DVD Review: Birth of the Living Dead (2013)

By Keri O’Shea

It’s hard to think back to a time when the phenomenon of the ‘independent movie’ was all but unknown, and even harder to think back to a time when the flesh-eating zombie as we know it didn’t exist – but one man, together with his team, was responsible for the advent of both in one fell swoop. That man was of course George Romero, and the movie in question was 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. However, this is all gospel now. Romero’s well known for his part in horror history; especially since his return to the genre with Land of the Dead in 2005, people have begun taking a serious interest in the progression of the zombie. There has been a run of excellent books on the topic; magazines like Bizarre have run extensive features on Romero and his work in the past. And, as series like The Walking Dead continue to thrive, many fans by now have a pretty solid idea of where it all came from. So do we need another examination of the zombie’s roots?

The answer to that is – maybe not, but Rob Kuhns’ labour-of-love documentary on Night of the Living Dead is definitely an enjoyable, agreeable piece of filmmaking nonetheless, one which still sheds some new light on the development of what’s really been a cultural phenomenon. It also manages to do this without seemingly having a particular axe to grind, or needing the participation of any rotten pseuds along the way: in the world of the horror movie documentary, this is worthy of note and praise on its own.

Birth of the Living Dead begins with the advent of Romero’s filmmaking career, looking at the work he did on advertisements for his early company, Latent Image, prior to the truly guerilla project that was Night of the Living Dead, alongside all of the practicalities of entering the uncharted territory of a self-financed horror film. There’s a good balance of anecdotal (with most of these anecdotes coming from the disarming figure of Romero himself) and factual here, building up an interesting account of the process, and of just how challenging it all was.

Along with this, and probably Birth of the Living Dead’s greatest strength, is the contextual material it offers. We may all have heard or read about the political content of Night.., by now; however, seeing newsreel footage of the Vietnam War, the 60s race riots and violent protest juxtaposed with several key scenes from the film really does illuminate these scenes, whilst hearing Romero describe his ambitions for his project definitely reaffirms the socio-political context for what holds up as a great, disturbing piece of film, and probably the first with such an overt political agenda. It really doesn’t seem the case that this political rationale is something that’s been dredged up with hindsight, either; everyone interviewed here seems clear and in earnest about what the film was commenting upon. There’s also some material on the advent of the zombie, or the ghoul, as-was, although oddly not too much is said on this score – still, it does provide a golden opportunity for Kuhns to interview some of those who saw the film as children, when it was mistakenly lumped in with the monster matinees which were all the rage at the time…

With regards Night… itself, throughout there are of course lots of fascinating little titbits here about the actors and the shoot. In fact, in several places it’s a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ deal actually, with text briefly appearing on screen to tell you something intriguing about a scene or a cast member before – gone. There were also break-downs of some key scenes, helpfully explained by those in the know (crew members or other talking heads, with special mention to the brilliant Larry Fessenden for his pithy, smart contributions throughout). Evident care has gone into this film too, with some nice shots of NOTLD-inspired artwork interspersed with the other footage, adding to that feeling of high pace which keeps the film going. There is one part of the film which I don’t think particularly fits, though, and that’s the footage of the teacher using Night… as a teaching aid for his ‘promoting literacy through film’ project at his school in the Bronx, New York. Sure, it was kind of fun to see the kids recoiling at the film and then describing what they’d seen, but it felt a little bit extraneous. Still, for the most part, the film strikes a good balance between then and now, content and context.

Night of the Living Dead is not only part of the horror canon, it helped to create it; it’s even now a much-discussed piece of film, too, especially seeing as the zombie horde shows no sign of letting up in cinema or in TV. For all of that, this is a worthwhile documentary displaying aptitude and enthusiasm. It probably won’t revolutionise your appreciation of Night…, but it will no doubt add some entertaining material to it. Worth a look for sure.

Birth of the Living Dead will be released in the UK by Maven Publicity on 12th May 2014.

DVD Review: Orca – The Killer Whale (1977)

By Keri O’Shea

Earth’s oceans; vast realms, places which seem to maintain their mystique, even as outer space begins to yield its own. Beautiful, alien, incomprehensible, and brimming with mysterious life, the seas have never lost their fascination for us. They are also infested with gilled fucks, hell-bent on the destruction of Mankind come what may: this is essentially what cinema taught us in the wake (see what I did there?) of Jaws in 1975; soon, every potential aquatic foe had it in for us. Free Willy was nothing more than a glint in the director’s eye. Heck, it wasn’t just the sea, either; from bees to bears, Nature was more or less done in the 70s. Done. Sick of our cruelty, sick of our pollution, sick of our fucking haircuts.

Still, so much as a formula quickly developed as to how these angry nature movies played out, Orca: The Killer Whale is an oddity. Based on the title (which has an extraneous exclamation mark in some early press, a la 50s sci-fi and horror) and the poster art, you might expect high schlock; look at the cast list and you might think you were going to get another Moby Dick (well, okay, maybe not when you see that Bo Derek is attached to this film). The truth is that you do indeed get something in-between. If that intrigues you, then read on…

The at-first stereotypical Irishman, Captain Nolan (played by Richard Harris. Yes, Richard Harris) makes a living capturing and trading in large aquatic creatures, drugging them via harpoon so that he can get them onto his boat and then sell them to aquariums. We meet Nolan and his crew as they’re tracking a Great White shark; marine biologist Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling) is diving in the area at the time too with a colleague, and they narrowly escape the shark and then Nolan’s harpoon in pretty quick succession. The shark is finally killed, though, by two killer whales – creatures which just happen to be one of Bedford’s specialisms. If her subsequent conversation with the captain is intended to make him respect the whales, however, then it doesn’t work, and Nolan soon gets the idea of capturing an orca instead. He and his crew try, but fail – harpooning and killing a pregnant female in the process. Her furious mate then sets about tracking Nolan and his boat, intending to wreak vengeance upon him…

