Borley Rectory (2017)

For many of us growing up in the Seventies and Eighties, being terrified by the Borley Rectory hauntings was practically a rite of passage. For my part, I must have been around nine years old, I’d guess, and found out about ‘the most haunted house in England’ from a Readers’ Digest Mysteries of the Unexplained compendium. There were other tales of ghostly phenomena which also fascinated and appalled me – the Matthew Manning story, the Bell Witch case – but the allegedly ghostly scrawls addressed to ‘Marianne’ really fixed themselves in my imagination. I couldn’t bring myself to re-read the section on Borley Rectory for weeks at a time, but thought about it constantly, even beginning to practise my own automatic writing after I read about its use in Borley – thus, terrifying myself even more.

I’m clearly not alone in this; many people of around my age need only hear the phrase ‘Usborne Book of Ghosts’ and they’re off into a kind of traumatic nostalgia trip – the kind which seems uniquely beloved of horror fans, this drive towards recapturing the halcyon terrors of childhood. This makes it all the more unusual that a cinematic take on the Borley Rectory hauntings has been so long in coming, Haunting at the Rectory (2015) notwithstanding, and even if several superb haunted house movies (such as The Legend of Hell House) have already taken their cues from the case. Director Ashley Thorpe originally intended to make his Borley Rectory a short film; years have ensued, the project has grown, and the resultant film is a feature length offering.

Some sort of potted history would seem to make sense here, given the framework used in the film itself, but then the history of Borley Rectory, in Essex, England, is a convoluted, complex one. Originally built on the site during the Victorian era, the first inhabitants of the house – the Bull family – soon reported ghostly phenomena, such as footsteps, and the apparition of what seemed to be a nun, walking in the grounds. A combination of local rumours and the literary imaginations of the Bull daughters no doubt fuelled an atmosphere of suggestibility, but it seems that the people involved were very earnest about what they had seen. By the time that the Bull family vacated the living, with Harry Bull dying in the late 1920s, the rectory’s reputation was firmly established.

In 1929, Mr and Mrs Smith became the new incumbents, and the supernatural phenomena persisted; the family eventually contacted The Daily Mirror newspaper, asking for their help in contacting the Society for Psychical Research, and a series of sensationalist articles duly appeared before the newspaper facilitated the involvement of Harry Price, a notorious ‘ghost hunter’ of his day. After the Smiths left and the Foysters moved in during 1930, Price maintained his interest, and in many ways the phenomena seemed to intensify around the Foysters, particularly Mrs Marianne Foyster. Allegations of faking phenomena dogged Price throughout his professional life and Borley was no exception, but certainly Price’s involvement helped to cement a public interest in the place which has endured for the best part of a century, and after the Foysters, too, left Borley Rectory, Price and his team even took the unusual step of leasing the property for a year. Further spirit messages were communicated to members of his team during this time, including the prophecy that the Rectory would soon burn to the ground: this it did, in 1939, with at least one witness claiming to have seen a ghostly nun at an upstairs window…

Borley Rectory (2017) is unusually framed as a documentary film, exploring and discussing the events mentioned above in largely linear order with the help of a narrator – none other than Julian Sands. Ashley Thorpe explained at the screening that his film had been heavily influenced by his own childhood nostalgia for spooky 70s TV, such as the works of Lawrence Gordon Clark and the Armchair Thriller series, which had a scary ghost nun of its own. I’m sure I saw some Ghost Story for Christmas artwork tucked away in one of the sequences, too. However, Thorpe also mentioned a love of 1920s and 30s Hollywood horror, which seems altogether heavier in the mix: Borley Rectory is shot entirely in black and white, and the actors wear the heavily stylised costumes and make-up beloved of, say, early James Whale cinema. Whilst it’s somewhat engaging to see some well-beloved actors both dressed in period costume and acting accordingly – with Reece Shearsmith as the Daily Mirror reporter, Nicholas Vince as Reverend Smith and author Jonathan Rigby as Price himself, the rather studied delivery somewhat dwarfs any stylistic links to the barely-glimpsed horrors of Gordon Clark.

This brings me to my biggest gripe with Borley Rectory, something concomitant with the chosen acting approach. It’s the animation. Rather than a conventional shoot, the film was shot entirely on green-screen and then pieced together; the actors themselves were never shot on any location, it was all done and dusted in a few days, and then the film was built around them. I don’t doubt that this is a meticulous process, and doubly so for sequences such as the pop-up book, which I acknowledge was built on the back of careful research and application. I also know that there are other forces at work and other considerations to be made in judging how best to put a film together, made all the more difficult by the vastness of the Borley history. Some viewers may love this painstaking approach. However, the effect for me was to make me feel doubly distanced from the events taking place on screen. An altogether quieter, more conventional framework would, I feel, have better served the story. The ambition here is clear, but ultimately, the flashy visuals engulfed the haunting.

That all aside, it was certainly enjoyable to see something so oddly beloved finally make the leap from the printed page to the screen. Perhaps the most salient point which Borley Rectory successfully communicates, is that a haunting seems to be very much like a relationship; people, with all of their flaws and ulterior motives, imprint upon the phenomena they report; in some cases, their flaws make the phenomena altogether. This is one of the most confounding but fascinating aspects to any alleged haunting, and Borley Rectory – the place –  seems to have been an example of this par excellence. It’s fitting that Borley Rectory – the film – successfully makes this point, whatever my misgivings about its visual style.

 

Doubleplusungood (2017)

The legacy of Catholicism in French and Belgian left-field cinema seems to mean a strange predilection for Christian themes, although it finds its form in curious ways. In recent years we’ve had Calvaire, made in 2004 (retitled ‘The Ordeal’ for English audiences, which neatly strips it of its Biblical meaning), the Christmas creation horrors of Satan (2006) and of course Martyrs (2008). Now, ten years later, we have something which merges crime drama with something altogether more spiritual and not a little gonzo: voila, Doubleplusungood.

Doubleplusungood (and I’m using the one-word form here after IMDb) at least ostensibly looks like a very different deal to the films aforementioned: we start with a gritty Man Bites Dog-looking black and white intro and meet our key character, whilst a voiceover regales the audience with the pleasures of operating in the criminal underworld. But we move on, fifteen years (and into sharp colour) to pick up with the narrative and narrator again. Yep, it’s the same guy, same dark streets in an unspecified location, and now he’s on a specific mission. He’s on a theologically-tinged quest to terminate the so-called Twelve Apostles of Lucifer; organised into a so-called ‘Pyramid of Power’, our guy proceeds to ‘climb’ said pyramid, dismantling the apostles’ hold on his society as he goes.

