Occulus Orbus

BLOOD CAR

2011-10-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

TRAILER

When I saw the premise of this movie, namely 'Guy in near future that has run out of oil invents car that runs on blood', it immediately conjured up an image in my mind of what this horror-comedy would be like.

Well, the film was absolutely nothing like I expected it to be in terms of tone and mood, but it was unquestionably good.

It's a cripplingly-low budget post-modern anti-consumerist black comedy in which Vegan kindergarten teacher Archie Andrews is labouring away unsuccessfully in his attempts to create a motor which runs off of various vegetarian food sources.

We see his dilemma every day as he stops off at the vegan food kiosk ran by archetypal nice girl Lorraine, which just so happens to be directly opposite the meat kiosk (it's literally two booths in a parking lot, and works absolutely brilliantly in terms of production design contributing to the overall narrative) which is run by the stereotypical bad girl Denise.

Our hero is torn between the lovely Lorraine...

After cutting himself and spilling some blood into his vegetable fuel, Archie quickly figures out where he has been going wrong, and succeeds in becoming one of the few people in the world able to run a car. This makes him verrry popular with Denise...that is, until the car runs out of gas.

...and the decidely dirty Denise!

Soon, it becomes evident that if our hero is to be able to get his rocks off (and indeed, have enough of his own blood left to achieve and maintain an erection, let alone remain conscious!), he's going to have to start finding other sources of blood...and so the killing spree begins!

This may sound sick, but the part where he shoots the dog is one of my favourite scenes in the whole movie!

Squirrels, dogs, the homeless, the elderly, hitchhikers. All grist for the mill, and fuel for the blood car!

The mulching mechanism in the boot of the Blood Car!

The movie is also extremely suggestive sexually, with implied golden showers and F to M anal fisting. 'Last Tango in Paris' style! It really jars with the overall low-key mood of the film, but works all the same.

Stereotypically-cute hitchhiker girl

I particularly liked the ending of the film. Perhaps because I just got done reading Bronson's Loose!, but it reminded me of the end of Death Wish. Rather than stopping the killer in their midsts, the authorities seek to utilise Archie's talents for their own ends.

It's an intelligent and somewhat minimalist deadpan comedy that hits all the right notes as far as I'm concerned. Totally different to what I expected, but an extremely pleasant surprise. It's difficult to accurately sum up, but let me say that if Hollywood were to remake this movie tomorrow, it's the kind of thing that Michael Cera would be in the lead role of. It's like 'Scott Pilgrim vs. The World' spliced with 'Repo Man'. Seeing as I like both of those movies, I really enjoyed this one as well, so I can most wholehearted endorse it.

In short, buy this movie, or the cute child gets it!

RICHARD HARRISON Vs. RICHARD HARRISON

2011-09-06T03:26:00.000-07:00

Who is more badass?

Richard 'Ninja' Harrison, star of innumerable Godfrey Ho cinematic cut-and-shut ninja epics...like this one.

or:

Richard 'Old Man' Harrison, star of History Channel's 'Pawn Stars' and mainstay of Las Vegas' Gold & Silver Pawn shop?

...I have to say, as much as I love ninja movies, the Old Man's just shading this one for me, probably due to his pearl of wisdom about the prerequisites for calling yourself a man. Having said that, he does lack the ability to disappear into thin air or magically change into a full ninja costume (plus eyeliner) in just a split-second puff of smoke.

Still, this intriguing battle could make the basis for an interesting crossover film...imagine somebody comes into the G&S pawn shop and sells the Golden Ninja Warrior statue. After having had a buddy who is an expert look at it...

...and then totally lowballed the seller on the price...

...the shop buys the statue. Then, having seen said statue on the TV show, the remaining members of the Ninja Empire from which it was stolen resolve to liberate it from the pawn shop by fair means or foul, whereby it is discovered that ninja Richard Harrison is actually a distant relative of the Pawn Stars Harrisons, and he joins his long lost brethren in the almighty struggle to rout the fiendish evil ninjas from Las Vegas.

Think about it...it would be like Ocean's Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, PLUS Ninjas. What's not to love?

Joking aside, I wonder how much that Golden Ninja Warrior would actually be worth if it ever came on the market? I'm pretty sure it's not made out of real gold, but discerning film geeks everywhere would still want it, that's for sure.

Ownership would also mean you could also totally mug Steven Spielberg off if you wanted to. After all, he only owns 'Rosebud' from Citizen Kane, which I think we can all agree is a distant second in terms of cinematic prestige when compared to the Golden Ninja Warrior statue, and the incredible powers of invincibility and imperviousness to all harm (except a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick) that it can bestow.

Anyway, all things considered, the undisputed winner of this contest is definitely Richard Harrison. Hands down.

BRONSON'S LOOSE! The Making Of The Death Wish Films

2011-09-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

Bronson's Loose! The Making Of The Death Wish Films
By Paul Talbot
Foreword by Andrew Stevens
161 pages B&w
$15.95 US
Published by iUniverse

I've wanted to pick this one up for a while now, but the price was never 'right' for me (more on that later), so
I was very pleased to be able to source a copy from Ebay for under a fiver, postage included.

The book itself is a medium sized softback and just 161 pages thick, but boy does it look cool. Awesome full colour artwork from Death Wish 3, beautifully cropped and composed. As soon as I saw this online, I knew
I wanted it, and I have to say that this is one of those situations whereby you can judge the book by its' cover.

I love the original Death Wish movie, which is an undisputed classic, and I also have a soft spot for the sort of schlocky
action movies the sequels transmogrified into. Also, whilst I know some people can't stand him, I like Michael Winner because he
always speaks his mind, however unpopular that may be. Throw in the extremely colourful duo known as 'The Go-Go Boys' (the Cannon figureheads Golan and Globus),
and you have a very interesting mix.

The one notable absentee in the roster of interviewees is Charles Bronson, for obvious reasons, but I find this just adds to his enigmatic 'man of few words' persona.

It's exhaustively researched, and the author has interviewed a number of people related to the numerous films, including cast, crew, and upper-level production people.
Each film has a dedicated chapter, plus there are two Appendixes which detail the casts, crews, and plots of the films, plus the soundtracks. It's an easy and engrossing read.
Of particular interest are the various rejected concepts for the sequels, and various alternate endings and casting possibilities.

My favourite part? There are loads, but the peach has to be the anecdote regarding the MPAA appeals process for Death Wish 3 '...when director Michael Winner complained that Death Wish 3 was
given an X rating because it had 63 killings while the R-rated Rambo had 80 killings, the woman at the ratings board explained that most of those
killed in Rambo are Vietnamese."

Jaw dropping, ain't it? I think that merits the description 'Cartmanesque'.

Paul Talbot's book really only has one flaw...there's not enough of it! I can quite happily overlook the fact that all the pictures are in black and white, but for
me, this book was over far too quickly. I guess I should just learn to pace myself a little better.

If you like the Death Wish films, this is a must buy...it's that simple. If not, don't.

It's currently available for somewhere between £8-£10 on Amazon, which is a little more reflective of the US dollar cover price of $15.95...I seem to remember it being something like £16 when I first became aware of it,
hence I didn't buy it. Is it value for money? If you like Death Wish, then yes it is. It is a fleeting, all too brief pleasure, but a pleasure all the same.

All in all, I'm really rather pleased with my purchase here. My copy won't be finding itself back on Ebay anytime soon.

My LOVEFILM Experience

2011-07-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

I got a letter through the post recently informing me that LOVEFILM was becoming part of the Amazon family of websites, and given that I had ordered DVDs from Amazon in the past, they were going to offer me a free 30-day trial.

To sweeten the pot even further, if I took up this offer of a free 30 day trial, I would get a £20 Amazon voucher too.

(For people who don't know me, I love books. I always have a couple of piles laying around that I haven't read yet, and that never stops me buying more...Ebooks and Kindles are for losers, baby! Anyway, you can take it as read that for £20 worth of store credit at Amazon, I'm prepared to do the sort of things that will make a whore blush.)

I read and re-read the letter, going over the small print in exacting detail to try and see where the catch was, and I couldn't see one, so I took the plunge and signed up.

There's a great selection of movies available on the site, but curiously none from Universal...it appears the two companies are in dispute about how much money each should make from the venture. You can also stream films (didn't try it given that my internet connection is 'temperamental' to say the least) or rent video games (which I also didn't bother with).

I rented two films which were dispatched to me via first class, hence very little waiting. The package they come in is easily reconfigured into the postpaid return envelope (also first class, which means you send the DVDs back more quickly and get newer ones out), and there's also a spare, standalone postpaid return envelope just in case you have a disaster with the first one.

The discs come in clear plastic sleeves, with just the discs and nothing else, so it is very much 'no frills'. Both discs were in good working order and played fine.

After watching them, I put them in the envelope, posted them back,and then subsequently cancelled my account to avoid being billed when the free trial period elapsed.

You cannot cancel your membership online, but instead must phone LOVEFILM to do so (it's a free phone number). Of course, the salesperson will try and get you to delay cancelling your account (I would expect no less), but I just stuck to my guns and cancelled it.

As promised, I got an email with a £20 Amazon voucher code in it, and not long after my phone call I got an email confirming the cancellation of my account (which I can apparently reactivate at any time online by myself, should the urge take me).

All told, it was a 'does exactly what it says on the tin' experience. All parties were as good as their word, I'm happy to report.

It's a great service, just not one I feel like taking up and subscribing to at the moment. If you are looking for a movies-by-mail service, I can certainly recommend it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some books to order...

TO BE CONTINUED...

2011-07-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that I've missed two consecutive 'Music Video Mondays' posts, and here's why.

The first one I was out of town for (and subsequently internet incommunicado). For this weeks entry, I was planning on some Norwegian death metal to accompany the reviews of a few Norwegian films I rented from lovefilm during a free trial, such as Dead Snow, Cold Prey, etc.

I was going to bill this smorgasbord of all things Norwegian as a veritable 'Norgy', and was all geared up to drop it upon my unsuspecting readership.

...and then the Oslo massacre happened.

In years gone by, I would always think that TV channels and film distributors who would pull a film or programme because it was too near the knuckle with regards to current events were mad, or at least oversensitive. Surely it would be the best time to show such a work, given that it deals with the same issues which are currently fresh in everybody's minds?

Yet now I find myself doing the same thing.

Perhaps I am getting old.

Anyway, my Norway-centric special will be posted in the near future, I just think it would be in poor taste to publish it now, so I'm going to sit on it for a while.

A COMMENTARY ON COMMENTARIES...

2011-07-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

As you may have read in my review of 'The Silencer', the review copy I was sent contains two excellent commentary tracks. I was then subsequently informed by Steve Lawson that the UK distributor deemed it necessary to remove the commentaries from the official UK release of the DVD because the BBFC requires itself to re-review the film (and thus re-bill for the reviewing) for each commentary track, which means that this would effectively treble the price the distributor would have to pay to get their film certified by the BBFC and thus be legal to sell in the UK.

You can check the rule out here.

I've reproduced the pertinent part below.

The BBFC received legal advice on 17th October 2007 on the issue of audio commentaries. Our advice is that audio commentaries will almost always constitute new video works and consequently require classification.

You should see what they have to say about DVD seamless branching as well!

UK filmmaker Pat Higgins has devoted one of his 'Fake Blood On The Lens' video diaries (always worth a watch, for the uninitiated) to the topic, comparing the UK release of his film 'The Devil's Music' to the US release. He hits the nail bang on the head, and I'd encourage you to watch it to see exactly what I'm talking about.

Now, I can understand the need to certify the commentary tracks to make sure they contain nothing untoward, or more specifically nothing which is not in keeping with the certificate bestowed upon the original film...for example, imagine the latest family-friendly all ages extravaganza with a commentary laden with expletives and anecdotes about which actress blew which producer to get the role, who was constantly disappearing to their trailer and doing coke or whatever, etc. That's simply not going to fly, and understandably so.

Still, perhaps a compromise solution could be reached which neither a) financially punishes smaller independent producers or b) deprives DVD-buying British customers of DVD extras, which of course provide something of a purchase incentive and thus dissuade piracy/illegal downloading to an extent.

My suggestion would be that the filmmakers should be able to simply submit a transcript of their commentary tracks, which could be reviewed for a flat fee. If submitted in a digital format, it could simply be scanned for various offensive words and certified accordingly.

I'm also perplexed at how the BBFC demands a separate certification for each soundtrack, but does not charge for two certifications of the original film...after all, surely watching it with no sound at all constitutes a 'different soundtrack', so surely two separate reviews would be called for? It's a definite inconsistency, but on the other hand, I certainly don't want to be giving them ideas.

The inevitable outcome of the policy is a simple and obvious one, UK consumers, particularly those of niche/genre cinema, will steadily begin to gravitate towards sourcing their films either from overseas (in the case of finished article hard-copy discs) or watching them online in various digital formats. This means a loss of custom and thus revenue for retailers and distributors, and ultimately filmmakers as well.

To punish filmmakers for wanting to give the paying customer value for money is simply illogical and tantamount to commercial sabotage. I recently watched the Norwegian film 'Cold Prey' on DVD, and was surprised that given that it was a fairly professionally made and well-budgeted piece, there was an absolute paucity of extras on the disc. Now, a Norwegian commentary would be of little use to most English-speaking viewers (though I actually found the dialogue suprisingly easy to follow), so you think they'd compensate by adding some other extras, but no dice. Perhaps the necessity of removing foreign-language commentaries actually makes them more appealing to English distributors?

Who knows...it is just baffling to me that British filmmakers and British customers have to suffer at the hands of the British censor, whilst everyone else gets to enjoy all the goodies that have had to be stripped off the UK version not for censorship reasons, but instead for financial ones. The only beneficiary I see from this current state of affairs is the big multinational companies like Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, etc., whilst the 'little guy' has to carry the can again.

Well, I guess I can stop wondering why certain films from UK filmmakers (like James Eaves' 'Bane') come out overseas long before they are released in the UK. With this nonsensical policy, the BBFC have lurched from being a begrudgingly tolerated part of 'the cost of doing business' in the British film industry firmly into the realm of aiding and abetting the phenomenon known colloquially as 'Rip Off Britain'.

If this sort of crap continues, you'll be lucky to get one commentary or any extras on future independent DVDs. Perhaps some sort of campaign is in order to encourage them to rethink this policy? Any ideas would be gratefully received...

The only possible 'out' that springs to mind is for producers to make the commentary tracks available as MP3s for download, and then people can play them on their stereo whilst watching the movie with the sound off. It's a bit of unnecessary hassle, but it could work. Of course, does this not open up a whole new can of worms? What if I decide to watch 'Toy Story' whilst listening to Satanic Death Metal or expletive-ridden Gangsta Rap? Obviously, that would be 'my choice' if I chose to do that, and thus could not be legislated against, but then surely choosing to listen to the film with one of the alternate soundtracks/commentaries is also 'my choice' too...it's not as if James Cameron is going to burst into your house and force you to watch and listen to all the extra features on his latest film at gunpoint, is it? Ergo, it is entirely a matter of personal choice whether the commentaries are listened to or not. This new 'recorded work' is made by the actions of the end user...they must operate the DVD remote to select the option and commit to it to make it happen. Exactly the same is true of my example of watching Toy Story whilst listening to Cannibal Corpse or something.

Also, if I'm watching a nailed-on 18 certificate film, such as a gory horror or high-bodycount action movie, one wonders how the choice of words used in the commentary can in any way make the depicted onscreen violence any 'worse' or potentially more 'psychologically damaging', especially if it involves the filmmakers or cast members simply discussing the experience of shooting it?

Clearly, like so many Government edicts, this whole notion is laughably half-baked. What's not laughable is that it is very much a reality that independent filmmakers in the UK have to deal with.

