Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Review by Keri O’Shea

What is it with the whole zombie clown thing? Rare is it that in a film which contains zombies, you don’t get a zombie clown – and yet, like nuns, you just don’t get that many of them about. Seriously, I cannot remember the last time I even saw a clown, yet there’s always one in any given city centre during any given zombie apocalypse. But, it seems like Bozo the Undead has become a zombie movie trope, which is okay, and when you see one, you can get a fair idea that the filmmaker in question knows and enjoys their genre. This is true of Kill Zombie!, a movie which definitely knows what it is and where it stands in a now very busy genre – not just a zombie movie, but a zomcom.

We meet Aziz (Yahya Gaier) after a testing twenty-four hours. Aziz had a job where he had to wear a suit, and he worked in a generic Amsterdam office role which had little to recommend it. When he was asked out by the lovely Tess, his day perked up, sure, but then this was counterbalanced by getting fired, thanks to all the phonecalls he kept getting at work from his party animal brother Mo (Mimoun Ouled Radi). Oh well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em – so Aziz left the office and headed over to join his brother at a pool party. Shame a fight soon broke out and got the brothers, plus the people they were scrapping with, locked up.

And then a Russian space station fell on the city. This brings us up to speed with Aziz’s current situation.

As we all know, outside of children’s films at least, it’s so rare that we can rightly say it’s impossible that anything falls out of space and makes things on Earth any nicer. In this case, at least the event causes the cell doors to open, and our unlikely group can try to figure out what to do, now that the entire place is filled with walking dead.

In his recent review of Brit zomcom Cockneys vs Zombies, our very own Tristan said, ‘the major problem with a film like Cockneys vs Zombies, or indeed any other British horror comedy, is Shaun of the Dead – a film so perfectly pitched and massively popular that anything else is going to look rather lacking in comparison.’ I’d agree with that, and be inclined to extend what he’s said to outside the UK: the success of Shaun of the Dead has spawned a whole generation of these types of movies worldwide. I won’t say that SOTD was the first funny zombie movie of course, but in recent years it’s been the best, and so in allowing a lot of zomcoms to be made, it’s still in there as the gold standard. For filmmakers following in its wake, this makes things a bit tricky, but perhaps the safest approach has been to make peace with the basic SOTD formula and allow your own film to just throw a few extras in there for good measure. It worked really well for Juan of the Dead and it seems to be what directorial team Martijn Smits and Erwin Ven Den Eshof have gone for here. You’ll recognise a few of the same motifs: the male leads, one daft, one serious, for instance; you’ll also recognise a few of the gags. Where Kill Zombie! goes off on its own is really in the level of blood and guts slapstick it employs.

And there is lots of daft physical humour and slapstick here; okay, it’s not groundbreaking, but it’s pretty universal, and when combined with novel dispatch methods for zombies, there’s plenty of fun to be had. Take a group of people all occasionally pratfalling and then pitch their ineptitude against the walking dead and, voilà! You never knew a man holding a wooden stool could make you laugh. And, to be fair, there were a few moments here when I did, as the kids say, LOL. Kill Zombie! has some well-pitched comedy moments, and the actors are more than capable of being funny. Still, in its mission to be over-the-top, a few of the scenes tested my patience; I hope I’m not spoilering it for anyone when I say there’s a bit which plays out like a game of Street Fighter and that was a bit too wry for me.

Still, what’s important is that Kill Zombie! doesn’t slack off. Just because it isn’t a landmark movie, which it knows, it doesn’t just go through the motions. It takes some of the tropes, like the panicked TV news bulletin, and plays with them; we might be fairly placed to predict what’ll be said, but how it’s said is still funny (“I thought that was the weather girl walking in…but that doesn’t sound like her…”) It also goes the extra mile in terms of splatter (even though some of it is rather sloppy CGI) and it throws in some inventive kills, making the most of a fairly extensive cast of extras. Its lead characters are likeable, and the relationship between the two brothers manages to be sweet and believable (and, although the artwork on my press release is only at the ‘to be confirmed’ phase at the moment, both brothers should definitely be on the cover, in my humble opinion, rather than giving centre-stage to ass-kicking cop Gigi Ravelli, as lovely as she is.)

But, I find myself going back to that film again, because how much you’ll get out of this movie depends very much on how your tolerance for the modern zomcom is bearing up these days. Personally I thought Kill Zombie! was decent. It was lively rather than lazy, moved along at a good pace, and didn’t just go through the motions. It won’t change your life, sure, but it’s still worthwhile. If you still have time for this sort of thing, of course…

Kill Zombie! will be released by Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment on 17th September.