The film therefore follows the pattern of our protagonist, Dago Cassandra, working steadily through a hitlist; the apostles he’s seeking are a disparate bunch, but overall, they appear to be low grade crooks, and (hopefully no spoilers here) they get offed in a series of increasingly grisly ways – whilst all the while, a mysterious key player seems to be monitoring proceedings from a shady office, and you get the distinct impression that he will figure prominently over the course of things. The involvement of a character called Eve is a further complicating presence, but this allows further asides about the nature of religion and morality – this is all context which clearly underpins Doubleplusungood throughout.

In this recognisable, but unnamed country, with an apparently supernatural frame and a heavy reliance on dialogue (or more often, monologue) in order to explicate all of this, one thing leaps to mind here: Tarkovsky. Like Tarkovsky, the presence of fantasy (or in the more established director’s case, sci-fi) elements is more a means of allowing us to explore characters and how they behave under extreme, unexpected circumstances than a means to study the fantastical – it’s all about the melting pot of human drama. There’s definitely something of this in Doubleplusungood. However, as the film takes place on the streets of what at least looks like a conventional European city setting, it’s far more streetwise than Tarkovsky, and there are some elements of worldly, or at least world-weary humour along the way here.

The film, for all its unusual contextual factors, is however broadly linear: it takes its unconventional elements on a pretty straightforward journey through a series of kills, which can feel repetitive, despite the film’s efforts to draw down interest via its inventively-nasty sequences. The film certainly steers away from conventional style or approach throughout: it’s thoughtfully shot, with a wide range of locales and lots of artistic, experimental detail (even veering into psychedelia on occasion). There is undeniably something of the new-wave of French/Belgian horror cinema in the way Doubleplusungood looks, with lots of that blueish colourisation, though it’s still far more of a crime thriller overall. That said, we do see a bit of ‘implement torture’ going on here, which also chimes with those new wave horrors.

This brings me to another of the film’s features, and probably the one I have most problem with: the voiceover technique employed. Doubleplusungood makes heavy use of a voiceover (by the central protagonist) to explain most of its goings-on, which – considering the mysterious elements in the film – it could have dialled back, leaving the situations to speak for themselves. Having all the elements of the plot explained along the way felt like heavy going at times, and the heavy American accent being attempted, whilst possibly intended to further the film’s sense of rootlessness, was an oddly jarring decision which raises as many questions as it answers.

Still, Doubleplusungood is stylish throughout, even if it’s a little too free-floating at times in the way it draws all its action from a largely straightforward journey (once we accept the divine calling behind the killing spree, that is). This is undoubtedly an experimental, attractive and ambitious film in anyone’s book, though perhaps needs a few more moments of key dramatic development to justify and sustain the wide range of creative styles it uses.

Torso (1973)

Honestly, I’m the sort of reviewer who thinks that the vast majority of slashers (and many gialli) are better enjoyed as still images than films – being largely an array of stylish, bloody set pieces only loosely linked by some sort of plot – so watching Sergio Martino’s crossover film Torso was an opportunity for me to test my misgivings about this type of catch ’em and kill ’em horror. His other work has been pretty diverse fare in its way, after all, and a who’s who of cult film stars helps to underpin the potential of the film under discussion. Worth a shot, right?

Well, the heady mix of sex and death promised by the film’s subtitle (‘Carnal Horror’) is present and correct straight away, so at least false advertising is not a charge we can comfortably bring against Torso. We’re straight in with the nudity, albeit with some strategic creepy doll placement which not only spares the lady in question’s blushes, but seems likely to be Plot Relevant. Creepy dolls in Italian horror tend to be there for a reason, I find. The opening sex scene quickly turns into a soft-focus tableau, but something sinister is going on in the background. Someone’s snapping away with a camera – an example of voyeurism which will recur throughout Torso. Following this, we’re taken on in time to an art lecture in Perugia, Italy, and a lecture on what the lecturer believes to be the unconvincing torments of arguably an early vision of torture porn, Saint Sebastian, as imagined by artist Peregino: after discussing the finer points of Saint Sebastian’s representation, the largely hot and pouty student body make time for play, which soon gives way to yet more surveillance: this time, a masked figure watches a couple unbelievably manage to get it on in a Mini (and an old Mini, too) before dispatching the lovers in a gruesome manner. Shock ripples through the campus, and as a group of friends try to solve the mystery, it seems as if there’s a large number of potential suspects at hand.

This is possible – and plausible – because, my word, director Martino has made practically all of his eligible bachelors here completely nightmarish. Scrub that; it’s all but maybe one or two of the male characters in the film. The men are by turns sinister, lowering, socially awkward (which on its own would be fine) and completely unable to appreciate that women might have plans of their own which don’t involve accommodating them. Oh, and there’s that whole thing where at least one man is so repressed that he’d rather maim a beautiful girl than accept her on her own terms. This network of weasels pops up throughout the film, and whilst a good share of what they do or say is obviously designed to repel, you can’t help feeling that a lot of the dialogue was scripted and spoken in good faith – it simply happens to sound positively creepy now. Torso also falls into the slasher/giallo trope of trying very hard to be liberated – lots of flesh on display throughout – but ultimately, it still often feels rather arch and prim in that its transgressions need to be paid for with restorative violence. Of course, it’s unfair to criticise a single film for clearly following a generic formula, as Martino intended for Torso, but by the same token, knowing that any boobs on screen will probably be followed up with some sort of assault isn’t necessarily that engaging for the most part, either.

All of that said, Torso does achieve many things which distinguish it against a crowded field of carved-up nubile flesh. It boasts beautiful locations (mind, Italian cities seem to do the hard work by themselves) and some scenes border on the supernatural, in ways beloved of Martino’s near-contemporary Michele Soavi. It’s also an incredibly tactile film, with close attention to small details; whilst the gore FX haven’t aged particularly well, they’re very brief, whilst interesting, unusual shots (such as a woman’s hands palpating mud) show artistic flair. And, after moving all of its pieces into position for benefit of the big whodunnit, the film generates tension very effectively: yes, this takes time, but the closing twenty minutes or so give a good pay-off for all that has come before, resulting in a genuinely gripping finale. I’m not sure I can say that Torso has won me over fully to this style of filmmaking, but certainly, this is an arresting example of its genre, which manages some real surprises, in amongst the various nods to Bava et al.

Shameless Films have gone the extra distance in putting together this Blu-ray edition, splicing hitherto missing footage (subtitled rather than dubbed) into a well-presented, well-packaged release. Alongside the standard Shameless trailers, there’s also an extra feature starring Sergio Martino. You can find out more purchasing Torso here. 