MUSIC VIDEO MONDAYS: BLEED

2011-07-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

A new feature here at the blog, and something to get me posting more regularly...it's Music Video Mondays!

My inauguaral selection is BLEED by Swedish Math Metal gods (and inventors of the 'djent' sound) MESHUGGAH.

Be advised...the video contains flashing images and therefore may not be suitable for people who suffer from epilepsy. Having said that, the sheer technical complexity of the music will probably cause you to have a seizure if you think about it too hard anyway.

Oh, and before you ask, no this video does not feature cameo appearances by Lady Gaga, ohGr, or that dude from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey.

(My blog's format seems to clip the size of the embedded video player, so click HERE to view it on Youtube where you can enjoy the full image, the correct composition, and even watch it in fullscreen if you so desire!)

Pretty awesome, eh?

You could debate the symbolism and themes therein for months on end...I'm certainly picking up that the thread that gets cut may in fact symbolise the umbilical cord. The constant images of clockfaces and clockwork mechanisms would also seem to suggest the inescapability of time.

I can't put my finger on it, but I get a very vague Hellraiser-type vibe from it (without any aspects which really scream 'direct homage'), possibly due to the fact that the central character's desire for hidden knowledge leads to his eventual (literal) enslavement at the hands of some otherworldly being. Maybe the constant shots of chains moving about as well?

Anyway, enjoy!

THE SILENCER

2011-07-11T07:13:00.000-07:00

THE SILENCER
Running Time: 75 mins
Directed & Produced by Steve Lawson & Simon Wyndham
TRAILER
OFFICIAL SITE

I've been meaning to check out The Silencer for a long time. Firstly, it's a no-budget British film. I'm all for no-to-low budget filmmakers, doubly so if they happen to hail from my homeland.

Secondly, I thought it looked cool and that the concept had some definite potential with its' faceless/voiceless hero clad in black motorcycle leathers and a tinted helmet.

Unfortunately, it seems The Silencer first surfaced on DVD in the UK on the now-defunct Black Horse Entertainment label, which means that due to its' relative rarity, it can be difficult to scare up a copy at the sort prices I'm willing to pay when taking a punt on a low budget indie.

Sure, you can get dirt cheap ex-rental versions off of ebay, but I'm as anally-retentive about not having DVDs with 'RENTAL COPY' plastered
over them as I am anally-retentive about having proper retail versions with a sleeve and all the trimmings. What can I say...I am a DVD snob, otherwise I would have probably downloaded it off the internet or something. Where's the fun in that, I ask you?

So I was like the dog with two bones, caught between the affordable yet undesirable ex-rental copy or the brand new and sealed but priced at more than I want to pay retail version, and unable to decide on either.

Then lo and behold, out of the blue, no less than Steve Lawson (not to be confused with fellow UK director Steven Lawson) himself emails me and asks me if I'd like a review copy. Thus inadvertently solving my dilemma whilst simultaneously disproving the maxim 'If you don't ask, you don't get.'

I didn't ask, but I did get. With this is mind, I'm going to purposely NOT ask low budget indie filmmakers to send me their screeners, because the asking approach doesn't seem to be working...maybe I should make the first move and contact them? We shall see.

So, the moral of the story is that if you send me your movie, book, comic, fanzine, whatever...I WILL REVIEW IT. Steve Lawson figured it out, and this here review is the result. I am as good as my word!

So, without any further ado, here is my review of The Silencer

Glenn Salvage is Michael Eastman, an elite anti-narcotics cop who's been double crossed and left for dead. Having been shot full of lead by the henchman of the local drug kingpin, he awakes in hospital some time later to discover that thanks to some pioneering surgical techniques, his life has been saved, but his vocal chords have not. Whilst his wounds leave him mute, in a Darkman-esque twist it appears that an unexpected side-effect of the surgery has rendered him impervious to pain...but not from injury.

Suspended from the force, Eastman must now struggle to come to terms with his injuries, clear his name and exact vengeance upon those who have robbed him of everything, including the love of his life who has now shacked up with one of his corrupt former team-mates. Drug dealers, hoodlums, corrupt cops...you name it, he's going after them with a vengeance.

Spiritually, the movie feels like it should have been shot in the late 80's/early 90's in New York. I feel a more bleak urban environment (or more of the bleak urban environment that is already there) would have complimented the similarly-bleak mood of the piece. As it is, a lot of the movie is shot in the beautiful English countryside in bright sunshine (which is a rare enough combination in and of itself!) which seems a little incongruous with the overall mood of the piece.

Some full-on 80's cheese sequences shot with either blue gels or filters as the menacing back-lit silhouette figure of The Silencer suddenly strides through one of those ubiquitous clouds of steam/smoke
that always seem to be rising out of somewhere in 80's urban action flicks (like the iconic title card shot from the opening credits of 'The Equalizer') would definitely have hit the spot.

There's a subway sequence that certainly captures the right sort of mood (I'd dare say the film was given an 18 certificate on the strength of some of the grafitti alone...disgusting!), and some more sequences along those lines would certainly not have gone amiss.

One thing the filmmakers have unquestionably got right is the wonderfully ominous synth signature we hear whenever villains suddenly realise that The Silencer is there...again pure 80's, but absolutely bang on the money, thematically-speaking!

Image quality is excellent, and the use of camera movement is subtle and well-judged (as opposed to the
'We're paying for the jib/dolly for the whole day, so we might as well use it for every shot!' brigade, the spiritual twins of the irritatingly ubiquitous 'Let's use every effect and transition in Final Cut Pro just to show that we can' people).

Particularly impressive also is the use of reveals. Both Lawson and Wyndham have professional experience, so we're not looking at your usual camcorder jockeys here, and thankfully it shows.

There are certain scenes and a couple of performances which occasionally serve to betray the true budgetary level of the work, but then there are also those which punch far above the financial weight of the production too. Maye Choo has gone on to carve out a nice career in television dramas such as 'Honest' (NSFW), and Jim Clossick was also very impressive, particularly near the end of the film. I've seen a lot worse, but taking the rough with the smooth this is a very passable and fairly professional looking production. Dare I say it but this is the kind of movie that should be turning up late night on Movies4men or Movies24 (before they start with their 'erotic' programming). I'd much rather watch this than one of those second run made-for-TV Syfy channel disaster movies which all seem to closely follow the Jaws/Day After Tomorrow template.

Action and fight sequences are great. Cinematically, the subway sequence is the standout, but I think my favourite overall is his second visit to the country estate of drug dealer Sirrus Rook, complete with a pair of butterfly knives (for those not au fait with these things, I'm talking about the meat cleaver sized Chinese knives rather than the Balisong flick knives which are sometimes erroneously called Butterfly knives).
Butterfly Knives...that's what I'm talking about!

There's also a pleasing dust-up at a car scrapyard, with all the smashing of windscreens and denting of bodywork your heart could possibly desire.

Whether they needed to be or not is another question. Truth be told, if we're going to be picky, I'd probably say that The Silencer specifically belongs in the genre of vigilante films. There's definitely some martial arts action, but the nature of this particular beast is definitely
in the tradition of Death Wish and The Exterminator (the chief influence on the film, so much so that one of the characters is named Ginty by way of homage to Robert Ginty). The commentary mentions specific pains being taken to limit the style of fighting to reflect the condition of The Silencer, holding off on the big moves until the showpiece finale. Obviously, the budget did not stretch to huge amounts of onscreen gunplay with squibs going off everywhere, so hand-to-hand combat makes a very decent substitute. As it is, I think they've done a great job of serving their narrative needs (of a physically limited character) whilst still fulfilling the requirement for action.

Would an explosion or two have made it a better film? Maybe, but then we would be straying away from the vigilante genre and firmly into the territory of the action movie. Thankfully, the filmmakers elected not to use CGI explosions or anything like that. Sometimes, less is more, and nothing would ruin the suspension of disbelief more than crappy CGI. In the end, there's a lot to be said for 'keeping it real'.

What the movie does lack is a strong central antagonist or villain, which I believe is in part due to there being perhaps one too many 'key' villains, and not enough screen time being available to properly develop them and establish them as truly credible threats to our hero. There are five by my count, and with a running time of 75 minutes, that doesn't leave a lot when you consider the main character, love interest, and any of the slightly more incidental characters too (like the drug dealing Irish terrorists, for example).

Lawson himself plays one of them, and mentions in his commentary that he was struck by just how much he is in the movie, and concedes that it's probably too much.

Of course, this is one of the drawbacks to having the main character be mute...whilst there are numerous non-verbal things you can do to move the plot along, you're not going to be able to get away with this for the lion's share of the movie. The filmmaker's have obviously realised this and opted to have other characters pick up the slack in terms of dialogue and exposition rather than use flashbacks, dream sequences or internal monologues to give Eastman a voice.

At this budget level, it's a lot easier and cheaper to shoot something with Steve Lawson, because as one of the producers, he's always there. Also, lest people jump to the wrong conclusion and think that it's one of those oft-seen exercises in ego-gratification whereby the producer assiduously casts themselves in their own movie, make themselves look like a total badass, hog all the best lines and end up either in bed or the jacuzzi with one or more nubile and naked young women who, but for the fact they are being paid, would otherwise be out of said producer's league (...and believe you me, I have seen a fair few of those kind of movies), you could not be more wrong.

Lawson arguably plays the least likeable and most unsympathetic character in the entire film. A villain, but more of a pitifully detestable one than a 'cool' or fearsome villain, and without wishing to give too much away, he has a wonderful 'just when you thought he couldn't go any lower' moment towards the end of the film as he tries to placate a local drug dealer. A self-promoting role it is not, but there is a lot of it.

In addition to the inability of the central protagonist to speak is the fact that Eastman
is also fitted with a neck brace (which he removes before going into action), which prevents any movement of the head, including minimal movements such as nodding.

In such a situation where the tools of both verbal and non-verbal expression are either seriously curtailed or removed completely, some actors might tend towards
overcompensating with their facial gestures, which can have the unfortunate side-effect of descending into unintentional comedy. Fortunately, Salvage avoids falling into this trap in his depiction of Eastman. Another bonus is that they probably saved a small fortune in ADR costs by conceiving the lead character in this fashion...the filmmakers never mention this as being in any way responsible for informing or motivating their decision to have a mute lead, so I'm going to assume it's just a happy accident. If not, it's a devilishly clever money saver.

The only dialogue scene Glenn Salvage gets to do in the whole movie!

I'm happy to report that the single disc is heaving with extras, including a making of featurette, outttakes, and not one but two
(count 'em!) commentaries!

***PLEASE NOTE: Steve Lawson has informed me that the version put out by Blackhorse in the UK does NOT contain the commentary tracks like my review copy, but does contain the other extras. Please bear this in mind when I'm talking about the commentaries. I was unaware of this at the time of writing my review, but I'm leaving the sections regarding the commentaries in because I believe they help paint a fuller picture.***

The second commentary involves Lawson flying solo and giving a 'Low budget Filmmaking 101' of sorts, which is extremely honest in its' appraisal
of the film and its' inherent faults.

It's another one of these films which has been shot over the course of a year rather than a few weeks. Of course, this sort of thing matters not a jot to the man in the street, who expects it to be as good as your average $50 million Hollywood action movie. Personally, I can't help but admire what they've managed to put together with so little money.

It's highly interesting to see and hear what went wrong and how the problems were overcome, or how they impacted upon what was initially planned.

The Silencer is a film I like 'as is', off the bat as a stand alone feature, but I dare say that you'll appreciate it a lot more and respect the
achievement of the filmmakers after having listened to the commentaries. I know I certainly did.

For example, regarding my contention about too many weakly-established key villains (or 'end of level boss' types, for the video game geeks among us), there is one who is obviously there to provide a physical counterpoint to The Silencer. Alas, the actor playing him injured his leg, meaning that they were unable to display his kicking prowess in an earlier scene where he's working over a punchbag,
and that the proposed 'epic showdown' also had to be cut drastically short as well. The idea was sound enough, but unfortunately the filmmaking fates conspired to prevent it being realised in the intended manner.

Of course, in the ad hoc think-on-your-feet world of low budget filmmaking, you are going to get the occasional curveball thrown at you. Life certainly threw a few lemons in their direction on this shoot, but they made lemonade accordingly.

What's most bizarre to me is that one of the best and most striking scenes in the movie seems to have come about completely by chance. After The Silencer has dispatched a bunch of would-be rapists in the subway, he moves towards their intended victim, an Oriental girl, a reaches out to her, but she recoils and
runs away, terrified of the mute brute lurching towards her, incapable of offering so much as a reassuring word. Given that Eastman's estranged love interest is also Oriental, I feel this scene serves as a wonderful encapsulated metaphor which both mirrors and echoes his plight. Neither commentary track draws attention to any intent
behind it (I'd be crowing about it if I'd thought up putting something like that in, let me tell you...),
so I can only assume it is a happy accident, even though the fact it is shot in slow motion would tend to suggest that some thought went into it.

Either way, it really works as a cinematic device. In truth, it would have still worked with any female, but the fact we are talking about two women of similar appearance and ethnicity makes it a doubly bizarre coincidence, but doubly effective in a visual terms at the same time. For me, the single most memorable and resonant scene of the whole movie.

We later learn that this apparently coincidental casting of two ethnically-similar females also served to inform the characterisation of one of the villains (a drug dealer with something of a taste for ladies of the Asian persuasion), and also part of the storyline in the final third of the film (wherein Lawson's character reaches a whole new depth of scumbaggery).

There's also a sequence contrived to get a little 'production value' out of a real life motorcycle spill on-set. Again, whilst I like the film as is, it's only after getting the inside scoop on the making of it that you really begin to fully appreciate it for what it is.

Whilst scouring the web for some pictures with which to tart up my review, I happened across the Tesco DVD Rental page for the movie, wherein one disgruntled reviewer from Cardiff complains about wasting 90 minutes of their weekend on the film (which only has a 75 minute running time...go figure), and claims the story line rips off the Steven Seagal film 'HARD TO KILL' as well, which it plainly does not.

Another makes the ludicrous claim that The Silencer is a 'Rip off from every film with martial arts in'.

Just take a moment to reflect upon the outright stupidity of that statement. Aside from the obvious physical improbability and impracticality of such a notion, this plainly laughable assertion is easily disproved. For example, at no point in the film does Salvage homage Van Damme by doing the splits or flashing his bum, there's no wirework whatsoever, and absolutely no ninjas either.

It's a good job Tesco's doesn't rent hardcore porn DVDs (....yet. Every little helps, after all), lest he accuse the director of Sex-Starved Sorority Sluts of ripping off Cum Chugging Co-Ed Cheerleaders because their movie also features a scene where some guy ejaculates on some chick's face.

Seriously, some people do get out of their pram over nothing these days! Possibly they are getting it confused with one of the other films (at least three more by my count) called 'The Silencer', one of which stars the American Ninja himself, Michael Dudikoff!

Dudikoff's cool, but he'll never out-ninja Richard Harrison

Or this one:

Anyway, that aside, I'd definitely scarf up a retail DVD version of this if I come across it at a price I'm amenable to. Yes, I'm one of those sad people who likes them in the case with the sleeve and everything. I still buy books made from paper too. And read them.

The Silencer was actually pretty much the film I expected it to be. I could tell from the trailer that it was a cut above most low-budget stuff, and I wasn't wrong. I'm not going to lie to you and pretend it's the greatest thing since sliced bread or that it raises the bar clean out of sight. In the end, it's just an extremely decent little movie, nothing more, nothing less. Don't go in expecting a Hollywood blockbuster and you won't come out disappointed.