Review by Keri O’Shea

I’m not the world’s biggest martial arts movie fan generally; the genre’s just too expansive and, in a lot of cases, all the expert flailing of limbs grows monotonous through overkill after a while. However, this is certainly not always the case. I saw an Indonesian film entitled Merantau a few years ago, and was hugely impressed by its unorthodox elements, as well as by its blend of realistic fighting with moments of great beauty. The only minor issue I had with it was that a slightly saccharin note crept in towards the end; I didn’t anticipate this of The Raid, the most recent film by Merantau director Gareth Wyn Evans, and my gut feeling was correct. The Raid is an altogether darker movie in look and feel, though without having to sacrifice the high intensity of the action therein. However, in common with Merantau, this is an action flick with heart and soul; put simply, personal integrity, and issues surrounding integrity, are examined here.

The basic plot is, or at least appears, magnificent in its simplicity: we’re shown two polar opposites in Indonesian society. One’s a cop, Rama (star Iko Uwais), preparing to go to work; the other’s a gangland boss, Tama (Ray Sahetapy). When we see that Rama is about to form part of a team on a clearance operation, we understand that these two worlds are about to collide. Rama’s senior officer outlines what they’re about to face: Tama’s based in a notorious tower block, surrounded by his own henchmen and lots of other people who would happily act on their anti-cop bias; there’s also a large-scale narcotics lab to be taken care of there. Floor by floor, the cop team must do whatever is necessary to shut this place down for good.

It seems like plain sailing for the cops – at first (although necessity is an ugly, child-killing beast). But, when Tama’s paranoia pays off, he’s able to put the building into lockdown, watching the cops’ progress on his CCTV network and using his insider info to put a serious crimp on their winning streak. We also soon see that there’s more to this mission than a straightforward clean-up; but, regardless of the whys, getting out of this place alive is going to take some serious guile.

Wow. This is a very tense film, sometimes unbearably so, and right from the outset; in a very short space of time, our premise is neatly in place. We see the anxious cops, lots of them new recruits; we hear how efficiently their orders are given, and we know what’s waiting for them inside that looming tower block. Just like that, within a few minutes, we have a strong set-up for the action which we know will follow. However, the action is not relentless, and it’s far stronger for the contrasts which Evans weaves into the movie. We see this happening right from the start. As Rama prepares for his mission by exercising at home, we see him training, but then it’s broken up by some moments of great stillness. He’s training, but then we see him praying; all the sound and movement slows almost to nothing. It’s a device which is used throughout The Raid. The way in which Evans carefully punctuates extreme violence and rapid pace with moments of brooding peace (and even some slow-mo) adds exponentially to the film’s impact; had this been nothing but action, the action would have become normalised, and it would have lost a lot of its edge. As it stands, you’re always surprised by the contrasts, and you have space to appreciate the characters too.

The film also works so well because you’re not allowed to occupy a privileged position as a viewer; our empathy is kept with the cops (particularly Rama and his closest friend) because we’re usually at their level. A wide array of camera shots establish a sense of time and place whilst smart editing makes us feel vulnerable within it. The camera even follows the cops into the unknown on occasion, literally jumping into holes after them and trying to regain balance afterwards. Where we do differ from the cops is in that we know early on that the bad guys are already watching them; it’s insider knowledge which definitely adds to the anxiety here. It also allows the set-up for an absolutely staggering scene of good guys vs. bad – impeccably choreographed in its grisliness.

The bad guys aren’t just mannequins, though, meaningless beyond their contribution to the body count. Although most of them don’t have big speaking roles, they’re still people, with their own motivations; some of them look scared, some of them look confident, and some would rather not get involved. The film breaks with cliché in other respects: wounds are realistic (punctured bowel, anyone?) and people don’t simply lie down and die when they’re hit. As the cops pass through the building’s corridors a second time, you can clearly see a lot of people lying there wounded, and the cops themselves are far from infallible because they’re good, sustaining major hits throughout. Iko Uwais has matured a lot since Merantau, and he’s put through his paces here, balancing his martial arts work with acting as an individual under extreme pressure.