I know, I know. It’s a funny thing: in so many of these types of films, there’s an agenda at work. An awakening conscience about animal welfare is crafted into a dramatic narrative, forms the bedrock of the plot, and tries to teach us a few things along the way. Fine. Sadly, to make the narrative dramatic enough, filmmakers end up making the animal in question into the enemy, and thus eminently killable, which somewhat undoes the animal welfare angle. That happens to an extent in Orca. The furious creature unleashes his vengeance upon Nolan in a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation until you end up feeling rather sorry for the captain; he never intended to kill the female, after all. Mixed messages, that is.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg (heh) though, isn’t it? Read what I’ve just written there again. The fact that here we have an intelligent species, sure, but one completely anthropomorphised in the film until the orca has become a kind of wicked assassin, well…it’s a bit daft, no? And yet, that’s our storyline. You may be able to take that on face value quite happily in certain types of film, but here, with it being handled in such a sober fashion, the tone of the film can get a little confusing. This is no exploitation film filled with stock footage and two-bit actors: there’s an impressive cast here, real characterisation, frequent evidence of high production values, and an Ennio Morricone score which I’d go so far as to say is bloody sumptuous. All of that, some lovely photography and a climactic end sequence which looks great on camera, and yet we’re expected to accept elements in the plot which just don’t follow.

Yep, this is a slightly schizophrenic film. Nonetheless, I was engaged by it, if only in trying to fathom it out (and I know I’m doing all of these puns by the way). There’s certainly plenty to like about Orca, for all its fundamental oddness, and for a spin on the Nature Gone Bad genre which you may not have encountered yet, it’s a decent film in its own right. Can you really argue with Charlotte Rampling in a wetsuit, anyway?

Orca: the Killer Whale is available now on Region 2 DVD from Studiocanal.

DVD Review: The Borderlands (2013)

By Keri O’Shea

Everyone’s filming everything these days. And everyone’s footage can be used to form the bedrock of a horror film: that’s the basic take home message of The Borderlands, which features – as its main premise – the idea that even representatives of the Vatican themselves now feel the need to record ‘evidence’ on usually hand-held cameras. The evidence (or otherwise) in question is evidence of bona fide miracles as reported by members of the lay community: as this sort of thing is bread and butter to the Catholic Church, all such claims need to be checked out before they can be verified. Responsible for overseeing, collecting and collating any resultant footage is an organisation known as The Congregation.

The Congregation as we encounter them here consists of just three members: firstly, a camera whizz who isn’t a Catholic himself but definitely believes in “stuff” (Gray); a Scottish priest who fulfils the stereotype of also being a hard boozer (Deacon) and a third priest who wants things done by the book (Mark). They’ve been summoned to a small town somewhere out in the sticks in England by a Father Crellick, who is sure that his small church has bore witness to a miracle. He has footage (of course he fucking does) of a baptism where…a strange rumbling took place at the back of the church, and some other mysterious sounds too. Doesn’t sound on a par with walking on water exactly, but The Congregation set about investigating Crellick’s claims, taking a cottage in the area while they go to work. What they find ancient evil forces beyond their control terrible danger etc.

I tried. I really tried. I had heard very positive things about this film, and to an extent, I expected to like it accordingly. As the film trudged on though, I realised that whatever tricks it might have up its sleeve, it was fairly unlikely, moving swiftly to impossible, to engage me after such a long expanse of the very worst flaws of the found footage genre. Firstly, the tenuousness of the premise. Why all the Paranormal Activity style cameras in the cottage, if they were investigating the church? This footage had been collated by an outside party at some point, hence the chopping and changing between cameras – but who, and, considering the ending of the film, how? And then, if someone had edited it, why hadn’t they cut out the reams of kitchen-sink dialogue with its pregnant pauses and its non-landing jokes? If they hadn’t been arsed to do that, then why add what sounded suspiciously like incidental music over one of the sequences? Or why not clean up some of the murkiest footage? I was beyond exasperated by the mid-way point, didn’t feel I had any sense of or interest in why they were doing what they were doing, and as mildly ingenious as the ending was, it had been done with acres more panache and sweet, sweet brevity by short film The Ten Steps years before. It also chose to tack on a pagan horror theme, in a similar way to another British film with lots of suspiciously ad-lib seeming dialogue, filler, plot gaps you had to fill with a shovel and then an about-face into pagan thematics which was woefully underdeveloped. Yes, I mean Kill List, which I loathed, and so being landed with a found footage movie which had elements in common with bloody Kill List felt like adding insult to injury to me.

In the interests of balance – the film did a few things well. I did like that it understood the creep factor of effective audio, and a lot of the sound effects used were nicely handled (although, again, it reminded me of The Blair Witch Project in this and other elements, perhaps drawing a bit of inspiration from, to my mind, the undisputed modern master of terrifying sound FX, Eduardo Sanchez). It also managed a few unsettling sequences, and what was happening off camera worked best, creating the impression of a big bad world outside the handycam’s viewfinder. The settings were decent too, although falling back on the ‘creepy rural folk’ motif a bit heavily. See, that’s the frustrating thing here: there were the odd flashes of hope, but diluted so much by the film’s less successful elements that the overall impact was at best negligible, at worst as good as absent.

