Film Reviews by NP

Originally known as ‘Cagliostro’, the subsequent tweaking of the script and title (and scant minutes that actually feature a traditionally bandage enwrapped mummy) ensured that this would quickly join ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ (both 1931) as one of the most iconic (that over-used word) horror films of all time.

Reviewers have noted this could be seen as a re-write of ‘Dracula’, and stars two of that film’s players (Edward Van Sloan and David Manners). The former film’s use of ‘Swan Lake’ as opening music is also re-used here. The inclusion of ‘Frankenstein’ Boris Karloff further compounds Universal Films’ impressive growing repertoire company of the time.

Bramwell Fletcher plays Ralph Norton, the hapless explorer who foolishly resurrects the mummy from his long slumber, and his crazed hysterical laughter as he (but not the audience) witnesses Imhotep talking ‘a little walk.’ Another classic horror moment.

As far as the mummy is concerned, that is all we see – a flickering eyelid, twitching fingers and a reaching hand, and finally two long bandage trails signifying the departing wizened creature. These frightening moments are accompanied by no musical score whatsoever, which heightens the isolated nightmare.

Karloff is seen from that moment onwards – ten years after his reawakening - as Ardath Bay (an anagram of Death by Ra, I recently discovered, 84 years after the film’s release), literally a living mummy. Face and hands leathered and broken (an arduous make-up by resident genius Jack Pierce), Karloff does indeed look and move like a reanimated cadaver. It is a wonderful, restrained performance. Even his eyes lack any lustre until the very end, just before the character meets his doom.

For such a slow moving, unspectacular film, things could become a little dull. Luckily the heroine Helen Grosvener is played by Zita Johann who is lively and headstrong (and apparently had a less than joyful time filming, feeling she was a ‘scapegoat’ for Director Karl Freund). Certainly she gives more of a performance - even when Grosvenor is possessed by Bey - than David Manners who, like his turn in ‘Dracula’, is charming but stodgy - (indeed, between her two would-be suitors, Grosvenor might find Bey has more life in him!).

‘The Mummy’ stands shoulder-to-shoulder within its mighty triumvirate and has gone onto inspire generations of horror films. Fans might be disappointed that it wasn’t until the first sequel (‘The Mummy’s Hand’ 1940) that we become more familiar with the traditional looking pharaoh, and this is a very slow film, very of its time. And yet it contains a creeping sense of dread, an overwhelming atmosphere of reincarnated, ancient horror that any sequels or remakes could never quite emulate.

Not only is this an exceptional film in its own right, it has restored somewhat my faith in modern horror cinema. I’ve seen a run of recent films that have really disappointed. Here we have a tale of possession, of haunting, about a spirit returning to avenge itself. It’s not a hugely original run of events, but it is done extremely well. Acting, direction, (and especially) pace – all these things come together to make a thoroughly satisfying whole.

From the beginning, when (SPOILERS) a perfect couple are separated mid-sentence by a fatal car crash, to the very ending when it becomes apparent that good doesn’t always win, things never let up. That’s not to say anything is rushed for the sake of sensationalism. Equally, the special effects are mainly reduced to very powerfully staged crashes and bangs. We know precisely what is going on except for where the story is actually heading: the producer (Jason Blum), director (Kevin Greutert) and writer (Ben Garant) have us right in the palm of their hands.

Everything and everyone shines here: Sarah Snook is hugely effective as Jessie, by turns appealing, terrified, confused and sinister, all achieved with apparent ease. Hers is a talent I would like to see pay dividends. Certainly, the filmography is lengthy for the Australian actress. From her accent, I wasn’t even aware she was Australian.

The main Louisiana location is used to very good effect. The swampland surrounding the isolated community provides a necessarily uneasy backdrop for the powerful scenes of Voodoo, and the old family house is perfectly decked out with a setting of homely familiarity gone mainly to ruin.

At one time during the film, I thought I cleverly figured out that Jessie was actually dead, ‘Sixth Sense’-style, but the results are so much more original than that. There’s no real gore to speak of, but as a really good, solid ghost story expertly handled, I’d recommend this unreservedly, especially to anyone beleaguered with the current spate of popular horror films.