My only real gripe with The Raid would be in regards to some disparity of threat during the film; Tama, for instance, seems to disappear from the equation for a surprising length of time, when he could be directing everyone’s efforts from his CCTV hub. The idea of his all-seeing, all-powerful status takes a few knocks along the way as his concerted, organised retaliation lulls in places; it’s not enough to destroy his credibility as a villain, but enough to make me wonder what had happened to him. Guns as weapons are also in, then out of the equation during the fight scenes in some baffling ways. Obviously if everyone just rained bullets on everyone else this would be a short film, not a feature, and a very different animal, but at some points I wondered why the choice of weaponry had shifted. Still, some minor griping is just that: the pace, performances and gritty aesthetics more than compensate. I loved how the building itself provides such surprises – more than just a series of floors and staircases, it shifts, is permeable; its walls hide secret compartments, its fabric can be torn open, its floors give way…

Just as the cops make their way slowly up through that building, so the film reveals that it has more and more to offer. It operates effectively as an action film, with a simple premise which works. But, as the cops progress inwards, more and more about their mission – as well as about themselves, and their enemies – comes to light. The Raid is anything but mindless violence, instead using its violent framework to say more about its characters, albeit never in a sentimental, or even an expected way. I’ve honestly no idea how a Welshman came to establish himself as a director in Indonesia, but the fact that he has is something to celebrate: The Raid is a brilliant, savage piece of filmmaking.

The Raid (DVD/Blu-Ray) is released by Momentum Pictures on 24^th September 2012.

Review by Keri O’Shea

Don’t get me wrong here; I’m a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe, but straightforward cinematic adaptations of his prose rarely yield quality results. His works are often not much more than fragments – short insights into extraordinary circumstances giving way, naturally, to mental torment, rather than what we’d usually consider as conventional stories with detailed plots and characterisation. Great on the page, sure, but more difficult to translate as-is to the screen, which is why I think the Corman Poe adaptations have endured; in developing so extensively on the tales themselves, they’re linked to Poe’s work but not limited to it. And, I’d be very surprised if Corman’s Poe cycle wasn’t in director Stuart Gordon’s mind when he came to work on The Pit and the Pendulum. Here, too, Poe’s original story is extensively developed, retaining its setting in the Spain of the Inquisition, but broadening in scope to include a substantial story arc with a cast to go with it.

Toledo, 1492: we’re quickly introduced to the idea that any religious authority which would disturb a tomb to declare its inhabitant a heretic (flaying the corpse for good measure) probably isn’t much endowed with sanity or compassion. It’s a state of affairs which will soon come to haunt the recently-married Maria (the little-known Rona De Ricci) and Antonio (Jonathan Fuller): they’re trying to sell bread, when they get swept along by a crowd heading to the nearby auto-da-fé – bringing them to the attention of the merciless Torquemada (Lance Henriksen). Maria’s beauty and innocence have an immediate effect on Torquemada, and he’s quick to declare her a ‘witch’, getting her taken into custody and thereafter treated with the sort of hospitality you might expect from a set of sadists and zealots (including Gordon regular Jeffrey Combs, deadpan as ever in his role as a bureaucrat in a torture chamber).

Antonio, presumed killed in the fray when Maria was seized, regains consciousness, and attempts to rescue his wife by breaking into the castle where she’s being imprisoned. His subsequent actions, as well as those of others around him, bring the ruthless efficiency of the Inquisition under immense pressure, in particular putting the (proverbial) thumbscrews on Torquemada himself, a man in whom personal weaknesses are already starting to emerge. The result is a movie which starts relatively slowly, but escalates to a high Gothic crescendo which is a lot of fun to watch. Whilst the film begins with a premise which is very familiar (everyday men and women taking on corrupt and powerful organisations), Gordon and his team play it through via an engaging period drama here. Evident care has gone into getting the costumes, locations, and visuals right (no doubt through turning a careful eye on the portraiture, as well as the allegorical paintings, of the day), but this believability is balanced against a substantial Stuart Gordon pay-off – OTT, but OTT whilst still tying up all the plot threads. There’s always method in Stuart Gordon’s madness.

Extending ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ in this way (a credit to writer Dennis Paoli, who has also done some star turns adapting Lovecraft for the screen) allows not only for a decently-sized cast but for characters to emerge. Key amongst these is Lance Henriksen as Torquemada. Henriksen never phones in any of his performances, and he attacks the role here with relish – sometimes bordering on too much relish, as some of his wild-eyed antics don’t feel as powerful to this reviewer as his more brooding, introspective scenes. What’s certain, though, is that Henriksen brings presence and menace to the screen, especially when his character is faced with what is, in many ways, his greatest weakness personified – Maria. Maria is unfortunate enough to be genuinely pious and very beautiful, never a good combination, and through no fault of her own she is attractive to the holy man. He cannot bear his weakness, and makes others suffer as he suffers. It’s a shame to see that De Ricci hasn’t been credited with any acting roles since making this film, because she’s an excellent balance to the corruption of Torquemada. For example, when she’s examined for witch’s marks – in a scene which is, after all, a full-frontal nude scene – it’s easy to believe in her innocence and embarrassment. And, there are other recognisable faces here: as well as appearances from the prolific Mark Margolis as Mendoza, the ‘saved’ henchman to Torquemada, and the equally-prolific, sadly now deceased Frances Bay turning in a ferocious performance as the witch Esmeralda, The Pit and the Pendulum is also notable for a short (and tragicomic) Oliver Reed cameo, with Reed playing a visiting cardinal. His scenes are instrumental in something else which Paoli does here, namely, drawing on other Poe stories for inspiration. The movie isn’t just limited to the story with which it shares a title, something else which adds breadth to this screenplay.

