Film Reviews by NP

Sun-kissed, breath-taking landscape, stunning young blond lady meets hunky hitch-hiker who, within seconds, has removed his shirt, and the finger is hovering precariously over the off button. But any worries this may be Baywatch soon dissipate.

Mallory (Julianne Hough) is driving around the Grand Canyon, when her car breaks down. Christian (Teddy Sears) helps out, and she gives him a lift to the motel where he is staying. Christian’s transformation into perversity and psychotic evil is initially unthreatening in the extreme, but the power of Sears’ performance is a slow-burner. His slow, methodical taunting of Mallory is sadistic and measured, underlining the fact he likes to be in complete control of the situation - especially when Mallory deliberately crashes the car and becomes trapped inside, while Christian is free and happy to leave her to suffer.

As time goes on, the punishing imprisonment means many demeaning moments for Mallory, but just as luck seems to reach an all-time low, she might just be alright. Well, of course she’s alright. Not only that, but she saves her aggressor’s other victims, holed up in the motel – and sees off Christian as well. And that’s after 48 hours trapped upside down in a car.

Stretching credibility as it does, this nevertheless has some tense and harrowing moments, and the acting is excellent throughout – especially as the bulk of the film is essentially a two-hander.

Playboy ‘playmates’ Mary and Madeleine Collinson play Maria and Frieda, two recently orphaned twins from Venice, who have the additional misfortune to be coming to live with their Uncle Veil, the constantly furious leader of ‘The Brotherhood’, a group who bastardise their interpretation of religion by sacrificing young girls whom they believe are ‘servants of the devil’. One of the best lines in the film is Veil’s response to his nieces not wearing black after two months of mourning. On seeing their smart clothes, he intones, finger raised to the Heavens, “WHAT kind of PLUMAGE is this??”

Peter Cushing gives one of his best performances ever as Gustav Veil, a fairly complex character as written. With seldom few genuine ‘good guys’ on display (hero Anton (David Warbeck) is a teacher with less than professional designs on Frieda, who is, after all, one of his students) , Veil is typically written as a hypocritical, tyrannical yet ultimately fragile and humane authority figure. Cushing plays every contrast to the hilt, so that rather than hating him, the viewer is drawn into the moral dilemma of how to deal with the demonic forces he has given his life (and the life of those around him) to destroying, when such forces infest his own family. In his perverted translation of religion, he and his followers, all aroused by each other’s vehement hatred of impurities, are responsible for the deaths of more innocents than the corrupt Count Karnstein – and yet when Gustav falls, as he inevitably must, he dies a (kind of) hero. Real life tragedies etched ten years of age onto Cushing’s countenance (compare his appearance here to his last Hammer outing ‘The Vampire Lovers’) and leant him a forlorn countenance that adds to Veil’s vulnerability.

Damien Thomas was rumoured to be in line to play Dracula for Hammer once Christopher Lee had finally hung up his fangs – and from his performance here, it is easy to see why. The twins are also very good here, despite having little formal acting experience – subtle differences in responses separate the mischievous Frieda from the wholesome Maria very well; no mean feat considering they are dubbed throughout. Dennis Price is exceptional as the weasely Dietrich. Often wasted at this stage of his career on cheap sex-comedies and low-budget horrors, he is exemplary here, especially when ineffectually attempting to excite Karnstein with some inept devil-worshipping entertainment. Harvey Hall, the only actor to have appeared in all of this trilogy (alongside Kirstin Lindholm who is briskly burnt at the stake), is his usual dependable self as Franz, one of The Brotherhood. Finally, Katya Wyeth plays the third incarnation of Carmilla/Mircalla, (who speaks in crisp, clipped RC English, without the European intonations of her predecessors) who – in her one scene – incestuously seduces The Count and turns him into a vampire (which begs the question, who was responsible for the vampire attacks on villagers before Karnstein’s turning?). Apparently, Ingrid Pitt was offered the part, but possibly due to its brevity, turned it down.