Minutes into this film, we are bombarded with information, some star names and some sumptuous foreign filming. It’s a project desperate to hit us from the very beginning. Only when things calm down a little do we get know any of the characters – played by an impressive array: Peter Cushing, William Mervyn, Edward Woodward and Patrick MacNee. Of them all, MacNee gets the most to do, but even he is killed off well before the final curtain.

Patrick Mower (currently hamming it up in missable Brit-soap Emmerdale) is extremely good as Richard Fountain, who has gone missing in Greece. This allows us some expansive foreign locales, but sadly, this film lacks the ability to deliver a straight-forward, comprehensible film. Whilst the idea of Fountain having been attacked by a Grecian vampire in this sunny, most un-vampiric paradise is an appealing one, so little time is given over to any kind of character development that we don’t really care about Fountain’s plight – or indeed have time even to notice the girl is a vampire until the brief act is carried out and she is despatched. Things become interesting when Mower’s character behaves more and more erratically, climactically speaking out in a rousing rejection of the well-to-do scholars that would see him sensibly married off and educated. That only vampirism can free him from the shackles of his peers is also an interesting idea, but has no time to breathe before Fountain his unspectacularly killed.

This was a troubled shoot, apparently. Director Robert Hartford-Davis found the budget ran out before the film was finished and he removed himself and his name from the project. I was very much reminded of the work of Director Peter Walker (Schizo, Die Screaming Marianne etc) such is the mishmash of pleasing directorial flourishes and messy narrative, but at least at 89 minutes, the project isn’t allowed to meander too much. A horror film filmed in a determinedly un-horrific way, a few more chills – or indeed any at all – would have helped balance the tone out a little.

Imagine what it must be like to dress up as a clown and then never be able to remove the make-up? Well, now you don’t have to – because that is what happens in this film. Unfortunately, that is all that happens in this film. Kent McCoy (Andy Powers) then descends into a vengeful murderer who goes through the motions of many other human/monster hybrids, trying to regain his sanity whilst becoming more monstrous by the moment.

Except that his monstrousness is pretty anaemic, both in visualisation and acting, and this kind of thing has been done much more effectively elsewhere – the distinction here is that the creature is a malevolent demon trapped in a clown suit, and it is the ridiculous nature of that which separates this from other such films. Never once is the viewer invited to worry about the juvenile victims of the creature, never is pathos or sympathy squeezed in between the hollering parents and copious amounts of blood, and sadly, rarely is the titular clown actually particularly scary despite his handful of (off camera) misdeeds, at least not until the end, when the mutation nears completion. By this time, of course, McCoys hitherto placid wife has become ‘supermom’, able to bounce back from her husband’s repeatedly ‘fatal’ attacks.

I seem to have recorded some scathing views about this, and the film really doesn’t deserve them. But what irritates is that, bar the originality and silliness of the central premise, this follows the same route as so many other films. Wife becomes concerned with hubby’s behaviour, finds he has become possessed, seeks the help of someone else who has been possessed and overcomes the evil so she and the family youngster can live safely ever after. Reassuringly, however, it is revealed the demonic suit still exists and is being held by the police as part of the evidence concerning the swathe of killings. So you never know, Clown may be back.

Men in folky animal masks pursue, imprison and monitor a young lady (Christine François). The imagery is at once bizarre and unsettling, but it doesn’t stop there. We see Cathy and Pony Tricot next, French Director Jean Rollin’s Castel twins as maids, dressed in extraordinary metal and spike-adorned fetish gear. They don’t speak initially, just observe in a detached fashion and tend to the members of the house. Their presence is sprinkled throughout the film; always they are resigned looking, forlorn and fascinating.

Olivier Martin (actually Rollin’s brother) is Pierre Radamante the hero of the piece, typically rather fey nevertheless provides a welcome wholesomeness in the face of so much apparent evil and strangeness. His father Georges (Maurice Lemaitre) is the head of the organisation that has enslaved the young girl, and his secretary Solange (Ursule Pauly) is his nefarious subordinate.

The young girl is being enticed as a form of spectacle for the mask-wearing guests of the house, tempted by blood. It seems as if she is a vampire and they are a secret suicide cult hiding under a veneer of respectability. There are long periods where there is no dialogue, and this at the film’s beginning, revealing no compromise to the telling of the story. It is there, but you need to pay close attention. It is a good half hour before any explanations are forthcoming.