 

Willard (1971) and Ben (1972)

1970s cinema has many noteworthy qualities, but amongst these, the decade is certainly remarkable for its brief, but intriguing phase of imagining animals ‘going rogue’ and attacking humans; some of the resulting films were breakthrough hits, such as Jaws (1975), whereas some, such as Day of the Animals (1977) would be long-lost to obscurity if the DVD age hadn’t decided seeing Leslie Nielsen wrestling a grizzly bear was too good to pass up. Before sharks, bears and other beasts were redressing the natural balance, however, there was Willard (1971) – a film where it’s the humble rat who’s up to no good, though all at the behest of a rather lonely young man. I suppose the initial premise makes some sense: compare the number of people killed by sharks to the number killed by rats over the centuries, and the rat is definitely king – though to be fair to rats, they’ve simply been clearing up after Man for millennia, fighting over the same resources, often dying of the same things, whilst not being particularly deferential along the way.

Willard himself is a rather feckless young man: he has a white-collar job as a cashier at the ultimate blue-collar business, a steel mill: he clearly doesn’t fit in there, and when he returns to the sprawling but tumble-down home which he shares with his mother (Elsa Lanchester), he’s frequently surrounded by elderly family members and family friends who can’t understand why he doesn’t use his initiative at work to get further on in life. The plant once belonged to his father, after all. After a particularly abortive 27th birthday party, Willard – miserable and brow-beaten – disappears outside. He sees a rat out there, but rather than call Rentokill, he throws the creature a few crumbs, which – being a rat – it happily eats. As escapism goes, it’s not orthodox, but Willard continues to feed the rats he sees, lying to his mother that he’s got rid of them. He even tries to obey her command to kill them off on one occasion, but he can’t face it: soon, Willard is spending more time with his growing cabal of rats, training them to perform simple commands.

To state the bleeding obvious, anyone with a rat phobia is going to have problems with Willard: the rat cast is actually quite large, though these are of course fancy rats (the tame variety) rather than wild rats. They’re quite well-trained, too, which makes the film’s initial premise seem more plausible than it might otherwise; I used to keep fancy rats myself, and I can verify that they’re surprisingly bright little critters who can learn basic commands, even if they then choose to do the opposite of what they’re meant to be doing at twice the speed. Course, I’ve never (yet) tried to train a rat to take vengeance on a malingering boss, as Willard eventually does: as his life begins to unravel, the command he exerts on his rat posse becomes more and more unlikely. The film is chiefly about a man losing control over his life, however: the rats are an engaging sideshow, but the spotlight is very much on Willard.

With these rather gentler kinds of exploitation films – y’know, where the goings-on are incredibly unlikely but there’s a story behind it – it’s completely possible to take them on face value. You can do that with Willard: sad loser wreaks havoc on an unfair world. It’s interesting, though, if you can be persuaded to look a little further, to see a young man up against a system which seems completely stacked against the young. The only people who own anything are resolutely much, much older: the Willard family business has gone to an opportunistic post-World War II businessman; Willard’s remaining family are ageing; he has no siblings; even the people meant to care for him or about him are ludicrously out of touch. The 1970s inhabited by our main character is a very lonely place – lonely enough for him to make friends with creatures usually considered vermin. He has no control over who comes and goes at his own home, either: let me potentially be the first person to compare Willard to mother! (2017) in that he continually finds people letting themselves in, talking about helping themselves to his house, and there’s even an impromptu funeral bash which he hasn’t organised.

Still, for all the extremes of unlikelihood which ensue, with rats eventually rebelling against their master, Willard is by and large a fairly quiet film, with only one or two scenes which go beyond this. Really speaking, Willard is an interesting oddity in the ‘careful what you wish for’ category, an engagingly dismal look at 70s America.

Clearly, it was modestly successful enough to give rise to a sequel: Ben (1972) appeared just the next year, this time named for the particularly intelligent rat rather than for yet another lonely human whom he would ‘work alongside’. Ben therefore shifts focus, escalating the horror which only constituted a fragment of the earlier film and adding extra rat attacks on humans. And yes, it’s a bloody weird quirk of history that the late Michael Jackson sang on the film’s soundtrack: perhaps people don’t realise that the King of Pop was in fact serenading a hyper-intelligent killer rat, but there we go.

In the sequel, Willard’s rat posse have escaped and decided to go it alone, moving into the sewers beneath the city. Forging a link to Willard before it, people establish that Ben is the leader of the rats via some pages from Willard’s diary (which we never saw him keep, but hey.) This eventually throws them into the path of a young lad, Danny, who is being bullied and suffers from a heart condition: Danny befriends Ben in particular, and Ben – who is already rather comfortable with people – becomes his best mate/avenging angel, protecting him from the bullies. Thing is, Ben the rat isn’t always a force for good. Ben and his crew aren’t too keen on human intervention in their now-habitat, and anyone making the mistake gets attacked by a whirlwind of flying rodents; again, probably not safe terrain for a phobic.

Ben (1972) feels as rushed as it no doubt was, but it’s interesting in how it manages to generate some sympathy for a pack of occasionally hostile rats led by an oddly prescient rat. It retains the same half-eye on the underbelly of America, too, with lots of clambering about in the tunnels beneath the streets. The performance given by Danny (Lee Harcourt Montgomery) swings the focus, though, now that we have a victimised child in the frame, rather than an isolated adult. By the end, you even find yourself gunning for the child/rat combo rather than the people meant to be sorting things out, which happens despite all of the film’s flaws and overdependence on simply chucking more rats into the mix. Their friendship is even a little Disney, considering all that’s gone before – which includes the addition of flamethrowers.

Truth be told, neither Willard nor Ben are superb films and Ben is the weaker, but they’re certainly quite unlike anything else, and they have had some influence elsewhere. Willard even got a fairly glossy remake/’reimagining’ in the Noughties featuring cult actor Crispin Hellion Glover, so its reach was definitely there. Willard, in particular, is also notable for a surprising cast featuring ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ Elsa Lanchester in one of her last roles, alongside Ernest Borgnine as the execrable boss. There’s enough here to entertain and some material which can surprise. Well, you can now own this ratsploitation double bill in an attractive limited edition Blu-Ray box set: the good folk at Second Sight are about to release this, and you can find out more about it here.

Sneak Peak: Adam Mason’s Empire of Dirt

Few modern directors have such a distinctive, visceral style as Adam Mason, and it’s fair to say that I’ve taken a keen interest in his career so far: over the years I’ve reviewed his feature films Blood River, Pig, Luster, Junkie, and Hangman, and also interviewed Adam (together with collaborator Simon Boyes). I’ve always felt excited and challenged by his work. So obviously, when I got the opportunity to take a look at his brand new short film, Empire of Dirt, I jumped at it.