Of course, running throughout the film is the Inquisition’s sickly preoccupation with the ‘perils of the flesh’; although the majority of the torture scenes are quite bloodless, this obsession with carnality as something corrupting and malign lends the film and script an unseemly feel. It’s always there, finally coming to the fore in the film’s conclusion, but colouring word and deed throughout. Whilst I have some problems with some of the dialogue, which at times feels clunky, what it does very well is to show the dishonesty at the heart of the Inquisition’s practices – all dressed up in proper procedure and due process it might well be, but it doesn’t change the sex and violence that’s really going on.

Although The Pit and the Pendulum has an escalating pace and even odd moments of humour which makes it feel a long way away in tone from a period Gothic like, for instance, The Monk (2011), it does have substance and much to recommend it, aesthetically, stylistically and in its imaginative development of a classic horror short story (not forgetting Richard Band’s sweeping movie soundtrack). Stuart Gordon is a versatile filmmaker, and his foray into historical horror has a great deal to offer those who enjoy films of this genre. Let’s hope this new release of a now twenty-one (!) year old film helps to bring it to a new audience.

The Pit and the Pendulum is available now from 88 Films.

Review by Keri O’Shea

When watching a great number of modern horror movies, there’s something I seem to find myself wondering: am I, the viewer, meant to empathise with the twentysomethings who are so often the main characters – or, are they being presented to me merely as stooges, awful human beings who are about to get punished? Should I care about them, or just rest easy in the knowledge that they’re about to be offed in a series of increasingly unpleasant ways? It’s a quandary which began to brew again as I sat through the opening scenes of Truth or Dare; here, we start by meeting a group of wealthy, spoiled students, all talk about their conquests, their cash, and their cocaine. It seemed very unlikely to me that director Robert Heath could expect us to sympathise with these people; so, it’s a testament to his direction, the writing and performances that, up against some serious issues, the film manages somewhat to break away from expectations.

We first meet friends Paul, Gemma, Chris, Eleanor and Luke at an end-of-term house party. The booze is flowing, the coke is going round, and before long everyone decides it’ll be fun to play a game of – you’ve guessed it – Truth or Dare. The game proceeds until the bottle stops at a quiet, nervous outsider called Felix, who requests a ‘truth’ question and makes the mistake of answering it honestly: he admits to having a crush on Gemma, which gets him a smack in the face from her boorish boyfriend, Chris. He leaves, hurt and embarrassed.

Moving forward in time a few months, and – oddly – Felix has invited the gang to his birthday party, at his family home out in the countryside. They – perhaps equally oddly – accept the invitation despite the fight which happened the last time they all met up, but the lure of free booze is too great, and so they all head out to the house together. There, a groundsman directs them not into the grand old ancestral seat itself but towards a cabin in the woods, accessible only by foot. Off they go, walking the mile to the cabin, where they’re greeted not by Felix but by his older brother, military man Justin, who explains that there’s been a bit of a mix-up. Felix has been held up abroad, he tells them, and sorry I didn’t cancel with you in time, but come in anyway and have some champagne. Not too long after that, Justin suggests they play Truth or Dare again; and if the first game didn’t exactly go brilliantly, then the second is about to get far worse, as a lot of the issues surrounding Felix, his family and his ‘friends’ are about to be put under severe pressure.

There are some good, strong moments during this film, primarily born out of its neat pace shifts – one of which occurred just in time to stop my attention waning around the thirty minute mark, providing a real surprise. Truth or Dare’s sudden shifts work because they disrupt the film just that right amount; they happen when the film seems to be settling into quite a flat progression, with little, seemingly, on the horizon. Then, thump! The plot veers into new territory. Whenever this happens, you get a sense of the skill and ambition which is present here. However, that skill and ambition is often fighting against other elements, namely the overuse of various horror tropes.

