Keri O'Shea

Childhood Terrors – ‘Sugar and spice and all things nice’: Misty Comics and Horror for Girls (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

What got you into horror as a child? Most of us can chart our love of the genre back to our early years, and we can probably identify one or two fundamental fandoms that set us along our own individual paths into darkness. While horror cinema almost inevitably takes centre stage, back in the days when it was tough to track down the movies which tantalised us so by reputation – or via equally tantalising stills in books and magazines – the hungry nascent horror fan had to make the most of the other resources available to him. Or indeed her… Comics offered just such an opportunity: they were cheap, easy to find, and – despite a general downturn starting in the 70s – still prolific, in a broad range of genres to suit most adolescent tastes. Not least, of course, horror. Yet it would still surprise many to learn that a British title existed, aimed at teen and pre-teen girls, which thrived by thrilling its readers with tales of mystery and horror. Welcome to the world of the Misty comic.

Misty first appeared back in 1978, brought to the stands by esteemed children’s publishing house Egmont. The comic ran weekly until 1980, when it underwent a merger with another girls’ comic, the more traditional Tammy, which meant a gradual decline in the horror focus over the following years. But there was enough of the Misty content to generate a series of dedicated holiday specials and annuals – which is how I first encountered the publication. The year was 1986, and I received the last Misty annual as a Christmas present. Needless to say, I was hooked. I can credit Misty with introducing me to the delights of scary fiction, the London Dungeon, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vincent Price, to name but a few. My early education in horror had begun, initiated by a comic which dealt nearly exclusively with female characters and female perspectives – albeit refracted through tales of the supernatural, some of which had the real potential to terrify…

‘Welcome To My Midnight World’

Misty wasn’t just the name of the publication, but also a character in the comic, with her own mythology and her own followers and fans. Reading something like an allegory, albeit one which wasn’t very strongly delineated, our timeless, ageless ‘gatherer of stories’ existed in a ‘Cavern of Dreams’ near to a ‘Pool of Life’. From time to time the publication featured letters in which readers asked questions about her domain, where and what she was (the 1982 annual featured a long Q&A with the character, for instance). Misty didn’t feature as a character in the stories, however, but operated more as a horror hostess – introducing the stories to follow, and sometimes commenting on their conclusions. Upon reflection, Misty’s appearance was at least as significant to the character’s impact upon her fans as anything she might have said or done in the comic. The Misty aesthetic was anything but conventional, particularly for a mainstream girls’ magazine of its day, and it must surely have had an influence on her readers. It definitely did on this writer.

With long, dark hair, alabaster skin, a flowing pale gown and even a pentacle necklace, Misty’s appearance recalls several possible influences. One of these must be classic horror (although in keeping with the medium and the target age group, Misty was more of a benevolent supernatural creature). You can see something of Carol Borland’s character Luna Mora in her looks, right down to the heavily-lined eyes and flowing hair. Borland played Luna opposite Bela Lugosi’s Count Mora in the 1934 film Mark of the Vampire, in the process becoming the prototypical Gothic vamp. There’s also something of the inimitable aesthetics of Hammer horror there too. Hammer’s period Gothic had become part of the fabric of British pop culture in the mid-20th century, and Misty no doubt owed something to the studio’s stable of glamorous Gothic leading ladies. The image of her ghostly figure, swathed in a shroud-white gown, beneath a full moon and the silhouette of a bat is pure Hammer. Also significant in establishing the look and atmosphere of both Misty and her comic were the Gothic Romance novels that had reached a peak in popularity in preceding decades. Seldom offering more than a hint of the supernatural, these pulp paperbacks aimed at a female readership featured damsels in distress in grandiose, if gloomy historical settings, with dark, Byronic anti-heroes ready to sweep the heroine off her feet against a backdrop of thrilling mystery. While the romance element took a backseat in Misty (boy-meets-girl storylines usually concluded with the ghostly twist that one partner was dead) the comic clearly took a few stylistic pointers from the Gothic Romances issued by publishers like the Paperback Library’s Gothic imprint in the 1960s and 70s.

Another possible influence on Misty from the same era might be the flood of lurid occult pulp paperbacks and magazines, themselves informed by the occult revival of the late sixties and the rage for all things weird and ‘witchy’. The interplay between the Age of Aquarius and the mainstream had generated a new and recognisable look for the modern witch – young, enigmatic and darkly beautiful – a sexy collision between hippy mysticism and creepy cuteness. This hip 20th century sorceress duly found her place on many of the covers of the countless books and periodicals which flooded the market. Right down to her necklace, Misty appears to owe a great deal to this phenomenon, as well as to the vogue for supernatural goings-on and their representations in pop culture, a well-established phenomenon by the time the comic appeared. Yet, as much as its heroine had an almost hip look, there was a strong streak of conservatism at the heart of the comic itself. Unlike the comic’s titular heroine, the sympathetic characters in the stories tended to be conventionally pretty ‘straights’, whilst most of Misty’s villainesses tended towards the witchy look.

The infamously bloodthirsty Countess Bathory herself even makes an appearance in one issue, looking incredibly proto-Gothic, all raven hair and kohl eyes, not unlike a certain singer named Siouxsie. Misty’s run coincides with the rise and fall of the original Gothic Punk movement in the UK. The term ‘Gothic’ was coined in reference to the bands Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Bauhaus just a year after the first issue of Misty hit the news-stands. By the time the title was fully extinct in 1986, Goth had fallen out of favour with trendsetters. Of course, Misty catered to a very different audience than the fishnet-and-eyeliner aficionados buying Bauhaus records, but Goth drew from many of the same pop culture inspirations as the teen comic, exploiting perhaps similar dark and morbid fascinations. But if the Gothic Punks thought their music was selling subversion, Misty’s publishers certainly didn’t see their spooky stories in that light.

That conservatism suggested by the dress of the title’s heroines found expression in the stories. Misty offered a moralistic species of the supernatural: although the tales were fantastical, they were often fables which warned against selfish behaviour, and the inevitable punishment was made to fit the crime. While a million miles away from the infamous EC horror comics of the 1950s in terms of graphic gore and gleeful ghoulishness, Misty shared their relish for poetic justice. While they were being playfully spooked, Misty’s young readers were also being shown how to behave. In ‘The Green China Man’, a spoiled young girl called Tina Swanson finds herself drawn to a strange antique ceramic figure, one which seems to have the power to literally grant her every wish. She uses this to her own advantage, until she decides to condemn a school-friend to “get lost” and an unfortunate echo bounces this message back at her. Only the accidental destruction of the green china man allows her to return, and to atone for her behaviour, of course. Idols and strange artefacts usually spelled trouble, as did strange mirrors, which featured a lot in the comic. Such magic props were usually employed to demonstrate that you should be careful what you wish for, and that appearances can be deceptive. Too much vanity is inevitably rewarded with hardship.

Also frequently in the firing line in Misty stories are greed, duplicity and cruelty: ‘Mountain Girl’ tells the tale of a girl and her grandfather who have the uncanny ability to make abundant crops grow near their isolated woodland home, despite the relative poverty of their nearest neighbours. When residents of the nearby town find out about this, they demand their presence in the town so that they can benefit from their strange powers and generate wealth for themselves. However, their cruel treatment of their unwitting guests leads to the girl taking a violent revenge on the town, because her ability to control nature extends to causing earthquakes. Often, when strange, supernatural powers stem from the protagonists of the story, we witness the heroine having to decide whether to use her powers for good or for evil. The text story titled ‘The Takeover’ reads like a parable against envy. A girl called Louise has the ability to replicate the traits of others. When she employs it to supplant the talents of her kind-meaning sports mentor Miranda, it leads to a grisly comeuppance when Miranda falls ill. One of the most popular Misty stories was a lengthy serial called ‘Moonchild’. The main character in the series, Rosemary Black, discovers she has the powers of telekinesis, linked to a crescent-moon shaped birthmark underneath her hairline. She has inherited these powers from her maternal grandmother, but Rosemary’s mother has spent many years trying to keep her strange offspring as low and subdued as possible in an attempt to head off the arrival of any strange abilities. Yet, rather like in the classic horror movie Carrie, it proves to no avail, leaving Rosemary to decide how to use her telekinesis. Can she resist the temptation to use it against a group of school bullies who are making her life hell?…

Although many of Misty’s stories took place in contemporary Britain, the comic commissioned a significant number of stories which took place in the more distant past, usually, though not exclusively (and again, rather like many of Hammer’s horror films) at some point after the turn of the Nineteenth Century, though up until the first decades of the Twentieth. Often, these stories have obvious precedents in classic literature – and definitely show an awareness of sensation fiction, which was perhaps the comic’s equivalent in earlier times. For instance, ‘The Weird Sisters’ (1981) with its discussion of female insanity and treatment in Victorian England has echoes of the novels of Wilkie Collins, particularly The Woman in White. ‘Strange Heritage’, with its Yorkshire setting and themes of thwarted love, bears some resemblance to Wuthering Heights, albeit with a bang-up-to-date message about the importance of nature conservation (!) Yet as well as using period settings in its pages, Misty also devoted space to excerpts from classic literature itself.

One of the most ghastly of these – and perhaps most surprising, given the age of the readers – was an excerpt from M. G. Lewis’s notorious work of Gothic excess The Monk. (In a 1796 review, the poet Coleridge observed that ‘the Monk is a romance, which if a parent saw in the hands of a son or daughter, he might reasonably turn pale’!) The excerpt included in Misty is a poem from the novel entitled ‘Alonzo the Brave and fair Imogene’. This tale of chivalric love between a Crusading knight and his lady gives way to horror, as Alonzo takes Imogene at her word when she declares that, should she ever love another, he must attend her wedding feast in ghostly form, and ‘bear [her] away to the grave’. The description of Alonzo’s unvizored visage riddled with worms has retained its power to disturb, and doubtlessly would have had an impact upon its young readers. Keeping company with the ghastly Alonzo and Imogene (or Imogine, as spelled in the original) through the course of Misty’s existence were diverse examples of literature by writers like Wordsworth and Poe, alongside tales of Ancient Greece, Arthurian legends, and suchlike. It’s an impressive introduction to writing which might not otherwise have found its way into the reading habits of pre-teens. In addition, many girls would have their first history lesson on subjects like the Borgias here, as well as finding articles about alleged real-life hauntings and other spooky locales.