Director Tim Burton often cites Hammer films as an inspiration for the visuals of his films, especially ‘Sleepy Hollow (1999)’. It is easy to imagine he refers specifically to ‘Twins of Evil’ as virtually every scene is reminiscent of the darkest gothic fairy-tale, with great use of rich colours against the shadows. Apparently the budget for this wasn’t much higher than the previous ‘Lust’ film, which is astounding, as this looks magnificent and a true credit to Director John Hough.

The music also separates this from others in the trilogy. The bombastic score is exciting and plays against some of the more gruesome scenes (the elongated burnings, for example), and yet makes them more tragic and frightening than if more traditional incidentals were used. ‘Twins’ is as good as anything Hammer has ever produced.

Fresh from playing an unnamed vampire in this film’s prequel ‘The Vampire Lovers’, actress Kirstin Lindholm here plays an unnamed peasant girl in the pre-credits sequence. She is attacked by another wraith-like bloodsucker stalking the countryside in broad daylight, which seems perfectly acceptable for the undead in these latter day Hammer films.

Immediately, the same studio-bound low-budget tattiness that afflicted the earlier film is evident here. Former DJ Mike Raven plays Baron Karnstein (presumably the same character John Forbes-Robertson played in ‘The Vampire Lovers’), dressed in suit and cape and dubbed by Valentine Dyall. He spills the girl’s blood to resurrect, in a nice gory sequence, Carmilla. Close-ups of Christopher Lee’s eyes, complete with red contact lenses, spliced from another film, are inexplicably inserted during this scene, further under-lining the gleefully cut-price nature of this production – and this barely ten minutes in.

Unlike the episodic nature of ‘The Vampire Lovers’, this gives us more time to get to know the characters. Ralph Bates – in a role originally written for Peter Cushing – plays Giles Barton, a fascinating character who exudes prim fussiness as schoolmaster in an idyllic Finishing School for girls, but hides a dark desire. He is chided by the girls for being a pervert, whereas the less interesting hero Richard LeStrange (Michael Johnson), who lies his way into the position of supply teacher so he can ogle new pupil Mircalla more closely, is welcomed with open arms by the students.

Pippa Steele returns from ‘The Vampire Lovers’ to play a different, equally doomed, character, as does the splendid Harvey Hall, but the titular Carmilla has been recast. Instead of Ingrid Pitt’s mastery of seduction and devilry, we have Yutte Stensgaard’s far less complex interpretation. Well worthy of a mention is Suzanna Leigh as Janet Playfair, the schoolmistress who tries to attract LeStrange’s eye. Christopher Neame, one of a gaggle of villagers would go onto play Dracula’s servant Johnny Alucard in ‘Dracula AD 1972’.

Barton’s moonlit rendezvous with Carmilla is my favourite scene from the film. Barton wishes to be a servant of the Devil, having studied vampire lore and disposing of Carmilla’s victims. His crumbling entreaties to the unfeeling girl as she drains him of his blood are a perfect mix of seduction and doom. Almost as mesmerising is Carmilla’s later love scene with LeStrange. This scene has been much derided, mainly due to the inclusion of a song (‘Strange Love’ by ‘Tracy’) throughout its duration, but I really like it. With horror, you either have to ‘go with it’ or not, and this scene helps to sell the haunting, dreamlike atmosphere – and yet it is telling Hammer never tried anything like it again. Ah well.

Having succumbed to the charms of a mortal, Carmilla’s days (or nights) are numbered. The Karnsteins return to their castle and a fiery finale involves a burning wooden stake hurtling from the ceiling, impaling the girl as the Count and Countess face their fate. I’m not sure whether I prefer this to the previous film or not. Both have flaws – usually budget-related – but many merits too. One thing I am sure about, however, is that the final picture of the trilogy, ‘Twins of Evil’ ends the project on a high.

By 1970, the formula that had been successful for Hammer was sliding out of fashion. Audiences were tiring of the European ‘bloodshed and bosoms’ stories the company were releasing with regularity. Their answer was to up the quotient of both, and the cleavage on display here is provided by no less than three main players – Kate O’Mara, Pippa Steele, Maddie Smith and especially Ingrid Pitt.

