showdown between Cliver and Altman is laugh-out-loud funny. After wrongs have been righted, the final shot doesn’t even have time to linger, bludgeoned by the end credits in a similarly clumsy fashion to how most of the previous events have played out.
The more I watch The Devil Hunter, the more I enjoy it. That’s not to say it’s any good, but the whole enterprise is catnip for those with a deep interest in exploitation cinema. It’s a cannibal film without much cannibalism, an adventure film without much adventure, but in which Jess Franco’s cavalier attitude to logic comes to the fore and there’s a thrill about experiencing something so random and rudderless. You may spend a lot of this film thinking “Why?” but just go along with it and wonder what the home video fans of the 1980s thought when all of this grisly nonsense was lighting up their living rooms.
In 1983, the Director Of Public Prosecutions published its first list of movies which were tagged with the tabloid-friendly label of Video Nasties. These cinematic outliers were deemed to have to power to deprave and corrupt and, if the title in question had been successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, any dealer stocking it could be fined or jailed. In one case, involving Romano Scavolini’s Nightmares In A Damaged Brain, one of its distributors was sentenced to eighteen months in prison (eventually reduced to six months on appeal, but sheesh).
It was a heady time, driven by moral outrage, framed as a battle for the very soul of the United Kingdom, and the seventy-two films that appeared at one time or another on that DPP list attained a level of notoriety their filmmakers never expected (unless, arguably, you were Umberto Lenzi). Thirty-nine remained banned, thirty-three were dropped from the list. All of them became must-see items, of course.
As the memory of those crazy days fades and those of us who lived through the Nasties era scratch our heads and wonder what all of that hysteria was about, did those movies actually threaten the fabric of society as we knew it? Let’s take a look at another of them…
DEAD AND BURIED (1981, dir. Gary A. Sherman)
When visitors to the sleepy coastal town of Potter’s Bluff wind up dead, Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) returns from the big city to investigate and finds that nothing is as it seems in this outwardly idyllic landscape. Gillis, with his criminology degree and “hometown boy made good” tag, vows to get to the bottom of the gruesome goings on, but the town’s mortician/coroner Dobbs (Jack Albertson) is less concerned with discussing possible motives and more preoccupied with restoring the mutilated corpses to a level of aesthetic beauty that qualifies his work as an artform. At home, things are getting decidedly odd, with Dan’s doting wife Janet (Melody Anderson) disappearing at all hours and always seeming to have an air of knowing more than she’s letting on…
Directed by Gary Sherman, who helmed the superb London Underground chiller Death Line almost a decade earlier, and with Alien scribes Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon on screenplay detail plus FX royalty Stan Winston providing the often impressive make-up trickery, it seems odd that something with the genre pedigree of Dead And Buried should share the same area of DPP real estate with other, far scuzzier celluloid transgressors. Yet here we are, and there it was.
Its bow on VHS wasn’t exactly down to some fly by night, exploitation heavy label either, with it landing a rental release courtesy of the generally reputable outlet which was Thorn-EMI Video. That, however, was no defence against the BBFC once there’d been the inevitable complaints from the amusingly fragile home audience of the 1980s, emboldened by a handful of puritanical individuals to complain about all and sundry.
When I use the term “generally reputable,” it’s worth noting that Thorn-EMI found themselves in even hotter water with another title – Tony Maylam’s shear-happy slasher flick The Burning. Sherman’s spooky tale didn’t cause as much of a ruckus, but it wound up on the Nasties list nonetheless before it was eventually dropped a little further on down the trail. A 1990 release was cut by about half a minute to shorten some of the murdery antics – which included the sight of the alluring but deadly Lisa Blount’s faux nurse sticking a syringe in a patient’s eye – then it resurfaced again just before the end of that decade, at which point those previous cuts were finally waived.
Given Shusett and O’Bannon’s input and given the fact that a certain Ridley Scott movie is inevitably mentioned on the box art, it’s fair to say that some viewers were expecting another round of Alien-style claustrophobic tension, but Dead And Buried is altogether stranger and looser, narratively-speaking, than Scott’s tightly controlled galaxy of horrors. Sherman creates a vivid, otherworldly, small town atmosphere where the close-knit community’s veneer of friendliness barely conceals their coldness to the outsider. As one of the trailers stated, “There’s one way in…and no way out.”
The opening sequence is an absolute doozy and sets the uneasy mood for the rest of the proceedings. Christopher Allport’s photographer is capturing attractive shots of the landscapes when the previously mentioned Blount shows up, seduces the snapper and catches him off guard just long enough for her accomplices to appear out of nowhere, beat the poor guy, throw a net over him and set him on fire, capturing their handiwork on their own cameras.
It’s a startling sequence, made more chilling by the fact that the violence is meted out in such a matter of fact way and there’s no emphasis on gore. It’s possibly this which made some of the video viewing public switch off in disgust, which to me only serves to underline that Gary Sherman is great at delivering memorable horror moments without drowning the audience in gore, although he also knows exactly when to deploy a gruesome special effect.
The investigation of the killings is approached in an unusual way, in that we immediately know who’s responsible and the viewer is entertained/frustrated by the fact that Gillis is always several steps behind, obstructed by both Potters Bluff’s info-light population and something far more devastating which the story takes its time to reveal. Farentino, who was more familiar to folks in terms of his television projects – for instance, he played the pseudo Roy Scheider role in the execrable small screen treatment of Blue Thunder but it’s absolutely not on him that the ‘copter’s television outing was so bad – is excellent here, blundering his way through a case where the clues are somehow right in front of him, yet impossible to spot. Anderson, who’d been done slightly dirty by her damsel in distress role in Flash Gordon, gets to flex a little here and delivers by far the most upsetting line in the movie.
Stealing the movie, however, is the superb Jack Albertson in his final on-screen role (he was part of the voice cast for The Fox And The Hound, which is his last credited movie). As Dobbs, he’s comedically cranky, obstinate, sometimes philosophical, sometimes straight talking, taking great delight in pushing Gillis’ buttons and stringing him along for the sport of it. Or is there something more sinister at play? Even for a coroner, Dobbs has a particular interest in the mechanics of death and takes glee in providing obtuse semi-answers that instantly mark him out as a suspect.
With the whodunit replaced by a whydunit, Dead And Buried throws the need for convoluted killer unmaskings out of the window, instead homing in on a number of creepy set pieces where unwitting folk stop off in Potter’s Bluff and very soon realise that’s a very bad idea. Even when you think some of these people have escaped, there’s a disturbing visual cue in the very next scene to let you know they definitely haven’t.
Lower key than its writers’ space shocker or its director’s Seventies subterranean slayings, Dead And Buried seems to be a title which is often overlooked, strangely lacking the inbuilt cachet attached to other, less accomplished works which were handed a ban. This is, in my book, a crime equally as heinous as those committed by the parochial perps here. It’s dripping in dread, with a streak of deliciously dark humour throughout, and it’s easily one of the best movies on the Video Nasties roster.