Better than Bunty, eh?

For the second part of Keri’s feature, click here…

Welcome to Childhood Terrors!

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

It’s been some time since we’ve run a series of special features here at Brutal as Hell; those of you who have been reading for a few years may remember that it used to be a reasonably regular occurrence – and so now, for the first time in a while, as the nights are at their coldest and darkest, we pause to take a look back, to think about where our love for this genre came from, and why it turned into something so important in our lives that it’s become part of our make-up as adults. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Childhood Terrors – a set of articles and special features which will be unashamedly personal in nature, because they’re all about our own nostalgia, our own favourites and our own key influences.

Horror is one of those genres which, for the most part, boasts a long-lasting affection from its fans, and is often linked to some of our keenest early memories. There are of course many reasons why this comes to be, but certainly, children seem to be drawn towards what scares them. Daring themselves to reach down the scary book from the bookshelf…turning to the page which they remember, yet fear…or avoiding the frightening film, or the daunting character, whilst all the same asking a million questions about it and mythologising it in their own ways, as I did myself with a film which has a cherished place in my adult life now. Horror provides the first real love-hate relationship for a lot of us, way before it cements into a personal passion in adulthood.

Certainly, although child-friendly horror has long existed, for many of us as horror fans (particularly those of us who are a bit older), our first and most formative scares probably derived from things which we just plain should not have seen. I will forever remember the rare thrill of sneaking a peek at even a few moments of films being watched by my parents, and the aftermath of bad dreams which they caused; the dream sequence at the end of Carrie, where her hand darts out of the ground…the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London…hell, it’s not even horror as such, but some scenes from Troll fascinated and terrified me (and it’s a real sadness to revisit such scenes in adulthood and see that the intervening years have stripped them of their magic, even if it means their power to scare, too).

But did all of this do me any real harm, I wonder? Did it any of us? Bad dreams are one thing, but even the briefest contact I had with horror at a young age fuelled my imagination like nothing else: things that actively scared me prompted flights of fancy, childish art projects, stories, and a definite learning curve, as strange as that may sound. My growing love of the genre definitely developed my reading skills, too, as I sought out ever more challenging and memorable books and comics. If I saw a picture which grabbed me, then I wanted the necessary reading ability to find out everything I could about it. In effect, I wanted to be scared – because it also meant escapism, creativity, growth and change. Those of us who have stuck with horror may, like I do, always feel like they’re chasing that thrill of fear, trying to get it back again. Ultimately too, I knew it was fiction; horror provided many kids with a safe space to experience a whole host of emotions and ideas which couldn’t cause us material harm, whatever the powers-that-be said.

With all of this in mind, I can’t help but wonder if modern society’s well-meaning attempts to cocoon children from seeing anything which might alarm them might, in effect, be starving them of the kinds of imaginative lives that many of us had. I used to work in daycare (yeah, laugh it up) and I remember getting a warning that reading through ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ might be too much for some of the little darlings, and they didn’t want parents to complain, after all. If you know the book, you might well be as perplexed as I was. On a more serious note, last week many of you will have read about the substitute teacher in the US who has been found guilty of ‘disseminating matter harmful to juveniles’; just what was going through Sheila Kearns’ mind when she decided to play the anthology horror movie ABCs of Death to several classes we can only imagine, and certainly, her actions were complacent at their absolute best, but the fact that she has wound up in court over it, when you’d assume her 14-18 year-old charges would have accessed far, far worse in their time, seems to set a worrying precedent. Won’t someone please think of the children? I’m not suggesting that kids of all ages should be parked in front of any and all horror films, of course. But any insinuation that fiction on-screen can really cause ‘harm’ sets my teeth on edge somewhat, because – haven’t we been here before?

Many of us found quite enough scares as children, however, whether they were intended, or very much not intended for kids’ consumption; many of us found horror where it was never even intended to be at all, come to that, getting creeped out by things which screened way before the watershed, shows and films deemed suitable for family entertainment. We all once found our scares in a wide range of sources, regardless, and the articles which will make up Childhood Terrors are our affectionate celebration of these. I hope you’ll enjoy our trip down Memory Lane; just don’t look behind you…

DVD Review: Dead Snow 2 – Red vs. Dead

Posted on January 18, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Ah, Nazis. There’s a definite fascination with the Nazis in modern/trash culture, and in horror movies they turn up with perplexing regularity; maybe it’s because they were our foes, maybe we feel most comfortable playing out fantasy scenarios which involve them because we feel safe to mock those whom we beat – or maybe it’s the smart uniforms, but in any case, they crop up an awful lot, whereas the Soviets – who threatened us with worse than even blitzkreig – rarely appear. Well, whatever the reasoning there, you can’t deny that undead Nazis make for fun films, and Dead Snow 2, like the first film, knows just how to play it: picking up right where the first one left off, with the escape of the last survivor of the cabin, Martin, thereby quickly setting the tone for the madcap movie to follow.

Martin manages to make it to a nearby town and seeks medical help but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he finds himself in the frame for what has happened. The bodies of his friends have all been recovered, and as such, Martin winds up handcuffed to his hospital bed. Things are not looking good for him…especially when it turns out that the well-meaning doctors have found the severed arm of the mean, reanimated Einsatz commander General Herzog – and attached it to him. Anyway, Martin assumes – or rather hopes – that the Nazis have been beaten. After all, they were after their gold, right? Nothing else? How wrong he is. Not only are the Nazis still around, but they’re on the move, and even seeking new conscripts. Via the use of his new arm, which boasts super-human strength (and contributes to some hilarious scenes as a consequence), Martin manages to escape, and concentrates his efforts on finding out where the division are going. Luckily, it turns out that some self-styled internet zombie specialists have been following the case – and they’re coming to help…

Dead Snow 2 balances an awareness of itself and its place in a burgeoning horror genre with its sparky elements of creativity perfectly; although, as with the first film, it pitches in the odd quote here or the fan reference there, it never feels like it’s trying too hard or desperately wants to belong. It just works, it feels genuine, and more than this, some of its most memorable scenes come from its clear links to genre classics – the way it takes an idea and runs with it, turning it into something novel. The reanimated arm element, for example, seems to my mind to be a clear nod to Sam Raimi (as with lots of the film’s visual gags) but because the film goes so incredibly overboard with it, it’s definitely out there on its own. This is also a film which is pretty merciless in its plentiful splatter, and everybody gets it irrespective of age or gender or anything else; the effect of this was to have me laughing out loud a lot of the time, often because I just couldn’t believe who they’d just killed and how. The film has a huge sense of humour, lots of physical jerks and a whole host of ingenious, graphic kills which boast spot-on comedic timing. Its tone is playful and as a Saturday night movie, it really works well.

Despite the ubiquitous ‘let’s make a remake/sequel and add American characters in order for it to be a success’ schtick, the ‘Zombie Squad’ who turn up to help out aren’t the cavalry we might be expecting. Sure, they help, but they’re mocked pretty hard (as is everyone present) with director Tommy Wirkola having some fun picking over American preconceptions of Norway, and vice versa; their arrival is played for laughs, albeit not unduly mean-spirited, and it still feels very much like a Norwegian film – for which I’m very grateful. I’m also grateful for the fact that our lead character, Martin (Vegar Hoel) is a regular-seeming guy, not a 6′ speak-your-weight machine with impressive dental veneers or a bloody Final Girl. The film is stronger for its characters being, well, frankly a bit shit in a crisis. And as for the zombies themselves, due to the interesting spin on the zombie genre we get here (where they have more in common with ideas of vengeful ghosts than your conventional mindless flesh-biters) they come across as real characters, despite having more or less no dialogue, some perfectly-pitched one-liners aside. Although we’re not meant to root for them, I couldn’t help give a little inward whoop of joy every time Herzog and his men appeared on screen, because let’s be fair – they owned it.

Dead Snow 2 is a joy to behold, frankly, if you like your horror gory with lots of black comedy throughout. You won’t get any profound messages about World War II or the Occupation here, or at least I didn’t, but you will get characters of every stripe being sent up relentlessly and in good style. (Oh, and you know that thing I said about how the Soviets never get an airing in horror? No more. And it’s fucking glorious.)

Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead is available on DVD and Blu-ray now from Entertainment One.

The Colours of Horror: Bad Science and Unnatural Nasties in 80s Cinema

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Since the widespread colourisation of film replaced black and white as the go-to format for popular cinema, horror movies have frequently led the charge when it comes to the most creative use of colour palletes, special FX and lighting. It’s something of a myth, a myth which persists, that horror always takes place in the shadows; sure, we’ve always had great examples of less-as-more giving us good films, but many of the most memorable horrors have been choc-full of different gaudy hues – elaborate make-up rendered in unnatural detail, hosts of garish grotesques and lashings of Kensington gore. Just consider Roger Corman’s Masque of the Red Death – the whole spectrum comes into play, with fantastic effects.

However, as fascinating as the rise and rise of technicolour terrors is (and this may well be a subject for another time), I’d like to set the clock to 1980 – the beginning of the decade where I grew up, and the period of time when so many of my favourite lurid horrors took on a look all of their own. We can start with one of the most game-changing visual experiences to ever grace our screens, and to my mind, the film which set the bar for a new, popular pallete. I’m talking of course about Dario Argento’s Inferno. Although other films of this year made some good use of the new colour scheme, such as The Boogeyman with its brightly-coloured lighting in key scenes, to me it is Inferno which takes the prize for utterly drenching its characters in certain bright colours – blue and pink, primarily. These colours began to take on a fun, recognisable significance of their own, with others adding to the popular range before long; Inferno, with its beautiful cinematography and a director who had steadily built a reputation for his formidable use of aesthetics, was the start of the new wave.