Based on Sheridan de Fanu’s masterful ‘Carmilla’ tale, this forms the first in a trilogy of films to feature the titular character, although ‘The Vampire Lovers’ is the only one that really uses the original novel as its inspiration. The sequels, ‘Lust for a Vampire’ and ‘Twins of Evil’ feature Carmilla/Marcilla/Mircalla as an increasingly peripheral figure played, bizarrely, by three different actresses. Perhaps the writers Harry Fine/Tudor Gates/Michael Style were trying to suggest that not only does she transcend age and time, but occupies multiple personalities too.

After opening with a voice-over (strongly reminiscent of the opening of Hammer’s ground-breaking ‘Dracula (1957)’) and a convincing model effect of the castle, the low-budget is betrayed in a very studio-bound yet sinister graveyard as Baron Hartog (Douglas Wilmer) witnesses the arrival of a wraith-like vampire (Kirstin Lindholm) before beheading her. The story proper begins with the introduction of Marcilla to a rather threadbare party, where she is placed in the care of General von Speilsdorf (Peter Cushing) and his niece Laura (Pippa Steele). It is then that strange dreams and occurrences begin in earnest. Following Laura’s death, Speilsdorf is written out of the narrative for much of the film, leaving George Cole’s Roger Morton and his niece Emma (Maddie Smith – and her Governess Kate O’Mara) as Carmilla’s later protagonists/victims for a brief spell before he leaves ‘for Vienna’. Jon Finch plays young Carl, who completes the quartet of angry men with a grievance against the mysterious vampire woman.

‘The Vampire Lovers’ is an enjoyable, unpolished production. Occasional scenes are dogged by signs of the raggedness that was creeping into Hammer’s dense production schedule at this time. The inn where the butler Renton (splendidly played by Harvey Hall) visits is filmed in close-up to avoid revealing a lack of customers; there are recurrent location scenes featuring a tennis court complete with chain-mail fencing; also, the camera lingers on scenes of Carmilla casting reflections – although she happily exists in daylight, suggesting she is perhaps more than a vampire.

Perhaps the best scene is a brief one. Witnessing the funeral of one of her victims (although no-one has yet made the connection between the mysterious girl and the succession of blood-drained victims) in the woods, Carmilla is terrified by the religious symbolism, and the ceremony overwhelms her.

Whilst it is great when the four protagonists finally gang up to rid 19th century Styria of Carmilla, to have them fractured throughout the film means that each one is severely underwritten. They are little more than cogs that come together, rather than characters with personalities.

The greatest written part goes, of course, to Ingrid Pitt’s titular character. The actress rises brilliantly to the challenge of playing a seductive, occasionally vulnerable, centuries old vampire. Her apparent infatuation with Emma is brought to life more by the actresses than anything in the script, and that is what stalls her plans to seduce everyone in sight. Never a step out of place, Pitt’s charm and presence underlines how incredible it is that she never played the part in the following two films in this trilogy.

Mara – according to Nordic mythology is a supernatural, female creature who haunts you at night and causes bad dreams.

Jenny is being interviewed by the police in a darkened room. In flashback, she tells us how she sees the sees the spirit of her mother, but that’s impossible, because her mother has been institutionalised for years after chronic post-natal depression. However, Jenny learns she has actually been released two years earlier, which seems to validate her sightings of the woman who had abused her as a child.

The flashbacks continue. She is at a party with her cousin and some friends, at her mother’s house. Jakob and Stina seem to be getting close and Jenny doesn’t like it. After more images of her mother appear, Jenny at last gets some sleep. When she wakes, everybody has gone. It is tempting to speculate that they left her because of her moody nature, but the truth is much worse. After an age of Jenny thinking she hears and sees ghostly images, she finds her friends stabbed to death. Her mother appears to be descending the stairs, bloody knife in hand. Jenny runs outside, blood staining her clothes and ample bosom. The police arrive and tell her to ‘drop the knife’. Looking at her hand, she is shocked to see she is holding the stained kitchen knife.

At this point, I was fairly disappointed in the resolution – neurotic girl imagines spectres are killing people, and we are left unsure whether or not it’s all in her mind. I was hasty.

Back to the interrogation. Jenny has told the police all she knows – and is then told her friends are alive and well. Confused, perhaps, but unharmed. So, the inspector reiterates, where did all the blood comes from? Jenny looks to the camera, and we see an image of her mother – dead and bloody, lying in a wood.