The storyline would definitely benefit from a little simplification, and some of the performances are a little patchy in places, but that's just a matter of personal taste. Some of the longer dialogue sequences would definitely have benefited from some intercutting of different shots. Alas, shots require set-ups, set-ups require time, and time requires money, which is something that is in short supply at this level of filmmaking. Thus, sacrifices have to be made.

In terms of mood, execution, and action scenes, The Silencer delivers quite handsomely. In the course of writing his review, I've watched it three times (once with the soundtrack, then once with each commentary), and even with the rough edges I feel I could quite happily watch it again at some point. It's very easy to watch, possibly due to the slightly shorter than average running time, although it's not noticeably short and is well paced throughout.

As I write this, the usually-Satanic IMDB has it clocked as a 6.7, which isn't probably too far from the truth, and when you consider how little was spent on it and the manner in which it was produced, it's an achievement and a half. One shudders to think what the team behind it might be capable of if given a budget somewhere between a luxury car and a small house.

If you want to make your own low budget independent films however, this one is definitely required viewing. If anything, I'd recommend it to aspiring filmmakers before martial arts fans, such is the amount of insight and revelation provided by the commentaries. As I said in my review of Infestation, I much prefer open and honest commentaries as opposed to the saccharine Hollywood ones where everybody and everything is either 'great', 'fantastic' or 'amazing'. It's refreshing to see filmmakers who not only realise what they've done wrong or could have done better, but also own up to it as well.

So, to paraphrase a famous song, as far as low budget action flicks go 'Silence(r) is golden'. If you spot a copy at a price you like, my advice would be to snap it up post haste.

BRITISH HORROR CINEMA

2011-05-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

Edited by Steve Chibnall & Julian Petley

An extremely readable collection of essays regarding British horror films...there are a couple of chapters nearer the end which stray into the sort of overly-verbose territory that has me breaking out in cold sweats and having flashbacks to my Master's Degree studies, but overall I found this book to be very accessible and highly enjoyable.

It truly is a mixed bag, wth no two chapters ever really overlapping any of those that will either precede or succeed it, taking in everything from a history of British censorship to Amicus, and it is a wonderfully engaging blend, with all credit due to the editors for their inspired and judicious selection.

However, in keeping with that grandest of traditions, they have truly saved the best until last. Firstly, we have an interview with Clive Barker and Doug Bradley, and then we moveon to what must be the piece de resistance (and my favourite chapter in the book) from Richard Stanley, the director of 'Hardware'. Let me ask you, how many books have you read recently which contain gems like this?:

"In point of fact, Hardware went into pre-production at a time when I thought I had put the movie business behind me for good. Having become embroiled with a Muslim guerrilla organization, I was about as far away from the Scala as I could possibly be, doing my bit to help the mujahedin to fight the communists in Afghanistan. I had just crossed the border back into Pakistan in order to get medical attention for one of my companions who had been wounded in the battle for Jallalabad when I found myself collared by the anxious producers and returned to England to start shooting my first feature as a director."

This guy didn't direct Rambo III...he lived it. Beat that, Mr. Stallone. It certainly trumps my oft-repeated claims about having been a ninja or working in porn, that's for sure.

Stanley's contribution is worth the price of admission by itself, although his recollections of the Scala left me feeling as if I needed a shower to get clean again. It takes in a lot of topics, most interestingly the Jamie Bulger murder, in the aftermath of which Stanley was present at the parliamentary hearings on video nasties.

It really brought back some happy memories of that era for me. Anyway, I'm off to dig out my VHS of 'Hardware', and perhaps see what I can do about getting myself a copy of 'The Lair of the White Worm', by fair means or foul!!!

Let me leave you with this:

"The debacle also proved to be the last straw for my then girlfriend who had been around just long enough to know that things weren't about to get any better. Clearing my odds and ends forcefully from her appartment, she singled out a copy of The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Dario Argento's debut feature, for particular condemnation 'This is exactly the sort of shit I don't need in my life any more!' she spat, flinging the tainted cassette in my general direction, followed a moment later by a VHS copy of Michael Mann's flawed occult thriller The Keep."

There but for the grace of God go I...although having women pelt you with Giallo flicks on VHS sounds like the sort of kinky sadomasochistic action that certain people would pay a pretty penny for, especially if they were the ultra-rare 'big box' rental versions. Just another thing future generations will be missing out on now that everything's gone digital.

Anyways, back on topic, is it worth the money? Well, it will cost you something like £16-17 new from Amazon, and for my money, that's a tad overpriced (although lest we forget, I am tight-fisted) when you consider the type of book you could get from FAB Press for that sort of price. Still, I got my copy from the local library, so I'm not complaining.

Is it one I'll be ading to my permanent collection, should it turn up on Ebay for £6-8 in the near future? No, probably not...if I were engaging in any sort of academic study wherein the British horror film would be covered then I'd say it was an essential buy given the amount of quoteworthy analysis contained within, but I'm not. It was very much a 'one and done' experience for me, although one that I enjoyed a great deal.

Now, why doesn't some enterprising publisher tap up Richard Stanley for an autobiography?

LOST TRAILER PARK

2011-03-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

Moving swiftly on from Hammer films which only exist as posters, it's time to delve into the world of films which only exist as speculative trailers.

The so-called 'faux trailer' has most recently been popularised by the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez collaboration 'Grindhouse', wherein they and a few other selected filmmakers contributed fake trailers to play inbetween the two feature presentations of 'Death Proof' and 'Planet Terror'.

Alas, 'Grindhouse' blew chunks both critically and commercially, and most people were in agreement that the faux trailers were the best thing about the film. Indeed, so much of a hoopla was made over the fake trailers that Robert Rodriguez decided to spin one of them off into a feature length movie all of its' own. That movie was 'Machete', which, despite an awesome poster, also blew chunks both critically and commercially. I hear the third time's the charm, Bobby...but then again 'Once Upon A Time In Mexico' was a poor relation to the two films that preceded, so maybe that's not the case.

Still, rumours abound about Rob Zombie perhaps doing something with 'Werewolf Women Of The SS". Could faux trailers be the newest insidious marketing/decision making technique from Hollywood? Only time will tell.

What time won't tell you, but I will, is that if you want to see awesome faux trailers for movies that will never exist, then you need to get your ass over to the the Lost Trailer Park. It's nothing short of genius, and their newest trailer 'March Madness' is their best yet!

I first heard about it by listening to the filmmakers being interviewed on the Alternative Cinema Podcast. (If you're not already listening to it, you should be!), and lo and behold, it's even more awesome than it sounded when they outlined the premise of it. Go check them out!

Also, whilst were on the subject of faux trailers, I figure I'll throw in these two from VH1's 'Scream Queens' reality show.

Reform School Zombie Squad. Surely a contender for best line never in a movie?

Vampire Outlaws

Not bad as reality TV shows go, but how much cooler would it have been if the show was geared towards unearthing 'Scream Queens' in the more classical Linnea Quigley sense of the term?

So, it seems the newest trend in moviemaking is not making movies. Who would have thought it?

BECAUSE PIRATES VS. NINJAS IS SOOO LAST YEAR...

2011-03-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

Seriously, how could you go wrong with a concept like this?

Sadly it's one of many proposed Hammer projects which never got off the ground (no pun intended) and thus never made it beyond the conceptual artwork/teaser stage.

I'd seen this image floating around the web some years ago, and was just blown away by the awesome simplicity of the concept, and the fact the concept is also simply awesome. It's like an internet meme all unto itself.

What I didn't realise is just how many embryonic Hammer ideas there were that never got produced. I've recently got 'The Hammer Story' out of my local library (it's excellent and a full review shall be forthcoming!), and it's mindboggling to see the Hammer films that never were.

Oh, to be Dr. Evil with his time machine and 100 million dollars...actually, given what I've read so far, $2 million would be enough to make 10 Hammer films plus have change left over. How times have changed, and not for the better.

In the end, it all comes down to nickels and dimes, and for whatever reason the people running the US studios declined these ideas and so they never came to fruition. All that's left is some rather excellent artwork to tease us with a glimpse of what might have been.

On that thought, let me leave you with the teaser poster for 'Savage Jackboot'. Peter Cushing a a Nazi. How cool would that have been?

BONE SICKNESS

2010-12-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

BONE SICKNESS
Directed by Brian Paulin
Morbid Vision Films

I've been wanting to check out something from Morbid Vision for a while now...I see them floating about now and then on the Rue Morgue forums, and they seem like good people. Plus I'm getting a uniformly positive vibe about their movie 'Fetus'.

Thus, fate stepped in (in the form of the Horror channel) and provided me the opportunity to watch the movie which preceded 'Fetus', namely 'Bone Sickness'.

'Bone Sickness' chiefly concerns an unfortunate fellow called Alex, who is suffering from a rare degenerative bone disease. The only thing which seems to offset the disease is for Alex to consume bone marrow. Fortunately, Alex's friend Thomas is a mortician, and a man of highly dubious ethics, and thus has access to lots of freshly-minted cadavers brimming with juicy, succulent bone marrow. What could possibly go wrong, I hear you ask?

Take note, phoney Vegas stage magicians...the old 'Sawing A Woman In Half' trick performed without the aid of any tricked-out box. Beat that!

Without wanting to give too much of the plot away, let's just say that all hell breaks loose, the dead walk the earth, and Alex starts retching up worms and maggots as he begins to transform into something quite inhuman...and in that regard he's not alone!

Cleanse. Tone. Exfoliate. Moisturise. Worms. Because you're worth it.

IMDB estimates the budget at around $3000, and as we all know, IMDB is never wrong. Ever.

It struck me that I've actually watched indie horrors with a budget slightly more than 1000 times (yes, one thousand times that of Bone Sickness, and whilst the money is clearly evident in the technical quality of the finished product, if the filmmakers aren't coming from 'the right place', horror-wise, then all the money in the world ain't gonna make a lick of difference. Look at this way, if you can rack up three stars on IMDB by only spending $3,000 then it suggests to me that with a little extra cash and a touch more experience, Paulin and company could really light it up.

You can't keep a good man down...or a zombie, for that matter.

Sure there are technical faults aplenty, and room for improvement in any department you'd care to mention, but the amount of set-piece moments crammed in here, especially considering the obvious financial limitations, is highly impressive.
In spite of the faults, it's still a movie I could stand to watch a second time. I can't say that for Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen (about an hour too long, if I'm honest) or 2012 (just plain awful).

A lot of the cast could be described as 'not ready for primetime', but you're not watching this film for soulful soliloquys and meaningful monologues, but rather sadistic skullcrushing and malicious maimings, and on that front, 'Bone Sickness' delivers the goods in spades. And hatchets. And just about any sort of blunt-force trauma inducing object that you might care to imagine.

In addition to the gratuitous gore, we also have some gratuitous nudity to balance the proceedings out.

Usually, when Ruby LaRocca is getting eaten in a movie, it's by Darian Caine or Misty Mundae, not Zombies!

Ruby LaRocca is probably familar to any Seduction Cinema devotees lurking amongst our number (it's okay...you're amongst friends here!), and bodacious lead actress Darya Zabinski's charms might be best summed up as 'a dead heat in the Zeppelin race'...if you know what I mean!
Some mornings, I just don't feel myself until I feel myself...

There's also one bizarre incidence of pixellation of a girl's genitals, I'm guessing perhaps with an eye on being suitable for the Japanese market?

The Japanese do indeed make some rad DVD covers, it must be said...

My biggest gripe with Bone Sickness is not the technical issues, but rather with structure. After what should be the big finale, we have a couple of other scenes tacked on at the end.

Remember: If Brian Paulin ever suggests that he should 'Pimp Your Ride' for you, it would be well advised to politely decline his kind offer...

There's nothing wrong with the scenes in and of themselves (indeed, the graveyard sequence is a veritable gore tour de force, with a terrific bludgeoning decapitation with the help of a handy headstone!), it's just that
they are devoid of any protagonist the audience can identify with, seeing as just about every character in the film
is slowly working their way through some zombie's digestive tract at this point in the proceedings.

If I'm being picky, he should really be wearing gloves...but who's going to argue with someone pointing a gun at them?

There's also a sequence illustrating the zombie problem spreading to the wider world, and with the forces of humanity clad in biohazard suits, it kind of puts one in the mind of Romero's 'The Crazies',
or other toxic-spill inspired zombie flicks of the Eighties. Again, nothing wrong with it...there's a car stunt, a body burn, and yet more gore, including an awesome suicide-by-hand-grenade scene!
It's just that it seems superfluous in the context of the general storyline of the movie.

Finally, we have a short but atmospheric scene showing a zombie ambling his way across a snow covered landscape as a desperate voice on the radio asks if there is anyone out there still alive. I think this scene might have worked better if it was dropped in at the end of the credit reel.
As it is, it's just another part of the collection of scenes at the end which tend to distract from the narrative that has preceded it. I can certainly see the intent of these scenes, but whilst they contain some of the more impressive sequences in the film, I still think they do more harm than good.
Looking at them, it's hard to see how you would edit them down so as to be effective in a narrative context without losing something good in a blood-and-guts context. Working at this budget level, if you've spent the time and money shooting something, you really can't afford not to put it in.

I couldn't help but like it, in spite of the numerous production shortcomings. The good outweighs the bad, and it's never boring, predictable, formulaic or prosaic...I've seen a lot more respectably-budgeted mid-level indie horrors
where the production values are on a par with a 1990s TV show, but they're just kind of bland. Bone Sickness was obviously done on a shoestring, and more often than not it shows, but it matters not a jot in the grander scheme of things because it's evidently a movie that has its' heart in the right place...until some undead ghoul tears it out of their chest or something, that is.

It's a heaving, pus-spewing, blood-gushing, gore-laden highlight reel of horror set pieces. I think a lot of more casual horror fans would dismiss it out of hand as amateurish rubbish (but what do they know, after all?), but true horror fans would immediately realise a no-budget gem that punches way above its' weight.

Cool? Undoubtedly.

If you like your movies all glossy and blue-lit like every other Hollywood horror, you'll hate Bone Sickness. If, on the other hand, you love low budget indie horror and like to see practical effects as opposed to CGI, then Bone Sickness will be right up your alley. This is horror made by hardcore horror fans for hardcore horror fans, for those people to whom splatter matters.
If you, like me, count yourself amongst that number, then you'll no doubt be punching the air with macabre glee and failing to restrain yourself from yelling 'Fucking Old School!' at the top of your lungs. I kind of caught myself subconsciously humming the theme tune from 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' a couple of times...it's definitely a movie that will bring those sort of 80's Italian zombie flick memories rushing back.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Your mileage may vary dependent upon your tolerance for ultra-low budget filmmaking, but for me this movie rather hit the spot. C'mon...where else are you going to see a film where one of the characters projectile-farts a mess of worms out of their bleeding backside?

Exactly.

Apparently there are two versions of this flick in existence, but I've no idea which one it is that I ended up watching, and which DVD version that corresponds to. I'm going to attempt to find out and will update this review accordingly as and when I do.

There goes the neighbourhood...

So, having ostensibly 'watched it for free' on the TV, would I now go out and buy it on DVD? Yes, I think I will...however, I think I might be tempted to make a little detour and perhaps check out 'Fetus' first. Either way, Bone Sickness has served to whet my appetite. It's an acquired taste, no doubt, but it's the kind of thing I can most certainly watch quite happily.

A Brief Update...

2010-11-22T06:03:00.000-08:00

First off, apologies for not posting in so long. I've recently had both of my computers go haywire, plus I've been experimenting with a new format for posting reviews on the blog. Rather than type them straight into Blogger, I'm going to complete them in another application and then just copy and paste them.

