Film Reviews by NP

Some of Hammer’s most interesting films were made during their perceived decline and ‘Vampire Circus’ is one of the defining examples of this. It’s also probably the company’s bloodiest feature.

The cast is faultless (only the dubbing threatens to spoil things), with the evil circus people emerging as more interesting than our heroes. Emil is played brilliantly by Anthony Higgins/Corlan – smiling and stroking the face of Albert (Laurence Payne) as they throttle each other; Lalla Ward and Robin Sachs as the two dancers, are twins both seductive and deadly (dare I suggest Rollin-esque?) and fresh-faced, young and sweet Lynne Frederick makes the most of innocent Dora; Robert Tayman is Count Mitterhaus and does very well considering he is definitely dubbed by a different actor and has to wrestle with some very outsized fangs. James Whittaker’s rich, layered score is among the most haunting Hammer ever featured. Sumptuous and atmospheric, this confident film belies the company’s fortunes at the time of release.

The film has been heralded for inciting the ‘torture porn’ style of projects like ‘Saw (2004)’ and ‘Hostel (2005)’, and yet remains more effective than any of them for not giving any clue or indication as the depths of the depravity unleashed toward the close. Truly shocking, hauntingly beautiful and not easily forgotten.

This is an odd one. There’s some good acting and beautifully haunting locations on display. There’s a creepy apparition type (Shane West), and a nice, slow-burning story being told, featuring some appealing characters. Yet for some reason director Tom Provost doesn’t seem to want to make the most of the more dramatic moments.
An accident involving a rock fall is adequately staged, and yet contains no threat whatsoever. The music (provided by Jay Duerr among others) is determined to undermine such scenes. Often the incidentals are curiously jaunty when they should contain some menace.

Most characters remain unnamed; West provides a very solid ‘ghost’ – clean cut, hair gelled, looks like he might work out. Only a grey pallor indicates any other-worldliness. For a while, the most alarming things are the woman’s (Mira Sorvino) mood swings.

I applaud Provost’s desire to do something different but wish that more could have been made of the creepier moments. My score is 6 out of 10.

Fabio Testi certainly played some unorthodox ‘heroes’ in these Giallo films. Here he’s a police inspector who is quite happily having an implied affair with a habitual shoplifter. No wonder little Fauta Avelli says, “I don’t know if I can trust you.”

‘Red Rings of Fear’ is actually the final film in a ‘schoolgirls in peril’ trilogy, which also included the superior ‘What Have they Done to Solange?’ and completed with the mediocre ‘What Have They Done to our Daughters?’, and with an umbrella title like that, you know the level of sleaze you’re wading into.

A group of teenage girls known as The Inseparables seem to know more than they’re letting on regarding a recent murder, and so – purely in the line of duty, Inspector Gianni Di Salvo (Testi) turns his (professional) attention onto them.

Giallis are often accompanied by a memorable score, often by Ennio Morricone, Stelvio Cipriani, Bruno Nicolai or as here, Riz Ortolani, who fills his soundtrack with ambient thumps and crashes rather than infectious melodies.

The ending is both a surprise and a shock and proves to be the highlight of an entertaining, but middling, Giallo film. My score is 6 out of 10.

Despite ‘60’s supernatural soap 'Dark Shadows' making an appearance or two, and a villain that looks like 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation’s Leatherface, this is a very talky, turgid affair.

The film goes through all the beats of being fascinating – vaguely arthouse direction, intense performances, much grandstanding – but really, it isn’t. There’s nothing for the viewer to latch on to and becomes frequently incomprehensible. As a result, it seems to go on for far longer than its 102 minutes.

A couple of creepy moments exist in a vacuum but aren’t enough to generate much interest. When it ends, you’ll wonder why you stuck it out for so long. My score is 4 out of 10.

This starts with an intriguing premise where an escapee from a dark cult tries to begin a new life as a carer. The people she cares for are played by members from special needs communities. We then get intermittent flashbacks and bloody entrails with added offal.