Argento was, by the time 1980 came around, no stranger to the importance of colour, and his stand-out work, Suspiria (1977) looks almost painterly: key scenes are flooded with washes of coloured light, and the end result is a pretty overwhelming sensory experience. However, in terms of style, Suspiria was all about the primary colours – red, in particular, being used to imbue the interiors of the dance academy and keying in to all the associated properties of alarm, danger, even blood. Suspiria is a horror film of the 1970s, and it looks in every way the part. Argento carried on with the stylistic choice to flood his horror with colour in Inferno, but here he changes the colours he uses, heralding something new in the process.

Moving away from the use of primary colours (with the exception of the rather royal blue lighting used), the new colours-for-strangeness were modern and different to what had come before, perhaps also reflecting the fashions of the day: bright colours were widespread and trendy at this time, after all. Developing technologies also allowed more scope for adding neon-coloured SFX to films in post-production, too, further widening the array of possibilities – but a select set of horror films and directors really turned this potential to particular effects – using these modern, bright, unnatural hues to tie in with their fantastical plots, even becoming part and parcel of the strange goings-on.

In Re Animator (1985), Stuart Gordon’s madcap, grisly spin on the HP Lovecraft short story Herbert West: Re-animator, we see West (genre film god Jeffrey Combs) working on a serum which will reanimate (natch) dead flesh – with grotesque, but hilarious consequences. West’s ‘re-agent’ – capable of overthrowing the natural order by conquering death – is emblematic of bad science, and all of the fears and anxieties people have about science refracted into one blackly comedic substance. It is as such an unnatural, luminous green. Luminous green as code for ‘sinister substance’ has endured, too: as recently as 2007, more than twenty years after the re-agent, the zombie movie with a twist Wasting Away colourised its own sinister substance the same bright colour – the only colour, as most of the scenes are entirely black and white.

‘Bad science’ on screen, as seen throughout the rest of the horror decade, has seen some other notable uses of madcap colour – and one of my absolute favourites is also a horror-comedy spin on Lovecraft, from the same director as Re Animator, no less. This time, though, the film is From Beyond, and Gordon represents the nefarious experiments of Dr. Edward Pretorius, and his inter-dimensional gateway machine the Resonator, with a palate of shockingly bright pinks and blues. The colours operate as a rather eye-catching portent of doom: right before bad things are due to happen, you get your senses hit with waves of vivid, incongruous colour.

(The apex of madcap horror-science though, for me, probably occurs right at the turn of the decade with Frank Henenlotter’s touching tale of boy meets girl, boy accidentally dismembers girl with lawnmower, boy reconstructs girl with an assortment of hooker body parts after blowing a whole host of them up with explosive crack. Yep, Frankenhooker (1990) comes across as a glorious hurrah for a decade of demented experiments: the reanimation scene here, which is an update of a horror staple seen in numerous Frankenstein movies, uses an eye-popping range of colours, neatly combining our luminous pinks, greens and blues into one scene.)

Going back to the 80s, though, we can see these pinks, greens and blues being put to other uses, exploring different aspects of cinematic strangeness. Richard Wenks’ oh-so 80s Vamp (1986) has another way of hurling modern society into disarray – this time, through the exploration of the supernatural, where ultra-old meets very-new. Our protagonists are your standard Frat boys out on a pledge (and for some this might be horror enough) but when they find themselves in the After Dark Club on the look-out for a stripper, it turns out that the staff there are none other than bloodsucking vampires, with their star girl, Katrina (Grace Jones) the head of the group. Her bizarre key scene – pure 80s, partly erotic and partly unsettling – defines the look of this film perfectly, placing an ancient being smack-bang up to date in terms of the aesthetics put in place, and her transformation scenes are bathed in the same colours too, conflating her performance with her predatory nature. Jones looks striking enough under her own steam, and so here she looks pretty remarkable.

Whilst you could look for, and find, a bit of social critique in Vamp if you saw fit (certainly the self-assurance of some self-satisfied frat kids takes a hell of a knock), there’s definitely more to be had in a film of the following year – one which is equally viewed through an array of vivid shades. Jim Muro’s Street Trash (1987) looks at the effects of a noxious substance which finds its way into the human food chain – well, into low-grade alcohol actually, where it has a horrific effect on a group of people who already have it bad enough, being down-and-outs on the streets of New York. A new drink – Viper – hits the shelves, and it has a horrible, albeit incredibly lurid, effect on the people who drink it. Right there, on the streets of one of the world’s most iconic cities, these people literally dissolve into a dew – or else, a torrent of blues, greens and pinks, an absolute explosion of the spectrum and a grisly death…

As a cartoonish horror movie, Street Trash isn’t exactly meant to be a political statement, but along the way you can’t help but see it as a spit in the face of the American Dream, particularly in its incredibly mercenary 80s phase. (The same could be said of C.H.U.D. made a few years before, which, although rather less garish, also spins its narrative around the plight of the urban homeless, here extending the demonisation of the homeless all the way to their literal transformation into monsters.)

The last film I’d like to talk about here is another Henenlotter; this is a director who liked to push the envelope, and found a host of ways to do this on screen; in this movie, psychoactives and addiction are given the Henenlotter treatment, all via a little parasitic critter known as an Aylmer (something which prompts the Aylmer’s unwitting host, Brian, to exclaim “Elmer? You fucking called it Elmer?”) An absurd and fantastic genre film, Brain Damage (1988) is many things – monster movie, trip movie, camp gore fest and body horror. As Brian is parasitised by the crafty (and tuneful) Aylmer, which has escaped from a nearby household after years of being kept weak by a lacklustre diet, he finds that he’s getting a hefty dose of a powerful psychoactive, which makes him see and experience the world in psychedelic glory (even a car-lot can become a carnival on this stuff). Only thing is, the creature wants a bellyful of human brains in exchange, and when Brian refuses to help him get them, he withholds his narcotic ‘juice’ – sending poor Brian into hideous withdrawals. The whole escapade is trippy throughout, looking incomparably 80s, and using our pet palate to variously represent Brian’s trips, and his eventual comeuppance. It’s still an oddly eerie film to this day, both because and despite the fact that it is so firmly of its time.

And all of these films are of their time, aren’t they? Oh, of course lurid lighting and colour never went away (*cough* Gasper Noe *cough*) but skip forward to the current day, and the norm is something far, far more washed out; think of the new wave of French horrors and you think of their drained, blue-filtered aesthetic; think of the ongoing onslaught of ‘found footage’ horror and you’re lucky to get much in the way of polished cinematography at all, let alone a color palate to play with. That said, this isn’t true of the glut of faux grindhouse films we’ve seen of late; in emulating films which came before, movies like Hobo with a Shotgun picked up on a lot of the same colour usage and styles, making for fun play with a distinctive palate whilst showing that there’s a taste for this stuff out there still. The film itself ain’t perfect, but it was so good to see that look again. I suppose, for me, nostalgia makes all of this feel like home – and as much as I love modern horror, I do love the fact that these bold, eye-catching shades are finding their way to screens again. We don’t always want realism, after all – sometimes, we want a bit of sorcery, a bit of nature gone awry or a healthy dose of science-paranoia. It’s part and parcel of the magic of horror…

“Body horror is where my heart lies…” – an interview with director Andy Stewart

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

We look at quite a few short films during the course of an average year here at Brutal as Hell, what with the Horror in Short section we run, together with our combined attendance at horror festivals – but sometimes, a filmmaker’s work stands out, and that’s certainly the case with director and writer Andy Stewart, based in Glasgow. I originally featured Andy’s first film, Dysmorphia, back last year – this is still available for you to watch, and if you’re a fan of hard-hitting, though still understated body shocks, then I recommend you do so. Since then, I’ve been able to catch up to the rest of Andy’s work to date – namely, Split, and Ink – and therein I’ve seen a director crafting a recognisable style of his own, where we see an idea firmly grounded in the everyday allowed to run wild into the realms of flinch-inducing, grisly detail.

Andy was kind enough to have a chat with me about his work so far…

BAH: The first question is kind of an obvious one I know, but – how did you cross over into filmmaking? I understand you moved from writing into directing…

Andy: Yeah, I used to be a sports reporter, covering third division Scottish football games. Not the most glamorous role. In the end, I got fed up of sitting on freezing cold football terraces and decided to retire to the warmth of my house and start blogging, which I used as a means to moan about my perception of mainstream horror films. This kind of grew until I had 10 regular writers and we were reviewing screeners, interviewing actors, directors, authors and I also began writing for magazines at this time. After a while, and having sat through more awful screeners than I could stand, I decided that I wanted to have a crack at film-making and, being a massive David Cronenberg fan, started churning out short body horror scripts one after the other. Dysmorphia seemed like a good place to start but, I didn’t know any technical people to help me actually bring it to life until I was introduced to my producer, Adriana Polito, who was absolutely instrumental on Dysmorphia. She’s one of the most organised and efficient people alive. I genuinely couldn’t have done it without her.

Dysmorphia, especially considering it’s your very first film, packs a hell of a punch; it’s a very bold, very graphic take on a genuine mental condition – though the gory scenes in the film derive a lot of their impact from the fact that you find yourself feeling sympathetic for the plight of the main character. Particularly at the end, you feel that it’s a very humanised kind of horror, and certainly no splatterfest. What’s the story behind Dysmorphia?

I mostly write about things I can kind of relate to. That’s where it came from, to an extent. Obviously, I haven’t taken things to quite the extremes the main character does but I have felt kind of alone and depressed at times in my life and have been unhappy with aspects of my appearance at different times, as most of us have been. The rest kind of came from my existing knowledge of the 2 conditions that became one in the film (Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Body Integrity Identity Disorder). I have always been a bit fascinated by BIID. I have never quite been able to understand the emotions and feelings that lead a person to disassociate so completely with a part of their body as to want rid of it and I don’t suppose that I ever will. It’s a really interesting condition.