The problem with Blogger is that you save something, come back to it and finish it off, or post something new inbetween finishing it, and it gets posted in the date order you started it, ergo the 'newest' post may actually crop up in the archives rather than front and centre. There have actually been updates to this blog, but due to the dating system, you could be forgiven for missing them and thinking it was not the case.

In spite of all that, I haven't simply been sat around doing bugger all. In fact, I've been rather busy...here's what I've been up to:

1)Writing reviews for the Combat Film section of Combat Magazine. They keep me well stocked with interesting screeners, some of which I shall also be reviewing here in a more in-depth fashion. Aside from getting my (real) name and work in print, it has also provided me with the opportunity to get my reviews quoted on DVD sleeves and even on TV adverts!

2)Getting the ball rolling on my new blog project Read, Review, Bid Adieu, wherein I am undertaking to re-read, review, and then get rid of my massive comics collection one book at a time. Feel free to drop by and enjoy my reminiscences, recollections, remorse and regret as I slowly whittle my comics collection away, bit by bit.

I kicked the whole thing off with a bang with San Diego Comic Con Comics #2 (the very rare and very valuable first ever appearance of Hellboy!). Yes, the first cut is the deepest, but if I can bring myself to sell that, I shouldn't have any problems parting with the rest of my collection...or should I?

Tune in and find out for yourself. It promises to be an excruciatingly embarrassing experience as I try to recall what motivated me to buy certain books and so forth.

3)Visiting the set of the upcoming film 'On The Ropes' and interviewing the principals behind it. Look for a report to appear in Combat magazine shortly...

So remember, anything cool and genre-related you might have that needs reviewing, send it my way! Just drop me an email for the details. I have to say that I am more than a little shocked and disappointed not to have been deluged by a flurry of no-budget zombie or slasher movies yet. If you know someone who knows someone who's making a zero budget horror flick, send them my way, dammit!

Also, I don't just review movies...I can (and do) read books as well. Frankly, I'm game for anything. Having said that, the only offers I've had to review stuff on my blog have come from a software company, whose products aren't remotely genre or exploitation related. Must I be reduced to that? I hope not, but on the plus side they are promising me a full version of the software if I publish a good review. Shall I prostitute myself so? I may not need or have use for my software, but perhaps the whole thing would make good fodder for my CV (or 'resume' for our Americanese-spesaking readers).

In the meantime, I'm gearing up to drop one of my 'new format' articles on the blog...a Johannes Roberts retrospective. It's gonna be a doozy!

THE SPAGHETTI WESTERN MUSICAL POONTANG THEORY...

2010-06-09T05:26:00.000-07:00

Let me run this past you:

PART ONE:

How the BBFC could even contemplate banning this masterpiece is beyond me...

THE SPAGHETTI WESTERN BIT
One of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns ever filmed (for my money, at least) is Sergio Corbucci's 'Django'. I could totally murder the theme song at a Karaoke evening. It's the film Sam Peckinpah's 'The Wild Bunch' wishes it was, and that's saying something!

THE MUSICIAN BIT
Dave Stewart (most notably the one out of The Eurythmics who wasn't Annie Lennox) has a son, also a musician, called 'Django'. He probably named him after the somewhat obscure guitarist Django Reinhardt, but I'd prefer to think he named him after Franco Nero's coffin-dragging badass of the same name. Plus, it fits the theory.

Admit it. You would, wouldn't you? I know I would...

THE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN BIT
Django Stewart is, as we say in the trade, 'knocking off' the rather delectable Georgia May Jagger.

PART TWO:

Nobody made a Spaghetti Western about a guy called Pete Best, know what I'm saying?

THE SPAGHETTI WESTERN BIT
There's also a titular Spaghetti Western character called 'Ringo', who has also appeared in a number of films. Face facts: Any movie franchise that can have both Richard Harrison(the undisputed King of Ninja movies!) and Sergio Leone doing the musical duties must be required viewing.

THE MUSICIAN BIT
The drummer out of The Beatles is also called 'Ringo'. The generally-held consensus is that Ringo was not only the least musically talented of the group (pretty harsh when you consider the competition), but probably also not really musically talented enough to make a career as a professional drummer either.

THE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN BIT
Yet Ringo was somehow talented enough to pull Barbara Bach, one of the most outrageously doable Bond Girls ever.

Rope. Closet. Women's underwear. Is it still 'too soon' for me to start doing David Carradine jokes?

I'd say that trumps a Yoko Ono in any man's language, even more so if said man happens to be avowedly heterosexual.

PART THREE:

Do I really have to further prove my theory to you foolhardy disbelievers by revealing that there is in fact a character called 'Mongo' in 'Blazing Saddles', named after the musician Mongo Santamaria?

You can naysay all you like, but I am convinced that this in fact proof positive of one of the immutable laws of the universe, like toast always landing buttered side down and cats always landing on their feet.

Mongo chins a horse

It seems quite evident to me that if you want to hook up with the best looking women, it pays to be named after an obscure character in a Western who also shares a name with a musician, and the name should preferably end with the letters 'ngo'. For some reason, the convergence of Spaghetti Westerns, Music, and the 'ngo' ending seems to attract beautiful women like bees to honey.

Bear this in mind when it comes time to name your male offspring. Me, I'm off down to the Deed Poll office to get my name changed to 'Bango', then I'm going to kick back and wait for scores of beautiful women to start throwing themselves at me, like they do in those terribly subtle deodorant adverts you see on the TV.

LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS

2010-04-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

First things first...let me apologise for the lack of updates. I've gotten a bit sidetracked with my review of Nightmare USA (which is understandably taking forever to do, given the size of the book in question), so I'm going to be making up for lost time with a lot of shorter reviews to make up for the disruption in service.

So without further ado, let me get on to Lesbian Vampire Killers...

About the only way anyone could give this movie 'two thumbs up'...

I haven't got the DVD of this, and I didn't go and see it when it was out at the cinema either. It's one of those where my immediate reaction was 'I'll wait for it to pop up on Sky Movies', and boy was I right!

Simply put, Lesbian Vampire Killers is a bottle job of epic proportions. One would perhaps go in expecting an entertaining exploitation-tinged blend of lowbrow comedy, gratuitous sex and/or nudity, and splatterific horror, but it fails to deliver on all three counts.

It's somewhat symptomatic of the general attitude of (and indeed, problem with) a lot of UK media types whereby they lack the conviction (nee balls) to make a proper exploitation film and instead churn out safe and insipid filler like this. Films like Lesbian Vampire Killers are what happens when you let right-on Guardian-reading PC types attempt to make exploitation films, only without exploiting anyone or anything. Simply put, they lack the gumption (or testicular fortitude) to go the whole hog.

Don't get me wrong...the production values are generally very good (despite much of it being very obviously shot in a studio), the performances are acceptable, and Corden tries to make a go of the comedy part of the bargain, but the script isn't particularly funny to begin with. You get the distinct impression that had 'Gavin & Stacy' never been made, neither would Lesbian Vampire Killers.

The fact that it is a certificate 15 should tell you everything you need to know...this is an object lesson in the pulling of punches, and one which I'd urge you to avoid. Whether this was done with a commercial sensitivity in mind (you've got a larger potential audience for a 15 rather than an 18), or as I suspect is more likely, because the filmmakers kind of want to make an exploitation film because it's 'cool', but don't actually want to make an exploitation film because it's not politically correct. Which is basically like trying to make a porno without any sex or nudity. What you're left with is neither fish nor fowl, yet curiously close to a turkey all the same.

Like I say, thankfully I didn't buy this on DVD, otherwise I would be punting it out on Ebay in double quick time. Save your time and money, or better yet, spend it on a film that does deliver the goods.

SOUL SEARCHER

2010-03-02T03:53:00.000-08:00

Directed By Neil Oseman
TRAILER
Running Time: 98 mins
BBFC Rating: 12

There are times when you sit down and watch a low budget independent movie on DVD and then begin to ask yourself questions like 'Why the hell didn't I watch/know about this sooner?'. Soul Searcher is one of those movies.

Indeed, upon viewing it my joy at discovering what must surely qualify as one of the UK's best kept secrets was tempered only by the nagging feeling that I must be terminally out of the loop to have missed this both at the time of release and at any point between then and now. What the hell have I been playing at?

The story centres around good-natured loser Joe Fallow, who works the night shift driving a street sweeper whilst eternally trying to work up the courage to ask out his unrequited love, Heather.

One night on his rounds, he witnesses a fight that will change his life forever. Now, with the surge of alcohol-fuelled violence that goes on at night inbinge-drinking Britain, you would be forgiven for thinking that this may not seem like such a remarkable event, but this fight involves none other than a Grim Reaper and a supernatural entity, which puts it in a totally different league to two beered-up muppets beating each other up outside the kebab shop.

Thankful for Joe's assistance in defeating his assailant, the Reaper offers Joe the opportunity to ditch his mundane life and instead become the Reaper's replacement, and our tale of supernatural arse-kicking begins in earnest, because in addition to having to dispatch the recently deceased, it seems that all manner of strange creatures from the Other Side are popping up in the land of the living. Who is breaching the walls between Hades and humanity, and more importantly, why? It falls to Joe and his friends to find out and stop them before the barriers are brought down completely and Hell is unleashed on Earth!

Soul Searcher is a difficult film to classify, but I'd probably tag it a supernatural action film if pushed. The cover blurb from The Guardian has it as a 'fantasy action movie', which is just as accurate. It really does have a little bit of everything going for it. There are some very well done martial arts sequences (choreographed by Simon Wyndham of The Silencer and Insiders fame) which are staged and executed better than some I've seen in dedicated fight flicks, but it's not a martial arts movie per se. It's also not a horror movie in the traditional sense either, so if you want to see buckets of blood sprayed on the walls, you'd be advised to look elsewhere.

Hey Joe...whereyou going with that scythe in your hands?

Essentially, Soul Searcher is just a very good movie which eschews the use of ultra-violence because it doesn't really need it. The storyline is intelligent, with the central premise being Joe's struggle between the woman he wants and his duty as a Reaper (which, paradoxically enough, is the same conundrum that also drives the villain of the piece), and the performances are well done and believable.

There's also an interesting variety of special effects in play, from the ghost trails to various infernal creatures, and the overall production design is a great lesson in how to create atmosphere with just a few lights and some gels. Also, the climactic final sequence aboard the train really ups the ante, and adds a much bigger budget feel to the proceedings.

Best of all, Oseman admirably resists the temptation to puss-out and take the easy road with a feelgood Hollywood-style happy ending and instead opts for one that is sad but makes absolute sense in relation to the storyline. Bravo, sir, bravo.

The single disc is positively rammed full of extras as well: Feature-length 'Making Of' documentary, two commentaries, various specific technical featurettes, bloopers, deleted scenes, Easter Eggs and a whole lot more besides.

So, as is always customary in my reviews, it is time to tap into my inner curmudgeonly miser and ask the eternal question: Is it worth the money? I paid the princely sum (princely by my usual standards, that is) of £2.99 for it on Ebay, postage included, and I feel as if I have not only robbed the seller, but probably somehow anally raped him in the process as well. At that price, Soul Searcher represents a bargain of the highest order, and one that you would do well to take up should you see it offered. My copy was put out by the now-defunct Blackhorse Entertainment, so like many other titles under that aegis, availability (and thus price) can vary massively. Forewarned is forearmed and all that jazz...

Cover for the American release

Looking at it now, I'm beginning to wonder whether the relative obscurity of this flick (at least to me) is due in part to the fact that it is a certificate 12 as opposed to a 15 or 18, that perhaps buyers at all levels had it pigeonholed as a horror film and then said to themselves 'How good can it be if it's only a 12?'. Well, let me be the first to correct that misguided assumption and say it's damned good, and succeeds in being interesting, engaging and above all else thoroughly charming without the uses of excessive gore or nudity (not that I have anything in particular against gore and nudity, you understand). It's certainly not a kids' film by any stretch of the imagination, that's for sure.

Anyway, you know about it now, so you've no excuse. My advice would be to grab yourself a copy and join me in the brotherhood of forehead slapping and 'Why the hell didn't I know about this sooner?' exclamation. After Soul Searcher, it's going to be almost a relief to pick up a film on my 'To Do' list and have it be average or disappointing. Then I won't feel quite as out of touch as I did when I watched Soul Searcher.

WHEN EVIL CALLS

2010-02-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

Directed By Johannes Roberts

Rated: 18
Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Running Time: 75 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Anamorphic Full Frame
Dolby Digital 5.1

Let me preface this review with a little personal information. I hate mobile phones, and do not own one (if you ever speak to anyone who knows me, they will readily confirm this fact). Don't get me wrong, I think they are a neat little gadget, but for me the bad outweighs the good. I hate gormless morons who blithely walk around transfixed by their mobile phone and utterly oblivious to all that is around them. I also hate 'comedy' ringtones, and is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the more stultifyingly banal the 'conversation', the louder the brain-dead numpties are obliged to speak to have it?

I also hate that toerag off of the so-obviously-manufactured-it-isn't-funny T-Mobile adverts with his cacophonious attempt at a band. Now that I come to think of it, I'm not particularly fond of the ads for iPhone either, wherein they expect us to bow down in awe-struck reverence of 'Apps' that perform the simplest task imaginable (to anyone with a modicum of initiative) as if beholding the reinvention of the wheel. 'Can't remember how to tie your shoelaces? There's an App for that too!' says the condescending voiceover guy.

So, when it comes to mobile phones, it's fair to say that I am the very antithesis of Ashley Cole.

Does anyone remember that old Phones4U ad with New Zealand's very own Flight Of The Conchords in the VW Camper with a PA system singing a song which contained the lyric 'Set it to vibrate, shake your derriere...BUZZ!'? I bet Ashley Cole does...

I'm just telling you this so that you know where we stand before we begin, as 'When Evil Calls' was shot with the explicit intent of being viewed via mobile phone (and other such mobile devices), in an episodic format. What's more, the plotline revolves around mobile phones as well. As you can well imagine, I duly waited for the DVD, so without further ado, here's the review...

The basic premise revolves around an evil supernatural clown who grants wishes to hapless teenagers. They receive a text teling them they've won a wish, and they are told to text their wish to make it come true. True to form, the wishes do come true, but there are dire consequences, and I'm not talking about jacked up call charges either.

Clowning around

We're talking Wishmaster/Bedazzled territory here (with perhaps the merest hint of Stephen King's 'It' because of the clown), wherein the vengeful and malevolent entity granting the wishes punishes the wisher for their verbal ambiguity and infelicitous language. You know the sort of thing...a seemingly-harmless utterance of 'I want my boyfriend to eat my pussy' means a cunnilinguistically-inclined wish instead manifests itself as coochie cannibalism, or indeed literal gynophagia if you prefer. The old cautionary tale of 'Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it', basically.

Now that's what I call a lovebite!

There are some names you might recognise in the cast, such as Dominic Pinon, Jamie Winstone, Jennifer Lim and Chris Barrie amongst others. Of course, if you are an unreconstructed pervert like me, you will also recognise the name (and other notable attributes) of Page 3 girl Vikki Blows.

I'm going to resist the temptation to do a pun on her surname...

Oddly enough, one of the other segments involves quite a bit of nudity, but without spoiling the surprise let me just say that like all of the wishes, there's a most disquieting downside to it...still, it's fun while it lasts, eh?

Fact: Netball played by hot naked girls would draw bigger TV audiences and make more money than the NBA

In an attempt to disguise the episodic nature of the beast and flesh it out into a more linear narrative, the producers have enlisted Sean Pertwee as the school caretaker to act as a narrator of sorts.

Sean Pertwee as our humble (and foul tempered) narrator...

These sequences are shot in POV, with the viewer ostensibly cast as a bullied pupil who is taking refuge from a gang of miscreants in the janitor's shed. It's quite the one man show on Pertwee's part, and he does get to reel off some absolutely criminal one-liners too.