And that’s about it really. The audience is led to believe things will happen and then they don’t. There’s no progression, no real explanation, just occasionally blood-soaked imagery.

As a series of set pieces, it creates a sense of jeopardy, but we’re not given a tangible reason why. What we end up with is a production memorable for its obscure oddness. My score is 5 out of 10.

Wolf has a terrific cast, and it’s just as well because the story – and the way it is told – relies a huge amount on the players.

This is exactly the kind of production the excesses of drama school caters for. Main players George MacKay and Lily-Rose Depp star as Jacob and Wildcat, part of a group of mainly young people who believe they are birds and animals. Paddy Considine is also very good as The Zookeeper, whose brutal methods of therapy blur between brazen cruelty and viciously curative – we’re not sure which.

What develops isn’t easy to define. Part horror, part possible love story, but bizarre on all levels, the results are not uninvolving, but seem to meander before some sort of conclusion is reached. Watching this is certainly an experience, and kudos to director Nathalie Biancheri for trying something so unorthodox, and the brilliant cast for entering into it so wholeheartedly. My score is 6 out of 10.

This is a superbly atmospheric ghost story set in a remote Icelandic town, involving a couple who – unadvisedly, as you would imagine – set out to renovate an old house. Equally predictably, this isolated, dilapidated building holds its own dark secrets.

The twist at the end works nicely and underpins the bleakness of it all, but again, it’s the atmosphere that sells ‘I Remember You’ to me. An unusual and quietly powerful ghost story. My score is 8 out of 10.

When a middle-aged couple Anne and Paul Sacchetti (Barbara Crampton and Andrew Sensenig) move into an isolated, creepy-looking house, in a film called ‘We Are Still Here’, it’s no great surprise to guess what will happen.

Explanations are brief and scant. We learn that the house may have been built upon an ancient burial site, was owned by the Dagmars, and that they used the place as a funeral home and sold the corpses. Whatever the explicit reasons, there’s more than enough ghoulishness within the premises to make reasonable the current hauntings.

The superb score is composed by Wojciech Golczewski, and was released in 2015.

Isabelle (Rita Calderoni) has been burned to death, and accused of witchery. A group of vampires keep her body, greyed and damaged, and sacrifice virgins in a bid to bring her back to life. Into the protracted maelstrom comes Laureen and her fiancé Richard Brenton and bless me! She’s the living embodiment of the long-dead Isabelle. Much wailing and screaming ensues – you needn’t worry too much about the storyline (there are many flashbacks outlining what is going on, but even then it is not made clear that they *are* flashbacks, which helps the dizzying incomprehensibility nicely). I found myself just enjoying the crazy exploitation style of it all and basking in the long-gone European atmosphere. The very effective musical score from Romolo Forlai and Gianfranco Reverberi only serves the enhance this.

I quite enjoyed this for what it is. It’s loud and it’s relentless and some of the set-pieces are eerily effective – but after the brief end credits rolled, I was ready for something else.

This was made in 1971 but released two years later, and then again in 1981 as a zombie film with additional sequences directed by Jean Rollin. Of its many titles (Une Vierge chez les Morts Vivant · Christina, Princess of Eroticism · The Erotic Dreams of Christine · A Young Girl Among the Living Dead . Una Vergine tra gli Zombi), ‘A Virgin Among the Living Dead’ is among the least advisable as it gives away a major spoiler. There’s little use in carefully building up the suspicion that the relatives Christina visits aren’t quite ‘normal’, when the truth behind their behaviour is revealed in the title!

The constant zooms in and out of locations and items often seem haphazard and unnecessary, but there are times (when Christina goes for a night-time wander prior to finding a hanged man) when the approach effectively communicates a trance-like state. The ending, too, is extremely effective – by far the best sequence in the film. Although Christina’s fate is tragic, it is handled beautifully, with the rest of the ‘family’ standing by, seemingly in a somnambulist state with a haunting incidental score.