At times this can be ponderous: scenes are inserted for their own sake that appear to have no bearing on anything else. The ending could almost be seen as a tribute to the Universal films of old (watching ‘House of Dracula’ is cited as one of Rollin’s formative horror experiences) with masses of people (lead by Michael Delahay nicely underplaying the Grandmaster, a role he would repeat in the following year’s ‘Le Frisson des Vampires/Shiver of the Vampires’) with fiery torches descending en masse.

The apparent death of the evil Solange is accompanied not by strident music, but simply by the guttural shrieking and bleating of night animals, making her demise an isolated, detached affair. Solange is responsible for the unforgivable act of injuring, or possibly killing, the twin maids in one of the film’s most notorious sequences. Knocking them both down with an iron candelabra one twin falls all the way to the bottom of the lengthy flight of stairs, in actuality knocking herself out in the process! Luckily, they both appear later, bloodied but alive, and it is due to them that Solange meets her fate.

The Castels appear sporadically throughout Rollin’s films (though sadly not in his retrospective ‘La Nuit des Horloges’ (2007) – at least not outside the archive footage used to represent them). They are more effective than ever here, the stars of the show. Dark haired, dressed in a variety of eccentric costumes, they are mainly unspeaking. Inexperienced as actors they may have been, but their twin presence is extraordinary. Even an uneventful scene of them going about the business of changing clothes or procuring refreshments for their masters or slowly descending stone stairs with their crackling fiery torches, is enlivened by their other-worldly silence, their silent observation of each other’s actions. ‘The Nude Vampire’ is their greatest achievement, and the overall alien atmosphere would have been far lessened without their contribution.

The end of the film, customarily filmed on ‘Rollin’s beach’ in Dieppe, provides the platform to reveal the imprisoned young girl was never a vampire, indeed there have never been such things as vampires (!) – rather, she is a mutant. The nature of her condition is unspecified, but it seems to be impervious to bullets and display distinct vampiric tendencies. Indeed, these mutants are what the human race will become.

Desi Arnaz Jr plays Kenneth MacGee, a bull-headed American writer who boasts to his agent Sam Allyson (Richard Todd) that he can write a novel in 24 hours isolated in a remote Welsh mansion. It is to Arnaz Jr’s credit that MacGee emerges as such a likeable character, so brash is his character written.

All the horror atmospherics are then applied - an endless storm, long shadows (naturally) and – in the film’s major selling point – four of the genre’s most celebrated actors. John Carradine is Elijah Grisbane, grouchy, irascible and ancient. Peter Cushing appears next as Sebastian Grisbane, lisping, tipsy and nervous. Out of the night then steps Vincent Price as Lionel Grisbane, suitably theatrical and soliloquizing. Finally, Corrigan emerges, played with typical fruity authority by Christopher Lee. Sheila Keith ably joins the ensemble as the frightening house-keeper, and Julie Peasgood, who seems to be utterly delightful in every acting job and personal appearance she has given, plays wide-eyed Mary Gorton.

Emerging as an enjoyable, but far inferior version of ‘The Old Dark House (1932)’, this proved the final filmic project of Director Pete Walker, who had helmed a string of 1970’s ‘exploitation’ horrors (‘House of Whipcord’ and ‘The Flesh and Blood Show’ amongst them). Never meeting with huge success, he retired from the profession after the release of this was also met with a muted response, despite being the only grouping of the four legendry thespians.

A fondness of Walker is to end his film with a twist. The twist here is not only as improbable as the others, but there are several of them, piled one after the other, which leaves the viewer a little shell-shocked. Here, the twists push the narrative further towards being almost entirely tongue-in-cheek, which is either detrimental or beneficial to the film, depending on your point of view.

Despite a bigger than usual budget, the director’s work is still a little murky, the murders awkwardly staged. The results prove enjoyable despite the flaws, mainly because of the tremendous cast enjoying themselves.

Director Pete Walker is notorious for his low-budget horror films throughout the 1970’s. This, his first, is a horror in title alone, and a couple of mildly grisly moments. The film aims to be some kind of slow-burning psychological thriller concerning Marianne’s crooked relatives attempting to kill her so to claim her vast inheritance, but contains too few surprises and a pace far too slow to sustain that.