So, thanks to the combination of its emulatory nature (Paranormal Last Exorcist Kill List Project?) and its exasperating filming style, with all of the flaws of said style in there for good measure, I didn’t enjoy The Borderlands at all. If you’re more forgiving than me, then you might be able to see past the above and get something out of the premise. For a far more positive appraisal of this film, you might like to check out Ben’s Abertoir 2013 review. Feedback generally has been more akin to Ben’s than to mine. Me, well, as I say – I tried.

The Borderlands is out now on Region 2 DVD courtesy of Metrodome.

Comic Review: Loki: Ragnarok and Roll #2

By Svetlana Fedotov

Over the past few years, the name Loki has stayed more times on comic geeks’ lips than the previous several decades combined. Thanks to Marvel’s huge success with the Thor and Avengers franchises, the God of Mischief has found himself basking in the spotlight (with no small contribution by the devilishly handsome Tom Hiddleston and his legions of fangirls). It is perhaps in part to the sudden interest in all things Norse, or just to mess with fans’ heads, but BOOM! Studios has released its own tale of Loki’s travels among the Midgardians. Sharply funny and filled with pop-art satire, Loki: Ragnarok and Roll pits the Trickster as the frontman of a Goth band and explores the subsequent troubles his new found fame brings him.

In this newest incarnation of Asgard, Thor and Loki are once again full brothers, living for an unnumbered series of millennia answering the demands of their father Odin. If the Marvel comics leaned in favor of Thor, this comic definitely leans in favor of Loki, making his older brother a muscle-headed punk a few fries short of a full Happy Meal. After a failed attempt at a peace talk in Jottenheim, they come back to the castle right as Odin is throwing a party for all the major gods; for you see, all the gods exist in this universe, from saints to spirits to the flying spaghetti monster, god of the Internet. Thor immediately lies to cover his ass about the Jottenheim failure and, by placing all his blame on his brother, gets Loki kicked right the fuck down to Earth. Wandering around an unknown city, Loki soon finds himself in front of a Goth club and after a few choice words and action panels later; he becomes the singer of a band. The second issue continues six months later, after he has raised the band to glorious fandom only to piss off the gods with his announcement of being an actual god. Having had enough of his actions, the collective holy group decides to take the guy down a peg, come Hel or high water.

Loki: Ragnarok and Roll is a pretty goofy comic, which is actually part of the appeal. Loki spends most of his time dissecting human reaction to celebrities and idols and the comic helps bring that around with the jealousies of real gods and their falls from grace. They read like caricatures of their mythologies and really, in our current age of sex and technology, that’s really all they are. Loki’s character realizes that and by dropping to Earth, he slowly becomes aware that the only gods left are gods like him, silver-tongued and adaptable to the lowest common dominator, something he then takes in his stride. It’s really more of a testament to our spirituality, or lack thereof: how the only ones left to worship are celebrities. You know, in retrospect, have you ever read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods? It’s a lot like that. But, if overtly obvious philosophy on our trashy society isn’t your thing, there are still some great jokes and action scenes as well, which work beautifully with this over-the-top comic. Also, if you ever wanted to watch Thor get kicked down a notch, this whole comic is about kicking Thor down a notch. I mean, what a cock, amirite?

The series is fronted by the powerhouse of Eric M. Esquivel and Jerry Gaylord (I feel like they made up their last names). Esquivel has spent a lot of his career penning indie and small print comics, which has allowed him a lot of freedom to write from a well of his own ideas. His unique take on the popular mythology does really well without turning into a Goth circle-jerk, which it could’ve very easily. The artist Jerry Gaylord, most recognized for his work on Fanboys vs Zombies, takes his quirky illustrations and blends them seamlessly with Esquivel’s words. Gaylord’s cartoony pop art makes the whole thing jump off the page, like a Saturday morning cartoon come to life.

If you ever get tired of Marvel’s Thor holier-than-thou attitude, then grab this comic and check out the view from the other side.

Comic Review: Dead Letters #1

By Svetlana Fedotov

Nothing gets the blood rolling like a solid noir tale. Dark streets boiling with danger, fast-talking swindlers, and the ever present lady in red have flared the imagination of many an author. Now throw some ghosts and monsters into the mix and you’ve got yourself a genre that practically writes itself. After all, what is a bigger mystery than death? The strange unknown that lies beyond the pale curtain? Comics particularly have always understood the literary draw of horror noir, something especially highlighted by the success of Constantine, Criminal Macabre, and Dead Boy Detectives. Following in their ghoulish steps, Boom Studio’s newest release Dead Letters takes all the good, scary elements of its predecessors and brings them to life, from the perspective of a down on his luck criminal as he struggles to remember who he is and why no one seems to stay dead for long.

Centered on an amnesiac named Sam, whose first memory is that he remembers nothing at all, Dead Letters kicks off with a shot of a gun and a mad spree across town. As he dodges bullets and sends some in return, Sam attempts to reconstruct what he can from his dimly-lit memories; though little does he know, you can’t outrun your enemies. He soon finds himself at gunpoint in the middle of the woods (or a park?) surrounded by a very colorful, twenties-themed collection of mob bosses, who force him to choose alliances – and things just get weirder from there. A mess of hot ladies and cold men, he soon finds out that his choice has reached the highest of authorities, yeah, GOD. Tossing in ghosts, zombies, and a gun-toting angel, Sam soon finds himself on a trip of a lifetime.