Rather than a straightforward stand-alone short film, Empire of Dirt is intended to introduce characters and themes which will be explored fully in a feature-length offering. As such, no time is wasted: we’re shown, briefly, that these events are taking place in Manilla, 1997, and then we’re straight in to a frantic shootout, followed by a skirmish in a dilapidated building. It seems as though our protagonist is coming to the aid of a desperate, terrified woman, at least on first impressions: whatever his loyalty to her is, he pitches himself into some gritty, bloody and physical action, killing those he finds, with the violence happening both on and off screen. It’s a testament to Mason’s directorial abilities here that, even in a few short minutes, you feel as disturbed by the violence taking place off-screen as you do the violence in front of you.

However, any resolution to all of this is withheld: the film executes a radical shift, revealing to us that there is far more here than meets the eye. Our main character is acting under duress; supernatural elements are briefly introduced and we see enough to appreciate that that this isn’t some standard hitman, and the girl he’s saving? The first glance didn’t reveal everything about her, and she isn’t what she seems to be. Quickly, the film moves from its harsh realism into nightmare.

As a taster of a potentially full-length film, Empire of Dirt merges enough of the raw and the bizarre to suggest a deeply-intriguing and engaging tale could follow. It is full of that vivid claustrophobia which Mason does so well, and it looks superb, with strong palates of reds, blues and greens. The resonant music keeps up the emotional weight throughout, and the introduction of those otherworldly elements, even in a few short minutes, raises the tension of the film to an almost unbearable level, suggesting that we can expect a particularly grisly spin on haunting, conscience and revenge. I’m certainly curious…

There’s a great deal within Empire of Dirt which would reward development into a feature length format, and I look forward to being able to comment on the whole story.

IT (2017)

Few writers have had their work adapted for the screen half so much as Stephen King, nor with such variable results, but then this is exactly to be expected when the man himself’s work has varied so wildly over the years. When it comes to the huge tomes from his early days, such as The Stand and IT, the TV miniseries has often seemed to be the way to go, rather than making a feature film. Particularly bearing in mind that epic-length films are really more a contemporary domain, it no doubt made sense, even if for manageability alone, to serialise the events of the books over a period of weeks. The resulting TV version of IT, made in 1990, for all its (now apparent) flaws cemented itself as a formative experience for many viewers, particularly those of us in our thirties. Look at it now, and what you mainly see are the awkward birth pangs of CGI; back then, though, everyone – very few of whom had read the book, and many of whom were children themselves – were frightened of Pennywise the Clown.

Of course, knowing this, the new, epic-length film version of IT has repositioned itself so that the Losers Club are actually growing up in the late 80s, not the 50s; the nostalgists which the film is depending on now see their own childhoods reflected within the story, rather than seeing their childhoods simply in the memory of watching the series. The snake is eating its own tale: series like Stranger Things come along and commemorate the creepy 80s, then a film comes along which casts some of the same kids in a newly 80s story. But then, in a film about children’s fears, this approach is completely in keeping with things as a whole.

We start on familiar territory, and one of the many iconic scenes we saw first in 1990, only made more savage, more jagged for our jaded post torture porn palates (if that phrase gets into The Guardian, you saw it here first, and I’m very sorry.) On a stormy afternoon in Derry, Maine, older brother Billy (Jaeden Lieberher) is helping his kid brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) to wax a paper boat, so that Georgie can go and sail it along the flooded gutters. The boat sails really well, so much so that little Georgie can’t keep up, and the boat disappears down a drain – but someone catches it. Georgie is amazed to see a clown deep within the sewer, who promises him his boat back, if he’ll only reach out and take it…

Months go by. Billy and his family are not alone in having children missing, but as devastating as this is, Billy and his friends have enough hell from their day to day lives: bullying, isolation, puberty, indifferent or downright wicked adults. It’s a combination of all of this which presses the so-called ‘Losers Club’ into the dual world of escapism and danger which solving these mysteries entails; slowly, they begin to piece together a unique puzzle, and they throw themselves into the path of something bizarre, demonic and very hungry which has long been hiding in the sewers beneath their home town.

This is not the full picture, and indeed, what turns out to be IT: Chapter One only concerns itself with the flashbacks to childhood, which link the Losers Club back together as adults in the novel. It’s clearly explained that more is to follow, and the way in which the story has been chaptered here actually works well – or at least, the first film does, so I hope subsequent films do likewise. There are certainly a fair few questions about Pennywise and his actions which could be explored at some point; perhaps there’s some assumption that viewers will already appreciate the extra dimensional elements already, which is fair – or, the film also works perfectly well as a straightforward horror staple, the omnipotent bad guy who knows just what you fear. It would however be interesting to see how much exposition is going to follow.

IT also uses its now thirty-years-old setting, a world before health and safety, safeguarding and more concerted efforts to tackle bullying, to present childhood itself as horrific. Sure, these kids didn’t have to prefix ‘bullying’ with ‘cyber’, but no one was tranquilised by mobile phones and social media, either: it plain didn’t exist. Your plight was your own, and your world ended at the edge of town, or went as far as your friendship group – if you had one. It seems to me that knowing all of this – seeing these changes – has also been used to add to the impact of the supernatural horror. (This would have been as much the case had they left the setting in the mid-twentieth century, mind, but fewer of us would now recognise that in the same degree of detail.) As for the adults in IT, and bearing in mind that many viewers are now approximately the same age as them and not the kids, they’re represented as negligent at best, incestuous at worst: they cajole, they medicate, they exploit but most of all, they ignore their offspring completely. Their children are ripe pickings for any sinister force which might come along.

Whilst the sinister force itself relies on jump scares and a brand new toolbag of terrifying antics, the end result is definitely entertaining, with some ingenious new scenes – and no one could level the charge that the SFX here is lacking, though how they’ll feel in another twenty-seven years remains to be seen. The film moves at a fast pace, doesn’t skimp on the gruesome carnival of Pennywise’s tricks, and ramps up the splatter throughout, giving rise to complaints from some quarters that the genuine otherworldliness of the novel has been sacrificed. It’s certainly true that IT (2017) takes its cues from the likes of Insidious as much as it does the old miniseries, and it looks every inch the modern horror, with more fast-moving, snarling antagonists, heavy use of shadow and even the odd moment you catch yourself recalling from the many Far Eastern horrors which have emerged in the past twenty years or so. Still, considering he only gets a few moments of screen time, Bill Skarsgård does a decent job as Pennywise, a challenging role for someone themselves only in their twenties. I feel that the nu-Pennywise lacks something of the innocence which Tim Curry was able to convey (and then shed, to great effect) but this he makes up for, with the aid of clever special effects assistance, in scenes which are brand new and now very much his own. It’s probably fairly unlikely anyway, but I never want to see a slide projector again.

So, it’s been simplified, it’s been dressed up in new clothes, and it’s been (perhaps slightly cynically) repackaged, but it would be difficult to deny that the new, faster, sleeker and even more monstrous IT isn’t vastly entertaining anyway. Decisions have to be made whenever turning to Stephen King for source material, but I think that, largely, the right decisions outweigh the more questionable ones here.