Susan George plays the titular character and is terrific throughout, her initially headstrong behaviour played as naïve and confused rather than as reckless as she first appears (also, for an exploitation picture, she wears her various skimpy costumes extremely well). Barry Evans is the good guy, Eli. Evans seems too fey for the role (Patrick Mower and Ian McShane were also considered), but his niceness is reassuring against the shenanigans of ratty Sebastian (Christopher Sandford). Judy Huxtable gives probably the best performance as Hildegarde, but the character’s decline into madness is beyond even her talents.

Sapphire and Steel composer Cyril Ornadel produces a memorable musical score (his theme was written so as to be in time with Susan George’s stylish and much-discussed go-go dance routine during the opening credits) including a haunting, possibly ‘cheesy’ song illustrating Marianne’s plight that is repeated at various intervals to arresting effect.

Ultimately, like other Pete Walker ventures, the project might well have been improved if slightly shorter, possibly cut back to 80 or 90 minutes. Marianne’s relentless plight becomes too elongated to care about, the most potent moment being a nicely staged slow poisoning in a sauna that Marianne cunningly defeats by climbing out of the window.

It’s uncanny. Feisty, pretty Donna Hunter (Cassie Scerbo), who works with her dad and younger brother (they are Gold Hunters in the arctic) welcomes new deckhand Owen Powers (Brandon Beemer) with as much venom as she can muster – but he’s almost as pretty as she is! Turns out he’s a good guy as well, so one would consider it an inevitability they are destined for a long and fruitful life together. And yet to criticise such ‘cheesiness’ (cheesy: (a). Of poor quality; shoddy: a movie with cheesy special effects. (b). Vulgarly pretentious or sentimental: a cheesy romantic comedy) is proof of not understanding the point that it’s ‘cheese’ is entirely deliberate. Therefore, it is beyond criticism because it is supposed to be ridiculous.

I’ve never really understood this. A horror comedy that is neither horrific nor comedic, just hovering somewhere in between. You either go into a horror film wanting to enjoy it by laughing at it, or to invest in the story it is telling and go along with it. It’s impossible to go along with this film because the titular creatures, the Sea Vampires disturbed by the salvagers are adorably bad. Even the illustrations on publicity material depict them as being just as cartoon-like as they are on-screen. And yet the players are earnest and don’t play anything for laughs.

The creatures appear to loosely be based on stingrays, but with bulbous eyes and wide, frog-like mouths. For the hilarity of their every appearance, they are deadly beasts, killing Donna’s father as well as other peripheral characters. But not to worry too much – she and Owen are finding comfort in each other’s melancholy. It seems as if the ice maiden is about to be thawed out. So disturbing a race of killer jellies has its benefits!

The creatures are routinely defeated by grow-lights used by the local villain to cultivate marijuana (the swine), which is inventive, if nothing else. Ultimately, this film seems to have been produced to fit the ‘so bad its good’ criteria, which as an ambition, baffles me.

It is hard to believe this was made the year before Star Wars. A low-budget British picture, with grizzled, familiar British actors from the time stomping around in freezing locations and cramped interiors, in film so gritty it’s like looking through a cigarette fog.

Lynne Frederick, who had been so pure faced and natural in Hammer’s Vampire Circus five years before, is fully a product of 1970’s fashion here. An underrated actress, she puts in a fine leading performance as Samantha Gray, who appears to be losing her mind. Pursued by William Haskin (Jack Watson), she never appears pathetic or hopeless, just vulnerable and attempting to make the best of her spiralling situation.

The film, shot very much in the style of television psychological drama (with added gore), becomes a sluggish affair after it becomes obvious that nothing is really going to deviate from the familiar ‘woman in peril’ storyline. Having said that, there are some grisly low-key moments (the brief possession in the village hall is memorable). Also, there is a grimness on display here that doesn’t let up – the world in which Samantha spears to be trapped is relentless.

Director Pete Walker was prolific in the 1970’s, producing a number of similarly low-budget horrors. Whilst many derided his work at the time, others have named him as a UK Jess Franco or Jean Rollin. The similarities are there. Exploitative, under-funded, commercially compromised – and suitably modest in interviews, saying of his films, ‘All I wanted to do is create a bit of mischief.’ His last horror film was 1983’s House of Long Shadows, which prided itself on uniting stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, John Carradine and Vincent Price for what turned out to be last time.