What challenges did you face putting together those special effects? I’m guessing, like most first-time filmmakers, that you had limited funds…

Yeah. That’s a fair guess. The entire film was made on a budget of £160. Ten quid of that went on the FX. I knew that I couldn’t afford to show too much, lest it look fake, so I made the decision pretty early on to go with the “less is more” approach, which I think serves the film quite well. I designed a lot of the special FX make-up in advance with Ruthy Devenny, the prosthetic FX technician. That tenner went on a slab of pork belly that I rigged with a blood tube. It’s only in one shot. The rest was all Gordie’s real arm. There were actually very, very few challenges. That side of things went quite smoothly although the room did start to get a bit whiffy from the pork and hot lights…

Judging by your work so far – Dysmorphia, Split and Ink – you clearly have an interest in body horror, and by that I don’t mean the zany kind which you’d associate with, say, Henenlotter, but a far more unflinching, unsettling variety. Is this an area you’d like to explore more in future work, and if so, do you have any ideas where you’d like to take it next?

Oh definitely. I think if you are going down the more severe body horror route of Split or Ink, it should be unflinching and should unsettle people. I am a major hypochondriac, so body horror is one of the few things that troubles me and I can’t get enough of it. I get grossed out by anything to do with fingernails and teeth. I have a few other things that I want to do, film-wise, but I will absolutely be back to body horror. Body horror is where my heart lies, I guess.

Late last year, you were a guest at Sheffield’s Celluloid Screams horror festival, where me and editor-man Ben got to catch up with your two most recent short films, ‘Split’ and ‘Ink’. What was the experience of screening two of your films at the same event like, and were you pleased with your response?

Anyone who knows me, or who saw me before the screening of either Split or Ink at Celluloid Screams, will know that I am a nervous wreck before any screenings. I hate watching my films and hate watching them with audiences. Part of me feels a bit guilty for subjecting folk to these long, quiet, often revolting films! It was weird to have the two films playing on the same day, too. The only people with more screen-time were Astron-6. That’s madness.

I was really happy with the response to both films actually, and the feedback was lovely. It’s always lovely and touching when people come up to me and say they enjoyed my work or that it elicited some kind of reaction. On the whole, Split was received better, I think. Some folk weren’t quite as taken with Ink, but that’s OK. I know where it’s lacking and that’s something for me to work on.

I have to ask this, having sat – and squirmed – through Ink. What was your thinking behind the idea? The main character covets tattoos of his own, but comes up with a horrific way of getting them…

It actually came from frustration. I have a lot of tattoos, and it’s true what they say – they are kind of addictive. I was unemployed for a while and couldn’t afford any new tattoos and so I remember sitting thinking up ways to get new ones. Crazy things. I was like, “Well, I could do my own. Prison style,” and “I could flee a tattoo studio without paying but, no, that’s illegal,”then I hit on the idea of “I could steal them from folk but, no, also illegal, and nuts”. Then I started thinking that it could work as a film and, in fact, was written at the same time as Dysmorphia. It was originally a much more slapsticky, schlocky affair, but I rewrote it to pull it in line with the tone of Dysmorphia and Split. I actually now work in a tattoo studio in Glasgow so don’t actually have to pay for my tattoos. That was also part of my reasoning behind making Ink when I did. In fact, the scene outside the studio was shot at my work and the “Tattooist” is played by an actual tattooist. The guy were all really supportive.

So far, you’ve made three short films. Given the success of the ABCs of Death compilations, it seems like the horror-viewing public is rediscovering a taste for short movies…this is partly behind our thinking at the site with the Horror in Short section; it seems such a shame to overlook good short films, so we aim to make them available for our readers. What do you personally most enjoy about the medium? And are you interested in moving into feature-length filmmaking?

For me, short film-making has helped me start to find my style, if you like, and I have had to adapt quickly in order to do that. All three shorts have a very different tone and look, which kind of chart my development, if there’s been any. I enjoy telling a short story over ten, twenty minutes and being able to get the reactions I get, whether that’s covering of eyes or flinching or, in more extreme cases, vomiting and fainting. I know the arguments that say that short film-making is no longer an effective way to get your name out there and that it’s features or bust, but to that I say, it hasn’t been a bad experience for me at all. Maybe only in financial terms, to a small extent but – for me – there’s a hell of a lot more people that know me for my short films than ever did with my writing.

As for features, yeah, I have a few scripts ready to go. It’s definitely what I want to do…and soon.

As a horror fan yourself – what are some of your own favourite films and directors?

I love The Wicker Man. It’s a real comfort film to me. Plus, the score and songs make it almost like a weird musical, which kind of tickles me. My top horror films will always feature The Wicker Man, Re-Animator, Halloween, Hellraiser, Cronenberg’s The Fly and The Abominable Dr. Phibes. They’re my go-to’s. As for directors, that’s easy too. David Cronenberg, David Lynch and John Carpenter. Aside from horror, I’m a huge Muppets and Godzilla fan. I actually for a while held a secret ambition to work on The Muppets!

Finally, what are your plans for the coming year?

Ink and Split are still out at festivals so hopefully I will pop up at a couple of those. I’m also in pre-production on what is likely my last short film, though we aren’t actually shooting until June. It’s not body horror this time, rather a dip of the toe into sci-fi horror/fantasy territory. We have most of the same crew from Ink returning, with Grant Mason handling the FX again and BAFTA winner Alan C. McLaughlin back as cinematographer. We have also just locked in our actors, so it’ll be the first time I have worked with recognisable horror actors too, which is utterly exciting and humbling. Can’t say too much more on it right now, unfortunately.

After that, I’m all about the features…

You can keep up to date with Andy’s forthcoming work via the Shining Example films website – or, follow them at Twitter or Facebook.

Thanks to Andy Stewart

Blu-ray Review: Ganja & Hess (1973)

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

When Blacula appeared back in 1972, it was an immediate, if a surprise, success: the way that it catered to audiences via its excellent cast without talking down to anybody (the odd comic turn notwithstanding) whilst adding something strong and new to an already tried-and-tested vampire horror genre saw certain cinemas taking record profits, and you have to strike while the iron is hot – so it didn’t take long (only a few months in fact) before film studios were eagerly trying to commission their own Blacula before the crowds moved away, spending their cash on the next next big thing. Step up one-time director Bill Gunn. Gunn, being a practical man, was all too happy to take advantage of the money being made available for a new movie, ostensibly another ‘black vampire’ film – but his resulting work, Ganja & Hess (also known by other titles, amongst which – you’ve guessed it – Black Vampire) plays fast and loose with the vampire theme to such an extent that it’s dubiously a part of the genre at all. The studio hated the resultant work, and demanded that it be so cut and edited that Gunn, angry and disappointed, took his name off the credits. The film has been knocking around only in varying versions in the years since, but never until this point – and the work of Eureka Entertainment – has this cut been restored. So, at last, we get to see the film the way the director intended, or pretty damn close. And, after all that, I find it’s quite unlike anything else I’ve seen – sometimes brilliantly, sometimes bafflingly so.

One of the first directorial decisions to confuse the hell out of me is the way Gunn references what I’d say are key plot points – by doing it all off-screen, either via some brief on-screen text just after the opening credits roll, or even more infuriatingly (according to your personal preferences, of course) by having composer Sam Waymon singing about what’s happened. In any case, we learn that anthropologist Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones, a.k.a Ben from Night of the Living Dead) was conducting research on the legendary Myrthian civilisation in Africa when he was stabbed by a ceremonial dagger. The attack failed to kill him, and on his recovery, he found himself craving human blood. This is all before we really meet Hess, however, so it’s made clear from this choice of introduction that we can forget any expectations of a standard narrative, or indeed anything approaching what we might associate with either the horror or the equally nebulous ‘blaxploitation’ genres. Had Gunn made the choice to film that which we’re left to glean here, costs also allowing of course, then there would have been plenty of options for sex, action, gore, horror or anything similar, but obviously that was never the director’s intention.

With that established, we’re pitched into an oddly art-house state of affairs; lengthy, naturalistic scenes inside an evangelical New York church contribute little, other than allowing us to meet the pastor there, who doubles up as Hess’s chauffeur and does have some plot relevance in due course. We find Hess himself established in a fine house in New York; there are a lot of sequences pitched in to hit us over the head repeatedly with the fact that he’s an intelligent and refined man, mainly through lots of still shots of pieces of art, and we see this intelligent and refined man (who owns pieces of art, I don’t know if I mentioned that) managing his blood addiction carefully, though being forced to engage in some risky behaviour – such as stealing from blood banks. Things grow more complicated when Hess takes on a new assistant, Meda (Gunn himself) and the unstable newcomer attacks him. Hess does of course fail to die, and when Meda commits suicide, Hess hides the body in the cellar of the house – after drinking his blood, of course.

This little indiscretion could have been forgotten, were it not for the fact that Meda’s wife, Ganja (the superb Marlene Clark) has just arrived back in the US and is looking for him. More to the point, she’s broke, and she was hoping she could join her husband in his new place of employ, as she can’t afford a hotel…so, reluctantly at first, Hess allows her to stay with him, but they soon develop a romantic relationship which will become complicated by his wish to keep her with him forever and her discovery of his condition…

Although in some ways the arrival of Clark heralds a new act in the film as a whole – Ganja Meda is a formidable character and a very strong female lead – Ganja & Hess never drops its strange veneer and perhaps clings to it all the more, refracting the later plot developments through the uncertain lenses of dream sequences, flashbacks, partial memories and lots of ‘what did I just see?’ You’ll notice that I keep returning to the presence or otherwise of ‘the plot’ and perhaps this is my error; maybe, trying to see the film in this way is to miss the point. I don’t think a film needs to be either straight-laced or incomprehensible, though, and in many places I found Ganja & Hess to be art-house for art-house’s sake, full of improvised dialogue (which I rarely get on with since the aversion therapy that was Kill List), clunky camera angles and odd stylistic decisions. There are also references to religion and redemption which labour the film somewhat, either left on the periphery or forced into view. For all of that, this is a film which is clearly ambitious, and obviously wanted to do something atmospheric on a low budget and a severely restricted time-frame – which it does achieve, whatever misgivings I have about the film overall.