IT is on general release in cinemas now.

 

Celluloid Screams 2017

Festival season is upon us once more, and one by one, the best horror and genre film festivals of the UK are revealing what they have lined up. Myself and co-editor Ben often take ourselves down to Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema for Celluloid Screams: now in its ninth year, it has introduced us to a range of excellent films during the years we’ve been attending, and films we see there have often wound up on our ‘Best Of’ lists at the end of the year – proving that festivals are where it’s at for film fans. This year looks to be no different, with an absolutely stellar line-up coming our way. Whilst there’s often a bit of overlap between festivals of this nature (no bad thing, in my opinion, meaning that most people will be able to get to at least one of the screenings they’re after) Celluloid Screams has also got the steal on some intriguing and exciting new films.

Here’s some of the highlights for me:

The Endless (Friday 20th October)

We’ve been big advocates of filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead here at Warped Perspective (or rather, back in the Brutal as Hell days) and there’s a good reason for that. Benson/Moorhead blend clarity of vision with sharp characterisation and masses of imagination; they never feel they need to give the audience a safe journey, and both of their films so far (Resolution and Spring) rank amongst some of the most memorable films I’ve personally seen in recent years. I cannot wait for The Endless. Engage copy and past mode:

A decade after leaving their home at Camp Arcadia, an isolated new age cult, brothers Justin and Aaron (directors Benson and Moorhead stepping in front of the camera this time) struggle to make ends meet in their normal lives. When a videotape arrives containing an invitation to revisit the camp, the two brothers are drawn back towards their previous life, initially enamoured once more with the seemingly idyllic existence that they used to share. The longer they stay however, the more it becomes apparent that the retreat and its surroundings are governed by strange and indescribable forces that threaten the very existence of those who dwell within it.

Borley Rectory (Friday 20th October)

…And breathe. Anyone who is interested in ghostly phenomena will likely have heard of Borley Rectory, once vaunted as “the most haunted house in England”. As a child, poring over investigator Harry Price’s accounts of this place terrified me so much that I had to sleep with the lights on for weeks. I’m beyond excited, therefore, to see this story – over six years in the making – making it to the screen. Director Ashley Thorpe calls his film an ‘ultrasound of a haunting’ and I anticipate great things. The involvement of League of Gentlemen/Psychoville actor and writer Reece Shearsmith is another element in its favour; alongside the other Gents, two of whom are going to be present at the festival (see below), Shearsmith has been integral in scooping up all manner of horror tropes and presenting them to us in bleakly comic form. It takes know-how to blend terror and comedy, but of course Shearsmith has carved a career as a horror and genre actor of some calibre, so appearing in a piece of work which picks at the seams of the ghastly British consciousness is exactly the kind of progression I’d both hope for and expect from him.

68 Kill (midnight showing, Friday 20th October)

Much has already been said of 68 Kill, the vast majority of which has been glowingly positive, and this sounds like a great film to pick for the late night slot. Trent Haaga is a safe pair of hands when it comes to what the blurb describes as ‘outrageous’ cinema:

Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) is a sucker for a pretty face. Dominated by his dangerously beautiful girlfriend Liza (AnnaLynne McCord), he duly accedes to her every whim. However, poor Chip lands himself in a whole heap of trouble when he reluctantly agrees to assist Liza with the robbery of $68,000 from her sugar daddy. This theft leads to a blood-splattered and increasingly outrageous sequence of events, as Chip tries desperately to find a way out of his chaotic situation and return to the simple life he once knew.

I Remember You (Saturday 21st October)

An Icelandic supernatural noir/horror? Sign me up; this tiny nation is (accordingly) something of a rarity on the genre and horror circuits, but has a culture, folklore and outlook all its own which is ripe for on-screen exploration:

Based on Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s best-selling novel, this supernatural scandi-noir is certain to send a shiver down your spine. An elderly woman hangs herself inside a church in the remote Westfjords of Iceland, which leads to an investigation into a number of strange deaths of elderly people in the region. Freyr, the new psychiatrist in town discovers that the deceased woman was obsessed with the disappearance of his 7-year-old son, who vanished without a trace three years prior. Across the bay in an abandoned village, three city dwellers are restoring a house when a series of supernatural occurrences begin to unfold. These two stories gradually intertwine and it turns out that the disappearance of a young boy decades earlier may hold the key to uncovering the truth.

Tragedy Girls (Saturday 21st October)

Been hearing good things about this one, and any skits on the pervasiveness of the ‘likes’ culture of social media (by the way, please ‘like’ and share this post for our edification) and our mordant preoccupation with celebrity deserve to be seen and enjoyed. This one will no doubt make us laugh at it all, too, which is exactly the reaction we need in greater abundance:

Meet Sadie and McKayla, aka the ‘Tragedy Girls’. Together, they run a website devoted to true crime. Their fascination with the subject is boundless, and the girls soon find they’re no longer satisfied with merely writing about violence, and decide to embark on a more ‘hands-on’ approach. Comedy ensues as the delightfully gruesome killings end up looking like accidents, much to the girls’ frustration, as they crave recognition for their murderous prowess. As their exploits attract attention to their small town, the Tragedy Girls quickly become engulfed in the social media fame they always dreamed of – but will their relationship survive it?

Special Event: Inside Number 9 (Special Anthology Screening – Saturday 21st October)

Remember how I said The League of Gentlemen and Psychoville wrought horror into uncomfortable laughter? Add Inside Number 9 to that list: it’s another piece of genius writing and storytelling for television which calls to the late, great horror telly of years gone by. With this special anthology screening of a selection of episodes, writers Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith will be in attendance both to introduce their work, and answer questions afterwards.

M. F. A (Sunday 22nd October)

I’d expect this to be the most harrowing piece of work on the bill. However, these are often the films we need the most; weave a story out of something disturbing and possibly relatable, and you can explore the feelings it engenders in a way which often just fails to materialise when you simply look at news or statistics:

Noelle (Francesca Eastwood) is a shy and withdrawn art student. She has a hard time fitting in with her peers, so she’s thrilled when she receives an invitation to a party from handsome classmate Luke. However, the evening takes a devastating turn when Noelle is brutally raped.

After seeking help from various sources, Noelle encounters hypocrisy, injustice, and a total unwillingness to address the situation. Her frustration soon turns to anger, and Noelle decides to take matters into her own hands. She sets out to avenge rape survivors whilst channelling her rage into her artwork, creating dark and affecting pieces for her thesis. With a mesmerising performance by Eastwood, this captivating revenge thriller tackles rape culture in modern society head-on with a fierce and unflinching intensity. Though it does contain scenes that some viewers may find upsetting, it deftly tackles the tough subject matter to shine a spotlight on a very real issue.