Too long is spent going through the rigmarole of seeing things that turn out not to be there again and again, but that notwithstanding, this is a very enjoyable low budget gore-thriller.

This solemn Norwegian gem features Anna (Noomi Rapace) who has been relocated to a flat following an incident with her abusive husband and father of eight year old Anders (Vetle Qvenild Werring). She exists in a constant state of neurosis and is monitored by two Child Welfare Officers. To relieve her worry that somehow her husband will find them and inflict further harm, she buys a baby monitor so she can listen to her son even when he is in another room. Sometimes, she hears the sounds of a child being beaten on the monitor, but Anders is sleeping soundly … so where do these sounds come from?

She befriends shy Helge (Kristoffer Joner), whose mother is on a life-support machine in hospital, and they begin a fragile relationship. And yet the disturbing incidents continue; the male welfare officer Ole takes an unprofessional interest in Anna, and the woman she believes she has heard on the monitor appears to drown her son at the picturesque nearby lake Anna often visits to relax. Anna dives into the water to rescue the boy. The next thing she knows, she is in hospital.

Anders invites a friend round, but we don’t get to know his name. The two lads share a kinship, and it appears the friend has been beaten by his mother. Whilst joining Anna for supper one evening, Helge meets the nameless boy and assumes it to be Anders, whom he hasn’t met. He sees bruises on the boy’s arm and assumes Anna has been beating him.

The final straw in Anna’s punishing ordeal is when Ole tells her that Anders’ father has gained custody of the youngster. She stabs Ole with the kitchen scissors, takes Anders and leads him to the open window, high above ground level. Helge bursts into the flat, past the bloody body of what actually turns out to be the caretaker, and gets to the bedroom just in time to see Anna and her son plummet to the ground below.

Only Anna’s body is found. It transpires Anders died two years ago, and so did his abusive father. Everything else we have seen was a mixture of the truth and the product of Anna’s ruined mind.

Poor Helge. An honest, decent man who witnesses it all, and loses first his mother, and then Anna. As he reads a final child’s poem to Anna by her death bed, we see visions of her and Anders strolling through a summer’s forest and sitting by the lake, happier than we’ve ever seen them. This is either a flashback to glad times, or a snapshot of where the tragic blighters are now; somewhere better.

This is a tremendous, bleak, intimate film that packs a punch with some very intense acting and a haunting incidental score.

‘The truth will set you free. Shame the devil’.

A disembodied, distorted voice ingeniously fits various torture devices to its victims and then encourages them to tell the truth and ‘shame the devil’. If they tell a lie, something messy happens to them. This is most successfully employed at the very beginning of the film, when a hapless grocery store manager manages to scrape through the test unscathed by admitting to an affair. When his wife arrives on the scene and finds him strapped to chair with a rifle pointing at his face, and a lie detector strapped to it, she vows to get help. “I love you,” she says. “I love you,” he replies. BANG! The store manager no longer has a face. It’s a gruesome and darkly hilarious moment. It’s also the most horrific scene in the film – something Director and Writer Paul Tanter seems aware of, as there are interminable flashbacks to that scene throughout.

The rest of the film is more of a detective thriller, with London Detective James (Simon Phillips) intrigued by the case, and then obsessed by it, as events seem to be trailing him around, eventually ending up in New York and the lovely Sarah (Juliette Bennett).

This is a decent film, which could have done with some more gruesome moments. It starts off very much as a ‘Saw’ type of film, and then becomes something less horrific, but still interesting, with a good twist at the end. It is interesting in a film concerned with making people tell the truth, how the finale sees James defeated by a lie.

In a year awash with horror films comes this oddity, built around the familiarity and fondness cinema-goers had for the leading ladies. When Beryl Reid’s Ellie potters over the hillside, or Flora Robson’s Joyce is introduced sternly cleaning the house, it is the actresses we are being treated to, with the characters of Ellie and Joyce yet to be introduced to us.

The production is more reminiscent of a heartfelt Ealing drama interspersed with briefly glimpsed moments of graphic horror than usual Tigon fare.