Dead Letters #1 is definitely a more questions than answers kind of comic. It keeps your interest with its hints of the macabre and the divine while keeping true to the noir feel. The story does well mixing new and old mystery tropes, such as the super-Asian, long cigarette, robe-wearing Ma, who runs her cabal of murderers with an iron-snake hand, whilst Sam is portrayed as a bit more contemporary, with basketball shorts and a wicked afro. To be fair, it’s a bit hard to tell what time period the series is set in, but if you just take it in your stride, it’s easy to ignore this. There is also a lot of story crammed into the comic and it feels like it would have been better as a double issue, or perhaps could’ve used some editing, but once again, it manages to carry itself.

The author of this tale of madness is Chris Sebela, the current writer for Ghost, and he’s a bit of an old hand at the horror noir genre. Another title of his, dubbed Screamland, about the old silver screen monsters attempting to solve a murder mystery of one of their own, was released to pretty solid reception. This newest work continues on his love for penning the weird and does a great job of bringing that to the comic audience. The artist, Chris Visions, is relatively unknown to date (I think this might be first comic), but he’s starting off his career with a bang. Usually known for illustration and cover work, his foray into sequential art is surprisingly well done, creating a smooth look for this fast paced thriller. With his use of photoshop drawing in his work, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on the forefront of digital comics soon.

So, in short, feel free to pick Dead Letters. You won’t be any worse for it.

Book Review: Sheer Filth! Edited by David Flint

By Keri O’Shea

It’s strange to think that, for many people who may be reading the likes of this site today, there has never been an alternative to the internet as a chief means of exposure to all that’s weird and wonderful in the world of cult cinema, or indeed outsider literature, art or music. In many ways, you might expect this to mean that the younger generation would be the most enlightened, liberated and open-minded individuals ever to walk the Earth. With round-the-clock access to everything and anything, surely people’s tastes should by now be incredibly diverse and equally, routinely satiated by the types of fare which would put the old cut-out-and-photocopy fanzine brigade to shame?

Funnily, this isn’t generally the case at all. Speaking for myself as someone who was just about sitting up and taking notice at the tail-end of the print ‘zine heyday (though we’re talking metal ‘zines, rather than the type of publication to be discussed here), it now seems that the more access you have to the strange and unusual, the less of a thrill it is to get your hands on it. In a way, the internet has turned into the ultimate in diminishing returns. Then there’s the odd effect whereby even those on the outside of the mainstream now seem guided more by the prominent voices to be heard there than by their own imaginations (and how a lot of those voices come to prominence in the first place is a mystery all of its own). For example, those of us who even moonlight in what has come to be known as ‘the horror community’ will no doubt have noticed that at least once per year, a certain film will somehow gain massive momentum because it gets the formula right, getting the notoriety, the ‘likes’ and the shares – which aren’t necessarily linked to its merits. Conversely, impertinent or unfashionable opinions can today bring down a tsunami of indignation on a scale which just wouldn’t have existed pre-internet.

To put it bluntly, shit has changed, and one of the absolute joys of reading Sheer Filth is that it comes from before all of this was a going concern. This isn’t, I hope, a straightforward rose-tinted spectacles moment here. Rather, the honesty, enthusiasm and enjoyment of all things sleazy and strange to be found in this collection of articles, reviews and interviews seems to stem, at least partly, from the fact that received wisdom or the Next Big Thing didn’t matter or even exist for these contributors.

For those of you unaware, Sheer Filth! was a UK-based ‘zine which appeared, as many similar ‘zines did, in the wake of the Video Nasties débâcle. As the censors hardly seemed about to hang up their scissors during those days (quelle change eh?) a host of ‘zines – ‘part of what felt like a movement’ according to Flint – kicked back against this state-savvy prudishness by championing a hell of a lot of the things deemed unsuitable or otherwise too lowbrow for the masses. Flint cites Fangoria as setting an important precedent in those days; colourful, grisly and glossy, it didn’t much care that sex and gore were considered beneath a lot of ‘proper’ film writers and publications and it featured them in spades anyway. Its rejection of received wisdom was very influential on Sheer Filth, and Flint’s insistence that his contributors never conformed to one authorial style or voice. The results are to his, and to their credit – and a lot of excellent writers cut their teeth here too (such as David Kerekes, to name but one).

This Sheer Filth collection spans all of the editions of the ‘zines themselves. Some of the highlights: an examination of the life of David F. Friedman, a chat with a very wet-behind-the-ears Buttgereit, a never-before-seen chat with British director Norman J. Warren, an interview with the doyenne of porn Annie Sprinkles, and a look at what is probably the first example of nunsploitation. You might also feast your eyes on film festival reports, educate yourselves on everything from the discordant noise stylings of Coil (who almost, almost did the soundtrack to Hellraiser) to the best of 50s surf rock, check out just what all the fuss is about when it comes to seeing De Sade on the shelves, read agog about the art-house weirdness of the movies of La Ciccolina, see some seriously renegade comics, read all about lost cinematic gems like Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and The Bride And The Beast, and also familiarise yourselves with some lively potted histories of America’s loveliest long-gone starlets, such as Jayne Mansfield and Bettie Page (back when there was far less of a Bettie cult and the lady herself was still lost to obscurity). I’m aware of the irony of this, but my Amazon Wishlist got a lot more extensive as I was reading this book…Sheer Filth is one of those tomes which can provide a great starting point for tracking down a lot of ‘new’ books, films and names.