In terms of what it does with the vampire motif then, it pulls away from it to such an extent that it really can be said to be an original vision – overtly discussing blood-drinking in terms of addiction and using it to explore a turbulent relationship between two interesting, if lesser-understood, central characters. There are also many impressive, haunting minor details in the film – key to which is the excellent soundtrack, with ‘the call’ of the African tribe which heralds the blood urge a stand-out, evocative device. The overall effect of Ganja & Hess is to draw you in despite yourself, ultimately, and it’s definitely a film which would merit repeat viewings. If you’re interested in the ancestry of the modern vampire movie, then Ganja & Hess is a distant cousin, but an important member of the family nonetheless.

The Eureka release will come with a tonne of extra features, including audio commentaries by producer Chiz Schultz, Marlene Clark, cinematographer James Hinton and composer Sam Waymon, scene-by-scene commentary from historian David Kalat, a documentary about the film – The Blood of the Thing – and a 24-page booklet, featuring an essay by film critic Kim Newman.

Ganja & Hess will be released by Eureka Entertainment as part of a dual format edition on 26th January 2015.

Cults, Crooks, Creeps – and a New Mythos Here and There…Keri’s Top Ten Films of 2014 (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

(For the first part of Keri’s Top Ten list, please click here.)

4 – Cold in July

I’ve been a big fan of Michael C. Hall since his work in Dexter – particularly the early series – so it’s testament to his skill as an actor that here, in the dark and stylish Cold in July, I barely recognised him. Dexter was pathologically cool; Richard Dane, the family man Hall plays here, is a kind of nervy, mistake-prone Everyman, someone who shoots and kills an intruder at his home – before, in a mere moment, realising that the man he was alleged to have killed was not the man he found at his place at all. A sequence of cover-ups and mysteries unfold, drawing Dane into a murky and dangerous world, peopled with crooks and villains – and under the superb guidance of director Jim Mickle (one of my absolute favourite working directors) it is in negotiating this treacherous liminal space that Dane develops into a fully-rounded, self-aware man. As crime dramas go, this really is second to none. Whilst I watched and enjoyed Mickle’s riff on We Are What We Are this year, Cold in July really nails it for me in terms of craftsmanship and originality. What an absolute pleasure to see Don Johnson doing such a blackly comic turn here, too. You can check out my full review of Cold in July here.

3 – Under The Skin

A film which is underpinned by myriad unanswered questions; a film with next to no dialogue, with much of what is spoken unscripted and spontaneous, via men who have no idea they are even being filmed – and a film which still baffles me now, months after I saw it. And yet, of all the films I’ve watched this year, Under The Skin must surely be the one which continues to engage and intrigue me most. My opinion of it has steadily developed and changed, moving from utter frustration at its strange structure and refusal to follow even the barest conventions of plot development, through to respect and now, coming full circle, into a staunch defender of the film; I’d even go so far as to say that I think it’s one of the most original science fiction films I’ve seen. It takes courage and hard work to make a film which can settle into your consciousness like that, let alone alter your ideas towards it months after the fact, but director Jonathan Glazer has done it, electing to let the strange story play out in incredibly suitable, eclectic fashion. Vital to all of this, of course, is Scarlett Johansson as the nameless female alien; she seems to have become the go-to gal for beautiful, emotionally detached alien characters since performing this role, but she really is perfect here, looking amazing but also chillingly inhuman; the beach scene in this film, for example, is genuinely disturbing and upsetting, and her utter inability to interpret what she is seeing as tragedy really underlines just how far she needs to travel to develop even a thread of the humanity she – eventually – seems to crave. Me and Ben discussed the film after we’d seen it earlier this year; as you can see, the jury was much more out at the time. If asked now, I’d say that Under The Skin is completely mesmeric – an odd yarn, but a fascinating one.

2 – Oculus

When you happen to be someone that enjoys supernatural horror, you often find yourself chasing after it, always looking for the good stuff. You get incredibly picky; a scene here or a dissatisfying conclusion there, and you’ll tend to write off the whole. Or is that just me? Anyway, I know that many people disagree with me on Oculus (our own Steph was a bit more guarded in her response) but to me, this is an excellent example of supernatural horror. Mike Flanagan had already shown himself a capable horror director in Absentia; in Oculus, he made my skin crawl, which is the biggest compliment I can pay it.

It starts from a reasonably standard premise – a haunted object, in this case a mirror – and then veers off into its own domain, creating a back story which doesn’t give up all of its secrets, and establishing, in the hinterland between these secrets and the very new technology which siblings Kaylie and Tim are using, something deeply malevolent. You are never really given an indication of why the mirror does what it does: any moralising on the film’s behalf would very likely have weakened the overall impact, and certainly reduced the creep factor. We just have to accept that the haunting takes place, whilst also, via the very effective use of flashback, bear witness to a happy family being destroyed. But by what? It’s some time before there’s any indication that anything happened in the family home at all, beyond marital disharmony and children’s overactive imaginations. By the time you have any sort of certainty about the nature of what happened, you feel as bewildered and traumatised as the key players here. Mirrors have long held a place in horror tradition, too, and the artifact itself here is used to excellent effect.

1 – Spring

Back in 2012, Resolution – the debut feature by filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead – made my end of year list, and they’ve gone and done it again with their second feature, Spring. Resolution was a highly original development on the ‘found footage’ genre and absolutely teeming with ideas, all of which were all pinned on a very risky end sequence, which gave lots of us pause for thought at the time; this isn’t an issue with Spring, although there is plenty of ambiguity to be had in the end sequence here, too. We don’t know what will befall the characters at the end of it all in Spring, but it ties in pleasingly with the film as a whole – a film bold enough to do the unthinkable for many filmmakers. It successfully establishes its own mythos. And what’s more, it works brilliantly. How often does an entirely new cinematic creature come around in this way? One of the real joys of following indie filmmaking is seeing inventiveness of this kind, and Spring is rife with pleasant surprises.

Add to this a genuine, believable array of characters, gorgeous locations, well-chosen moments of humour and a razor-sharp script, and there you have it – my film of the year, and I’m very excited to see what these guys do with the Aleister Crowley project they announced recently. You can check out my complete review here, and UK viewers – be sure to track this film down on its official release next year.

Cults, Crooks, Creeps – and A New Mythos Here and There…Keri’s Top Ten Films of 2014 (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on December 20, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

It’s become customary, as we approach the end of a year, to complain about the dearth of good cinema in said year. It’s almost a new Christmas tradition for film writers. There were no classics; there were too many lazy efforts; why do we still have to contend with all these remakes? No doubt according to your tastes, all of the above could be said about 2014, and any year which precedes or follows it. Personally, the number of films I’ve enjoyed out of films I’ve seen has been pretty high this year. The issue for me isn’t that there are no good films being made; it’s more that I haven’t yet gotten to see a lot of the films which I can see are now appearing on other writers’ lists. What can I say? All of the regular BAH writers have demanding full-time jobs and/or young families; we don’t necessarily always have the luxury of the time or the money (which need to closely coincide) that it takes to get to see absolutely everything which we might otherwise choose to see. Therefore, on this list you will see no Babadooks, no Guests, no minute dissections of the second ABCs of Death – and if I talk about them at all in future (which I sincerely hope to do) it’ll be as a viewer fashionably late to the party.

All of that said, I have been lucky enough to see some great films. The ones which have really stuck with me this year have been the ones which surprised me pleasantly (it’s easy to get glib, especially when you get hit with a run of screeners you don’t particularly love) or unnerved me in some way, either by pulling apart horror/sci-fi convention in some intriguing manner, or riffing very successfully on a tried-and-tested horror theme, bringing something new to it. In nearly every case, it’s taken a while for the film in question to bed in – a few days, or even weeks before I could really say I loved it. Perhaps that’s the ultimate compliment for a film – to suggest it has that sort of staying power, in a climate which sees such a rapid turnover of movies and so many filmmakers vying for the attention of their audiences, before they move on to the next thing.

Without further ado, then, here are the films which I’d say are my favourites this year.

10 – Lucky Bastard

I’ll start off with a film I had no high hopes for, but which impressed the hell out of me. Maybe pleasant surprises have more weight than banal disappointments? It’s a nice thought. Anyway, I received a link for an online screener for Lucky Bastard, something which looked to be a type of found footage film, based around the adult film industry. Hmm, thought I – it’ll be headache-inducing camera spin all the way, with the odd pause of course reserved for some crowd-sating T&A. How wrong I was. Lucky Bastard, first of all, doesn’t exploit the premise of adult film for cheap laughs, or use it as a pretense to moralise whilst covertly enjoying the nudity, Daily-Mail style. Instead, this is a well-written story in which the characters are completely humanised; these are good people who just happen to work in porn. When they are threatened as the story progresses, they show that they care for each other and you, by proxy, care what happens to them, in a series of escalatingly tense situations – though the filmmakers never forget that a well-timed moment of black comedy needn’t derail the whole story or that tension. Furthermore, here’s one occasion when it’s completely believable that there would be cameras everywhere, thus lending credence to an otherwise tired-and-tested framework. Lucky Bastard shows that found footage can still be done very well indeed, in the right hands; many people have rated The Borderlands for the same reasons this year, but for me, Lucky Bastard is streets ahead. You can check out my full review here.