This is just a snapshot of the weekend to come: there’s plenty more at the website, including a staggering array of short films, which are always given their fair dues at Celluloid Screams (and often make for the most unusual and innovative pieces of film you’ll see during the year). Also, look out for some classic screenings of Suspiria (which is turning 40) and Hellraiser (which is turning 30!)

Passes for the whole festival are priced at £85 (or a tenner less for concessions) or, if you’re a young whippersnapper between the ages of 18-26, you could get a £60 pass as part of Showroom Cinema’s Cine26 membership scheme. Individual tickets go on sale on the 22nd September. We’ll see you there!

The Guardians (2017)

Though a few notable films have bucked the trend, it’s still comparatively rare, at least in Western cinema, that we see so much of a mention of Stalin or the Soviets whilst Nazi bad guys are ten a penny in all manner of horror, sci-fi and exploitation cinema. So, when I saw the promo material for Guardians – a modest budget Russian sci-fi – it seemed that here we’d have a film to buck the trend, what with all the mentions of Stalin taking action in response to the Nazis developing ‘super soldiers’ and what-have-you. It turns out that this context is mainly for the press information and doesn’t really feature in the film at all, however, so aside from some black and white images relative to the Cold War in the opening credits, the film is set squarely in modern-day Russia.

Still, we do find out early on that there’s a super-secret Russian military project called Patriot, which, during the early part of the Cold War, used Bad Science in an attempt to one-up the enemy by creating a select few shapeshifting soldiers called – you’ve guessed it – the Guardians. But after the head honcho scientist August Kuratov goes power-mad, tweaking himself (if you’ll excuse the expression) into some sort of super-mutant whilst rigging up his laboratory to explode whenever anyone tries to thwart him, then the by-now disparate Guardians have to be reunited. Yes, we’re in the modern day by now, but time does not affect either creator or Guardian in a normal way. Their aim? To stop Dr. Kuratov doing something faintly confusing which involves taking control of all the machines in ze vorld! (See! I’m used to this being the Germans…)

The Guardians themselves, once back together, need to use their slightly odd array of skills to defeat their erstwhile engineer. So we have: Ksenia, a woman who becomes transparent in water, and is impervious to extremes of temperature; Khan, a guy who can move very fast and has some equally speedy swords; Ler, who can make stones move, and (my obvious personal favourite) Arsus, who can turn into a half man, half bear (the top half) or if he’s really up against it, an ENTIRE BEAR, replete with Incredible Hulk style magic reappearing trousers when he becomes a man again. The rest of the film prioritises a number of what look like reasonably budgeted fight/action scenes, with a fair few head-scratching moments regarding the plot: it feels rather as if things are being raced through here, simply in order to introduce some action heroes who are clearly being set up for a sequel by the end credits – which is okay, but if you’re expecting a detailed story, best forget it. In fact, you’re probably already thinking of a certain other franchise at this point, and yes, the similarities to X-Men are manifest, albeit the latter takes more time (or more time makes it to screen) to establish character and motivation. It’s as if director Sarik Andreasyan has looked at all the X-Men movies and got a little ahead of himself, wondering how he could propel his own characters to those heights. This is clearly a film made by a team cognisant of the rage for superheroes ongoing in cinema. Guardians goes at a run throughout, where perhaps it would have established itself better by taking a breath.

Still, given these similarities, it’s interesting to see where it does differ from that other film about a taskforce with superhuman mutations, and I think it’s interesting that Guardians has a Russian threatening Russia – at least as his first port of call – whilst the Guardians are from/have been scattered to the far corners of what once was the USSR. It is, I suppose, an idealised spin on history, where an evil globalist marches on Moscow and has to be suppressed by the Old Guard. Or, of course, I’m reading far too much into a film which revels in its cartoon strip, sci-fi lite substance, because I will say this: I rather enjoyed it, even though Marvel et al tends to leave me cold. It’s aesthetically pleasing, blends well-choreographed action with suitable cartoony CGI sequences, and plumps for the more family-friendly route through things, so – if watching the slightly jarring broad American dubbed version, of course, which is also fun – everyone gets to play. If you’re prepared to park your brain at the door, and you know you’re going to be getting something akin to a video game with fight sequences and cutscenes, then yeah, Guardians feels oddly tried-and-tested, but there’s enough here for simple entertainment. Ultimately, any film which uses the phrase “FULL BEAR MODE” has done enough. Frankenstein’s Army this ain’t, but it does what you’d expect, on its own terms.

The Guardians is available on DVD and Blu-ray now.

A Ghost Story (2017)

The way that I first found out about its existence no doubt did a great disservice to A Ghost Story. Remember that Guardian newspaper article from July, which argued for something called ‘post-horror’? Post-horror is, of course, simply the latest in a long line of terms invented by people who can’t quite accept that they may have liked or made some horror: we’ve had dark fantasy, social thrillers, and now we have post-horror; Nia has already debunked this more succinctly than I could do here. But the fact is, this was my first introduction to David Lowery’s film, and it could easily have poisoned the well. To anyone in a similar position, I’d say – see the film. It may be the case that it isn’t to your tastes: it’s a quiet, subtle and almost voiceless film, with minimal action and the majority of its quite devastating messages left to audience imagination. But it also manages to be one of the most horrific stories about time that I have ever seen, adding a different perspective to the old staple idea of ‘a haunting’ which has the potential to really get under your skin. It’s certainly got under mine.

The nameless couple at the heart of the story (played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) seem to be deeply in love – we start by seeing them cuddled intimately and sharing stories, with ‘M’ (Mara) describing how, as a child, she moved around a lot and would always write and hide small pieces of paper bearing messages – so that she left a little of herself wherever she’d been. Moving forward, the couple now seem to be planning a move of their own, away from the small house which will go on to figure hugely in the film. M seems more engaged by all of this than her partner, ‘C’, but in the rapid-fire way which is a hallmark of this film, we move forward again: C has been killed in an accident, right outside the house. His partner has to identify his body, which she does, in an understated but moving scene. All of this is traumatic in its own right; she pulls the sheet back over his face, and leaves his body behind.