Apparently, the flashes of gore – and a brief scene of underwear removal during a kiss-and-cuddle scene to ‘spice it up’ – were added after filming was over, at the insistence of Producer and Distributor Tony Tenser who felt, understandably, that this was a very tame presentation.

‘The Beast in the Cellar’ could have been lifted from a stage production, as much of the focus is inside the farmhouse, and there is a tendency for the leading players (Ellie, Joyce and soldier Alan, played by John Hamill) to indulge in lengthy preamble, telling each other and the audience what they already know.

James Kelley’s creeping direction often makes the most of the evocative location but wastes too much time on mundanities; there is a scene where Ellie discovers the Beast has escaped, which has her scuttling through the house, down some stairs, into the garden, by the side of some sheds, into the barn – and then back again - which seems to drag on forever. Soldier Alan visits the ladies to make sure they are alright, to tell them of the frightening events and killings occurring all around them, and then to assure them not to worry. His cheerful visits are relentless, and surprisingly nothing is made of the friendship between him and wholesome local nurse Joanne Sutherland (Tessa Wyatt).

The ‘beast’, when revealed, is … a wide-eyed bearded old man. Hardly a thing of nightmares – indicative of the film as a whole, in fact. Well played by all concerned, the story is too thin (indeed, everything you need to know is summed up in the title) and sedate to satisfy. And yet some elements remain unexplained - just why does Joyce take to dressing in her late father’s army coat and cap when she thinks no-one is watching? The reason for brother Steven’s incarceration is murky at best. These things would have been more effective had the audience furnished with some reasoning or motivation. What could have been truly frightening results in an inoffensive, even quaint, pot-boiler.

“It’s alive!” So gasps Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein, as he infuses the spark of life into a creature previously dead. On this occasion, it is a puppy used as an experiment. Cushing, taking over from Melvyn Hayes (as the younger Baron), makes the part instantly his own. Every flicker of the eye, every movement, every sideward glance is meticulously measured – a trait of Cushing’s acting, and one of the reasons he has been admired over the years by fans and fellow cast and crew members. As ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ starts, its credits intoned over swirling red smoke, Frankenstein is dishevelled and desperate, imprisoned for his foul deeds and a cert for the guillotine – his story is told in flashback.

This was Hammer’s first major success, the Mary Shelley novel condensed by writer Jimmy Sangster (but not as much as Dracula was the following year). Robert Urquhart, who played Paul Krempe, Frankenstein’s tutor, walked out of the premiere, and in disgust gave an interview slating its horrific nature; needless to say, he never appeared in another cinematic film for Hammer. He was not alone – ‘revolting, degrading, pathetic and depressing’ are four words amongst many scathing reviews of ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ upon its release, usually from the prissy pens of the British critics. Happily, the film made seventy times the money that was needed to make it, which tells its own story.

Goat’s eyes, severed hands and heads, and Cushing’s blood spattered lapels certainly brought ‘Curse’ a huge level of notoriety upon its release which fuelled its popularity and put Hammer forever on the map – as well as making stars out of both Cushing, and his ‘creature’ Christopher Lee (a role for which Bernard Bresslaw was also considered). Lee was chosen mainly for his height and smothered in car-crash make-up and an obvious wig, which provides an effective scare but is hardly memorable in the way that Jack Pierce’s make-up had been for the Universal original. It is unfair to compare the two films however – they were made in a different age for a different audience - and that is the last time I shall do so.

The few wisps of humour in this doom-laden story are provided by The Baron’s affair with maid Justine, who naively believes his lies and tried to blackmail him, and another scene which involves The Baron politely asking for the marmalade during a genteel breakfast directly after the scene in which he locks Justine into his filthy laboratory with his reborn creature.

The Creature has a magnificent introduction. Left in an emptying water tank, with its chest heaving, there is a crash which leads Frankenstein to scurry into his deserted laboratory. There stands his creation, uncoordinated arms and hands reaching to rip away the bandages covering his face. Phil Leakey’s make-up is revealed, and the creature (or rather the late Professor Bernstein, whose brain is in the monster’s head) immediately recognises the man who originally killed him and reaches out to strangle him. No mild-mannered monster, he still invites a kind of sympathy – in the way a rabid dog would invite sympathy for its plight, if not for its temperament.

