Film Reviews by NP

This doom-laden cheap and nasty production comes from Andrew Jones, who produced and co-wrote it. Jones is a prolific film-maker who has made a name for himself producing micro-budget horrors through North Bank Entertainment; his most successful projects involve demonic doll ‘Robert’, who has starred in three films so far, with more to come. His productions polarise opinions – on the whole, I’ve enjoyed them, with only ‘Silent Night, Bloody Night: The Homecoming’ and ‘The Amityville Asylum’ (both 2013) disappointing. ‘Resurrection’ is one of his first productions, and as such, has mixed results – and it IS nasty.

In common with low-budget projects, the sound levels are erratic. Loud moments are followed with very softly spoken dialogue that is occasionally incoherent. Lee Bane, who stars in many Jones productions, is sadly guiltier of this than anyone, although his indecipherable ruminations are hardly the fault of the actor. He plays Kevin, a member of a fairly dysfunctional family, even without the influence of the current apocalypse.

He’s married to pregnant Jenny (Rose Granger), but seemingly having an affair with her young sister. There’s Mum and Dad too, and a teenage son. The influx of living dead only add to the complications.

One thing that annoyed me about this is that the characters seemingly know that once you are bitten, you become a zombie. This ruling is either forgotten or disregarded adding to the jeopardy, but making the characters inconsistent and seemingly stupid.

Interestingly, however, the ‘normals’ outside pose an even bigger threat. Dad Terry travels alone at night to get help (always inadvisable) and meets a group of these thugs, who have taken the law into their own hands. Rather than run them down, he stops, something that doesn’t him any favours.

This is a mixed bag, really. There are scenes of gore that turn the stomach, and Director James Plumb makes the most of his lack of budget to produce a raw, grainy, unglamorous horror show.

In a a vague homage to the Romero original, the character of Ben (Sule Rimi) seems destined to be the hero of the piece with a knowledge and resolve that would appear to earmark him as a main player. Like the Ben featured in ‘Night of the Living Dead (1968)’, played by Duane Jones, he is also unexpectedly shot and killed when the others mistake him for a zombie.

What begins as a potentially interesting micro-budget project soon becomes something of a slog, with a collection of some extremely monotonous-sounding characters. Norman (Tony Fadil) is a mentally disturbed ‘shut-in’ who lives with his solitary friend Hugo. Hugo, of course, is a doll which may or may not be alive. Norman talks to Hugo, makes him tea and toast, and the initially imaginative direction suggests other dolls and mannequins dotted around the rooms may also have corporeal existences.

Hugo is stolen and Norman is lured into a television ghost-hunting reality show recording, lead by Sarah Sarah Rose Dentonand peppered with some rather dull characters. “Well, we, er, yes, so we’ve had incidents. I know that you’ve, um, come to do this doll mystery thing, so …” says the man who has allowed this team into the ‘creepy’ vaults. Johnny Rorie Stocktonstrikes up a friendship with Norman, which is bizarre given the way Johnny was the man who tricked Norman into coming here: the man responsible for the cruelty inflicted on this unstable character.

“I mean, well, what you’ve got to remember, you know, er, stuff like that, so …”

Quickly, things dissolve into a kind of found-footage tangle where everyone talks at the same time. The only entertaining character is the amusingly detestable Malik (Jon-Paul Gates), who usually ends most sentences with ‘d’you know what I mean?’

These, and most other scenes, are wearisome to watch, punctuated with shots of Hugo’s face, ‘watching’. The acting really isn’t that bad, but what doesn’t help any performance is that there’s no depth, no character and nothing to persuade us to invest in them, just a series of tantrums and confrontations. It’s all sadly rather gloomy and flat.

Written, directed and co-produced by Steven M Smith, with very effective music by Felipe Téllez, this successfully avoids greatness on a number of levels, but has a few redeeming moments. The mix of real mannequins and actors creates a sinister world of the dolls, although their backstory is pretty impenetrable.