At this point, C sits bolt upright. The sheet which covers him stays in place, referencing the old idea of ghosts wearing shrouds (see the alleged ghost photograph taken at Newby Church in the UK as an example) and also the prevalent idea in Western culture that ghosts remain because of some sort of unfinished business. Instead of walking through what looks like an exit, which is incidentally the only slightest nod to conventional ideas about the afterlife in the film, he walks home. From now, the character is mute and invisible. Whereas in a book like The Lovely Bones, where the deceased narrator is again drawn back towards their loved ones, in the novel we have just that – a narrator. Here. we have to read the ghost’s actions, even gestures, and we can do no more. We do know, however, that C’s ghost is fascinated by M, and desperate to reach out to her. Here. it could easily have segued into something which feels familiar – a Ghost (1990) for the Tumblr generation, where things seem bleaker but more picturesque as a rule. However, the key moment comes when M moves out; the ghost remains, trapped, waiting for her. Weeks – or years, decades? – go by. He observes life unfolding, but it is intermittent; a moment gives way to a different season, different residents. Still the ghost is there, (usually) invisible and unable to voice his thoughts. In this, A Ghost Story is indeed a horror story, because there can be few things more horrifying than the prospect of an eternity in this state.

And it’s time – not any evident God or other force – which drives the quiet horror of the film. C’s ghost is fixated on achieving something in the house, but seems to forget, or time runs away from him, or he begins to observe things around him, which are distracting. The mundane holds sway, he observes day upon day upon day of it, yet he seemingly lacks the ability to focus on things of his choosing. We accompany him in this confused, unsettlingly non-linear state, allowed to tune in only at certain moments; the effect of this is very eerie, almost unpalatable. Things which we see or hear only underline the great powerlessness of this key, yet unspeaking, faceless being, and by proxy, us (though a particularly overt nihilistic speech takes a moment to hammer that powerlessness home). And time is huge – it can wipe everything away, or do worse. The film forces us to contemplate how time is doing the very same thing to us, with some key scenes in particular showing just how tenuous it all is, and how the mundane can easily shift to something cataclysmic. It’s all presented in such picturesque fashion, too, that this only underlines the deep sadness here.

A Ghost Story presents age-old concerns and truisms in an artistic, innovative and finely-detailed form. It takes away many of the markers audiences might be expecting, but in so doing, it casts us adrift in the same settings and states as C, which allows the film to cast a very sombre spell. As I said earlier in the review, its low-pitched approach will be too quiet for some (I heard someone bemoaning this as the credits rolled) but after expecting something rather smug, something deliberately ‘post-horror’, instead I found a film which is imaginative, sophisticated and incredibly affecting. It’s rare – rarer than I’d like – that I see a film which I keep returning to in my head, days after the fact: A Ghost Story definitively achieves this, with next to no dialogue and only little exposition. Sometimes that which speaks least speaks the loudest, and there are no easy answers to be had.

A Ghost Story is now showing in selected UK cinemas.

 

 

 

 

30 Years of Stage Fright

Note: this feature contains spoilers!

In a small US theatre, the cast of avant-garde performance The Night Owl are readying themselves for their big opening night. In true Stanislavsky style, the director wants everyone locked in, so that they can really get into their roles. This is a health and safety disaster waiting to happen in its own right, so it’s even more of a shocker when a psychopathic luvvie breaks out of a nearby psychiatric hospital that very night, dons the suitably eerie owl mask being used in the performance and then runs amok, picking off the actors one by one. Yep, this is the film most commonly now known as Stage Fright (or StageFright, but I’ll stick with the distinct words if I may), the first film made by director Michele Soavi as a foray away from his mentor Dario Argento: it carries a lot of the hallmarks of Argento’s work, as you’d suppose it might, but it also shows a director already more than capable of committing his own style to celluloid.

There’s so much to love about this film, and perhaps after an interval of thirty years one of the first things you notice is just how roaringly 80s it is: not the most compelling opening statement to make about a film from this era, true, but for someone who grew up in the 80s, a patterned stocking here, some teased hair there and the addition of a Cramps shirt are all pleasantly familiar, because nostalgia can have a pull as strong as gravity: on a superficial level, Stage Fright starts life as Flash Dance with added weapons, a horror riff on a new on-screen trend. But, at a safe distance, you can see less salubrious elements too – people struggling to make their rent, a woman so hellbent on retrieving her damn gold wristwatch that she will risk death to get it back (several times) and the sleazy, predatory money man who has a say both in how the play is performed and what the girls do for him. Quelle change, I suppose, but for me it has that veneer of its era. Not for nothing does Soavi give us the scene where blood spatters over a stack of dollar bills – it’s like a little symbolic ode to the decade.

For all that, this is a horror film, and by this point in the 80s, horror was established enough and popular enough to be self-referential on a scale not seen before: horror cinema had often become about the knowing nod, relying on audiences to know some of the conventions, or at least to have seen enough of the wealth of films already floating around and far more readily available, thanks to good ol’ analogue technology. Freddy Krueger was doing the rounds by now, wisecracking and gurning for the camera as he terrorized teenagers; Henenlotter was grossing audiences out with his body gore gags; even Romero could afford to reference his own work in the otherwise relentlessly grim Day of the Dead (remember the little jingle from Dawn which plays over the zombie being left in the dark to ‘think about what he’d done’?) Stage Fright, too, is often cleverly self-referential, and deserves more dues for it. The whole film-about-a-play which is itself based on an exploitation script, where in one scene director Peter matter-of-factly announces that it’s time to give the rape scene a go, seems to me to be a spin on the behind-the-scenes elements of many of the films being made under the masked killer banner around this time. It’s an actor who initiates the horror here, after losing his mind in his acting career.

Tellingly, Peter is also insistent that when serial killer Irving Wallace gets loose, a ‘real event’ like this will help him to sell theatre tickets. Again, how many horror films have been either based on real events, or even rumoured to contain ‘real footage’? Peter’s an old crook, but he might even be right – well, so long as there are enough actors left to perform. Also, back when Stage Fright was made, it took its place amongst a number of films where antagonists deliberately broke the specific ‘fourth wall’ of the TV/cinema screen (like The Video Dead, Demons 2) or the horror begins in a theatre or cinema, such as Demons (which has a lot of crossover cast members with Stage Fright). Threat and murder merge with performance: bodies become props, and in Stage Fright the final, most obvious nod to genre film is in the glaringly obvious and literal murder set piece which Wallace eventually puts together. I suppose today we might call all of this ‘meta-‘, but in our jaded twenty-first century parlance, that’s become a bit pejorative, sadly. We’ll just say instead that Stage Fright does more than tell a straightforward story, whilst managing not to forget to tell it altogether.