9 – Soulmate

It is both a blessing and a curse that Axelle Carolyn’s debut feature, Soulmate, has become so well-known as the film that got the BBFC wagging its finger (and its scissors) at the opening sequence, of a young woman attempting suicide – which the censors deemed imitable, and thus beyond the pale for us poor, fragile filmgoers. On one hand, many people became aware of the film via the furore, but on the other, many of those new viewers have as yet found themselves unable to see the film in its entirety, a fact which I believe sadly and significantly impacts upon the film as a whole. You may, however, watch the scene for yourselves on Youtube here – and I strongly advise that you do. Not just to circumvent the BBFC, but because it’s actually a very moving scene, beautifully directed and sensitively done. Taking this scene as part of the whole, as it was always intended, Soulmate moves beyond a supernatural horror – though it does this very well – and turns into something else: it’s not about scares, really, it’s about extraordinary events befalling a woman, turning her from a victim into a victor, someone who wants to live. You can read my full review here.

8 – Big Bad Wolves

During my initial review of this film, I remember noting my ignorance of Israeli cinema, and in the months since I’ve watched Big Bad Wolves, it’s had me thinking of just how many countries and film industries there are out there which mostly pass us by, alongside their own abilities to dramatise topics which may yet be beyond at least mainstream European/American cinema. Certainly, it feels next to impossible that you’d get such a skilled, engaging, but ultimately unflinching take on the topic of child abduction from our neck of the woods. Hollywood would rope in Liam Neeson a-fucking-gain, throw in a few car chases, demonise a nationality or two and ultimately come out in a blaze of redemption. Without getting into specific nation politics, perhaps things can be done differently in Israel. A fascinating watch, Big Bad Wolves may be no horror film, but it deftly weaves a number of elements of horror into its crime drama. Its twist in the tale is one of the most understated shocks I’ve ever received from a film. Absolutely superb stuff.

7 – The Sacrament

The Sacrament, directed by Ti West, served as an excellent palate-cleanser for me. See, I hated The Innkeepers, and I was all but ready to give up on Mr. West; with his newest film however, one very different in direction, he’s restored my faith that he is capable of good storytelling with likeable, believable characters. In so doing, he’s also (in all but name, really) taken on the potentially risky real-life story of the Jonestown Massacre, where a notorious cult were persuaded by their charismatic leader, Jim Jones, to off themselves with spiked Kool-Aid. The tale of Jonestown has been much considered and debated in the decades since it happened. But what makes a normal person with a normal upbringing throw everything in to live an isolated, precarious existence in the back of beyond? By updating and retelling the story – yes, with hand-held cameras – West has made a good show of charting the escalating paranoia of an isolated, vulnerable community, via some interested parties trying to track down a missing sister. The results are impressive, especially in how West communicates the panic of the cult members on screen, without exploiting it all for kicks. Saying it provides insight into the mindset of the cult member may be pushing it a little far, but it’s a deft, worthwhile dramatisation in any case. The central performances are superb too. You can read my full review here.

6 – Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I’m so, so happy that my malingering suspicions about the (so far) two Planet of the Apes prequels have been greatly disappointed. I really am. In getting us up to the point at which, in the original, Charlton Heston touched down on an unrecognisable Earth (in one of my favourite films ever made), these prequels have developed the story sensitively and cleverly – but also given the subject matter a high-gloss Hollywood look, which actually fits very well indeed given the fantastical developments we’re asked to accede to, using frankly genius SFX to flesh out the subject matter (and it’s getting harder and harder to wince at CGI these days – things have moved so quickly that developments have quite overtaken my cynicism). This most recent prequel may have started on relatively safe territory with the whole ‘virus decimates humanity’ riff, but from here on in, the story moves in new directions entirely, whilst quickly jettisoning the ‘apes good, men bad’ dichotomy which not only would have severely limited the success of the film overall, but hardly have paved the way for what we know, plot-wise, is to follow. Andy Serkis has become the go-to guy for these sorts of hybrid CGI/acting performances, but let’s face it – there’s a reason for this. Through his skilled work, Caesar the chimpanzee is an incredibly well-developed character. The film has some faults but nonetheless this is an engaging and surprisingly moving piece of work. You can read my full review here.

5 – Godzilla

From a prequel of a classic, to a remake of a classic which has spawned many other remakes and sequels and may well now, at the time of writing, be back in business via the Japanese studio which launched the original. Leaving aside this complicated family tree, I have no qualms in having Godzilla on my best of the year list. In fact, I’ve been quite surprised at seeing so many ‘meh’ reviews of it this year, or even downright hostility towards it. Look, it’s a fucking big monster movie, a nod of the head to the ultimate fucking big monster movie, and I for one would take a fucking big monster movie over a whole cohort of its peers any day of the week – especially when it looks as glorious as Gareth Edwards has made it look. Edwards earned his monster movie chops, for me, when he made the (again often maligned and misunderstood) Monsters in 2010; he was clearly the guy for the job on the Godzilla remake, albeit a film drastically different to the study of human folly that is Monsters, and I love what he’s done here. As for criticism on the family focus in the film – well, this is right there in the incredible original Godzilla too, a film that has been with us now for sixty years. Sure, it’s a little saccharin in the 2014 version, but Edwards does enough around and outside of all of that to make this one of the most fun films of the year for me. And that’s the thing, really: I don’t want morose and subtle all the time. Godzilla is pure entertainment, and whether we get the next film from Toho or from Hollywood, or indeed both, I hope they’re just as entertaining. You can read Ben’s full review of the movie here.

Click here for the second part of Keri’s Top 10…

Happy Birthday, Joe D’Amato! Three Films Make a Feature…

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

That director and purveyor of horror and sleaze, Joe D’Amato was born on this day in 1936, and had he not died so suddenly back in 1999, would have been near to eighty years of age at this point in time. And yet, somehow, something tells me he’d still have been making movies, with the same diehard work ethic that could be said of other exploitation cinema stalwarts like Jess Franco and Jean Rollin. It seems unlikely that anything could have stopped him. I mean, what else would he have done? When he died at the age of 62, he had nearly two hundred directorial credits to his name, and had also completed plenty of other work in film as a cinematographer, writer and producer. That’s a pretty impressive career, even if a lot of his work was straight-up (heh) porn and probably even slightly beyond the remit of a site like Brutal as Hell, even if we did get a visitor today who arrived via the search term ‘cannibals eating human genitals’. I’m not a D’Amato completist, so I’m afraid I haven’t yet sat down nicely with my mug of tea to watch House of Anal Perversions – but where he began to dabble with the horror genre, well, there I’ve taken more of an interest…

The thing about D’Amato, though, is that he could never really divorce himself from that bawdy, rather unseemly spin on sex which he did so well. Almost accidentally, via making films the way he knew and liked, he often wound up infusing a lot of his horror with an undercurrent of mordant eroticism. Sometimes eroticism was left in the dust for utter filth, mind you. This often made for jaw-dropping, ‘oh no he didn’t!’ movies; take a film like the gloriously-titled Porno Holocaust (1981), for instance, and marvel at just how deeply wrong it all is. A radioactive rapist killing women with his semen? Oh, Joe – you went there. The results are always bewildering (with porn spliced into the horror, and vice versa), rather (read very) skeezy and for all of that, oddly entertaining. These days there’s a clear-cut sub-genre of porn films which plumps for horror parodies, but it wasn’t always this way, and once upon a time it was a lot more noteworthy to deliberately mix the two; grisly horror and graphic sex certainly didn’t always go together, but they did when D’Amato was around.

The first experience I had of this genre-mashing was in Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980), a title which I confess I got hold of simply because the title amused me so much; it does of course, as Eurosleaze and horror so often does, have several titles, and each of them you can conjure plenty with. I’m not sure what I expected from the movie, to be honest – but certainly, I think I expected more of a seamless join between the horror and the erotica promised in the title. What I got instead was a film which seemed to hop quite madly from hardcore porn scenes (and it may have been made in the early 80s – just – but the body hair quotient therein simply screams 70s) to a rather disjointed zombie horror – all set, as was often customary, in a tropical paradise which has a bit of voodoo going on. The horror and the sex happen very separately here; the basic plot is that some lusty Americans hope to acquire the tropical island for a holiday resort of some kind, but they are warned off this course of action by two strange, possible supernatural characters who warn them that the island is cursed (natch). The zombie element is given minimal treatment here, which is a bit of a shame as they’re nicely lumbering, old-school walking dead, but the film does boast a few noteworthy scenes: you get the gorgeous Laura Gemser (who by some accident of fate ended up as a costume designer on the so-bad-it’s-good epic Troll 2 in later years) biting off someone’s winky and furthermore, after witnessing a prolonged dance scene interlude which gets a bit full on, you will never look at a bottle of champagne the same way again. The film also features George Eastman – yes, him – who, interestingly, participates in sex scenes with his trousers firmly still on. Now there’s horror!

There was more horror to be had in Anthropophagus, made in the same year as Erotic Nights and also featuring Eastman – though looking a tad worse for wear in this film, as a rather grotesque, foetus-munching murderer who picks off a group of holidaymakers when they wind up on his remote island. Islands get a very bad rap in horror, don’t they? Anyway, Anthropophagus is probably D’Amato’s best-known foray into horror, at least for British viewers, for the simple reason that the film got swept up in the Video Nasties debacle and banned outright. This has probably added a frisson of danger to the film and sustained it for far longer than it ever could have on its own merits – as it’s not a great film, all told. The pacing is actually rather weak, and although Eastman can conjure up some menace in his role, he doesn’t really get enough screen time to develop on this. The foetus scene is certainly notorious, though its execution isn’t fantastic either – but still, it was definitely a turning point in shock and gore, which has influenced many horror fans since and no doubt spawned a gazillion enthusiastic homages. You can certainly still see the shadow of Anthropophagus in certain styles of gore/death metal – it seems that chowing down on the unborn is still a potent enough idea to have gone down in horror history, whatever the limitations of the film where it first appeared. If you want gore, then Anthropophagus is the place to start…

However, to my mind the very finest horror film that D’Amato ever made – Beyond the Darkness (1979) – is light years apart from the likes of Anthropophagus. An atmospheric and rather discomfiting piece of film, it manages to weave necrophilia into what would otherwise be a rather straightforward yarn about sexual jealousy and, yep, class and status too. Frank (the rather angelic-looking Kieran Canter) is a young man who could be said to have it all, in terms of wealth, a luxurious home and a beautiful girlfriend, Anna (Cinzia Monreale, who also appeared in The Beyond, playing Emily). Sadly for Frank, though, he is an orphan – and his housekeeper, the malevolent Iris (Franca Stoppi) doesn’t have his best interests at heart, for all her pretences. Sensing that the presence of Anna could jeopardise her position in the household – a position she hopes to bolster, as she has romantic designs on her young charge – she sets to work, hexing the young woman – which results in her death.