Otherwise known as ‘The Mermaid Chronicles 1: She Creature’, this enjoyable TV movie has credited, as executive producer, the mighty Samuel Z. Arkoff, who has enjoyed a similar role on a huge volume of films with sci-fi/horror connotations. Sadly, he was to die shortly after completion of this.

The rich, plummy voiced Aubrey Morris, whose career is made with playing eccentrics, played Mr. Woolrich who has imprisoned in his dark and gloomy castle, a mermaid (Rya Kihlstedt) in a water-tight cage. Showman Angus (Rufus Sewell) sees the business opportunities available in owning such a creature himself and shortly, she is part of his exhibition. Angus’s partner who gets closer to the She-Creature than she might like, Lily is played by Carla Gugino. All four are excellent in their respective roles, and are aided by a terrific supporting cast.

SPOILER – the fully manifested creature is pleasingly CGI-free and only occasionally betrays the project’s modest budget. There are some well-conveyed gory moments too, but this is in the main a psychological horror which, although talky in parts, is highly enjoyable. The ending may not be totally surprising, but it is pretty satisfying.

A bus carrying a menagerie of chorus girls and their manager Lucas (Alfredo Rizo) is stopped in its tracks by a storm and the crew rather insistently beg Count Gabor Kernassy (Walter Brandi) to stay the night at his splendidly gothic castle. Would you expect his strict instructions not to leave their rooms until dawn to be adhered? Of course you wouldn’t, and you’d be right. Before long, one of their number, Katia (Maria Giovannini) has gone missing after investigating the building’s crypt.

The bleakness of the location, highlighted by Aldo Greci’s crisp black and white cinematography, successfully obfuscates the entirely traditional premise of the story-telling.

Events conspire to ensure the guests have to remain at the castle for an extended period and it isn’t long before their fallen comrade has been forgotten and the manager is encouraging the troupe to practise their skimpy routines in the main hall, much to the chagrin of the chaste housekeeper.

Delightful Vera (Lyla Rocco) begins to feel a connection with Gabor, and it turns out she is a dead ringer for his deceased wife. And so the clichés continue, with Piero Regnoli’s nice gothic directional touches (and Aldo Pigar’s bombastic musical stings) keeping things fairly interesting. Every vampire film ‘box’ is ticked, but ‘The Playgirls and the Vampire’ is an entertaining chiller played with a certain wide-eyed vigour, Rocco especially, who has a look in long shot very similar to that of Edith Scob in ‘Eyes Without a Face’ from the same year.

Nessa Hawkins plays Keri Walker, a crack addled prostitute who vaguely remembers killing her latest pick-up as he attempts to rape her. Sounds grim? It gets grimmer. For some reason we don’t ever really find out, Walker is despised by all, even those who supply her drugs. So she enters into a sleazy ‘safe house’ where she is subjected to further horror and all kinds of degradation.

This is a micro-budget production, but every kind of distortion, jump cut and hallucinogenic imagery is used to take your mind off that. For example, the dialogue seems clumsily inserted at times, with a background static hiss, all of which cuts out when the line is spoken. Typical limitations of a low-budget film, or deliberate policy to further play with our senses? You decide! As a short film, it would work as a truly trippy, dark nightmare, but, even though the running time is only 1 hour and 17 minutes, the barrage of shouting and distortion eventually becomes confusing and the shocks lose their value.

Hawkins is excellent as the unfortunate, addicted Walker, her central performance giving us a welcome constant throughout the madness. The storyline, such as it is, exists at the beginning and isn’t further explored until the end, where events aren’t quite as she remembers. My theory, and this is a sizeable SPOILER, is that the ‘safe house’ is a doorway to hell, or death. As Walker finally fights back and rejects it, she regains and retains her life.

I want to like ‘Dark Places’ more than I do, because it uses its lack of budget to great effect and produces a cocktail of powerful twisted imagery. But there’s too much style over substance. David C Hayes, who stars as Luther, an excessive owner of the ‘safe house’ and one of the more extreme characters we meet here, also co-writes. Interesting.

65 years ago, a masked man attacked residents of small town Texarkana. Now it appears the miscreant is back. Speaking with a modulated voice in slow deliberate tones, the ‘moonlight murderer’ begins his killing spree all over again.