As you might gather from the above, there is a lot of sex and nudity in this book – easily as much sexual content as there is horror, though those of course go hand in hand (ahem) a lot of the time – and it should hardly take me to say that this is therefore not going to be a book for everyone. Sheer Filth is unashamedly pro-sex and pro-porn so, as it takes issue with censorship, it of course takes similar issue with attitudes and legislation which try to limit any activities between consenting adults. So much as the book can be said to have a prevailing outlook, this is it, and so beware if this isn’t something you want to take on board. Personally, I think it’s interesting to see that we’re still seeing a lot of the same blanket statements made about, say, adult entertainers some twenty years after a lot of the interviews in these pages took place, but that’s another of the ways that this is a genuinely engaging book.

As mentioned, a lot of the content here has been around for a while now, so where Sheer Filth contains articles about those who are now no longer with us, or where the content of a feature has been changed/disproved over time (such as, ahem, a treatise on the imminent disappearance of the cumshot in modern porn, feasible perhaps in an innocent, pre-bukakke world) then a series of footnotes provided at the end provides a bit of up-to-date context on these, even giving the nod where a certain Mr Flint got it wrong about a certain Ms Linnea Quigley…This being a FAB Press book, it is also lavishly illustrated throughout and fully indexed – looking like a very happy marriage between a ‘zine and a collectible volume.

Full to bursting with meticulous, earnest and often tongue-in-cheek journalism, this book is an education as much as it is eye-opening entertainment. As an irreverent and charming trek through some lesser and better-known exploitation fare, it’s hard to imagine better. And, ultimately, this collection is shot through with optimism. The hotbed of creativity which gave rise to the ‘zines of the late 80s was after all born out of moral panics, clampdowns and public misinformation. We’re hardly shot of that sort of thing now, with increasingly prescriptive mores seemingly always around us, maybe now to an extent even from within the ‘alternative’ scene as well as without. Sheer Filth is a reminder that you can shape your own zeitgeist and kick back against restrictions by embracing taboos. Highly recommended, sleazy good fun.

Sheer Filth has an official launch part on 4th April 2014 at Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema, where there will be a special screening of the new Video Nasties documentary, Draconian Days, followed by a Q&A and an after-party. Book orders will be dispatched on 9th April: for further details, check out the FAB Press website.

DVD Review: Stalled (2013)

Review by Ben Bussey

Regular BAH readers may have seen a recent review of mine descend into a frothing-at-the-mouth rant about the most frustratingly common mistakes made by no-budget indie horror movies. After that, there was nothing I needed more than some firm reassurance that, now and then, indie horror can still do precisely the opposite; rather than re-tread a painfully overfamiliar trail, it can find new, hitherto unexplored routes on the treacherous map of horror conventions, and come up with something that’s genuinely surprising.

To whit – Stalled. We’re a little late to the party here as this microbudget Brit horror comedy has been out there for over a month already, but what the hell. I hadn’t heard much about it until recently, and given how my finger is so firmly on the pulse (cough, ahem, etc.), it seems fair to assume that not all readers will be aware of it either.

But first, a little preamble.

About eight years ago I saw another no-budget British horror comedy called Freak Out. Imagine the young Kevin Smith making a slasher movie and you’re not too far off the mark. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the film, but it sort of pained me to feel that way, as it was clearly the work of young, ambitious people with genuine passion, knowledge and appreciation for horror… not to put too fine a point on it, but people who didn’t seem that different from me. I haven’t revisited Freak Out since, but as memory serves it revelled in its own absurdity a little too much, trying to make something on a fairly large scale when clearly the resources were not there for the filmmakers to do so.

In case you’re wondering why I bring this up, it’s because the same core team behind Freak Out, director Christian James and writer/actor Dan Palmer, have reunited on Stalled, and they’ve quite clearly learned some lessons along the way. This time, they’ve stuck a little closer to conventional indie horror wisdom and restricted the action to a single night and single location (and, for the large part, single performer) – but fear not, this most certainly isn’t kids in a cabin version 5,318,008. This is something we genuinely haven’t experienced before. This is the zombie apocalypse – as seen from a toilet cubicle.

Palmer stars as – who else – WC, a handyman in an office building, working during the staff party on Christmas Eve. Venturing into the girls’ bogs (or, if you prefer, ‘ladies’ room’) to do a spot of routine maintenance, he darts to hide in a stall as a couple of fetching, heavily intoxicated office workers in very casual attire venture stagger in, and proceed to engage in a spot of lipstick lesbianism (tick the box marked ‘something interesting in the first 25 minutes’…) However, a little face-sucking suddenly gives way to a little face-biting, and WC realises to his horror that a zombie virus has broken out in the building. Given his location, at least he doesn’t have to worry about soiling himself; but getting out alive is a dicier prospect…

It’s an inspired premise in so many ways. Yes, of course we’re all getting a bit shit sick of the same old zombie apocalypse movies, so the only way forward is to find a different approach – and this is clearly what Stalled is gearing toward. In some respects it’s not too far removed from last year’s divisive festival hit The Battery, another claustrophobic low budget production which kept its focus squarely on a pair of mismatched survivors with the zombies largely left in the background (see Keri’s review). Many found The Battery a bit too quiet, slow and uneventful – and, as such, Stalled may be a welcome alternative, as it’s a surprisingly loud and high-energy affair. At points I was reminded of the old Ryan Reynolds in a coffin movie Buried (although, all apologies Mr Palmer, you’re not quite that dishy), inasmuch as – while the action, in this instance, is not 100% confined to a single small space – the director does find a remarkable number of ways to keep that single space visually interesting. We even have a number of action scenes of sorts occuring within that tight little box (stop sniggering at the back), with all manner of seemingly throwaway items put to unexpected good use… I’ll give nothing away, but there are more than a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments.