Ultimately, ‘Schizo’ goes on too long with too little incident to prevent the interest waning from time to time, although the performances are suitably solemn, and draw the viewer back in again. The twist at the end is very much like something of the TV series ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ (ie: stretching credulity) but brings events to a satisfying conclusion.

A found footage-style film from the Second World War is not something I would have been expecting to take seriously, due mainly to the highly improbable nature of ‘home movies’ being shot with cameras from the 1940’s. Indeed, there is a certain tongue-in-cheek style to proceedings as if the producers are urging us to go along with a story they clearly believe is worth telling, however unlikely the circumstances.

With a few blemishes on the recordings to at least remind us the footage has apparently been lost for 70 years, we meet a group of Russian soldiers answering a fuzzy distress call from deep in the misty German countryside. The transition from the unforgiving, snow-flecked terrain and the underground bunker they discover, with its spitting electric cables and an adornment of torsos with weaponry grafted into their flesh is very evocative and succeeds in drawing the viewer in to this hidden world.

When the monsters emerge (‘sewing dead people together’), they are very impressive. There is very little CGI here, but physical, constructed monstrosities (many created by Richard Raaphorst for his previous, aborted ‘Worst Case Scenario’ film).

While the creations are wonderful, the human characters fare less well. Their dialogue soon becomes a hysteric mass of shrieking and cursing (understandable, given the circumstances) and it’s difficult to know (or care) who is who – which is fine: this is a monster show, and these people are largely fodder. When the soon discovered Victor Frankenstein turns out to be just another shrieker and curser, the interest begins to wane. He’s clearly insane, but just as two-dimensional as his (human) co-stars.

This is dreadful. A ‘skin-flick’ laced with sardonic dialogue and crazy, horny teens for whom taking selfies is a way of life and every line is a sexual innuendo. Classy it isn’t, but even as a softcore film, it lacks the courage to provide anything in the way of titillation that isn’t ‘cleverly’ masked by shadows, shower curtains or foliage. Here is a world where everyone aspires to look and act in exactly the same way and casually roll off identical low-brow dialogue.

Perhaps it is novel for a film featuring such cutesy smart-arses to begin when the youngsters have already suffered some unspeakable horror and are searching through the night for sanctuary, because that is how this kicks off. We don’t know why the scantily-clad youngsters are in the middle of a woodland (even though it transpires they are actually seconds away from suburbia) or what manner of jeopardy they have suffered. Who cares? Not the people behind this bore-fest. After finding an empty house in which to shower and continue to drink (clearly these are prioritiues), the second male of their number (I’m not sure they even have names, although I heard one called Billy at some point) heads to a bar five minutes away to call for help, but gets side-tracked by yet more rampant girl teens.

A joke is attempted. When one teen says to another he’s ‘At Wes Craven (the name of the bar, I think)’, his friend says, ‘Wes Craven? Used to be cool but now … eeeeeeewww.’

Apparently this is a spoof of 1980’s horror ‘flicks’. But it really isn’t. There’s nothing remotely funny here, there’s no concept of story, no reasoning for anything, no pretence at the first level of making the viewer want to continue watching beyond the repeated lame nudity teases. It’s the worst film I’ve seen for a very long while and just exists to fill the running time with no discernible lack of talent on display (and yet it appears to be adequately budgeted and directed. Couldn’t the money have been spent on something else?) Even the special effects, never called on to do much, fail to convince, with only gurgling sound effects laid over the soundtrack to let us know that a gore scene is being attempted. More fulfilling to simply watch some straightforward pornography and miss out on the stilted, unfunny drivel in between repeated cleavage shots.

Awful.

Is this film racist? The story involves a remote Irish village full of portly, suspicious middle-aged old-world types which is visited by a group of American friends who are young, casually confident and beautiful. It reminds me of old Universal films where Wales would be represented by a studio backlot and frequented with Americans, Scottish and comedy cockneys. The earlier films can be forgiven because of their naivety, made at a time where the world wasn’t quite the open book it is now with the advent of economy travel and the internet. ‘Leprechaun: Origins’ initially appears to be an exercise in contrasting a ‘civilised, acceptable’ world where everyone is young and perfect (good) and a ‘lesser, foreign’ world where everyone is backward, stupid and no-one is younger than 50 (bad). To use a frequently (and inaccurately) used word, I find this vaguely offensive.