The production values are decent, the acting is convincing. So why do I find this tortuously dull? How can something with a fair amount of screaming teens and restrainedly gruesome killings not arrest my attention?

Could it be that Jami (Addison Timlin) speaks in a monotone and insipid manner no matter what the emotion? To be fair to her, her contempories are often much the same. Far from the strutting posturers that frequent such films usually (which is a mercy), they are on the other end of the spectrum. Humbly mumbling their lines to one another, it is difficult to work out one character from another. Inoffensive –sweet even - to the point of inertia, these characters are barely even cyphers for the marauding killer, who is also without much in the way of presence.

It may be that I am simply not in the mood for this, but there seems to be no life in any facet of the proceedings. Even the occasional sex scene fails to break free of this miasma. Why is the murderer doing these things? Just *because*, really. I feel bad about my nonchalance – after all, a great deal of work has presumably gone into creating this: the bleakness of the locale is nicely conveyed by Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, and Ludwig Goransson’s musical score is nicely haunting; there’s a good set piece where a couple wake up to find their scarecrow perched on the wooden stand has been replaced by the bloody corpse of a young girl … and then within moments the lacklustre performance of those trying to solve the mystery drags things back down again. Sadly unengaging throughout.

This is a sumptuous, beautifully produced period horror drama. It reminds me of the kind of carefully crafted historical chillers the BBC sometimes produces for the autumn audience, the like of which receives acceptable ratings against the talent show dross elsewhere on mainstream television, and receives complaints from the cavilling general public for being ‘too dark’.

I love it: the smoky charnel houses, the rain and waste-strewn cobbles, the dim light, class divides, penny dreadfuls, pox-ridden low-lives, music hall drabs, salty gags, cockney peelers, pea-soupers and the streets of London ‘running red with blood.’

Dan Leno (Douglas Booth), a kind of Victorian Russell Brand, takes an avuncular interest in young Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke), who is under suspicion for murdering her husband. Inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy in a role originally taken by the late Alan Rickman) has evidence that her husband may be the legendry murderer ‘the Limehouse Golem’, and is determined to save Elizabeth from a date with the gallows.

There are those who say Bill Nighy only ever plays himself. I think there is truth to this, but when you have cornered the market so brilliantly, why step outside of it? Here, he is exceptional as always as the Inspector, with much support from the excellent Daniel Mays as Constable George Flood. In a small role Damien Thomas (Count Karnstein in Hammer’s 1971 ‘Twins of Evil’) plays heavily bearded Soloman Veil. Maria Valverde is wonderful as the arch Aveline Ortega.

A terrific twisted, twisty tale admirably directed by Juan Carlos Medina. Well worth your time.

Changed from ‘Barbies’ to ‘Barbys’ to avoid confusion with a certain well known blond toy, this Jess Franco film is typically as crass and weird as you may expect. By this time in his career, Franco was about to start working with One Shot Productions, a strictly no-budget company sympathetic to his style, as he was of theirs. So it’s interesting to see that ‘Killer Barbys’ is a comparatively slick affair. For a start, it isn’t shot on video. Secondly, it boasts some fairly impressive production values and set-pieces.

The Barbys are a suggestive punk rock outfit touring in a Scooby-Doo-type van that breaks down, leaving them at the mercy of the sinister Arkan (Aldo Sambrell) and the huge and gothic castle he frequents. There are two distinct styles here, and Franco makes little attempt to marry them together – incessant punky-music-scored wise-cracking and softcore scenes featuring the band, and some nicely lit sinister scenes involving Arkan and the castle’s Countess, punctuated with the antics of skivvy Baltasar (Santiago Segura) and his two dwarf ‘children.’ Interestingly perhaps, band-member Rafa is played by Carlos Subterfuge, who would go on to play a dreadlocked Frankenstein’s Ghost in Franco’s 1998’s ‘Lust for Frankenstein’.