Still, this is not to say I didn’t have any hang-ups with Stalled whatsoever. It did come close to losing me when, maybe a third of the way in – up to which point, most of the action had played out like a silent comedy – a second character is introduced in the form of an unseen woman (Antonia Bernath) in another cubicle. Perhaps this was an inevitability, as it was always going to struggle to keep things interesting with a single guy in a single location for a full-length movie – hell, even Evil Dead 2 cut away fairly regularly to events outside. Alas, the relationship with the mystery woman rather sours Stalled for me, as it results in an abundance of over-written, Breakfast Club-esque deep and meaningful life lesson conversations, replete with yet another Manic Pixie Dreamgirl figure. To be fair, though, things do progress in a slightly different way than I had anticipated, and attempts to up the ante for genuine emotional content are by no means in vain.

Even at 80 minutes, Stalled does feel just a little overlong; beyond the John Hughesy duologues, we definitely have a few scenes which could have done with some judicious snipping (there was no need to run the full credits at the beginning and at the end, for instance, and the post-credits stinger is a bit of a let-down). But I don’t want to nit-pick. I’m not seeking perfection when I sit down to check out an indie horror: I’m seeking something fresh and gripping, a break from the norm with at least flashes of ingenuity, and above all something which you can tell right away was put together with love. Stalled ticks all those boxes, no problem – so I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to all horror fans, not to mention all fledgling no-budget filmmakers who want some hints as to how it should be done.

Stalled is available now on Region 2 DVD from Matchbox Films.

DVD Review: The Doll Squad (1973)

By Keri O’Shea

Damn it, I have to admit – I do love a bit of 70s glamour. Oh, sure, we have the hairpieces, the false eyelashes and the ‘fuck the natural look’ make-up in spades today, but it just doesn’t look as…charming, somehow. Perhaps that feeling is exacerbated when you sit down to watch a film like The Doll Squad whilst wearing one’s obligatory, inexplicable check pyjamas (I bet 70s gals weren’t beset by either cartoon animal-bedecked or plaid nightwear on their Xmas mornings) but whatever, get the likes of Francine York and Tura Satana into a film, and you’re bound to fondly miss the good old days, all acres of glossy, possibly synthetic hair and tans which look like the sun may have made them, something which seems as rare as hen’s teeth in our cancer-savvy times, tans these days coming as they do in dysentery beige only and through a nozzle, or not at all. All in all though, the world was a gentler place back then – ladies in hotpants, pigeons carrying microfilms, henchmen in island paradises, exploding rockets…

Yup. Director Ted. V. Mikels (better-known for his involvement with a lot of ‘B’ movie horror fare, either as director or as producer) cuts to the chase quickly here, giving us a set up which, like a lot of underground cinema, doesn’t play it shy with the stock footage. It’s launch day, and as one Senator Stockwell watches the big event on the TV in his office, all of a sudden the signal is scrambled. He’s warned by a mysterious male voice that he should have played ball – and then the rocket blows up mid-air. He evidently has an enemy with influence – but who can find and take down this enemy, within the two-week time frame available to him?

Cue the Secret Cervix…no, sorry, cue the so-named Doll Squad, a group of female secret agents led by the consummately professional Sabrina (York), a woman who when requested, immediately sets about gathering her troops to track down that mysterious voice – though quickly losing two would-be dolls early on, which all goes to show the level of influence that this bad guy, whoever he is, has. It just so happens that once Sabrina has assembled her squad, they track down an interesting lead which will take them out of the US and to a remote island off the coast of South America. Now add all of the double-crossing, spy gadgetry and peril you might imagine.

However, The Doll Squad is an odd film because although it presses a lot of buttons – more or less every scene has something variously improbable, quirky or OTT – it doesn’t really feel like it’s doing so cynically. Rather, the screenwriters seem to have done their best to make the film entertaining for its own sake, something they’d enjoy watching on its own terms as a piece of entertainment, rather than just crowbarring a lot of things in there because a jaded audience would probably expect it. Maybe audiences just plain weren’t jaded forty years ago? Anyway, this quality also gives the film an odd air of innocence: this is pre-Charlie’s Angels, remember, so the concept of an all-girl group of undercover agents is rather unusual on its own, but even though our plot follows a group of ladies who moonlight – for instance – as erotic dancers when they’re not blowing shit up, or wear midriff-revealing booby tops to the shooting range, it’s surprisingly exploitation-lite in terms of the unholy trinity of nudity, sex, and violence. I’m not sure if our American readers will know and use this adjective, but there’s not really a better one: The Doll Squad is what we might describe as ‘saucy’. It has explosions aplenty and the shortest shorts known to man, but it alludes to many things rather than showing them, and this goes for the aggression on-screen as well, which is never that bad even at its worst. As Editor-man Ben pointed out to me when he handed the screener over, this is one film 88 Films could far more realistically release as part of their ‘Grindhouse Classics’ collection – but it’s also in many ways too gentle for that tag.

Still. It doesn’t matter what you call it, really: The Doll Squad is in its way quite charming, entertaining and easy to watch, with plenty going on and that old time capsule goodness about it too. I think it’s fair to say that none of the 88 Films catalogue is likely to change your life, but here’s one of their films which allows you to laugh with it rather than at it. This is quite a nice release from them too, with an audio commentary and a ‘Making Of’ documentary included, as well as the standard array of trailers.

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The Doll Squad will be available from 88 Films on 17th March, 2014.