Poor girl...she just couldn't 'weight' to be thin.

Having said that, I don't think any amount of effort would disguise the fact that this is a collection of episodes as opposed to a singular narrative (even though there is a definite running order and inter-episode continuity), but at least they've had a go at it. It just feels a bit 'grafted on after the fact'. With 20/20 hindsight, it's easy to play armchair producer and say that they should have shot extra footage to redress or minimise the episodic nature, but it's more than likely that the budget for such material didn't exist at the time of shooting, nor was the possibility of a DVD release set in stone either.

Personally, I'm not bothered. Whilst it's not an engaging film in the traditional sense, I believe it's ultimately a matter of perspective. If one chooses to view it as a collection of loosely interwoven short films, then it hits the spot rather nicely. If you go in expecting a fully-realised and traditionally-paced feature, then I dare say you are going to come out disappointed.

I was going to wish for something very obvious involving Vikki Blows, but, given the fact you can die if you get an air bubble in your bloodstream, and that the clown granting these wishes would no doubt use the ambiguity of 'Blow' to do me in, I've decided against it.

The constant repetition of the mobile phone graphics everytime a wish is granted renders any attempt at a more prolonged, linear narrative null and void. It's the old 'apples and oranges' scenario, but fortunately enough I just happen to like both.

Thus I can fully understand why some reviewers have buried this, simply because as a stand-alone feature, it's certainly lacking. Also, I'd say said situation would also be compounded if they had paid anywhere near a new DVD release price for it as well.

On the other hand, having chosen to view it instead as a grab bag of shorts, and having paid a comparative pittance for it, I personally found it rather passable. As with any such endeavour, you're going to like some episodes more than others, one man's wine being another man's poison and all that, but given the amount of individual episodes on the disc, you're sure to find something that will tickle your fancy, and most likely come to the conclusion that the good roughly outweighs the bad.

I can't recall the exact price I paid for this off of Ebay (I think it was either £1.04 or £1.24, postage included), but it's certainly value for money at that price. Having watched it, I probably wouldn't pay over a fiver for it myself and thus would advise you likewise. It's certainly of interest to anyone who likes Johannes Roberts' work, or low-budget British filmmaking in general.

This is my favourite part in the Behind-The-Scenes Featurette...

There's also some Trailers and a 'Making Of' featurette on the disc, although if you watch half as much of Zone Horror as I do, then you've probably seen it already. Such is life! Still, it does provide an interesting behind-the-scenes glimpse.

I'll be reviewing some more of Johannes Roberts' work in the coming weeks as I think he's a director deserving of attention. I've already got Forest Of The Damned on the shelf, plus Sanitarium and Darkhunters currently on their way to me...just got to sniff out a copy of Hellbreeder and I'll be all set.

In closing, I'd just like to say that I still hate mobile phones with a passion, and that 'When Evil Calls' did not influence my views on the matter one way or another, nor did my views on mobile phones influence my opinion on 'When Evil Calls'.

Having finally sat down and watched 'When Evil Calls', I must say I am now quietly curious about checking out the DVD cut of Hammer's 'Beyond The Rave', a project with a vaguely similar episodic genesis (as well as the shared involvement of both Lois Winstone and producer Ben Grass of Pure Grass). I must admit to having found the episodes of 'Beyond The Rave' to be nothing short of torturous, even more so when considering that it came out under the Hammer aegis. I can't honestly believe that they could improve upon the raw material that much, but I may very well be proven wrong. I'm just not prepared to pay £15 or so for the privilege of finding out.

I'm not against 'multi-platform' media products (or 'MP²'...I'm trademarking that. You heard it here first!) such as these, it's just that the proper pre-planning needs to be done from the script stage onward so that the product can be extended, cut down, combined or separated relatively seamlessly so that no version is an obvious 'poor relation'. It's certainly an interesting and novel development, but whether it's merely a flash in the pan or a nascent form of media production, only time will tell.

Me, I'll just wait for the DVD, thank you very much. I couldn't live with the thought of my money going towards the sort of prats that invariably populate mobile phone adverts. Believe it!

DEAD CREATURES

2010-02-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

Director: Andrew Parkinson

16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Dolby Digital 2.0

(PLEASE NOTE: All comments relate to the UK DVD put out under the 'Hard Gore' label. Other regions/releases may vary in content)

A quick question for our UK-based readers...do you remember those ads for Ronseal where the tagline was "Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin"?

Andrew Parkinson proves that making a film needn't cost an arm and a leg...just an arm

Well, the sleeve of my copy of 'Dead Creatures' says that it is "The 'Trainspotting' of Cannibal Movies", "Astonishing", and describes the style of director Andrew Parkinson as a "mix of Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and George Romero".

Now, normally upon reading such effusive praise, the patron of low budget horror will doubtlessly recoil as their boxcover bullshit-o-meter goes into overdrive. Yet it gives me great pleasure to announce that in this instance, the plaudits are entirely justified.

'Dead Creatures' is exactly what it purports to be, which is to say a socio-realistic take on a cannibal movie, and a damned good one at that. Personally, I'm not a great fan of socially realistic 'kitchen sink' or 'slice of life' films, nor the directors who make them (that's why I write a blog where the focus is firmly on way-out genre flicks), but I really enjoyed 'Dead Creatures'.

The storyline centres around an apparently normal group of young women who all have one thing in common...they are all afflicted by degenerative flesh-eating disease, the spread of which can seemingly only be staved off or slowed down by consuming human flesh. As such, they form a sort of loose support group for each other, the healthier ones caring for those who are further along or close to being too far gone.

Degenerative effects of the disease

The group ethos (and lifespan within) is explored by the adoption of a new member and the degenration, death and disposal of the oldest or most decomposed member. Everything is shot in a matter of fact style so as to render the bizarre almost mundane, and were it not for the frequent visual reminders, one could be forgiven for forgetting that it was a cannibal movie. Ultimately, it's a human story which one can quite easily view as being a metaphor for illness or addiction, which I'm sure is what most likely inspired the 'Trainspotting' comparison.

Has cannibalism ever looked more sedate or humane?

As if their condition wasn't bad enough, things are further complicated by the presence of a 'zombie hunter' who knows about the disease and is busying himself eradicating those who carry it with a pneumatic bolt gun (there's a great low budget cheat where they get maximum use out of an impaled prosthetic head). The shot composition in the scene where the hunter decides to give up the hunt and dispose of his weapon is fantastic, by the way...for me, the enduring image of the film.

About to get her brains pushed through her skull...

The production standard is very high, up there with a lot of the better drama output on British TV. If this cropped up on Channel 4 one night, you wouldn't bat an eyelid. It may be relatively low budget, but it doesn't broadcast the fact via technical ineptitude or trying to punch too far above the production's respective weight. It's evident that it's done by people who know what they're doing, rather than people who got Final Cut and After Effects for Christmas and feel duty bound to squeeze in every conceivable effect they know into the proceedings whether the scene or story merits it or otherwise.

US Cover (in association with Fangoria)

It may not be everybody's cup of tea with regards to what a cannibal film should be, and if you're looking for non-stop action and constant choreographed scares, then you might want to look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you're looking for a well-made, unsettling and unremittingly bleak horror experience, I would happily point you in the direction of 'Dead Creatures'.

As is customary with my reviews, I always remark on whether I consider something to be value for money. I took a gamble on this (99p off of Ebay, including postage...I'm a high roller, baby!) and it payed off in spades. In addition to the feature itself, there's a trailer, Making Of documentary, Outtakes, commentary track, Premiere featurette, and a short film called 'Sad Man' too, plus loads of the other additional gubbins. Having got all of this for 99p, I feel rather unclean, yet damned smug at the same time.

As to what I'd suggest you pay for it, I don't know...I get the impression this is a film people will either love or hate (the fact I was able to get it for 99p would surely attest to that in some fashion). If you see it floating about at a price you feel comfortable taking a gamble at, then my advice would be to have a punt. In closing, I should say that you certainly won't be seeing my copy popping up on Ebay anytime soon, 99p or otherwise. For me, it's a keeper...probably not something I'm going to watch as many times as Zombie Flesh Eaters or Suspiria, but still one I'm proud to have on the shelf.

I DREAMED A DREAM: CHARITY PORN

2010-02-06T03:21:00.000-08:00

...A FREEFORM DELUSION IN THREE PARTS...

PART 1: HELLO KITTY

I had an idea this morning whilst brushing my teeth which can only be described as 'Garybuseyian' in the scale of its' innate madness (The idea, that is...not my teeth).

Hello Kitty!

Xavier Leret's flick 'Unarmed But Dangerous' (AKA 'Kung Fu Flid') has the distinction of containing the feature film debut of one Ms. Kitty Lea, the much-beloved Page 3/Lad's Mag model.

No caption required...

In addition to all of her other activities, Ms. Lea has recently started doing the occasional daytime shift on Elite TV, one of those 'babe' channels where blokes phone in and talk one-on-one with their favourite model as they writhe about seductively and attempt to keep the guy on the (extortionately priced) line as long as possible and thus rack up those all-important call charges.

"What?! Would I 'plug your blog'? No, I'm not into strap-ons..."

It was while considering these disparate and apparently unrelated strands that inspiration struck me like that mythical bolt of lightning out of the blue...How mental would it be to phone her up whilst on TV and conduct a brief (with the emphasis firmly on brief) interview regarding UBD/KFF? It would certainly no doubt make for a refreshing change in the subject matter of the calls she would be receiving if nothing else.

On the face of it, it's a CV-padder's dream...a live, nationally broadcast on-air interview all for the price of a somewhat expensive phonecall. Better yet, because viewers at home can't hear what the callers are talking about unless they too phone up and listen in, you can pretty much make up the content as you go along, or perhaps simply forego the phone call altogether and just concoct the fictional interview out of thin air. In short, it would be about as credible as that live Michael Jackson seance that Sky put on, which is to say not at all.

Then again, because of the relatively private nature of the conversation, one could perhaps view the whole endeavour as thr crafty-genreblogger-stealth-interviews-hot-girl-on-phone-sex-TV-show equivalent of that old philosophical chestnut about a whether or not a tree falling in the woods makes a sound if there's nobody there to hear it. In short, whilst the idea would amuse and please me (and one gets the distinct impression that self-amusement/pleasure is the overriding motive of the sort of folks who phone into these channels), to be a truly great idea it needs to be developed into something a little more significant and far reaching.

"We can't stop here...this blog is batshit country".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally down on it, I just thought I could do something a little better, and a shade more ambitious. Frankly, I think the initial idea as it stands merits some sort of Hunter S. Thompson Brilliance in Gonzo Journalism award, even if I do say so myself. (I wonder if anyone has ever done a live TV seance for him?)

PART 2: HELLO HOLLYWOOD

"Yes, this is Bruce Willis. What's that? You're a big Marvel Comics fan and you'll pledge $2,500 if I can get the guy who played The Thing to sucker-punch the guy who played Daredevil in the back of the head? Now why would you want to see that? Give me three good reasons why I should make that happen? What's that? Gigli, Jersey Girl, and Pearl Harbor. Yeah, okay, you win..."

Indeed, now that I think about it some more, how cool do you think it would be if somebody would have thought to pull the same stunt during the Haiti telethon in the USA recently? I think most people would gladly cough up $50-$100 for charity for the opportunity to bend Steven Spielberg's ear back about the unmitigated travesty that was 'Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull', even if only for 30 seconds or so.

You have a captive audience/subject, because at the end of the day, they want your money (for whatever purpose, noble or ignoble), so they're not going to be in any hurry to hang up. Simply record, upload, and bask in the glory of instant internet legend status.

"Yes, this is Sandra Bullock. Oh, thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoy my movies. What's that? You'll mail our appeal ten crisp $100 bills if I tell you how to use the Three Seashells to wipe your ass like in Demolition Man? Well, actually, that was just a...oh, I see...you've been experimenting with it at home for the last three months with varying degrees of success? You just keep getting shit all over your hands and the seashells? Ok. Y'know, actually, now I come to think about it do you have a credit card at all? I mean it's just that I'd hate to think of the cash getting lost in the mail..."

PART 3: HELLO HOES

It was then that the the true Eureka moment duly arrived, and I realised that the above ideas were mere Fool's Gold in comparison to the brainwave that had now taken root in my cerebral cortex. If Hollywood can get together and do a 'Hope For Haiti' telethon, how much better (and ultimately more profitable) would it be if they, or the US porn industry, did a 'Hoes For Haiti' phone sex telethon? How much would the man on the street be prepared to pay for 15 minutes of verbal filth from Megan Fox or Angelina Jolie? I conservatively estimate a princely sum, especially when you consider that it's all in aid of a 'good cause'. Why, just think of the amount of money that would be generated as Bono had phone sex with himself...it would be like a fiduciary feedback loop of epic proportions, and all for charity too.

Truly, somebody needs to hep that dishevelled clown Geldof to what I'm saying here, because I think we're on to a potential winner...

THE KISS OF DEATH...

2009-12-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

Redemption goes bust?

The cult movie empire whose back catalogue includes the risqué films of Prince Andrew's former lover Koo Stark has collapsed into administration.

Redemption Films, based in Wigmore Street, Soho, was set up by Nigel Wingrove, Britain's answer to Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

Administrators were called in today at the distributor of gothic horror movies, whose past titles range from Sinful Nuns Of St Valentine to Ms Stark's cult 1977 hit The Marquis De Sade's Justine.

Mr Wingrove set up Redemption in 1992 after directing Visions Of Ecstasy, the only film to have been refused a licence by censors on grounds of blasphemy. He also manages the Satanic Sluts, the burlesque dance group of Georgina Baillie, the granddaughter of Andrew Sachs who was at the centre of the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand telephone scandal.

Vantis administrators said it hoped “to complete a sale of the business in the next few days”.

Damn...I merely mention the name of Nigel Wingrove and now this goes and happens. Still, I've no doubt we will soon see him back in some meaningful capacity, but it's still a total bummer all the same. Tellingly, the report only mentions Redemption, so I don't know how or if other labels and ventures ostensibly under the same umbrella are affected. We shall see...

In the meantime, I notice that Wingrove and Marc Morris' 'The Art of the Nasty' has recently been re-released as a special edition. If you can't think of anything to ask for this Christmas, this could well be up your alley...I'm hoping 'Nasty' and and a copy of 'Hammer Glamour' will magically materialise in my metaphorical stocking this Christmas, otherwise the reindeer gets it!

(You will kindly note that I made it through the entire post without making some sort of pun involving The Satanic Sluts and 'assets'. Admirable restraint, even if I say so myself...)

YOU'RE SCUM...AND YOU KNOW YOU ARE!

2009-11-23T04:52:00.000-08:00

Nigel Wingrove, the man behind Redemption, Salvation, and numerous other video labels specialising in sensational, censor-baiting movies, is now blogging over at SCUM NATION.

If you are familiar with his output (such as the sapphic nunsploitation classic 'Sacred Flesh') then you probably knew this already, but if you have still yet to discover the joys of Salvation Films, then you really should head on over there and enjoy the wit and wisdom of a man who has had a film banned by the BBFC on the grounds of Blasphemy.

This is a man who has the hypocrisies of our banal modern society firmly in his crosshairs, and isn't afraid to pull the trigger. Be sure to check it out...

THE WITCHES HAMMER

2009-11-05T01:53:00.000-08:00

Directed by James Eaves
Amber Pictures
TRAILER

I'll admit it, I likes me some vampire movies. Just like most genre flicks, I'll give any vampire movie a fair crack of the whip. Unless, of course, it's one of these 'Nu-skool' emo vampire faggotry flicks like 'Twilight', or has Kate Beckinsale in it. She's had her three strikes as far as the vampire genre is concerned, and is most definitely out.