Pegging the plot onto these oh-so familiar markers is a serious risk. Consider that, so far, we have a group of protagonists (with various ‘types’ represented) letting their hair down at the end of term, playing a titillating game of Truth or Dare, and picking on an outsider character. Then, later, the group of friends has an encounter with a gruff yokel and arrive at a cabin in the woods. I don’t think I can be accused of spoilers (seeing as how the image is splashed all over the press release and trailer) if I say the merry band then get tied to chairs and tortured. Sound familiar? Immediately, thanks to the use of these plot devices, the film begins to echo with all of the other films which have used all the same clichés. It hugely reduces the impact of the film on an individual level, because you cannot help but think of the last twenty times you saw all this happen on screen. With the tied-to-chairs thing especially, it’s become such a well-travelled channel in recent horror films that it has has now, quite frankly, become a rut. I’ll personally admit to being very sensitive to this motif in particular, but I’d argue that any film which utilises this type of on-screen ordeal has to fight an uphill battle in order to stand out from all the others. It’s a challenge which Heath and his cast & crew make a solid attempt at in several places, pulling several surprises along the way which counter expectations, but it takes them some time to break away from limitations which are ultimately self-imposed.

Truth or Dare felt like it knew where it wanted to go, but was maybe less confident about starting out, and for this reason, I’d say it’s more of a grower – straining against credibility in several places, sure, but engaging and enjoyable in places with twists along the way and some skilful uses of tension. Special mention must go to the stone-cold Afghanistan vet Justin, played by The Borgias actor David Oakes – his performance throughout definitely helps to sustain interest. Oh, and by the end I didn’t find myself loathing the twentysomethings, which must count for something…

Sharing in many of the flaws of modern horror cinema simply by repeating them, Truth or Dare nonetheless shows promise, and some real flair for dramatic intensity. It’s just a real shame that you have to get through the blue-filtered, ordeal horror deja-vu in order to appreciate all of that.

In the UK, Truth or Dare arrives on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD on the 27th August 2012 via Cine-Britannia/Showbox Home Entertainment.
In the US, The retitled Truth or Die arrives on VOD on September 1st and DVD on October 9th, via Bloody Disgusting Selects.

Review by Keri O’Shea

If you’ve ever heard the expression ‘May you live in interesting times’ then you’ll probably see how this isn’t necessarily a good thing, and the folk around to remember the world back in 1973 would probably be able to tell you a lot more about that. See, the early Seventies were ‘interesting times’ alright. After the Summer of Love came the hangover, and the hangover was a bitch. The world had changed. Emancipated women were great in some ways, but perhaps a teeny bit threatening in others. And, we see that concern played up to its zenith in the schlocktastic Invasion of the Bee Girls, because you can often spot a germ of truth in even the wackiest mirrors. Invasion of the Bee Girls is wacky, but it’s not dumb.

When a horny old research scientist is found dead in a motel room of what is tactfully referred to as “extreme exhaustion”, it doesn’t take the guys at the morgue too long to work out that he died of a massive heart attack, which they reckon was brought on by strenuous playing away. If this was a regular Joe, that might be the end of the story, but the Brandt research lab where he worked had links to governmental business, so Special Agent Neil Agar (William Smith, giving David Warbeck a run for his money) is sent to Peckham, California to investigate.

Agar starts by interviewing the departmental librarian and assistant of the deceased, Julie Zorn (Victoria Vetri, probably best known for leaping to her death from the Bramford building in Rosemary’s Baby). Ms. Zorn might be wearing spectacles and she might have her hair pinned up, but as we all know, that makes her a mere few seconds away from Sexual Abandon and she quickly confesses as much to Agar. Maybe it’s this, or the fact that she’s a useful ally in finding out what has been going on at Brandt, or probably both, but anyway, they team up to try to find out what has been going on.

Meanwhile, more and more dead men start to stack up – all checking out in the same way – and it’s up to Agar and the town sheriff to try and prevent any more deaths. They propose a curfew and complete sexual abstinence in Peckham until they solve the case; this is an idea which goes down like a cup of cold sick amongst the (male) residents at the town meeting, despite the risks. Add to this the fact that a lot of the other horny old research scientists Agar interviews declare that they probably wouldn’t mind ‘coming and going at the same time’ and you can see how Agar and Zorn have their work cut out…

But what of the cuckolded wives, left behind by their husband’s motel-room deaths? Someone, somewhere, is contacting them to invite them to the Brandt laboratory to find out what happened to their husbands…and, once they have taken up this invite, something about them changes…hell, they emerge as horny as their dearly departed, and no men, it seems, are safe…

Oh, wow. Sure, Invasion of the Bee Girls has enough soft-core T&A to work perfectly well as a piece of titillation, which is fine, but it gets a lot of other things very right too, so it’s easy to see it as a bit more than that. For starters, it moves along at a good pace – building the plot quickly and letting the audience in on just that much more than Agar & Zorn are aware of, without providing a big plot reveal of what the mysterious lab invite means until around an hour minutes in (and, blimey, Tomorrow’s World was never like this). It’s also very funny, albeit in a rather skeevy way; a scene where a girl thinks she’s getting prematurely felt up by her boyfriend until she realises she’s sat on a dead man’s hand made me laugh out loud, and the outraged response to the sex ban likewise.