This is a zombie-lite zombie film. Director and co-writer Bill Thomas has put together a commendably restrained take on the genre and placed it within the time of the Napoleonic War. This very interesting variation of the zombie idea is executed well within the limits of the budget, with many long, conversation set-pieces.

We spend much time listening to recollections of characters; luckily the actors are suitably interesting to listen to. Much of what happens is told rather than shown, but we are given several sequences that feature a small array of convincingly undead creatures, often in flashback. At one point, duplicitous John Cross (Matthew Neal) yells at another character, “Don’t you ever shut up?” Whilst not an unreasonable question, it should be pointed out that Cross also has much to say for himself.

As do they all. Such relentless chit-chat, no matter how well conveyed, becomes tedious, and you know that the occasional action sequences are just an interruption of that. A little more zombie gore and action would unlikely have blown the budget, and made things more interesting. My score is 6 out of 10.

In this DVD’s accompanying interviews, main actress Jemima West (Elizabeth) describes this film’s strong female characters as ‘empowering’. And it’s true to say that apart from young Tommy (Harlym McMilan-Hunt, who puts in a terrific performance alongside West), males are given secondary status; co-lead Christopher Dane (as Ethan) is suitably wet and distant (in a scene when their daughter needs to be resuscitated, for example, he stands back weeping whilst Elizabeth goes about the business of saving her life). If you’re a fan of female empowerment, you’ll like that.

As a horror film, it begins quite well but gets more confusing and bogged down with its own story, so that by the time the Cormack family move to Hawaii, you might be wondering if it’s worth the struggle trying to keep on top of events.

Director and co-writer Henk Pretorius does a credible job of building up the nature of the threat, but as his film rolls on, it becomes overwhelmed by the various ways to defeat it, and the increasing ways it defies those intentions. Even by the very end, the audience is given yet another jolt that adds to the jumble rather than providing yet another shock. My score is 5 out of 10.

Directed by Ti West, who was behind the very interesting ‘The Innkeepers (2011)’ and ‘The Sacrament (2013)’, this also stars Mia Goth, one of the most interesting performers around.

The results form a slow-burning slasher film built on an interesting premise: set in 1979, the main cast are staying on an isolated farm to make ‘The Farmer’s Daughters’, a film set in the burgeoning pornography industry. Apart from the in-fighting among the cast and crew, there’s also the business of the disapproving owners of the farm, octogenarians Howard (Stephen Ure) and his wife Pearl.

There’s some interesting bi-play between them all, but then things begin to get a little ridiculous, although events are based on real killings carried out by Ray & Faye Copeland in the mid-'80s.

Performances are good across the board, and the New Zealand location is put to effective use – beautiful, but remote. Strange though, even with the advancements made in effects and prosthetics, the ‘old age make-up’, as used here, is never very convincing.

Goth is good as always in both her roles – she has long since deserved the chance to play a part that gives her something interesting to do – although the reason she is playing two roles is only superficially interesting. Or, put another way, seems to be a bit of a gimmick. My score is 6 out of 10.

Not that the two main female characters are billed as representative of anything, but I think the message this film carries is that all men are imbeciles. Selfish, full of their own importance, dishonest and boring. Two victimised women join forces to rid the world of such sharply dressed gits. It’s filmed very much like a documentary, the acts of violence conveyed in an unspectacular way (although there’s a nice one towards the end).

As a result, things are deathly dull viewing a lot of the time. Language and lifestyle choices may seem quite shocking to begin with, but with nowhere to escalate to, lose their impact and appeal the more we see them. There is a constant backdrop of topical news reports running throughout. There’s probably a message there about the corruption of the world, but it’s not clear.

A nice twist at the end doesn’t really make the previous 108 minutes less tedious. My score is 4 out of 10.