Indeed, thanks to the aforementioned 'Twilight' and the numerous imitators/coattail riders it will inevitably foist upon us (like Cirque Du Freak's 'The Vampire's Assistant'), vampires are, like, so uber-cool right now. All the hipster kids are into the whole 'vampire thing' (or 'Vampyre' for the truly pretentious clove cigarette smokers amongst us).

Which means vampires are not actually 'cool' per se, but rather the very antithesis thereof. Which means it's the perfect time for me to start breaking out reviews of vampire flicks which the current plague of quasi-goth vampiric poseurs will never even have heard of, let alone seen.

First off the bat (pun fully intended) is 'The Witches Hammer'. Yes, I know exactly what you're thinking. Shouldn't there be an apostrophe to denote possession of the titular hammer by the similarly-titular witches? Apparently not, as said hammer (which isn't in fact an actual physical hammer per se, but instead a metaphorical one) is not possessed by the witches, but instead intended to be used against them. They could have simply avoided the confusion and called it 'The Witch Hammer', but 'The Witches Hammer' sounds that little bit cooler, plus implies the presence of more than one witch, and when you're producing low budget films you have to seize every available opportunity to metaphorically 'big oneself (and by extension one's production) up'. It's called 'production value', darling.

Head Recruiter for the Cult Of Coulter

'The Witches Hammer' tells the story of Rebecca (essayed by the suitably sultry Claudia Coulter), a vampire assassin recruited and trained by the shadowy and secretive Project 571. The atmospheric opening sequence is incredibly well done, showing Rebecca having been bitten by a vampire, being plucked from the morgue and having all sorts of medical procedures performed upon her during the credit reel. There's a wonderful sense of minimalist screen composition at play here, and it all looks extremely professional. This is why I'm such a stickler for good composition...it swiftly sorts the men from the boys and let's you know that the film isn't going to be done by three teenagers with a handheld camcorder. What's more, it doesn't cost anything to get it right either.

There's also an excellent, standout scene wherein Rebecca is tested to see whether she would prefer a glass of water or a glass of blood. It's peerless stuff all round, again starkly minimalist and wonderfully edited to crank up the tension as Rebecca's coldly detached handlers (Liza Keast and Andrew Cullum) continue to incessantly pose that most probing of questions: "Which drink would you like, Rebecca?".

It's a scene that will stay with you on both a dramatic and emotional level as well as on a technical level also. It's amazing to see how much drama can be squeezed out of so little as three actors, two pint glasses, some water and some red food dye, but they do it. Indeed, this scene is so brilliant in its' simplicity that on the BTS material we are shown Claudia Coulter doing her own homemade take on it as part of her audition reel for the role, sans the benefits of intercutting...you can check it out for yourself HERE.

Coulter has a really good look which suits the role to a tee. Her facial bone structure and prominent cheekbones allow her to look at turns both strong and imposing, yet also vaguely drawn and hungry, which is pretty much the perfect combination for a vampire I should imagine.

Rebecca begins to regret not taking out private healthcare...

One bone of contention I do have with the opening sequence is that the medical procedures are never really fully explained. We're told that Rebecca is 'genetically engineered', but there's never any real mention or latter demonstration of any benefits this genetic engineering may have afforded her. As I will go on to explain, she still has all of the traditional weaknesses associated with vampirism, so it's difficult to say what part (if any) this supposed engineering plays. We're told that her reflexes, speed and strength will be improved, but I always thought that was part of the overall package deal one gets when becoming a vampire (Indeed, this phenomenon is later confirmed in a flashback sequence wherein her bumbling sidekick Jonathan explains that his erstwhile wife's vampirically-derived 'extra strength' put him in the hospital for some time).

As such, I feel a simple line along the lines of 'As a vampire, you're already stronger/faster than a human, and with the genetic engineering, you will be stronger/faster than a vampire' would have certainly helped to clarify things. It's not sufficiently cleared up either when Madeline (Stephanie Beacham) describes her as a 'genetically engineered vampire created to destroy evil'. Putting aside the fact that 'destroying evil' is as nebulous and unspecific a concept as a 'war on terror', we are still not told exactly how this purported genetic engineering is supposed to help her in her designated task, however vague it may appear to be.

Having said that, to remove or reduce her weakness would ultimately leave her a less interesting character. How boring would Superman be if not for the existence of Kryptonite, for example? Her sensitivity to sunlight is demonstrated in a nice scene where her handlers take her to watch her husband and son playing in the park, from the comfort of a blacked-out BMW. As she leans to get a better view from an open window, her skin begins to blacken and burn.

I told you tanning beds were dangerous...

Indeed, there are a number of inventive ideas in the mix. Seconds after having completed her first mission, Rebecca is shot in the head by armed police. Aside from investing her character with a refreshingly believable level of vulnerability (this is her first mission, lest we forget), it also provides a neat way to tie up loose ends. The police aren't looking for anyone because the killer is in the morgue, which is exactly where her handlers from Project 571 collect her from once she's healed up. Ergo, she's a completely reusable/recyclable assassin (save for the obvious methods of vampire disposal), although whilst her carbon footprint must be admirably small, the same probably can't be said for the (hot) lead one.

It's kind of ironic that they're called 'miniguns', really...

There's also a nice twist in terms of character motivation. Rebecca isn't motivated to work for Project 571 out of some misplaced sense of duty, but simply because they can give her a place to stay and blood to consume. It is established in the opening act as she pays a clandestine visit to her former home that the hunger within her makes her a deadly threat to her husband and child, just as her handlers warned her it would. As such, she can no longer trust herself to be around them, and must instead settle for watching them from afar, which constitutes her 'payment' from Project 571, who keep tabs on them for her.

This reminds me of Amanda Donohoe in 'Lair Of The White Worm'

Alas, Project 571 is not long for this world, as Rebecca arrives back at HQ from one of her sentimental sojourns down memory lane to find the place trashed and her handlers murdered. It seems the attack was perpetrated by a marauding gang of vampires and witches (male witches no less, but then surely that would make them warlocks?) who are intent on completing the job and eliminating the last remnant of Project 571, namely Rebecca.

Whilst Rebecca was involved in a brief but passable scrap whilst carrying out her first mission, this is the first bonafide 'fight' scene in the film. It's not terrible by any means, and there are a few neat touches with the fight choreography involving her motorcycle helmet, but overall it seems a bit half-paced in places, to the extent that you can never successfully suspend your disbelief and believe they are fighting as opposed to going through a choreographed sequence of moves and manouvres. The key flaw for me would seem to be the editing, but then you can't edit a decent fight scene together unless you have the correct shots from either side of the 'impact line', which would appear to be the case here. But if you want a martial arts movie, go rent one. We're talking about vampire flicks here...you can get a good taste of the action contained within TWH from the BTS Featurettes HERE and HERE.

I will resist the temptation to do a pun on 'forked from behind'...

Having vanquished her foes, she is shot with a tranquiliser dart by the lurking Edward (Jonathan Sidgwick...think a bearded Jason Lee playing a hybrid of Vincent D'Onofrio in John Carpenter's Vampires and Tia Carrere's assistant from Relic Hunter, with perhaps a dash of Anthony Daniels' C-3P0 thrown in for good measure), only to come around some 12 hours later and find herself chained to a chair in the headquarters of....Project 572, headed by the ominous Madeline. It is here that the second part of the movie begins in earnest, and with it (in my opinion) the decline of the film.

By and large, the first 25 minutes or so of this film are quite simply solid gold. Yes, there are a few things here and there that I could do without, but overall it's extremely good. Were you, as a potential investor, to be shown this opening portion of the film as a premise for further investment, then you wouldn't be able to get your chequebook out fast enough.

Unfortunately, it is after this selfsame opening that the film begins to meander somewhat and drift away from the promise of the opening act. One of the chief problems for me is the inclusion of a number of overlong flashback scenes, often dealing with comparatively minor characters, which do little to actually advance the plot and instead serve only to disrupt the general narrative thrust of the film.

Kitanya: The First Witch

The first of these flashback sequences tackles the genesis of The Witches Hammer itself, written by the first witch Kitanya (the fetching Magda Rodriguez) back in the days of yore. Whilst I feel that this flashback is fairly needless (in truth, the whole thing could have easily been conveyed by 2-3 lines of dialogue from either Sidgwick or Beacham with perhaps a few seconds of flashback footage) and needlessly long, there is an even greater problem with it in that it simply does not make sense.

Suicidal Tendencies...

A visiting Holy Man converts Kitanya's village and steals and sacrifices her baby. Overcome with grief, she seeks to kill herself, but just as her life is ebbing away, she changes her mind and something 'From The Other Side' hears her plea and bestows life (of a sort) upon her again, and presumably magical powers to boot. You can see a 40 seconds snippet (a sort of 'edited highlights') of it HERE, but the actual flashback is around five minutes in length.

Kitanya prepares to deliver her own unique take on 'Hammer Horror'

So, in revenge, she dispatches the slumbering Holy Man with a pleasingly-large sledgehammer and then slits the throats of all the children in the village. Now, we can all agree that slitting the throats of children is evil, even if they are screaming, bratty ones, but anyone can do it if sufficiently disposed towards it. It's an act which doesn't require any magical powers or occult knowledge to perform, so we see no manifestation of her witch powers (if indeed she has them) even though we have seen how she purportedly gained them.

Writing the Kitanya Sutra?

After fleeing from the scene of her crime, Kitanya takes refuge in a deserted shack and begins to write the Malleus Maleficarum, AKA The Witches Hammer. That's correct...the first witch decides it would be a good idea if she writes a book detailing the myriad ways in which mere mortals can 'do her in', plus sundry spells and whatnot (There's also a glaring continuity error as Kitanya is shown writing the book in green ink with a quill in some sort of archaic language made up of symbolic ideograms and suchlike, yet when the book is opened at two points later on in the film, the contents are shown to be neatly typeset in black, in the standard alphabet).

That Kitanya should write the very book containing the prescribed methods used to torture, test, and kill innumerable witches throughout the ages may sound illogical at first, but one can perhaps view it as her being overcome with remorse and regret for her deeds and thus creating The Witches Hammer is her way of stopping others like her should they ever arise (although this motive is never actually given or implied). It's doubly puzzling because she cannot possibly know how to kill herself successfully without actually doing it, as if she is indeed the first witch, then she has no previous frame of reference for her weaknesses and vulnerabilities, nor are we given any demonstration that she can perform the feats of magic she now writes about.

Things are further compounded when she is cornered at her ramshackle hideaway by the angry villagers and summarily killed with some very basic agricultural tools like pitchforks. This, of course, beggars the question: If it's this easy to bump off a witch (without them returning in some way, shape or form), why would you need The Witches Hammer at all?

Why indeed? Suffice to say, this occult tome is apparently required to kill off a vampire called Hugo Renoir (Tom Dover, whose quasi-Vanilla Ice haircut is hilariously explained in the BTS featurette). We are told that a page from the book was copied whilst it was in the possession of The Church, and a spell has been cast over Renoir making him 'unkillable', lest either the original caster of the spell be killed or the spell is reversed with the aid of The Witches Hammer.

Edward & Rebecca: The Decidedly Odd Couple

Anyway, Rebecca and Edward set out to obtain the book, and do so easily. Indeed, too easily if we're honest (The problem of challenges being overcome far too easily is unfortunately a recurring one in TWH, as I will go on to address a little later in relation to some of the significant vampire villains).

The current owner of the book, 'Le Cardinale', proposes a trade of the book for the gift of vampirism, something Jonathan has apparently agreed with him in advance, hence Rebecca's presence. However, this gives rise to a bigger question...given the number of vampires after the book and involved in the central conspiracy of the storyline, why recruit Rebecca to do the job? Indeed, some of these vampires, such as Victor (Miguel Ruz) have a far purer bloodline, so one would think they have much greater 'worth' to anyone contemplating becoming a creature of the night, as 'Le Cardinale' is.

True, in the short term you'd probably rather have the less vampirically-thoroughbred Rebecca nibble on your neck instead of some guy with a dodgy moustache, but you've got to look at the long term picture as well when all is said and done...and I've no doubt the villains of the piece could easily source a similarly-sexy vamp to seal the deal with 'Le Cardinale' in Rebecca's place. That way, they could also have used the 12 hour period in which Rebecca was drugged to move her to their remote hideaway in preparation for the resurrection ceremony.

Having secured the book, our dynamic duo take the train to Renoir's remote lair, and Rebecca has to ride in the luggage car in a wooden crate. A nice touch, but when you consider the alterntive for Edward would be riding on the pillion of Rebecca's bike whilst holding on to her, you can't help but feel he's been rather shortchanged on the sexy front.

Like the minigun scene, this dream sequence is ideal trailer-fodder...

Still, it does afford an excuse for dialogue (and yes, you guessed it, another flashback sequence, this time for Edward) and it's not like she could ride in one of the passenger cars in her full light-tight biker gear without looking like that girl from the Zovirax advert, after all.

Who's afraid of the big bad Wolf?

Having taken the train as far as it will carry them, they decide to stop in a bar and take in a performance by surprisingly tolerable (by rock band in film standards) all-girl rock band 'The Lilettes'. Obviously neither of them subscribes to the maxim that a moving target is harder to hit, and they are soon learning the error of their ways as they are attacked by the masked and mysterious multiplying assassin designated by Madeline's Tarot as 'The Wolf' (replete with ominous, Overfiend-style vocalisations), plus the little and large duo of Charlotte and Oscar.

The masked man who literally can go forth and multiply...

The fight between Rebecca and her masked assailant (all three of him) is probably the best in the film, all told, and it's extremely pleasing to see Wolf's multiplying effect is performed practically rather than digitally. It's all the more impressive when you learn that this character is in fact an eleventh hour addition to the mix due to Sally Reeve, the actress who plays Charlotte falling pregnant and thus being unable to risk any fight or stunt work as per the original plan. You have to give them ten out of ten for improvisation here. Reeve's condition also contributed to the inclusion of a wonderful drinking straw joke, and also necessitated the somewhat disappointing off-camera kill that her character is subjected to, but I will get to that in a moment.

You've heard of Good Charlotte? Well, here's the evil one...

There's a great sight gag involving kitchen knives, stabbings with forks and a full-on battering with a cast iron frying pan (which could really benefit from better editing and sound effects)...Charlotte and Oscar are very much the comedic relief of the film, although sometimes I think the tendency to play for laughs with other characters aside from Charlotte & Oscar is somewhat jarring in terms of the overall tone of the film. Ultimately, that's just a matter of personal taste though, one man's wine being another man's poison and all that jazz...

"And the Oscar for Best Axe-Wielding Psychotic Vampire Dwarf goes to..."

Having dealt with their would-be killers and stolen a sporty red Ferrari, Edward and Rebecca finally make it to Renoir's lair, and the inevitable showdown commences, although not in the manner which they have been led to believe.

"Tie me Vampiroo down, Sport..."

The final act again left me with more questions than answers. Apparently, genetically-enhanced vampire Rebecca (or at least her genetically-enhanced body) is now to be the vessel for the return of Kitanya's spirit. Given the fact that the inter-species enmity between vampires and witches has already been hinted at earlier in the film, it's a bizarre choice akin to transplanting Hitler's cryogenically frozen brain into Sammy Davis Jnr.'s black Jew body. Who's going to be the idiot brave enough to hand them a mirror, post-transplant?