Already devastated by bereavement, Frank finds it very difficult to let go of Anna – so he doesn’t let go of her at all, digging her up, returning her to his home and embalming her, before returning her to their bed. As one does. The film follows his slow descent into insanity as he struggles to find a replacement for Anna, always ending up with another corpse on his hands (which Iris is happy to help him dispose of, reminding him all the time of just how much she is willing to do for him) – whilst all the time, Anna maintains her silent vigil in Frank’s bed, slowly but surely disintegrating as we go. All to a soundtrack by Goblin, might I add…

Shocking and repellent as Beyond the Darkness is in places, this is actually D’Amato showing what he can do, on a ridiculously limited budget and time-frame (the film was completed in just four weeks). It boasts an impressive, even Gothic atmosphere throughout, and here the links forged between sex and death are sensitive and seamless. Perhaps most impressively – and again in keeping with its Gothic leanings – you begin to feel a real empathy for Frank, even for all of his horrific actions. He’s a damaged man struggling to cope with loss, not to mention the machinations of the deranged and very driven Iris, who will do anything to claw her bloody way up the social ladder. Clear evidence of D’Amato’s versatility, this film, and – yeah, I’m going to say it – his talents as a director. He made some superb films, and this is not only one of his best, but one of my personal favourites. With a filmography of nearly two hundred, I suppose it’s completely inevitable that there’ll be a lot of differences in outcome and quality – especially when you’re knocking out (excuse the pun) a hell of a lot of DTV pornography. But Beyond the Darkness clearly deserves to reach a greater audience than perhaps it has done to date.

That ‘mordant eroticism’ of Mr D’Amato’s: well, when it’s good, it’s very, very good, and just one of the many reasons for remembering his birthday today. Happy birthday!

Thanks to @ronandusty on Twitter for his help!

Blu-ray Review: Nekromantik (1988)

Posted on December 8, 2014January 1, 2026 by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Nekromantik must be one of the most often-discussed, yet least-seen pieces of shock cinema which ever came lurching out of the 80s – that is, seen in its entirety at least. Here in the UK you could get hold of it, as you could most things, but not in any legitimate form – and many people will have seen the most controversial moments of the film (i.e. the necrophilia) without seeing much more of it. Certainly, it seems strange, twenty-six years or so after the initial furore surrounding Buttgereit’s gonzo spin on life, sex and death, to be sitting down to an above-board copy – much less a copy which has recently sailed straight past the BBFC without any incident. You could almost swear our film censors had finally got the distinction between fantasy and reality, had they not recently effectively banned a whole host of sex acts, almost as if to remind us that they can still make things interesting for everyone. Now, in 2014, we have the bizarre situation where corpse fucking is acceptable, yet female ejaculation doesn’t exist. But, I digress…and at least in the case of Nekromantik, thanks to the good folk at Arrow, we can all now see for ourselves what the tremendous fuss has been all about.

Well, any conventional sense of plot is rather low in the mix here, but such as it is, we follow the short and brutish story of an everyday German citizen called Rob Schmadtke. Rob works for a cleansing crew, whose role is essentially to bag up any body parts which ill fortune should see fit to scatter over the German roadsides (and this happens a fair amount). He doesn’t seem to fit in very well with the rest of the guys, and this may or may not be why he so often decides to take his work home with him to his dilapidated apartment and his girlfriend Betty, who seems not only fine with his collection of preserved body parts, but positively enthusiastic – especially when he carts home a badly-decomposed drowning victim for her to play with. Still, the course of true love never did run smooth. It seems like our Rob has lots of repressed issues, and when he finally loses his job, Betty decides to leave, taking her cadaver with her – though how this pastime will go down with the rich man she hopes to find is less than clear at this stage…

Now alone, Rob’s sense of abandonment and rage spills over into acts of sexual violence (or at least, violence motivated by sex), and that sexual violence is soon directed inward too, in the most literal way. All of this, mind, is refracted through a hazy mix of hallucinations, repressed memory, bizarre asides and even a film-within-a-film. Neat and linear, this ain’t.

First things first, cards on the table and other clichés; I don’t think Nekromantik is a good film. Or, rather, for me, it barely functions as a film at all – which would seem to tie in with what the director himself thinks. I think there’s always a danger of Emperor’s New Clothes when a film has built up such a hefty reputation as this one has, but in terms of my engagement with this film, there’s little to be had. The characterisation is so minimal, the key players seem only to be there to loosely link various amateurish, unpleasant tableaux together, and a lot of the inclusions here are by turns ridiculous and deeply, deeply crude. In its efforts to demonstrate the links between life and death, the conflation between each is about as subtle as, well, a spade to the head. I never want to see animals being killed on screen. The film as a whole has an almost childish obsession with body parts and bodily fluids, and an unholy triumvirate of blood-cum-piss punctuates the film throughout, leading up to a dippy conclusion worthy only of GWAR (or maybe Rammstein?) So, Nekromantik is squalid, it’s disjointed and it’s often baffling. It’s not a good film, and I don’t find it enjoyable.

However, for all its zero subtlety, it’s still an unsettling film, and that is what makes it remain worthwhile. I felt that, despite my growing intolerance for its barrage of have-a-go gore (which has a great deal in common with 1987’s Bad Taste) and the deliberate shock value of, say, having a pretty lady affixing a length of piping to a corpse’s crotch just so she can ride it (with the addition of a condom probably not making the sex all that much safer) the film still has a mesmerising effect all of its own. There’s real atmosphere here, whether you like said atmosphere or not. The grainy, gritty film quality (which hasn’t been dressed up at all for Generation Blu-ray); the overpowering, almost-constant soundtrack; the relentless montage of challenging visuals and subject matter; you can’t argue with the disturbing and memorable qualities which Nekromantik has to offer, and even if you may prefer some of its descendants – the Goroticas and Thanatomorphoses of this world, maybe – seeing the film in this format, with Herr Buttgereit’s blessing, is something else.

Arrow Film’s upcoming release is, and I’m sorry to sound like a broken record whenever I mention Arrow, surely the definitive version of this film, with a huge raft of extra features which help to contextualise and flesh out (!) the film’s legacy as part arthouse project, part cathartic censor-bait. Look out for a tonne of commentaries, an original interview with the director, a different, ‘Grindhouse’ version of the film, short films and music videos by Buttgereit and a range of visual goodies – to name but a few, and rather than have me paraphrase more of them, I strongly suggest you go and see what’s on offer. The whole package looks superb with original artwork too, of course.

Maybe there’s never going to be any real consensus on whether Nekromantik is experimental claptrap or genius gung-ho indie cinema, but I’d strongly advise you check out the whole deal yourselves: if nothing else, it’s certainly one that will stay with you, and the more and more films there are out there, the less and less I seem to find myself saying that.

Nekromantik will be released on Blu-ray by Arrow Films & Video on December 15th 2014.

Terror Australis: Australia and its Cult Cinema (Part 2)

Posted on November 26, 2014 by Keri O'Shea

By Matt Harries

Editor’s Note: for the first part of Matt’s special feature, click here.

So, Australia’s Outback can inflict lethal damage on the unwary. What, though, about the most dangerous beast of all? What happens to the man who lives there, far from the reach of the western world and its focus on ease of life and material comforts? Wake In Fright (1971) deals with this strange devolution of man as Gary Bond’s teacher John Grant sees his identity and values eroded and subsumed into the dusty outback mining town of Bundanyabba. Attempting to return to polite society at the end of term time, he intends to spend one night only there. After popping out for a quick beer though, he becomes embroiled in the booze and gambling culture of the ‘Yabba. He loses his money and the single day stretches into five. His life becomes a nightmarish tangle of drink, tawdry sexual escapades and senseless violence – the infamous scenes of the kangaroo hunt providing one of the most graphic moments of this intense and dizzying depiction of a downward spiral. The tagline reads “Have a drink mate? Have a fight mate? Have some dust and sweat mate? There’s nothing else out there.” Nothing except for the vivid rust red backdrop of dry scrub, which in its desolation drives this particular man to the brink of madness.

Not every white man fails to adapt to Australia’s harsh terrain of course. From the dual forces of the hostile, arid land and the looming punishment of the colonialists, the Bushranger was born. The most famous of these men, who escaped imprisonment and had the survival skills to evade his one time masters, was of course Edward “Ned” Kelly. Famous for his use of home made armour he has long been mythologized by many as a folk hero in the manner of England’s Robin Hood. The expression ‘as game as Ned Kelly’ arose to describe the Australian love of the plucky trier, but it is as an anti-establishment figure that Kelly has truly found his way into the hearts of the native population. Mick ‘Crocodile’ Dundee was of course the logical extension of this popularised image of the Bushman; all unconventional, laconic charm and cliched Aussie-isms. However, becoming a briefly popular figure in mainstream cinema was the ultimate sell-out for a caricature which was later to discover a darker side, one perhaps much more in keeping with the true nature of bush country.