Alongside all of this, propped up by a decent working script and earnest performances, you can read a bit more into Invasion of the Bee Girls…if you’re so inclined, that is. If you’re not, keep watching, more breasts shall be along presently, For me, I couldn’t help noticing the anxiety surrounding sex throughout the film. It felt like it was poised between two schools of thought; there are the old boys, hur-hurring amongst themselves about which women are ‘frigid’ and which aren’t, confidently cheating on their wives, even some who are prepared to take what they want by force (oh, and did I mention some of the scenes here are actually pretty nasty?) By the same token, and for all their bluster about it being ‘the way they want to go’, some of them get their wish, and they’re left pathetic, naked, dead and blue for their trouble. It’s not sold to us as a noble exit, and I’d say we’re encouraged to empathise with the voracious women, rather than the men they seduce. As for the women, those women who break out of the passive, no-libido-of-ones-own pattern are obviously very dangerous indeed. More than that, women! With careers! And knowledge! And LIBIDOS! Will bring down society! Hey, I wonder if this movie was a formative influence on Mitt Romney?

Invasion of the Bee Girls is massively entertaining; it has enough of that retro schlock appeal to make it engaging in-a-time-capsule-sort-of-way, but it’s possible to see a little more at its heart too. The performance of the lovely Anitra Ford as Dr. Susan Harris is an added bonus here – oh, and it plays out to Thus Spake Zarathustra. Are you ordering it yet?

Review by Keri O’Shea

Do you remember when WWF had (almost) nothing to do with endangered wildlife and everything to do with pro-wrestling? (Let’s try to put Jake Roberts and Koko B. Ware out of our minds for now, if you please.) Anyway, if you do remember, and better still, if all of this means something to you, then you are likely to feel some affection for Monster Brawl, because evidently the world of wrestling really means something to the film’s director, Jesse T. Cook. Might I add, the affection you feel is likely to exponentially increase according to how much alcohol is in your system; there’s a one-drink tipping point between thinking ‘monster wrestling is silly’ and ‘let’s have a little bet! By the way, my good man, is there any of that gut-stripping cider left?’ Because that’s what we have here, folks: Monster Brawl is a sprawling episode of WWF, pitching creature against creature. I got into the spirit of things, and made myself a shiny British pound into the bargain. However, if you have no passion for the wrestling format then you may find yourself wondering where the plot, characterisation, and similar common features of feature films happened to go. They ain’t here.

For those of you completely unfamiliar with the world of American wrestling, allow me to describe it to you. The match takes place, usually between two wrestlers, under the careful eye of a referee who makes sure that no illegal holds are being performed, and confirms the eventual victory, which is achieved by pinning the opponent flat to the ground for the count of three. Being the referee is a dangerous job, and any proximity to fold-up metal chairs is likely to end badly. Commentating on all of this we usually have two or more announcers, and they’ll also link in to little segues where the wrestlers and their managers talk themselves up. Monster Brawl takes this very-familiar premise, and replaces the common-or-garden seven foot hulks with…

To be honest, with a bit of a strange posse of famous monsters. Some of them aren’t all that famous; some of the big players you’d expect don’t show up. Seeing as how this is a love letter from an 80s monster kid who also lived for Wrestlemania, I’d have thought Dracula would have made an appearance. Instead he sent his representative, it seems – a female vamp, who I’m sure is a lovely girl, but didn’t seem to have a classic monster forbear per se. Frankenstein’s creature is in there (and yes, I’m still calling him that, even though the movie pokes fun at people for continually harping on the distinction) and we even get a bit of the original novel’s text thrown in, but who the hell is Witch Bitch? Maybe Cook was having fun with the idea of the underdog; those poor wrestlers who would be sent up against better-known, better-paid behemoths to be thrown around like rag dolls. Still, I was expecting more of the whole hog. If you’re only going to make one monster wrestling movie, it would make sense to invite the full monster crew. But, hey, what we get is still entertaining.