In many ways, Stage Fright belongs squarely in the by-now-established slasher genre, a place where it’s often filed away: early promotional materials emphasised the goriness, and in fairness, we have the nasty weapons, the omniscient killer and the ubiquitous ‘final girl’. But, this is a Soavi film. Not content to tell a story within a story and just hack and stab a route straight through it, Stage Fright also manages to interweave some of the Gothic elements which had been appearing in the genre since Bava first blazed a trail – linking gialli to Gothic – and which led to Argento bringing his creepy aesthetics to violent gore. Soavi’s adaptation of Gothic elements is gentler and more traditional than Argento, I feel (it’s also quite coy on nudity, as an aside) but the Gothic is undoubtedly there. The pathetic fallacy of an ominous rainstorm had been doing the rounds for centuries, then we have a black cat stalking through the set (completely unperturbed by the human suffering, obviously) and what looks like a Gothic artist Caspar David Friedrichs-style painted backdrop, at one side of the 80s backdrop being used by the Night Owl cast. Oh, and a huge mad owl, which is pretty Gothic too. After cutting his teeth on a Gothic slasher, Soavi went on to make a Gothic zombie movie in Dellamorte Dellamore – so he clearly enjoys using these aesthetics into his work, and does so brilliantly.

All of this, and in a well-paced, taut piece of cinema which doesn’t waste aimless minutes trying to be ponderous or edgy. It’s a roll call of genre stars, too, with Giovanni Lombardo Radice doing a camp turn as a dancer, Barbara Cupisti as Alicia, David Brandon as the sardonic Englishman Peter (catch the future echoes of Francesco Dellamorte) and – though he’s uncredited – it’s the co-writer of the film and Anthropophagus the Beast himself, George Eastman, running around with the owl head on. Keen eyes might also notice the Anthropophagus promo photograph perched in one of the dressing rooms. Just to throw one more name in here, a trivia fact on IMDb suggests that sleaze lord director Joe D’Amato at one time planned to remake Stage Fright under the title Willy Shocks Treatment, where the killer would be clad in light bulbs, but I’m not sure if my mind can fully comprehend this…anyway…

Soavi continued to explore the Gothic in The Church, refining his own visual style and atmosphere, but sadly concluded his forays into the horror genre with Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) – which is one of my favourite films – in the early Nineties. As my co-writer Ben said when I mentioned writing this piece, Soavi has been residing in the ‘where are they now?’ category ever since, at least as far as film fans would appreciate it: these days, his filmography is awash with TV movies, which don’t look particularly engaging to my (admittedly untrained) eye. So why did such a promising and innovative director pack it all in, when he seemed to be on the up?

This is always a difficult one for me, as I suppose I want directors whose work I like to be as dedicated to genre film as my imagination supposes they are. In actuality, there are lots of other factors at play, one of which might well be a complete distaste for making any more horror, as well as the usual stuff about money and funding. And then, Soavi’s old mentor Argento is still making horror films, and his work has progressed from the sublime to the ridiculous, so…a long career in horror can be a difficult path to take. You never know what the future will hold. But at least I’ve seen a film about a mad killer in an owl mask at least once, and I think we can appreciate, even at thirty years on, what a well-executed piece of horror entertainment Stage Fright really is. Should Michele Soavi ever fancy a return to this kind of fare, it’d be impossible not to welcome it.

Wolves at the Door (2016)

Considering their importance to the subculture consciousness – y’know, having probably dismantled hippie culture ready for the start of the 70s – cinematic versions of (or interpretations of) the Manson Family murders have always been…problematic, shall we say. Some of the very vaguest of nods to the case have been played for great, exploitative fun (such as I Drink Your Blood) whilst some have gone for the full art-house treatment (such as Jim Van Bebber’s The Manson Family) and – for me – not quite worked. It’s a different prospect altogether when you actually namedrop the case, as Wolves at the Door chooses to do: the Manson Family inspiration is right there, writ large on the cover art. Openly using such a well-known case has its issues; these are also writ large all over this film.

It all starts fairly no-nonsense, looking for all the world like every other home invasion movie which we may have seen over the past decade or so: some white suburbanites have someone shadowy and apparently very strong break into their home, where they daub words like ‘PIG’ in blood on their doors. The cops arrive, and fill in the gaps for us: it seems that some young hippies, or radicals, or other 60s-style ne’er-do-wells have been doing similar things all over LA – though one cop acknowledges – rather significantly – that this most recent attack seems to show that it’s ramping up a bit. We then cut to a slightly soporific gathering of twentysomethings – where one of their party is about to go away, and so is being given gifts and so on before they head back home together. You know what this means, folks: it’s someone’s Last Night. Alongside a police officer’s Last Shift, this is dangerous territory. I should also say that one of the group is a pregnant actress called Sharon…

True enough, soon the gang of young nasties are on the approach to the soporifics’ house, where they spend an awful lot of time channeling the slasher antiheroes who had yet to appear in cinemas at that stage, by appearing silently in doorways, seemingly defying logic and physics to be everywhere at once, and also moving with the silent certainty of a Jason Voorhees or a Michael Myers. As for the rest of the film, I’d normally be wary of spoilers, but in this case, there’s hardly the need. The nasties get into the house; bad things ensue, but nothing too horrifically recognisable from the Manson case files, which makes the whole thing feel simultaneously a tad disparaging and rather pointless.

See, this is the thing when you oh-so loudly and proudly declare that your film is based on the Manson murders. These murders are amongst the nastiest and most well-known from the era, and to this day, horror films shy away from torturing and killing heavily-pregnant women (as an example) so this leaves the film at an impasse: do you recreate all of the grisly details from the case, dare any disapproval, and also land yourself the task of creating tension around events which many viewers will already know well? Or do you deviate from the case, despite name-checking it – and, if you do something rather different, won’t you be held to account for that? These are issues which dog Wolves at the Door throughout, but, I’m sad to say, they’re only some of the flaws causing issues with the film.

Wolves at the Door plumps for the most simplistic approach possible throughout. Plot markers are thrust home in an unnecessary and rather uncomfortable way, I must say, and any endeavours to make us like characters who are so transparently about to be carved up always fall flat; more time is taken on needless props and jargon words to convince us that yes, this is in fact the late 60s. All of these irritations are magnified by the fact that you already know – more or less – what’s going to happen, especially when you see that some new perspective is not going to be forthcoming. Even at a running time of just 70 minutes, the weight of expectation – together with the dull pains of familiarity – makes the film feel incredibly slow.

In its race to be a HORROR FILM, too, Wolves at the Door also mashes loads of elements from other, quite separate genres together in a way which makes me feel that director John R. Leonetti may know a little about the horror genre (he’s worked in a variety of settings and genres) but doesn’t have high regard for its fans. As already mentioned, some of the scenes look like they’re Straight Outta Halloween, but in other places, the home invaders resemble Japanese ghosts (long hair in face, supernatural silence, moving as if on coasters) and everywhere, there are problems with that whole jump scare thing which only works, if we can call it working, by frying your nerves. Imaginative, this ain’t – and when images and news reel footage finally appear to try once and for all to link this lacklustre film to that horrifying and significant sequence of real events, it feels like the only genuine surprise we get: what a pity it also feels like an insult.

Wolves at the Door is available on DVD and digital download now.