I don’t know what on Earth to make of this, but that is hardly surprising. Clearly a vehicle for The Killer Barbys, much as ‘Spice World’, for example, was a vehicle for The Spice Girls, this venture is a much more lurid and less comprehensible affair. But in Franco’s hands, would you expect anything else? Also, it is enjoyable in its way. There are eerie sex scenes, full nakedness and an expectedly thin storyline. There are also a number of nice gore scenes, perhaps befitting a band with such a ‘raunchy’ image. Main singer Sylvia Superstar as Flavia gets the most to do here, which isn’t a huge amount.

The dubbing in this is some of the worst I have seen, with little or no attempt to marry the lines with the actors. The dialogue is pretty ropey too (“You are the most beautiful bitch I have ever seen in my life,” Rafa informs the Countess by way of a compliment).

Reviewing a comedy is difficult. If you examine the jokes too much, they fall apart. If you quote various lines out of context, they lose their impact. ‘The Cottage’ is very much of the type that deserves to be watched, enjoyed and left at that.

To skirt over the story, David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) have kidnapped Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) but the situation becomes more complicated than any of them could imagine. Then, those complications become complicated … and so on. Even in the very last scene, the situation that has taken on such satisfyingly ridiculous proportions becomes … even more complicated.

My one real problem with this are the excessive profanities. At the risk of sounding like everyone’s elderly parents, I found such expletives are shockingly funny to begin with, but become wearisome once they are established as the normal way of speaking. Other than that, this is a fine slice of black comedy. Politically incorrect in places, but mainly the laughs come from the extravagant blood and gore on display.

Tracey’s large breasts only feature once as the focal point of the comedy, serving only as a distraction allowing her to get the better of Peter. The males are the subject of the humour here, their ineptitude and consistent failures causing the mayhem that propels the story. It’s good to see Hellraiser’s Doug Bradley in this, but a shame his appearance is limited to a ‘villager with dog’ credit.

All performances are enjoyable, with the excellent Shearsmith getting the brunt of the gory punishment. With Serkis, it is easy to note his performances as a number of CGI creations in other films, but this is a reminder what a good ‘physical’ actor he is too.

This British/Irish film doesn’t present a particularly reassuring image of the police force, at least not in the remote Scottish village in which the story is set. They are either using their patrol duty for sex opportunities or taking steps to make life as uncomplicated as possible for themselves. This is the environment new recruit PC Rachel Heggie (Polyanna McKintosh so good in 2011’a ‘The Woman’, 2014’s ‘White Settlers’ and the ‘Walking the Dead’ television series) walks into.

A mysterious man, known as Six (the always excellent and intense Liam Cunningham) arrives without explanation at the police station and is placed amongst the other prisoners held there – wife-beater Ralph (Jonathan Watson) and a small time crook Caeser (Brian Vernel). The colour-grading is hugely drab: all dawn raw blue and urine yellow. It induces a slightly sickly atmosphere.

This is superbly directed by Brian O’Malley who manages to create some gory death moments virtually guaranteed to lift you from your seat. The ending, and the true identity of Six, remains enigmatic to the end. And yet there is a sense of closure on this particular night’s events that satisfies whilst appearing to be end only of the first chapter of a continuing narrative.

‘Let us Prey’ is a tremendous production that never slackens its pace and doesn’t put a foot wrong. Love it.

Can you have too much atmosphere? I ask this because I love films that transport the viewer to the fictional world of the production, incite you to shudder at each shadow, marvel at each misty dawn, gasp at the scale of the architecture and actually encourage you to feel you are part of the experience. The very stylish and sublime Swiss rehabilitation centre featured here is extremely scenic and beautiful but at 2 hrs 26 minutes long, your fascination with the mysterious healing base is stretched out too thinly.

Dane DeHaan stars as Lockhart, a character who is, at least initially, difficult to like. Strictly a businessman, an ambitious go-getter, someone whose personality is comprised of spreadsheets and business projections, and who is never out of his shirt and tie, he represents the cogs of industry and is surrounded by, manipulated by and obeys the rules of others just like him. Their mission is purely to ‘get ahead’, to make money, and when he is sent to the mysterious centre of wellness to locate and bring back the man he replaced - Roland Pembroke (Harry Groener) - he considers it a waste of his talents. To balance things, the money he earns helps keep his aged mother in the best care home he can afford. DeHaan plays the role exceptionally well, his ambition slowly being eroded, displaying a semblance of humanity beneath - a nice balance to the apparently benevolent Doctor Volmer (Jason Isaacs), whose ‘journey’ heads in the opposite direction.