At the finale, we return to The Baron’s incarceration, with Frankenstein facing the guillotine after his last hope, Paul Krempe, has wilfully failed to save him. Krempe is hardly as virtuous as he seems, I think. For all his gallant protection of Frankenstein’s intended Elizabeth (Hazel Court), it is clear he has designs on her – by the film’s end, he happily places an arm around her as he escorts her out of Frankenstein’s cell. The cad.

There’s something in the trees. It’s big and it’s shaggy and could possibly be a Yowie, a kind of Bigfoot-type. Only glimpsed sporadically and often partially obscured by rampant foliage, this familiar trick by Director (and writer) Travis Bain is used to tease us as to the specifics of the creature’s appearance, and also to obfuscate any short-comings of the man-in-a-suit costume. No CGI here.

Kent and Jack (Anthony Ring and Shawn Brack, soon joined by Melanie Serrafin as Rhiannon) are such good fun that despite the former’s continual misdeeds, it is a shame when he dies – partly because, because he has proven to be such a louse, he deserved a more prolonged send-off. The dialogue contains many moments of humour, but this is never allowed to dispel the carefully built up scenes with the Yowie, which rarely transcends its man-in-a-suit origins, sadly.

Some of the set pieces last just a little too long – there is a scene with a Detective McNabb that could have done with some judicial trimming. The creature has no end of bullets fired into it without apparent effect, and yet the human protagnonists still believe a bullet will stop it.

This is a good, solid story, full of surprises and twists that belies the very small budget. A couple of the gore effects are very convincing, and the scenery of misty, remote Queensland jungles are very well shot. From start to finish, this is really enjoyable, with a very satisfying ending.

A small town in the grip of winter. Four seasoned gentlemen delighting/torturing themselves by telling ghost stories by the fire-side, under the aegis of The Chowder Society. A mysterious young woman whose face is a blur in any photograph. And then the mysterious deaths begin …

This film is based on the novel by Peter Straub and has a glittering cast of veteran entertainers – Fred Astaire (as Ricky), Melvyn Douglas (John), John Houseman (Sears), Douglas Fairbanks Jr (Edward), and comparative youngster Craig Wasson as both David (who dies early on after the girl he’s sleeping with turns into a rotting corpse) and Don Wanderley, Edward’s two sons. Wasson is excellent throughout and makes a real impression, not easy in the company of such great performers.

To join the ranks of the Chowder Society, Don tells a ghost story of his own. He talks of a girl, Alma, whom he was seduced by. This girl, played with brilliant eccentricity by Alice Krige, displays increasingly erratic behaviour until Don tells her he wants to end their relationship. A month later, Alma strikes up a relationship with his brother David. Shortly after, David is dead.

This story seems to resonate with the old men, and they have their own tale to tell. 50 years earlier, the four of them got together with an upper crust ‘good time girl’ Eva. Petty jealousies, alcohol and general immaturity turn events nasty one drunken evening, and Eva’s toying with their collective affections and egos seals her fate. By accident she is murdered, and in panic, they bundle her into a car and drive it into a river. As the car slides beneath the water, she moves, her hand scrambling to find an escape from her inevitable doom.

This is what the Chowder Society have been living with all these years, and it becomes apparent that Alma is somehow a physical manifestation of Eva as she was back then. Why she has waited 50 years to exact her revenge is unknown. As the car is at last dredged from the water, her putrefying corpse lumbers out and collapses, dead one final time: very effective but after all the build-up, rather too brief.

The film is too long. Some pruning would have helped, especially an unexplored sub-plot concerning two low-life red herrings who serve no purpose, other than to look conspicuous in the modern setting. And yet the effects, used very sparingly, are excellent and there are moments of real tension. Equally, the town in the icy grip of winter is extremely well achieved and makes the closed off community look particularly inescapable.

This begins with a full-throated argument between Jay and Shell (Neil Maskell and MyAnna Buring), who live the kind of life documented by the likes of EastEnders. Gal and his new partner Fiona (Michael Smiley and Emma Fryer) come around for a dinner party typically punctuated by further profanity lead disagreements – and then Fiona visits the restroom, lifts the mirror off the wall, and scratches a symbol on the back. When she leaves, she takes a tissue with a sample of Jay’s blood. The next day, she and Gal have split up.