Perhaps the plan is to put her in a vampire's body so that she inherits the traditional weaknesses of a vampire, such as burning in sunlight? This might be a partially workable idea (although it is never stated that this is the aim), but we would then have to overlook the fact that Rebecca is arguably one of the most powerful and deadly vampires on the planet thanks to the efforts of Project 571. If the villains are looking to keep the resurrected Kitanya on a short leash, then they could surely find a far less formidable vampire to transplant her soul into.

Further confusion abounds when the crux of Renoir's scheme is revealed. Having resurrected Kitanya, Renoir intends to use her to control the otherworldly trio known as the Souls Of The Damned (portrayed by three extremely impressive 12 foot tall puppets). Yet it is these very selfsame Souls who furnish Renoir with the urn containing Kitanya's spiritual essence with the understanding that he will resurrect her. I'm at a loss to understand the logic here on a number of fronts, as I will go on to explain.

If Kitanya does present such a threat to the Souls Of The Damned, why would they hand her over and seek her resurrection? More to the point, given that the Souls Of The Damned are shown to be more than capable of effecting the physical world (with deadly effect!), one wonders why they do not perform the resurrection themselves?

It's never made clear what sort of yoke or control either party expects or believes they might have over the resurrected Kitanya, nor how they intend to bend her will to their own ends. Gratitude, perhaps? All I know is that transplanting the soul of the first and most powerful witch into the body of a genetically-enhanced vampire killing machine, and then expecting said super-powerful hybrid to simply do your bidding on a favour-for-a-favour basis is asking a hell of a lot, and displays a naivete that borders upon suicidal.

After all, let us suppose that the newly-resurrected Kitanya decides that she doesn't fancy taking orders but instead prefers giving them out? Can The Witches Hammer be used to control her? I honestly don't know, but it seems unlikely that Kitanya would write such an entry. She seemed easy enough to kill the first time around (although she wasn't a genetically-enhanced vampire back then, as she will be if the transferance is successful, so it's hard to say how or if traditional witch killing methods would work on her newly-resurrected self), but then killing her would rather defeat the object of resurrecting her, wouldn't it?

It's all the more baffling when Renoir asks Madeline if she's sure Kitanya will want to join them, and Madeline replies 'Who wouldn't?'. If I'm honest, it's a bit too much of a leap of faith to expect them to go ahead with their scheme without any real method of controlling Kitanya in place (whether it works or doesn't), nor any other such guarantee of compliance. It's like jumping into the lion cage at the zoo after they've been fed. They're probably not hungry, but that doesn't mean they won't maul you to death all the same.

Stephanie Beacham as the mono-ocular Madeline

Without spoiling the plot, it is revealed that Edward has been used by Madeline because, as a researcher, he has access to various rare books. Yet we are also shown that Madeline can, with a blink of her eye or twitch of her finger, completely befuddle and bewilder her opponents (as she does with her would-be assassins Charlotte and Oscar). Now, if she can do this to deadly vampires, what prevents her from performing the selfsame trick on a humble librarian, for example? Or on 'Le Cardinale', the man who has The Witches Hammer? No reason is given or apparent save for rank bone idleness. There's just no need for her to resort to the classic ploy of the stalking horse to achieve her aims.

The explanation given makes no sense either, when Madeline opines that 'The book (TWH) would never surface to someone like me'. No reason is given as to why this should be the case, or even if it is the case, and as such no sense can be gleaned from it.

In Germany, it's called 'The Vampire Hunter'

There's also another massive continuity error involving Rebecca's revolver and the amount of bullets it contains. She fires six in her initial skirmish with the extremely light-sensitive Variak vampires (a good concept well executed), before the gun is knocked from her hands. Later on, Jonathan finds the gun and shoots a Variak with it, then proceeds to the chamber where the resurrection ceremony is taking place and shoots the urn containing the soul essence of Kitanya, then levels the gun at Madeline before she forces it from his hand by way of magic (the very fact that she does this would suggest that the gun is not empty and she is under threat), but this would then mean that a standard six-shooter suddenly holds at the very least nine rounds, possibly more.

Where do these extra bullets come from? It's never shown or explained, and a cursory look at the gun confirms that it is indeed your standard six shooter. It's ultimately a continuity error that should have been dealt with at script level, as one can see that the filmmakers had access to various prop weapons (including pistols) which have larger magazine capacity. Given that Rebecca is shown using automatics throughout the rest of the film, it's rather odd that she should suddenly resort to a revolver. Again, it's one of these little things that don't quite add up.

Rebecca prepares to cut a swathe on the dancefloor

It's these kind of gaps in logic which tend to expose the tenuous nature of the plotline. Perhaps I'm just nitpicking, but there are just too many parts which don't make sense within the overall context of the storyline. I can more than happily overlook things which would be considered unrealistic in real life but are acceptable within the internal reality of a given film (like Rebecca being able to take her Samurai sword into a bar, just like The Bride in Kill Bill Vol.1 is allowed to take her sword on a passenger plane), but the truth is there are too many things in TWH which I can't seem to let slide. Too much time is spent settng things up which have no real discernible payoff.

Charlotte in her Pre-vampirism days...

In the cases of vampiric foes such as Victor and Charlotte, both are given flashbacks explaining their genesis as vampires, and each has their unique characteristics. Victor apparently has "strength and invulnerability of the purest kind" due to having been bitten by a pure blood vampire (in addition to being a trained killer in his pre-vampiric incarnation), whilst the larger than life Charlotte cannot apparently be killed with a regulation stake through the heart because apparently her heart is "so small and so deep that she can never be killed", suggesting a mere stake will not penetrate deep enough into the chest of the plus-sized villainess (as demonstrated in a brief altercation with Madeline). In their defence, when Edward is relaying the information about Charlotte, he does preface it with "It is said", which as anyone who watches Penn & Teller:Bullshit! can tell you means that whatever follows is pretty much an outright lie, but it seems the obvious response to such a challenge is either 'get a bigger stake' or 'chop her head off instead'.

Indeed, an outright lie is what these backstories are proven to be as both vamps are dispatched in fairly short order, much like every other vampire in the picture. At no point is Rebecca made to think outside the box, or draw upon some information she may have learned earlier vis a vis the respective weakness or achilles' heel of either of these vamps (physical or psychological), or think on her feet and improvise some ingeneous method of killing them, by turning the situation or environment to her advantage. It's just business as usual for these vampires we have been led to believe are somehow a little more dangerous than the average vamp, but sadly prove to be anything but. Still, as I alluded to earler, I can forgive this incongruity with regard to Charlotte for the off-camera reasons listed above which rather tie the producers' hands behind their backs. They may very well have had a much different plan in mind before the situation was effectively taken out of their hands.

More puzzling still is that during the altercation between Rebecca and Victor, Victor is killed by Edward just as he is about to administer a deathblow by way of a sword through the heart of the fallen Rebecca. Of course, had he succeeded in landing his intended coup de grace, then Rebecca would explode in a shower of sparks (just like all the other vampires), but it would also put a rather significant fly in the ointment of the villains' nefarious scheme to transfer Kitanya's disembodied soul into Rebecca's body, as there would be no body left to use. Again, the internal logic of the script is a tad awry here.

Ultimately, what is true and what is lies becomes frustratingly blurred as the viewer is constantly being told one thing but then shown another.

US Cover, I believe

The truth of the matter is that the 'Witches Hammer' plotline (i.e., that which comes after the bravura opening reel) is in fact something of an insubstantial, wafer-thin affair when all is said and done, a fact which I believe is chiefly responsible for the filmmakers' decision to try and overcompensate by way of numerous flashbacks and divergent sub-plots for peripheral supporting characters, as if to try and disguise the overtly linear simplicity of the story arc, which can be readily summarised (with apologies to a certain band) as Get Book. Bring Book. Kill., yet it still manages to remain enjoyable.

Away from plot-based concerns, the decision to shoot on film must surely have been something of a poisoned chalice before, during, and after production, but it's one I think the filmmakers will be glad they decided to take a chance on (I certainly am). As much as I like the freedom afforded by digital, film simply looks better. Perhaps one day the digital bods will be able to accurately mimic the mythical 'film look', but until that day dawns film is king.

As such, when Eaves and DP/Cinematographer John Raggett (another name that will undoubtedly be familiar to readers acquainted with the films of Johannes Roberts) get it right, the decision to shoot on film really pays off. It looks 'proper' for want of a better word, and belies the budget of the film. On the other hand, there are instances where the budget is more evident, or shot composition is a little less than what it could be (as you might well expect for a highly-pressurised low budget shoot where time is of the essence), and the choice of film mercilessly exposes them, like the analogy of a Ferrari with a lawnmower engine. Thankfully, the good outweighs the bad by and large, thus vindicating the decision (and extra expense/work involved) to shoot on film as opposed to digital.

With so few films in this budget range shooting on film, it confers something of a unique selling point to the film and thus adds marketability. Another such factor is the inclusion of Stephanie Beacham in the cast, and let me just say that whatever they had to pay or whatever hoops they may have had to jump through to get her, she was most certainly worth it. Aside from the added bonus of having an internationally-recognised name above the title, she injects an unerring gravitas into her scenes. It's just a really smart casting decision that pays off in spades, quite frankly. Check out some BTS footage HERE.

Rebecca in ceremonial garb at the film's finale...

Less obvious, but equally well done, are things like the costumes and music. Normally, the maxim is that if such things are done properly, then you don't notice them at all, but there are certain outfits such as the ceremonial gown or most of Madeline's wardrobe (including the eyepatch) which really catch the eye. Clever little touches like Madeline's custom Tarot cards or the paintings in Le Cardinale's lair simply add that certain extra something to the proceedings. These things don't make themselves, after all.

Promo Art...she doesn't have these weapons in the film

Bizarrely, for all of the gripes I've listed above, I still enjoyed it immensely. Like I say, I like vampire films, and this one has something about it. The people behind the latest incarnation of Hammer would have probably been better off sinking their money into something like this as opposed to the execrable 'Beyond The Rave'. It's not going to topple Razor Blade Smile from atop its' lofty perch as King (or Queen?) of the low budget British vampire flicks, but it certainly has a bloody good go at it. If you liked RBS, then you'll most likely enjoy TWH (but then, if you liked RBS, you probably already own TWH already...).

The parts are ultimately greater than the whole, but then there are admittedly some great parts of it, especially the opening segment. Even the flashbacks are good...as much as I feel there are too many of them, and that they're too long, I certainly can't say that they are poorly done. It's apparent that a great deal of effort went into the period flashbacks for Kitanya and Charlotte (including 'scratchy' black and white film and title cards), but my gut feeling is perhaps too much effort (and thus reciprocal screen time) was expended on them. If they were on the DVD extras as deleted scenes (or extended version of cut-down flashbacks actually in the feature itself), I'd probably think they were incredibly cool little bonuses. As it is, I think they're very well done, just used inappropriately.

If you're a vampire completist, I wouldn't hesitate to say "Go out and get it!". I'm not going to suggest it's the greatest vampire film ever made, but for all of the above faults it's not the worst either, and it does have some inventive little touches which serve to differentiate it from the pack.

Another variation on the cover art...

Ultimately, TWH is two-thirds of a very good low budget vampire flick, and one-third tantalising glimpse of what could have been with a little more time and money (which, in filmmaking terms, are by and large the same thing at the end of the day anyway). As the Icarus-like ascent and subsequent descent clearly illustrates, it is demonstrably capable of hitting the giddy heights but for whatever reason simply cannot maintain them, a symptom, I feel, of the compensatory over-ambition that affects many lower budget independent films and leads to the inevitable problem of resources being spread too thinly, and visibly so. To paraphrase a oft-quote truism about love, perhaps it is better to fly and crash than to never have flown at all. Having said that, it's probably better to fly and land uneventfully than either of the preceding choices.

When all is said and done, for all the faults, it's still extremely watchable. As a visual 'calling card' of sorts for Amber Pictures, it certainly does the job. It's telling that in this BTS clip HERE, Eaves is asked "What made you go for such a big 'scoped' film on a low budget", to which he replies "Stupidity". Having checked out the trailers for Amber Pictures' follow-up project 'Bane', it looks to be more of a constrained, claustrophobic and altogether tighter picture than the somewhat more sprawling TWH. It appears he's learnt his lesson, and made a tidy little film in the process, one which has certainly whetted by appetite and has me now eagerly on the hunt for a copy of 'Bane'.

Alas, I received TWH as a screener so cannot honestly make my usual comment as to whether I consider it to be value for money or not. If you can get it for a tenner or preferably below, my advice would be to bite their hand off. Again, like most of the titles under the Blackhorse Distribution aegis, it seems to crop up on Ebay at a vastly inflated Buy It Now price from time to time (I have a sneaking suspicion that someone is currently sitting on Blackhorse's back catalogue)...very rarely do you see individual sellers part with their copy, which should pretty much tell you all you need to know. My copy certainly won't be finding itself on Ebay anytime soon, I can tell you...

SILK STOCKING STRANGLER

2009-11-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

Directed by: Bill Hellfire
Produced by: Bill Hellfire & Cherry Moonshine
Distributor: Alternative Cinema

@Amazon.com

(This review refers to the 'Naughty Edition' DVD released on the After Hours Cinema label)

Lesbian lovers Olivia (Misty Mundae) and Jackie (Katie Jordon) are in a tight spot. Two months behind on the rent and facing eviction, they hit upon a scheme to keep the roof over their heads.

The two girls start to put on sexy shows for their lecherous landlord Richie (Joey Smack) in exchange for the rent. It seems like the perfect arrangement until Richie starts to demand kinkier and edgier shows, including strangulation and breathplay. Just how far are they willing to go?

This is ultra low budget filmmaking, shot in one day with a cast of three and a crew of four (one of whom also happens to be in the cast, so seven in all, including genre notable Johnny Crash). It's an amazing achievement considering how little time and how few people were involved. Indeed, you can't help but wonder how much better it could have been if they have shot it over 2-3 days with a little more money. In short, if I were in charge of the 48 Hours Film Project, I'd bar Bill Hellfire and the Factory 2000 crew from entering, because on this evidence they'd clearly piss it without breaking a sweat. Indeed, as I shall explain later, it seems he doesn't even need a full 24 hours to shoot a passable movie.

At just under an hour, it's not quite a feature, not quite a short, but the running time feels just about right. If anything, there are a few moments where the sex scenes begin to drag a little, something I think could have been remedied with a few more cutaways to Richie as he watches, using him as a sort of visual barometer for the scene's progress. This is done in one of the latter scenes where Richie gamely slaps, scratches and punches his face as the asphyxiation action unfolds before him, and it works like a charm.

It's a relatively simple tale (as the budget, schedule and cast would necessarily dictate) but told well and planned better. Of course, the key aspect that persuades the viewer to overlook the budgetary limitations is the inclusion of erstwhile Seduction Cinema figurehead, Misty Mundae (AKA Erin Brown, from the Masters Of Horror episode, 'Sick Girl').

The versatile quality of Mundae's face is such that she is able to seamlessly shift from being the seduced to being the seductress or just goofing off (as is so often the case in some of her more spoofy Seduction output) with no loss of believability. The fact that this is allied with a pleasingly natural figure reminiscent of classical sculpture makes for a heady combination and an undeniable screen presence. She's every inch the star, and none of those inches owe anything to botox, collagen or silicone. Her deal is real, so much so that she even has pubic hair. In short, the perfect antidote to the stereotypical softcore sirens who fall off the 'peroxide and plastic' production line.

In Silk Stocking Strangler, the producers have created an interesting visual dichotomy by having the Mundae, who looks like the archetypal girl next door (although I'm sure few of us have ever lived next door to a girl that was anywhere near her particular ballpark, looks-wise) play the pragmatic and somewhat avaricious character, whereas the decidedly more edgy and vampish-looking Jordon is cast as the reluctant moralist who is uncomfortable with the entire proposition. Appearances, it would seem, can indeed be deceiving, and that is a suitable metaphor for the film as a whole.