For such a driven character, it is ironic that when he is *being* driven to the centre, a mishap with a deer causes a crash that sends him there as a patient. Once there, he experiences the unorthodox, somewhat HP Lovecraft-ian techniques of healing the patients of their alleged maladies. That Lockhart is so arrogant in the face of the peacefulness of the doctors and inmates ensures the audience is far from on his side. Also, the reason The Company need Pembroke back is so they can pin various illegal business activities on him.

The finale is a terrific spectacle of Grand Guignol, with the reason finally revealed for all the atrocities committed. The closing scenes are lovingly crafted by Director and Producer Gore Verbinski. It is just possible Verbinski is too in love with the project, for there is no reason it should last 146 minutes. Possibly this is a major factor why the film failed at the box office. The fact that audience attention is allowed to wander on occasion is a huge shame, as intricate and meticulous scenes will be passed over.

The ending (SPOILER) is satisfying, with Lockhart rejecting both the wellness ‘clinic’ and his former life as a business drone.

Watching a couple of what I can only call Designer Nerds and their girlfriends flirting and arguing in a room can be a less than fascinating experience. The actors are all competent and veer from amusing to irritating alternately, and ultimately into a panicking menagerie when things go wrong. To explain:

Skeet Ulrich plays Brice, who hosts an ‘escape room’ event. Agitated that his project is no longer the popular resort it once was, he buys a ‘skull box’ (a device we are introduced to the film’s prologue, which is almost a movie in itself) thinking that its legendry curse will drum up interest in his business. To this end, Jess, Jeff, Ben and Angie agree to be locked in the room filled with potential clues as to their escape. If they don’t escape, they ‘lose’. However when a masked figure appears, to all intents and purposes a prop, Angie feels – in the film’s lowest point – that it is ‘looking at her boobs’. It isn’t a prop however, it is a killer, and every few minutes, the chain keeping it close to the wall loosens, allowing it to come into closer contact with them in the confines of the room.

A nice touch is when the killer gives a round of applause once the allotted time to escape the ‘escape room’ has come to an end but despite the best efforts of the cast, this exercise is pretty average at best.

SPOILERS

It must have been a challenge to go about a sequel to a film in which the original cast all appeared to die, but to its credit, ‘The Houses October Built 2’ – from here on in, THOB2 - actually begins as the earlier instalment ended – with the group of haunted house ‘enthusiasts’ being buried alive. Pretty soon, the ‘five thrill seekers’ are free once more.

Like the earlier production, this plays with the idea of found footage, in that it cheats with the concept by apparently including scenes that would have been impossible for the characters to film – but when it helps the flow and heightens the chaotic sense of the grotesque brutality to this extent, it is forgivable.

Like the Blair Witch trilogy before it, THOB2 takes the events from the previous movie and treats them as reality; the YouTube exploits of Zack, Mikey, Bobbie and Jeff have made headline news – and made a star out of the sole female of the group Brandy (Brandy Schaefer). Problem is, this new fame pushes the others to go further into the world of haunted houses and realistic funfair demons than ever before – and Brandy, or ‘Coffin Girl’ who has attracted 24 million YouTube hits, assuredly wants no part of it. I don’t like the way the boys cajole Brandy into the gang again, even considering the pressure they are under from their audience. Before, the group were extreme but likeable; now, that appeal has been diminished, although their recklessness proves to be entirely in character. Also, it would be unrealistic if at least one of the gang wasn’t reticent about coming for another journey. To help to understand why people enter into this kind of macabre exhibitionism, Brandy meets Dr Margee Kerr, who engages with scary things to help her ‘grow’. It wouldn’t convince me!