‘Leprechaun: Origins’ is part of a series of films and is the only one not to star Warwick Davies in the titular role (the Davis films are a lot better than this, going by reviews). It is entirely formulaic with cries of ‘awesome’ (when giggling at the backward locals) being replaced by ‘Holy fuck’ (when the Leprechaun starts killing the squealing youngsters).

It’s directed very nicely and lit in a way to make the pretty people even prettier (there’s clearly been a decent budget here), even when in underwhelming dire straits. The leads offer nothing beyond some distressed pouts and some impressive screaming. One of the most ingenious aspects of the film is how the Director manages to find ways of avoiding showing the creature – a blurry image here, glimpse of a claw or profile there; there’s one amusing moment when two of the hapless leads attempt to axe the Leprechaun but succeed only in killing one of their companions instead.

Remember, kids, don’t go to Ireland if you want to stay pretty!

A fairly formulaic story. A likeable couple move into an isolated country house after suffering a miscarriage, wife is sensitive to ghostly manifestations and grows tetchy when hubby doubts her. Are the manifestations real or a product of her spiralling instability?

The direction is very effective, very fluid, it is rare for the camera not to be slowly panning around events. And while the acting of the two leads is very strong (Leisha Hailey as Emily and Gale Harold as Nate – Hailey in particular provides a convincing essay on descent into total misery), this kind of story has been told many times before. It doesn’t help that the ghosts are very solid looking, and that the undead William is played by Gale Harold in a wig.

In the end, we are undecided whether or not Emily’s tragedy is to blame for her own cruel madness or whether the curse of the house has been pre-planned all along.

“We take no shit off the hereafter.” With dialogue like that, it’s easy to detect a certain casual arrogance from the team of ghost hunters on display here. And it is in plentiful supply; Martin Delaney plays designer-stubbled, unblinking host Jerry Mackay (a clever Jeremy Kyle namecheck?), and Lucy Cudden is Anna Gilmour, the pouting, tight-mini-skirt wearing telekinetic, none of whom are short of posturing self-assurance.

There is the technology geek (Alexander Perkins), who operates the equipment for the subsequent broadcast, and the strong and silent engineer (Simon Merrells) who isn’t asked to contribute much until the finale. Grahame Fox plays the manifestation of the Judas Ghost in probably the film’s best performance.

Mackay’s insistence on meeting with the ghost (“I want to talk to it,”) comes across not as a brave stance, or even reckless determination, more testosterone-fuelled petulance. That’s the problem really. The characters start off as cyphers and don’t progress. Their CGI-influenced jeopardy doesn’t help them become sympathetic and despite competent performances and apocalyptic dialogue, no threat is particularly tangible and chills are notably absent.

One development is that Mackay is seen to blink several times after the climactic moments, which suggest he has been moved beyond ‘smouldering’ by the fairly lame supernatural experience.

An attractive young lesbian couple are gunned down in the mansion where they live and, for some reason, then become vampiric creatures who seduce passers-by from the nearby road.

Husky, busty Marianne Morris and blond Anulka Dziubinska (billed as Anulka) as Fran and Miriam seem very at ease with the plentiful nude/sex scenes – even though the DVD extras refute this. Both actresses’ voices are also dubbed, much to their chagrin, and while such a practice seems unnecessary, the dubbing is more convincing than is often the case. They really do represent a kind of other-worldly sensuality that is essential for this kind of role. Whether stalking the misty, dewy countryside or the corridors of their magnificent home in their velvet capes, they look exactly like the spooky sirens they are meant to be. Other, sundry characters are deliberately dressed down to make the main couple look comparatively more exotic.

It’s hinted that Ted (Murray Brown), who is enticed to the country house and tormented throughout, is the man who originally ‘murdered’ the girls, although this is never really explained. Neither is the fact that he fails to recognise the house he is brought back to.

And yet the plot is not particularly high on the agenda. The endless discussions on the sophistications of wine and the charming attributes of the ladies could have been spent on making things clearer, but it seems there was an artistic decision to leave things enigmatic – which I have no problem with, as it fuels the Jean Rollin-esque dream-like atmospherics of the film. Equally, the nature of Fran and Miriam is muddy; the (rushed) ending of ‘Vampyres’ speculates they may have been ghosts all along, although the trail of bloodied destruction they leave proves them too tangible for that!