Gal and Jay are contract killers. Their new job is with A Client (Struan Roger) who insists on sealing the deal by cutting hands and exchanging blood. After a series of violent exchanges that threaten to tip the drama into a graphic crime caper, Jay sees Fiona from his hotel window, inexplicably standing outside in the night, waving. Equally odd, a number of the men they have been assigned to kill make a point of ‘thanking’ Jay shortly before he kills them.

Unnerved, the two men try to end their contract with The Client, who promises their families will all die if they renege. So, they continue to their next kill. This involves a group of cultists, who they see commit a human sacrifice. It is at this point that it is suddenly obvious that Gal and Jay, so cocksure and secure in their violence, are wholly out of their depth and dealing with forces they cannot understand. It is also at this point that the domestic drama cum crime caper has entered its true nature of fully fledged horror.

(Spoilers) In the final ‘chapter’, entitled The Hunchback, Jay is forced to combat a hunchbacked, masked character as the cultists surround them. He wins the contest by killing his assailant with multiple stab wounds. On removing the robes, he sees it is Shell, with their son strapped to her back, who he has killed. He is the victor, and is applauded by the cult, who embrace him as their own. As the other cultists remove their cowls, The Client, Jay’s doctor and Fiona are revealed to be among their number.

Like Director Ben Wheatley’s later ‘A Field in England (2013)’ this is almost impossible to categorise, and leaves the viewer wondering if everything that has occurred during the last 95 minutes actually comes together to make sense. The imagery stays in the mind, and, like in a dream, it is a challenge to put some of the pieces together. It is unsettling, graphic, convincing and compelling and the acting from all is exemplary.

Very much in the spirit of early team-ups that begun with ‘Frankenstein meets the Wolfman (1942)’ (with Jason as the lumbering Monster and Freddy Krueger as the more lithe, even sinewy Wolfman – and it maybe coincidental, but their fiery ‘demise’ on a boardwalk is reminiscent of the Monster’s final death in the Universal films, namely 1948’s ‘Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein’) ‘Freddy vs Jason’ is enjoyable very much as a ‘romp’, which makes it surprising to me that we are reminded quite graphically of Freddy’s penchant for juveniles. (“Freddie’s coming. He loves children, especially little girls.”)

Firstly however, we are introduced to the usual array of teens, vile in every way except cosmetic – after all, this is a ‘celebration’ of Freddy/Jason films, so it wouldn’t do to miss out on this particular staple. Some have returned from a previous entry, others are a new breed of laconic vacuousness; more ghastly than either of the titular monsters, it isn’t long before they are despatched, one by one, to the relief of much of the viewers.

Considering Freddy had assumed increasingly jocular and bizarre brief alter-egoes over the many sequels, he is, if anything, comparatively restrained here; apart from outsized shadows, he appears as a drug induced caterpillar, but that is the only concession to his wilder, younger days.

Of course, we really want to see the two Big Names fight. And fight they do, in a series of terrific set-pieces. Krueger is frustrated by Jason killing Freddy’s victims before Freddy does, and violence erupts between them, first in the dream world where Freddy resides, and then in reality. The self-mocking tone of earlier scenes is replaced with good old fashioned (or new fashioned, as there are plenty of CGI enhancements) fisticuffs. After many scripts were rejected for this, it seems the producers were more than happy with a thin, straight-forward knock-about instead of the more spectacular, intricate ideas originally discussed.

Neither Jason nor Freddy are victors, and yet perversely they both are – however, this is their last throw of the dice to date. It would be seven years before another Freddy film was attempted, but this was a spineless remake of the 1984 original and offered nothing new.

The word ‘exploitation’ has been linked with Pete Walker films, but he has questioned its meaning. After all, as he reasons, just about every film made now is exploitation-al in that nudity, sex and violence – often far stronger than in Walker’s films – feature as a matter of course and without much comment.