Other than that, it is business ‘as unusual’, as they traverse haunted houses and extreme Halloween attractions much as before. Their travelogue becomes a world where every face is horrifying, around every corner is a new reason to shudder, and fairground horrors become their life. The ‘bigger and better’ scares (and use of a drone to film them) open things up in the way sequels often strive for, but in turn, events lose some of the grimy intimacy of the first film. The enigmatic Blue Skeleton organisation is still trailing the gang, for reasons that are never clearly stated, other than their notoriety. Throughout, the haunted house network encourages them to ‘seek out Hellbent’ (a phrase which is more profound than they imagine) as an example of the most extreme experience you can get. Inevitably, when they arrive there, things are not as they seem …

I thought this was terrific. I’m not sure it topped the weirdness of the first, but Director Bobby Roe certainly tapped into the same vein. My favourite character from the first, the jerky, awful Doll Girl is here briefly and this time there are others like her. As sequels go, this is a good one. But I can’t see – now that the main characters have been exposed in such a way – how there can be any more instalments.

How it must have been for a horror film fan to be of cinema-going age in the early 1970s – this is another Italian giallo film that was released into the already bulging world in 1971. Directed by Mario Bava, it contains all the hallmarks – beautiful locations, beautiful people - and someone dressed in black who is killing them all, one by one.

Bava is lauded as an inspirational to many more modern film-makers, which is great. I find his work a little hit-or-miss. Perhaps his reputation goes against him for me; I try not to read reviews of any kind before I’ve seen a film, but it is difficult to avoid Bava’s status. Perhaps if he were not so revered, I’d (unfairly) be more open to appreciate his work.

That said, this unquestionably contains some gruesome moments and handsome set-pieces for the growing number of killings. Stelvio Cipriani’s very rhythmical soundtrack plays its part in cultivating the unnerving moments too.

As always with Bava, colour is very important. Garish and lurid, even when muted by day-for-night, it presents my main issue with his work. It is too stylised, giving a stage-bound feel, even on location. Such starkness also robs the sumptuous locations of their natural atmosphere and charms.

The story revolves around the lengths people will go to safeguard what they as their inheritance. It’s a thin plot, hardly elevated by a very contrived ending. As giallos go, it has enough memorable moments to make it worthwhile (my favourite involves daft and giggly Brunhilda (Brigitte Skay) skinny-dipping, when a bloated corpse brushes against her – dissolving into hysterics. Her fate is also soon sealed), but it is far from the most compelling in the genre.

I found this to be a genuinely surprising horror; not that possessed children is a particularly new concept, but rather in the way their threat is treated and revealed to us. In the opening moments, a flurry of activity involving a briefly seen horned creature abducting young Joey Girl (Olivier Cavender) from her trailer park home occurs while her mum Anna (Gabrielle Stone) is in bed with her current beau Creighton (Carl Jensen IV). At first it seems that her wayward past has made Anna into a scapegoat for judgemental and very religious townsfolk, who assume she is simply a bad parent and Joey has run away – but it’s a different story when all the children in the neighbourhood disappear too. And then one day, they come back.

Yet something is wrong and the children become increasingly feral. Joey, the only injured youngster, has had her tongue removed and soon begins to exhibit sporadic possessed episodes that increase in frequency. Soon the whole town is in the grip of fear and marauding, demonic youngsters. Things have reached this point so quickly, as does the descent into animal behaviour as the possession grows in intensity; events become hard to follow. But I get the feeling this is a deliberate decision of behalf of Director/Writer Roze to highlight the sense of chaos such a rapid decline has caused.

Children – apart from Joey – are rarely treated as individuals, rather a pack of animalistic hooligans. Pivotal moments like the death of loyal, quiet Creighton happen quickly and without fanfare. Blink and you’ll miss it. This approach is highly unusual in general, and for horror in particular, where such moments of graphic violence and spectacle are usually dwelt upon. Here, we waste no time on incidents – rather, we cut away and move onto the next occurrence.

I enjoyed this unusual, choppy film. The very simple effect of hollow eyed children with black vomit around their faces and clothes is extremely effective – as is the briefly seen demon itself.