Review: In Fear (2013)

By Tristan Bishop

Small casts, man. Low budget horror films with small casts always start the old alarm bells going. More often than not you’ve got ninety minutes or so of tedium awaiting you. The same goes for single location films. Unless we’re talking Alfred Hitchcock then these generally don’t come off all that well – setting your film in one place takes a big set of (figurative) balls and a certain level of literal cinematic mastery. Unfortunately it seems the world currently has a surplus of the former and a lack of the latter. You can only imagine my intense joy, then, when I came across In Fear. A low-budget British horror/thriller about two characters. Set almost entirely in A CAR. I’ll be honest, I readied myself for an hour and a half of boredom and settled comfortably in my seat.

There’s not a great amount of plot I’m able to recount for this film without major spoilers, but here’s what I can – Ian De Caestecker (TV’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D) and Alice Englart (Beautiful Creatures) star as Tom and Lucy, a young couple who have recently gotten together. They are driving to a music festival in Ireland and have stopped off at a pub, where Lucy visits the bathroom. Tom insists they leave the pub swiftly, stating that he has had to buy the pub a round after a misunderstanding with a local. He then proceeds to tell Lucy that he has booked them a hotel room for the first night. Lucy initially resists, saying she had arranged to meet friends on the festival site. She soon relents however, and they set off in search of the hotel. Unfortunately the place seems a little off the beaten track, and eventually they realise they have been going round in circles. No matter which way they read their map and the road signs they always seem to end up at the same place. And it’s getting dark. They soon begin to realise someone might be playing games with them. But who?, and, more importantly, why?

As you might have gathered from my opening paragraph, I didn’t exactly have High Hopes for In Fear. Thankfully I was very pleasantly surprised, as even though Jeremy Lovering’s feature début is small-scale and lacking in much plot development, it manages to be a well paced little film that delivers tension in spades. In Fear succeeds where many small cast films fail by featuring two likeable, naturalistic performances from the two lead actors. The idea that they have only known each other a few weeks and don’t totally trust each other quite yet adds subtly to the sense of paranoia which is key to the film’s first half – The idea of being trapped in a car in the dark, lost on a country road with someone who isn’t quite a stranger but isn’t quite a friend is certainly an unnerving one, and Lovering really manages to make it work. Editing, soundtrack and cinematography are all to a high standard, and combine with an excellently foreboding credits sequence to create the palpable sense of dread that the title suggests. Word has it that the director withheld the script from the actors whilst filming, and, if true, that certainly seems to have worked. Of course, halfway through, the film takes a slightly different shape, and one which amps up the tension considerably, ensuring you’ll be on the edge of your seat until the high impact conclusion.
Some people seemed to dislike the film for its relative lack of incident, but if you enjoy a slow creeping thrill on a low budget, then In Fear is definitely the right place to be.

In Fear is available to buy now.

DVD Review: Big Bad Wolves (2013)

By Keri O’Shea

It is of course a huge cliché to begin this review of Big Bad Wolves by professing my ignorance of Israeli cinema – but such it is, and if it’s going to be repeated elsewhere, it’s no doubt just as true from other quarters. Israel and film just feels beyond Western reach in so many ways; our concepts of the country tend to come more via current affairs – often bad news – than through contact with what could well be a thriving arts culture, but so little permeates through to us that, well, Israel still feels like a closed book in this respect. So, Big Bad Wolves is the first Israeli feature-length film I have ever seen, and as such it would be ridiculous to extrapolate too much about filmmaking in the country as a whole. However, I will gladly say that this is one of the finest, darkest crime thrillers I have had the pleasure to watch, and that if – if – the directors and writers Aharon Keshales & Navot Papushado are capable of more work of this calibre, then they will definitely and deservedly be on the ascendant from here on in.

The plot starts as it means to go on, splicing the everyday in with the briefest, but significant interludes which spell personal disaster for everyday people. We see a group of children playing hide and seek in and around a deserted house; a little boy finds one of his friends but when they go back to where the other girl was hiding, she’s no longer there. This leads to a hunt for the girl, undertaken by what at first seems like a criminal fraternity but turns out to be the cops, led by the charismatic, but flawed Micki (Lior Ashkenazi). Their investigation has brought them to a diminutive local figure, a teacher named Dror (Rotem Keinan): we are not told why he’s in the frame, or if there’s any good reason for it whatsoever, but the first major error in a catalogue of them is that, as they rough him up for good measure in a disused warehouse, their actions are filmed by a kid using his mobile phone. This puts a downer on Micki’s relationship with his boss, especially when the clip hits the equivalent of Youtube, but more to the point when the missing girl is found – dead – in a grotesquely-staged tableau, Micki is partly blamed, and then moved to a new department.

But Micki – with the implicit knowledge of his boss, it seems – retains an interest in catching this child killer, and just cannot let the case be. Likewise, someone else seems to be interested in what he is doing, unbeknownst, for the moment, to him. As those with a vested interest in trapping the predator collide, all are drawn into a savage, claustrophobic situation in which the most noble human impulses hold hands with unmitigated savagery – albeit framed by the most mundane details, as normal life just goes on around them, for as long as it feasibly can.