Step forward director Greg McLean and, 20 years after Picnic At Hanging Rock, leading man John Jarratt. In that film, as local valet Albert Crundall, he represented the classically Aussie opposite to his toffish British master. In Wolf Creek (2005) he plays another recognisably Aussie figure – Mick Taylor. Now Mick might come across as your typical outback bloke, but the cocky young tourists who he finds, broken down in the middle of nowhere, discover that he in fact represents a hideous distillation of roguish stereotypes. A combination of Ned Kelly’s anti-authoritarianism, the guarded jocularity of Bundanyabba’s sheriff Jock Crawford, and the bush craft of Mick Dundee are underpinned by a sinister brutality which echoes the infamous Ivan Milat killings. Taylor’s depiction represents the dark underbelly of Australia, a nightmarish antithesis to its cosmopolitan and multicultural image and a reminder of its blood soaked history.

As well as the presence of Jarratt, the influence of Picnic at Hanging Rock is strongly felt in Wolf Creek. The environment, in this case the meteorite crater of Wolf Creek National park, exudes a desolate eeriness. The young travellers discover all their watches have stopped working, as does their car, prior to Taylor’s arrival. As with the missing girls, the backpackers are carefree and innocent. They come from another land – to all intents and purposes, another time. The biggest difference between the two films is that Wolf Creek does not flinch in its depiction of the menace only alluded to with the events at Hanging Rock.

If, like America’s former frontier lands, Australia’s vast wilderness provides ample opportunity for nature to warp the minds of men, it is also well worth looking much closer to the urban centres for the aforementioned dark side of Australian cinema. While the likes of Sydney and Melbourne are internationalist glamour hubs, the run down, deprived suburbs exude a disaffection and ennui that has given birth to stories equally as brutal as anything seen in the country’s less populated wild places. Continuing with the folk-figure, Mark Brandon Read’s unlikely assimilation into mainstream culture could, perhaps, only have happened Down Under. Chopper (2000) is the partly fictionalised tale of Read’s notorious life as an alleged armed robber, arsonist and murderer. His predilection for targeting members of the criminal underworld, as well as his roguish humour and ear (no pun intended) for a soundbite, has made him very much the successor to Ned Kelly in the affections of many Australians. Apart from a measure of success as a writer and visual artist, the old Chop-Chop also featured in government sponsored advertisements warning against drink driving and the consequences of violence against women.

For all his notoriety, Chopper Read’s crimes are in some cases the subject of much conjecture as to their exact number and details, no doubt a deliberately engineered ambiguity that only adds to the overall sense of myth. It is precisely this basis in truth that pervades the following trio of urban based films. A seam of reported truth that both authenticates and fictionalises these tales of brutal violence that take place a stone’s throw away, in blue collar suburbia. First up is Romper Stomper (1992), a tale of neo-Nazi gangs in Melbourne (Editor’s note: you can also check out Keri’s retrospective piece on Romper Stomper here.) Notable in part for being a break out role for Russell Crowe as Hando, the gang’s charismatic leader, it taps into Australia’s rich tradition of punk rock as a means of expressing the kinetic fury of the gang. For all the political posturing, the chief tension in the film comes from the old fashioned love triangle; Hando and number two Daniel (Daniel Pollock) fatally clashing over Gabrielle (Jacqueline Mackenzie) as a bus load of Japanese tourists look on – the final irony. Strong performances from the lead trio underpin a powerful film that is as hard-hitting as a boot to the head.

Animal Kingdom (2010), like Romper Stomper, follows underworld life in Melbourne, this time the criminal Cody family. This family of brothers, and close family friend Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton) are presided over by matriarch Janine “Smurf” Cody (Jacki Weaver). Smurf’s estranged daughter dies from a heroin overdose, leaving grandson Joshua, or ‘J’ seeking the protection of a family he barely remembers. Life as a criminal family has a tendency to end in tears, and with the Melbourne police equally as corrupt and murderous the Cody family unit soon starts to unravel. Again, there are plenty of strong performances throughout. Jacki Weaver (who also had a small roll in Picnic at Hanging Rock) stands out as the matriarch who is at once cuddly and sinister. Ben Mendelsohn as psychotic Pope emits characteristic menace, while James Frecheville is perfectly cast after being plucked from obscurity to play the role of J. All in all, a well acted, taut examination of the disintegration of a family unit.

The final example of these tales of ‘urban horror’ – 2011’s Snowtown – is once again based upon grim reality, this time the so called Snowtown Murders that took place north of Adelaide during the 90s. The story follows Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) as he is integrated into the world of John Bunting (Daniel Henshaw), one of the neighbourhood’s self-appointed watchmen. Alongside John’s friend Robert (Aaron Viergever), Jamie finds himself being drawn further and further into a world of violence, usually perpetuated against paedophiles and homosexuals. Despite his initial aversion to the actions of John and Robert the influence of John is strong, and Jamie becomes increasingly desensitised to, and finally a direct part of the brutality.

Like Romper Stomper’s Hando before him, Daniel Henshaw’s John Bunting is played with chilling intensity. They are characters who have the charisma and magnetism to draw people into their thrall, to join them in perpetuating acts which they might normally be repulsed by or afraid of. Through the lens of unflinching social realism Romper Stomper, Animal Kingdom and Snowtown portray people within our modern cityscapes whose lives are as seemingly lawless and violent as any dystopian fiction or Western. Perhaps the real horror is the fact that these crimes take place just under our noses, involving people of regular flesh and blood who walk in the sunlight just like us.

Based upon the writings of Jack Henry Abbott and research conducted with former prison officer David Hale, Ghosts…of the Civil Dead (1988) follows the rising tensions of an increasingly brutal and authoritarian modern prison situated in the middle of Australia. Featuring a cast of musicians, actors and a large number of ex-cons and ex-warders, the film utilises a wide range of narrative viewpoints; Wenzil (David Field) is not one of the most notorious or dangerous amongst these people, but becomes living proof that prison can indelibly change a man. Grezner (Chris DeRose) is a cop killer, who seems primed for the inevitable explosion and who seems to be preparing himself for war. Nick Cave makes a rare acting appearance as Maynard, one of those wailing psychos who usually belong in mental asylums. His arrival heralds the final straw for the inmates and guards alike, as the simmering tensions result in a sequence of bloody deaths and suicides.

Referring to the Roman term civiliter mortuus – a person without civil rights – Ghosts…of the Civil Dead is an atmospheric and disturbing tale of prison life. The inmates subsist in long stretches of narcotised boredom. Criminality is rife on either side of the cell doors. Corrupt and immoral justice is served as young men are turned into killers, while others are left to rot their lives away in solitary confinement, never to experience true adulthood. It is a film that blurs the distinction between criminal and lawmaker, questioning the morality of the faceless ‘Committee’ whose social experimentation turns the inmates against each other. It is especially apt that this film was produced in a land shaped by transportation and its history as a penal colony.

A very different type of imprisonment is featured in Patrick (1978). In this case, Patrick is a young man trapped within what the doctors who care for him believe to be a comatose body. A disturbing experience from his youth has left him in this state, lying lifelessly in bed supported by machinery and seemingly only able to spit, which is attributed by his doctor as nothing more than a reflex action. Kathy Jacquard (Susan Penhaligon) joins the home as a nurse and is immediately assigned to look after Patrick, whose inert, staring form seems to have a strange effect on the staff. Chief Doctor Roget (Robert Helpmann) is convinced something lurks behind the eyes of Patrick and sees his patient as a means of advancing neurological science. Head Matron Cassidy (Julia Blake) is a hard-liner who takes an instant dislike to Kathy. Unlike the new nurse, she has no desire to help Patrick, and even seems strangely afraid of him.

Needless to say there is more to Patrick than meets the eye. Perhaps because she is the first nurse to treat him as a person rather than a corpse draining valuable resources, he begins to communicate with Nurse Jacquard. Unfortunately for Kathy, Patrick is a rather disturbed individual. He wishes to claim her for his own, and what’s more, his telekinetic powers seem somehow able to transcend the confines of the hospital room. His malign influence extends into Kathy’s life outside the hospital as she battles to prove his sentience to others. Patrick attempts to remove the various suitors clamouring for Kathy, and in one memorable scene he deals with his old nemesis Matron Cassidy in ‘shocking’ fashion. Considering he remains motionless for virtually the whole film, Robert Thompson as Patrick maintains a chilling presence in this classic of early ‘Ozploitation’.

It is fitting that the final film in this article features our old friend John Jarratt once again, albeit in a cameo role in which his character – a small town cop – sits on the opposite side of the fence to Mick Taylor. 100 Bloody Acres (2012) is the story of the Morgan brothers Lindsay and Reg (Angus Sampson and Damon Herriman). Their patented blood and bone fertiliser business has been booming – they’re even due to get a precious advertisement slot on the local radio. However the raw material of their fertiliser has grisly ties to the local mystery of a fatal car crash which was missing actual bodies. So it comes to pass that Reg, very much second in command to his domineering brother, discovers a handy roadside deposit of the secret ingredient. After struggling to load his bounty alongside the ‘roo carcasses he’s on his way home with, when he meets a group of young festival goers looking for a lift. Reg sees a chance to finally prove his worth to his brother and continues on with his cargo…

100 Bloody Acres is a rarity on this list in so far as it’s a ‘comedy horror’. There’s a decent combination of gore and laughs and the cast all do a great job, helped by a genuinely smart script. Damon Herriman steals the show as the hapless Reg. Struggling to get out from under brooding Lindsay’s shadow, he battles with his conscience, his duty as a “small business operator”, and with his unfortunate lack of grey matter. He plays up to the image of the backwards Australian country boy but he’s about the most likeable bloke you could wish to meet, even if his choice of girlfriend leaves a lot to be desired.

So that brings us the end of this particular cinematic compilation. Forged in the searing heat and dust of the outback, influenced by distant memories of brutal colonial rule but with a unique brand of humour, Australia’s cult cinema is in plentiful supply, if you know where to look. It’s a vast country though. Whatever you do, don’t get lost. Something has been lurking in the dark heart of the continent for a million years…

…waiting just for us.