Although monsters of varying fame are actually doing the fighting, the WWF/WCW/MMA vibe is carried on with the appearance of some very well-known faces. Herb Dean is the referee! Kevin Nash plays a manager! Is that Robert Maillet? And Jimmy ‘Mouth of the South’ Hart is here, still in full sway! I have to say, the presence of Hart was enough to put a grin on my face before the first five minutes of the film were out. Overlay that WWF with a dash of WTF, because you can add to all of this the presence of Lance Henriksen providing some voiceover work (and channelling the spirit of the Mortal Kombat games) and cult film legend Art Hindle. So, for film fans and wrestling fans, there’s a sizeable amount of talent-spotting on offer here. It all takes place in a spoooooky graveyard, too, with some warning that they have stirred up some ancient evil by hosting the fight there. As for the rest, you simply get to watch the fights, listen to the commentators, wait for the ancient evil to arise, and revel in all the slapstick.

So – is this a movie in the usual sense of the word? Nope, this is Famous(ish) Monsters’ Celebrity Deathmatch, but if you can check your brain at the door and allow yourself to be a kid again, then there is a lot of fun to be had here. I certainly had fun with it. Monster Brawl is a self-aware project too, with some genuinely funny moments and a lot of love for the various fandoms at its heart. If you take it seriously, you’re missing the point.

As well as the 89-minute feature (note: when films don’t overstay their welcome, this scores them a a big bonus point) you get a documentary on the making of the movie, some Jimmy Hart outtakes (I love the guy, but I would be slipping him bromide), and the official trailer. But hey, you can take a look at that below…

Monster Brawl is out on Region 2 DVD and available to download on 20th August, from Momentum.

Review by Comix

How many horror movies have you watched? Is the answer a lot? I bet the answer is a lot. Now how many times have you watched the useless female lead stumble her way from one dead body to another while screaming at the top of her barely legal lungs? I bet a lot more. Well Hack/Slash finally gives our sweet, lovable lead character a well deserved makeover, by arming the young lass with a bat and, get ready for it, a brain. Oh, and a huge-ass, deformed body guard named Vlad. Similar to “Cabin in the Woods” type debauchery, the comic follows the wacky misadventures of the dubious pair as they fight their way through monsters, killers, and creatures of all types.

The stories are centered around our girl Cassie Hack, a tough but super-hot and barely dressed young go-getter who travels the country fighting what the comic calls “Slashers.” Slashers are your basic bad guys; you know, malevolent ghosts, serial killers, parasitic, flesh eating twins. The usual. If the Slasher is a living being, no problem, stab the prick and wash your hands. But if they’re dead, undead, or “other”, she battles them through a mix of ingenuity and severe body damage. Basically, if it works in B-movies, it works in the comic. Cassie fearlessly hacks and slashes (see what I did there?) her way through each issue while fighting her own inner demons, namely, the murderous legacy of her mother, a woman who killed and cooked several teenagers at a high school. As Cassie travels, she begins picking up a number of strange characters who lead to even stranger cases which lead to the strangest secret club called the Black Lamp Society, which might or might not have something to do with all this….strangeness. Needless to say, it’s a pretty great read.

Not one to ever take itself too seriously, Hack/Slash spends most of its time riffing on the horror genre and giving fan service (by fan service, I mean tits and panty shots.) The comic is a great back hand to an industry stagnant in its portrayal of women in horror, even if the lead character is dressed in the sluttiest clothes this side of the stripper pole. There’s a lot of fun name dropping and geekery to be had as well, such as Cassie teaming up with Chucky, or spending several issues running around a comic convention trying to stop a serial killer dead set on murdering real-life comic book creators. Basically, Hack/Slash becomes a running horror joke that eventually pans out to an actual story, so if you’re hungry for both laughs and frights, this is the way to go.

Created and originally written by Tim Seeley, the comic is currently printed through Image Comics. The first several story arcs were actually published by Devils Due Publishing, but due to some legal issues, Seeley pulled the comics from them and began writing it for Image Comics, which is pretty awesome. Image Comics is best known for the iconic Spawn and its willingness to bring in indie-made comics to the big stage, so it was a really good move for the Hack/Slash crew. Though Seeley owns the comic, the credit for its continued publishing really goes to several authors and illustrators who have worked under Seeley’s consultations. Thanks to him and his people, Hack/Slash has literally blown up on the comic scene. The series has been adapted into a stage play, there have been talks of a movie, and Cassie Hack herself is an honorary Suicide Girl. You heard right, she’s naked on the internet! To the computer!