Wow. The first thing I’d say about this film is how brave I think it is to tackle an emotive subject like child abduction and murder head-on: it takes some doing to carve an engrossing narrative out of a subject which, in modern times, can quite simply provoke hysteria, especially when that narrative refuses to shy away from the grisly details – without, though, ever sinking to using these simply for shock, or to exploit the potential for emotional response. Of course, the subjects raised can make for unsettling viewing; that’s a given. Yet, another aspect of the film which prevents the type of crime underpinning the plot from ever feeling wanton is simply that we are kept in the dark. We are no omniscient audience – hell, we don’t even get to know what the cops know. Why is Dror in the frame? Should he be? Do they have the wrong guy – could this all be a horrible mistake? Because of the several strands of ambiguity which are woven through the film, we are made to feel even more uncomfortable – made to witness horrific acts undertaken by desperate men, though never made to feel we are being traipsed into a ‘torture porn’ scenario (despite the film opting for a much-hated torture porn trope of mine). Throughout, I had no idea who to believe or where my loyalties should lie. Once I felt I knew, the film would perform an about-face and make me reconsider. No one acts as expected, right down to the Arab character who gets a small role here, seemingly just to thwart everyone’s expectations of him. It’s testament to the superb writing at the heart of this film that it can challenge the audience like this, indeed several times as it moves forward.

Another facet to the skill of the writing stems from an aspect which, in itself, could be seen as a challenge: this film is fucking funny. Never for too long, and never where you expect it to be, but funny nonetheless. Sometimes the humour is sliced so thinly in amongst the film’s action scenes that you barely have time to give yourself permission to laugh. Sometimes, it’s more overt – and often challenging in its own ways by referencing childhood in places you would not expect: crime details read out as a ‘Once Upon a Time’ story; coins tossed to decide who commits an act of cruelty; wry exchanges between people in the throes of these acts. One of the film’s key themes seems to be surveillance – people seeing what they shouldn’t, or even going where they shouldn’t, and yet, this hefty topic is also made funny in places, like the Youtube plot-line. In effect, often you’ll laugh when you’d really rather not – though never losing sight of the main drive behind the narrative. The nuanced, developed characters at work here are, through the way in which they can make a joke out of the worst situation, or approach it in such a way, all the more human-seeming for it. We’re made to see that even at their worst, people are still people – a cold, hard fact, which often makes us more uncomfortable than the possibility of monsters.

A surpassingly bleak piece of cinema, Big Bad Wolves has both initiative and guts, holding onto its final shock until right at the end. It also has the courage to dodge out of any smooth resolution, landing us with a jagged, weighty ending after everything else. Big Bad Wolves kept me guessing until the final reel. On occasion, I am arrogant enough to suppose I’ve seen so many films that nothing can surprise me, but sometimes, it’s great to be wrong. I’m excited to see what these guys can come up with for their segment in the upcoming ABCs of Death 2…

Big Bad Wolves will be released on 28th April 2014.

DVD Review: Dr Mordrid (1992)

By Tristan Bishop

You would have had to have been serving time in a cosmic prison not to have noticed that Marvel films have been running things in the past decade. Since the first two X-Men films at the turn of the millennium showed us how comic book adaptations should really be done, Marvel have seemed able to do no wrong, and now we can look forward to two or three quality sci-fi blockbusters a year from their stable. However, this was not always the case. Before Marvel took film production ‘in house’, many different people got hold of the rights to the characters and attempted their own films, which were pretty much universally awful. The entertaining slice of cheese which is Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher (1989) aside, have you ever tried to sit through Albert Pyun’s 1990 version of Captain America?

Dr Mordrid may not at first glance appear to be a Marvel adaptation, but on closer inspection it starts to look an awful lot like Dr Strange. In fact, it transpires that Full Moon Productions (yeah, it’s Charles and Albert Band again!) used to own the rights to the character, but this expired before this film was made…Which makes this 88 Films re-release look extremely timely, given that a megabucks version is currently in the planning stages. Fact fans might also like to know that Dr Strange was actually one of the first Marvel properties to go live action – there is a 1978 TV movie with Peter Hooten in the role!

Jeffrey Combs here stars as Mordrid/Strange – a centuries-old wizard/alien sent to Earth by a being called The Monitor to foil an evil sorcerer called Kabal (cult actor Brian Thompson, here looking like Chris Hemsworth in a Willem Dafoe mask). Mordrid has his hi-tech base in an apartment building with wacky old tenants, a love interest (a Rebekah Brooks lookalike in double denim) who just happens to be a police researcher, and a raven called Edgar Allan. Mordrid wears a nice blue cape and makes use of a magic amulet and a crystal ball which puts him in touch with a cosmic entity called Deaths Head. Apparently some prophecies are coming to pass – large amounts of ‘basic alchemical materials’ are being stolen around the world. The trail of course leads him to Kabal, who has escaped his cosmic prison and is gearing up to open the gates of Hell. Can Mordrid stop him in time?

You’re probably as intrigued as I was when I was sent this disc – the cast and production history make it a very intriguing prospect. But, unfortunately, this is flat stuff indeed. Combs is badly miscast as the good guy, Thompson looks laughable rather than scary and the wizardry/outer space stuff fails to excite on any level. For a Full Moon Production there is a paucity of sex and gore too – which shows the intentions of the film-makers to go for a more mainstream audience. There is one scene in which Brian Thompson kills a naked punk chick by placing his ring on her head (stop sniggering at the back), which feels like it may have been added at the last minute in order to get some exploitation elements in the mix, and the climax features a fight between two stop-motion dinosaur skeletons, as well as some VERY briefly glimpsed mini-monsters (it IS Charles Band after all), but when a film can even fumble a reanimated Saurian battle, then you know it isn’t worth your time. Dr Mordrid is a very good reminder that sometimes the old ways are not necessarily the best.

Dr Mordrid is available now from 88 Films.