Pete Walker retired from directing films after 1979’s under-age sex drama ‘Home Before Midnight’, but was tempted back to direct his last, ‘House of Long Shadows’ in 1983. His films were frequently lambasted by critics; indeed, he sought to provoke controversy (‘rubbing them up the wrong way,’ as he called it) by deliberately featuring salacious themes throughout. And yet, as with many things, there is a new appreciation for his work now. He was independently releasing British horror films at a time when Hammer, Tigon and Amicus had long since given up on the genre and for that alone, deserves a great deal of merit.

We join this film with Jenny Welsh (Susan Penhaligon) enduring severely testing times. Regularly jilted by her live-in boyfriend, she has no-one to talk to of her woes and enters into a confessional at her local Church. The vicar Father Xavier Meldrum (a tremendous Anthony Sharp, who made a career playing vicars and librarians for many years) turns out to be somewhat perverse, so she flees, only to find she left her keys in the confessional booth. Breaking into the shop where she works with her friend Robert, she leaves him alone momentarily to buy some cigarettes, and when she comes back, she finds he has been attacked by a ‘mysterious’ stranger.

When it is revealed that Father Meldrum is a schizophrenic murderer caring for a disabled, housebound mother and intimidated by a bullying one-eyed housekeeper Mrs Brabazon (the incomparable Sheila Keith), it’s no great surprise. We are in familiar Pete Walker ‘Frightmare’ territory, revisiting themes of respectable establishment figures berating the young for their lapse morals, whilst turning out to be perverts and psychopaths themselves.

This is cited as Pete Walker’s favourite directorial experience, with professional actresses like Penhaligon and Stephanie Beacham needing less time-consuming guidance than some of his female protégés. ‘House of Mortal Sin’ is a typically enjoyable experience, although in common with his other projects, it is highly unlikely that his villains would get away with their burgeoning crimes for such a long time. It tends to drag in places, another of my problems with his earlier projects. Cutting 10 to 15 minutes might well have improved matters.

Calling for God’s forgiveness before strangling Beacham with rosary beads, methodically reading the last rites to his senile old mother before poisoning her (whilst Mrs Brabazon looks on with a sneer) and ending the film with the lunatic vicar still very much at large – all this may well have been deliberate provocation on behalf of Pete Walker to attract controversy. Judging by his comments in interviews ever since, that controversy never really happened, much to his disappointment.

I was sufficiently entertained by ‘Zombie Massacre 2: Reich of the Dead’ to seek out its prequel. With this debut, the filmography isn’t quite as bleak and gritty, but the characters are better defined – i.e.: there ARE some actual characters in this, not just cliché-spouting action men as there are in ZM2. Most of the acting here is fine, some isn’t. So – much like the other film, this is a bit of a mixed bag.

Zombies by their very nature are limited threats. They eat you, you turn into one of them. So wisely – or unwisely, depending on your point of view – the narrative here concentrates mostly on the human crew, a team of mercenaries contracted by the authorities to cover up an outbreak of the living dead, for which the Government (represented by General Carter played by Carl Wharton) is responsible. The remainders take time to make an impression, but after the arrival of a hillbilly and his (suspiciously young) girlfriend, the entourage prove to be pretty well-defined, especially ‘Mad Dog’ Mackellen (Mike Mitchell).

The Freddie Krueger-esque zombies themselves are more human than the full mask creatures from ‘ZM2’, which is probably budget necessitated, and there are plenty of them here. Luca Boni has a flair for these kind of pictures and succeeds mainly in the bleakness of the situation. He’s directed several other films in this genre, one of which appears to be another sequel to this, entitled ‘Eaters: Rise of the Dead.’

Sadly, a couple of the more anticipated deaths toward the end of the film actually take place off-camera. Worst offender is that of General Carter, whose death the viewer has been anticipating throughout the film and we don’t see it! There’s also a spot of unwelcome and unnecessary moral philosophising from the remaining heroes – but other than that, I really enjoyed this. There are some very enjoyable twists and turns along the way of the thinly-spread plot that keeps the audience on its toes. It isn’t flawless, but I would certainly look forward to any possible Zombie Apocalypse 3.

As a coda: there is a bizarre end scene that comes from nowhere but provides a satisfying topless bloodbath towards throughout the end credits. It proves if nothing else that, although the threat featured throughout this picture may have been curtailed, there are still plenty more of the living dead ‘out there.’