I know you want to pick up this sweet series and Image Comics has made it incredibly easy to do so. There are ten actual graphic novels that were released, collecting all the horror and mindless savagery, but if you don’t want to spend your precious money on ten separate collections, there are also four omnibuses collecting all the comics. The graphic novels and omnibuses have various pencil tests and cover galleries, so you can get into the nitty-gritty details that go into making big-breasted she-heroes. A word of warning of though! Apparently, there has been several reports of poor binding with the omnibuses, so purchase with caution. The books are regularly available at your local comic book stores or anywhere that sells fine printed media, so go get yours! Trust me, you’ll never find a better set of…ahem, comics anywhere else…

Review by Keri O’Shea

I think it’s fair to say that, if you’re a regular visitor to Brutal as Hell, then you probably mainly know director Pier Paolo Pasolini for his last film, Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom. Despite having almost nothing to do with the horror genre (because, come on, it really doesn’t) Salò continues to enjoy a solid reputation amongst genre film fans, its reputation as the go-to movie for on-screen excess still intact come what may. However, Salò really isn’t all that representative of Pasolini’s earlier work. The aggression and shock tactics he was ready to use in 1975 have some precedents, but generally, films like Hawks and Sparrows and Pigsty are a long way away from his most notorious project…

Hawks and Sparrows (Uccellacci e uccellini) is a picaresque; a father and son (played by comic hero Totò and Ninetto Davoli respectively) are wandering on the outskirts of Rome, contemplating life, death, and similar weighty topics when…they encounter a crow. Nothing so unusual about that, except this is a talking crow. A left-wing intellectual talking crow. Together with the bird, they continue their debates on religion as they go, with Mr. Raven offering an anecdote from the 13th century which he thinks will be of interest. The telling of the story transports father and son into said century. Now they are two monks, who have been bidden by their abbot to go forth and preach the word of God to both hawks (‘the proud’) and sparrows (‘the meek’). They take this edict very literally, and try to commune with nature to fulfil it. Meanwhile, life in their century goes on – it’s a world of slums, loan sharks, and an Italy struggling to claw itself into the modern day.

This isn’t a great movie, truth be told. It’s very low on action and plot whilst its languid, dreamlike pace wasn’t for me; there was also the issue of the film’s comedy elements. Pasolini himself said that some audiences laughed a great deal and some didn’t; I’m in the ‘didn’t’ camp, and this was underlined by the amount of uproarious mirth on screen which I never shared in. There were some lunatic touches which offered moments of physical comedy (show me the person who doesn’t laugh at an old woman being beaten over the head with a sheaf of wheat by a monk) but by and large, this film didn’t land with me. Too abstruse, too self-conscious. Where it is interesting, however, is in the glimpses of a modernising, but poor Italy, having a debate with itself (through the characters) about class politics and religion. Pasolini has a superb eye for framing shots and the contrast between wide open spaces and the tumbledown tenements of the urbanising areas looks wonderful.

Although very different from Hawks and Sparrows, Pigsty (Porcile) also runs two tales in different time periods, but the atmosphere here is much darker and more ominous. The voice-over which talks of cannibalism and generational angst soon gives way to a desolate landscape inhabited by (almost) mute savages, ever hungry (even for human flesh) and watchful. This soundless world is conflated with scenes from 60s Germany, and a privileged young couple called Julian and Ida. Ida tries continually to provoke Julian with her verbal sparring but it seems he is uninterested in her; eventually he admits he is in love, but not with her. Soon after this revelation he falls into a cataleptic state (hey, we’ve all had conversations like that). Ida and his family try to understand why this has happened – and the revelation, when it does come, might make them wish they hadn’t.

Heavy on the allegory, Pigsty has much to say about modern society as a wasteland, and of even the most bourgeois of folk as being little more than beasts, but these political messages in the film make for a very difficult film to watch. The huge contrasts between the silence of the savages’ world and the interminable dialogue of the bourgeois is grating; in communicating ‘the message’ of Pigsty, Pasolini makes his characters repetitive, petty and unnatural. He himself calls the film ‘experimental’; personally, my tolerance for experimental cinema is rather low. Again, there are some flashes of action, even brutality in Pigsty, but the general torpor of the movie is its main feature. Whilst I’m not a massive fan of Salò, I’ll say this for it: it’s never boring.

Where I absolutely can’t fault these films, though, is in how they have been presented by Masters of Cinema. The transfer of each film (Hawks and Sparrows being in black and white, Pigsty in colour) is impeccably done, with rich blacks, bright whites without any ugly glare, and crisp colours. Likewise, the sound quality is excellent and the dialogue is very clear. Each release is also accompanied by a lavish booklet: these are well-researched and interesting, containing essays, interviews, viewing notes and liner art.

So, if you’re a Pasolini completist, interested in the history of film, or if you simply want to see what else this director worked on before his best-known project, then these releases might have something to offer. Otherwise, these movies are, to be blunt, a challenge, and won’t be all that accessible to most film fans – or at least, they certainly weren’t to this one…

Hawks and Sparrows and Pigsty are released on DVD as part of the Masters of Cinema series on 23rd July 2012.