On the surface, one can choose to view it as what it is, namely a softcore stroke-flick wherein numerous sexual kinks and proclivities are acted out by Mundae and Jordon for the entertainment of the voyeuristic viewer, which is nominally Richie, but in reality us. Stockings and suspenders, smoking, sapphic sex sessions, strap-ons, and strangulation are all par for this particular course. A wide range of fetishes are catered for and duly indulged, and in fine style too.

Then there is the aspect of escalation in the sort of activities that Richie wishes to see the girls perform or partake in for him. Whilst it makes sense to increase the stakes from a purely narrative viewpoint, it also mirrors the oft-aired belief that consumers of pornography will ultimately become jaded with the level of a particular pornographic act in question and thus seek something more extreme, dangerous and degrading, ad nauseum, until they arrive at snuff.

Suddenly, we become aware that Silk Stocking Strangler is not in fact mere masturbatory fodder, but instead 'meta-pornography' which is to say it is pornography (albeit of the decidedly softcore variety) which passes comment upon pornography. The medium truly is the message here.

Of course, wherever and whenever the subject of pornography should arise, the question of exploitation is never far behind, and indeed who is exploiting who. Some (mostly hardcore misandrist/feminist types) would argue that pornography exploits women, whilst giving no thought to the male performers whatsoever. There are others who would argue that pornography exploits men (as consumers) and male weakness, and these themes are touched upon briefly in the film. Is Richie the exploiter? Are the girls the exploiters? Is Olivia exploiting them both for her own ends? The notions of power and control, in their varied forms, are present throughout, and it's only at the finale that we discover who's really in control as opposed to who thinks they are in control.

The climax of the film is a curiously satisfying one. On the one hand, you have the inevitable result of the constantly increasing level of danger injected into the sexual peccadilloes that Richie wants to see explored before him, yet there's an unexpected twist beyond that as well. In short, you're given exactly what you'd expect, and a surprise as well, but I'm not going to ruin it for you...leave us say that the viewer is left in no doubt as to who has really been using who.

One aspect of the film that really stuck out as being well done was the music, both incidental and the slightly-erotic-yet-still-creepy signature theme too. It compliments the onscreen proceedings to a tee.

In terms of extras, there are the usual features one would associate with releases from the labels under the EI Cinema (now Pop! Cinema) label, plus a revealing behind-the-scenes featurette, shot, I believe by Johnny Crash and Cherry Moonshine. As Misty Mundae is applying some makeup in the bathroom and chatting about how early she had to get up to make her call time, the camerawoman opines that she has got 'a long day ahead of her', to which Misty replies 'Well, Joey's Mom gets home around four, so we'll either be done by then or...who knows?'.

I guess we should thank God that Joey Smack's mother didn't get off work early the day they were filming...could you imagine your mother walking in as you filmed two scantily girls performing a variety of kinky sex acts, or perhaps while you were hanging a semi-naked masturbating girl by her neck? Me neither. Still, it would probably be slightly less embarrassing than a Jason 'Pie Fucker' Biggs scenario, as at least there are naked girls present.

So, is it worth the money? Despite the short running time, I'm very much inclined to say yes. It's a pleasingly detached, creepy and unsettling little oddity which isn't quite what you'd expect it to be. Failing that, there are naked girls too. Frankly, you can't lose either way.

On a final note, I should add that I am uncertain as to the legality of owning a film like this in the UK since the passing of the Criminal Justice Bill under the auspices of our former fat, corrupt, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (she's still fat and corrupt, just not Home Secretary any more). The asphyxiation scenes are not to dissimilar from the type of content you'd find on various 'Faux-Snuff' fetish websites which have since been proscribed somewhat under British law. So, if you do decide to order it, I've no idea whether UK Customs would allow it to pass (should they inspect it).

Having said that, the fact that you can order it from such mainstream outlets as Amazon should probably go some way towards getting it in 'under the radar', so to speak.

It should go without saying (but I'm going to say it anyway) that being a resident of the UK I totally do not own a copy of this film, either in a physical or digital format, and have never even seen it. The above review is just an astonishingly accurate guess as to the contents of the film and the themes tackled therein.

Honest.

CAGED FURY

2009-10-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Director: Ciro H. Santiago
Distributor: 23rd Century

@Amazon.com

(This review refers to the 1983 Cirio H. Santiago film, not the Bill Milling film of the same name with Erik Estrada in it. You can check out the trailer for Milling's movie HERE. The fact that I can't find a trailer on YouTube for Santiago's 'Caged Fury' must surely score double anorak points for obscurity?)

At a hidden prison camp deep in the jungles of South East Asia, some devious Vietnamese commies are kidnapping beautiful women and brainwashing them into becoming subliminally-activated suicide bombers to further their evil aims abroad. Help isn't going to be coming anytime soon, so the all-female inmates must engineer their own escape any which way they can...

'Caged Fury' really reminds me of a feature-length episode of 'Charlie's Angels' (specifically the one where they go undercover at a women's jail), only with the emphasis on escape rather than investigation. The plot is further thickened by the inclusion of a 'traitor within the group' sub-plot, as someone keeps foiling their escape efforts. Is it the whorish Honey? Perhaps the silent, semi-catatonic one? Maybe the young Vietnamese girl? The answer is kept well hidden with no obvious giveaways until the final reveal. It's probably the central narrative of interest, as the other plotlines are largely functional or too quickly resolved to be of any real interest. Even their eventual escape comes about more through luck than judgement or some carefully devised and well-executed escape plane.

As you might expect from a Women In Prison (WIP) exploitation flick, there's copious amounts of nudity, torture, molestation and rape...and even some consensual sex too! The camp commander likes to interrogate his female charges by affixing 'truth button' electrodes to their nipples (and a third electrode 'elsewheres') which seems like another contrived excuse for more gratuitous toplessness...but hey, who's complaining?

The picture and sound quality on my DVD are pretty poor, but then the DVD was dirt cheap. I believe I paid something like 50-75p for it in a bundle deal at a pound shop 'Oop North, and it comes in one of those hyper-slim cases so beloved of DVD pirates...and yet this is the official DVD, apparently. The no-frills approach is carried over onto the disc itself, with the multitude of extras such as 'Play Movie' and...erm...well, that's it! That said, the cover and disc art are really well done though. I certainly wouldn't be adverse to having a poster of it up on my wall.

Still, when all's said and done, I found this movie rather hit the spot for me. Cirio H. Santiago has done a lot better, and probably a lot worse besides, but that's the price you pay for being a genuine goddamned exploitation legend! Given the piffling price I paid for it, I can hardly complain.

Certainly WIP genre completists will find it to be a tidy addition to their collections (if they've already got everything put out by Lloyd Simandl's classily superior Bound Heat outfit, that is), but the casual punter may find it too be a little too sparse on action of either variety to seriously hold their interest. An acquired taste for sure, but most of my tastes are and this is one I'm not ashamed to admit having a taste for. It's a passable example of the genre, but by no means great. Given how cheaply it can be picked up, I'd definitely give it the thumbs up to anyone remotely interested in WIP films.

Overall, it seems like a bit of a missed opportunity...it could have been great, but instead is just OK, maybe even a little less when you take into account the sound and picture quality. Such is the nature of the low-budget beast, but on the upside, it costs virtually nothing to buy (if you can track down a copy, that is...23rd Century seem to eschew 'conventional' distribution channels, so try your local pound shop, publishers' clearance bookshop or local petrol station. Failing that, Ebay!), so what have you got to lose? Cheap and cheerful, and you get what you pay for, I guess.

@Amazon.com

You can check out another review of it here at Prison Flicks

BULLETS, BOMBS AND BABES: The Films Of Andy Sidaris

2009-10-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

Published By Heavy Metal

Andy Sidaris

There are people in life you look at and think "Damn! Now why didn't I think of that?". Suffice to say, Andy Sidaris was one of them.

Sidaris made movies for men, and never made any apologies for it. His movies are typified by scores of beautiful women in and out of skimpy outfits, guns, explosions, boats, planes, helicopters and fast cars, exotic locations, buff dudes and nefarious villains. Basically, everything a growing boy needs.

Hope Marie Carlton is fully loaded and ready for action...

Given that he had already carved out an extremely successful career in television prior to making movies, there was no need for him to ever try and second-guess or appease the critics. He already knew how good he was, and thus didn't have the pressing need for validation which seems to afflict so many others. Ergo, he made the kind of movies he wanted to make, and that people like me want to watch.

Andy at work...or at least as near to work as being surrounded by hot babes in swimwear can ever be

"Bullets, Bombs and Babes" tells his story, in his own words and with more than a few contributions from those who've known and worked with him, from his TV days to the production of his own unique brand of action movies. It's not a 'book' as such in terms of layout, but more akin to a large magazine or fanzine (what the Japanese have taken to calling a 'Mook'), but bound in hardback like a British Annual. As I'm sure you can imagine, and are no doubt hoping, it's heavy on pictures, both in B&W and colour, and light on clothing.

If you look at this picture long enough, you'll eventually notice Julie Strain is wearing a Malibu Bay Films jacket...

It's arranged in chronological order, addressing his early life and television career, the three films he made prior to making the ones people consider as the canonical 'Andy Sidaris Films' (AKA the 'Malibu Bay' films), and then moves on to fully get to grips with the films with which he is chiefly associated with and remembered for. In short, the type of movies that 'Andy Sidaris' has become the byword for, worldwide.

Andy Sidaris: Big In Japan

Each one of these films is given a feature spread, but the real juice comes from the interviews dotted about the book. Sidaris had a lot of recurring characters over the span of the 'Malibu Bay/L.E.T.H.A.L Ladies' movies, which means a lot of his actors worked with him on multiple occasions and thus can give a real insight into the man and his moviemaking process, just as Andy and his wife Arlene are capable of sharing some interesting tidbits and recollections about them.

The ridiculously sexy Cynthia Brimhall was a Playmate back when Playboy still had standards...

Aside from the laundry list of Playboy Playmates and Penthouse Pets who've featured in his films (whose names won't mean anything to you, dear reader, as you don't look at that sort of thing on the internet...right?), there are also a number of names that (if you're a genre film obsessive like me) will ring a bell. Danny 'Robert Rodriguez doesn't make a film without me' Trejo, Pat 'Mr. Miyagi' Morita, Al 'The most killed guy in cinema history' Leong, Erik 'CHiPS' Estrada and possibly the sexiest woman to ever step before a camera, the one and only Sybil Danning.

Austria's other gift to world cinema, Sybil Danning

The book also reproduces Sidaris-related interviews and extracts from such diverse sources as Spain's 'Gotham' magazine and Maitland McDonagh's 'Filmmaking On The Fringe' (of which I will also be posting a full review of shortly...it's an excellent book), and there is a whole slew of pictures from behind the scenes, such as a particularly eye-opening photo montage of Andy himself ostensibly demonstrating to Penthouse Pet Julie K. Smith how to do a striptease and pole dancing routine. There's also a bunch of interesting pictures regarding Andy's life away from the set, hobnobbing with the likes of Gerald Ford and Hugh Hefner. As you do.

If you're looking for porn, look elsewheres. Sidaris' films, in a purely sexual sense, are best described as "(Tits and) Ass With Class". They're a distinct step below late-night softcore in terms of explicitness of sexual content, yet ten steps above in terms of plotlines, production value and execution. It's a curious niche, and to say that it is one that Sidaris made his own would be the understatement of the century.

Beautiful women in exotic locations, the Sidaris hallmark.

It's not as if nobody else could make these kind of movies, but the fact remains that nobody is making or even attempting to make these movies, and certainly not at the level of overall quality that Sidaris did it at. The fact remains, if anybody did succeed in replicating the formula, the first response you'd elicit would be 'It's kinda like an Andy Sidaris film'.

Al Leong, Gyrocopter, Bikini Babe. What more could you want from a film?

Given a choice between an Andy Sidaris flick and either of McG's "Charlie's Angels" movies, I'd have to go with Sidaris every time. I'm heterosexual, plus I like movies that are movies rather than 90-minute music video medleys.

Value for money? Yes, I'd say it's priced about right for what it is. I'd imagine most hardcore Sidaris fans will probably already have a copy, but if you're one of those who are sitting on the fence with regards to this book, or have yet to discover the works of Andy Sidaris, then I can happily give it the thumbs up. All three of them...

INFESTATION

2009-10-13T04:53:00.000-07:00

TRAILER
Distributed by Blackhorse Entertainment (now defunct)
Directed by Ed Evers-Swindell

In the near future, a deadly virus has decimated the Earth's surface and forced humanity to dwell underground in vast subterranean cities. When an expeditionary team fails to report back, a ragtag unit of military misfits and misanthropes (including team leader Sash and brooding anti-hero Loki) is hastily thrown together and sent topside to find out exactly what has happened to them. Scientists have developed a serum which gives limited immunity to the virus, but that deadline has passed, so the expeditionary team should (in theory) all be dead.

The giveaway line is 'We're still getting activity readings on their personal locators'...dyed-in-the-wool fans of genre cinema will know exactly what to expect!

'Infestation' hits the ground running with a prologue comprised of two terrific action sequence wherein Sash and Loki fight off members of the 'Tunnel Rats' terrorist outfit with a mixture of gunplay and fisticuffs, which then seamlessly segues into CGI jetspeeder chase throughout the labyrinthe of the underground city's erstwhile skyline (if that makes sense?) which is every bit as good as the similar sequence in Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones, and doesn't feature Hayden Christensen either! What's not to love?

Loki (Ross Evison). Could Lisa Rogers tell the difference between him and Ralf Little after a few drinks? Probably not...

Loki disobeys a direct order to abandon the pursuit of the last remaining terrorist, and in doing so causes an accident in which civilian lives are lost. He's kicked out of his job and we next find him some months later drowning his sorrows in a bar, having drifted into depression. Fortunately, his old colleague Sash has just been handed a mission which would suit a near-suicidal pilot down to the ground, and so Loki is brought out of his enforced retirement to join the team going up to the surface.

Sash is starting to regret taking this assignment on...

After the team is introduced, there's a needless but well executed sequence in which the one of thrusters on their rocket elevator malfunctions (again done with CGI), meaning they could miss their window with the automatic, override-proof vents and doors which their craft is supposed to navigate, and thus be killed. Unsurprisingly, they make it after the thruster miraculously kicks in again. Like a Bond film, you know they're not going to die (at least not this early on...) but the scene is staged in such a way that it still grabs your attention and has you wondering how they're going to find a way out of it. As such it's rather a disappointment when the answer is simply good fortune. I felt this would have been a good opportunity to add a little characterisation to the team, to see how they cope with and rectify the situation? Which one panics? Who's the aggressive one who'd rather argue than fix the problem? Who takes the lead and sorts the problem out, and how do they do it? All this sequence establishes is that Freeman, their Commander, doesn't really care much whether they live or die, but we'd pretty much gathered that already, especially where Loki is concerned.

This picture gives a much better impression of what the film is like, although I've no idea where it's from or where it's used.

The opening scenes all have that sort of bleached-out, post-processed blueish-greenish hue which seems so beloved of music video directors working with nu-metal bands and the people who made 'Saw'. Of course, when filming in an ostensibly underground location, one must limit oneself solely to artificial light sources, and it has the added bonus of complimenting the CGI sequences which are largely green on black in the style of a nightvision camera, which makes perfect sense if you think about it. It's simple, logical and it works, and it's also probably cheaper and quicker than doing it in full colour.

Once topside, the mood of the film changes somewhat, as does the colour pallette, but more importantly so does the pace. The second act is extremely slow, all the more noticeably so having come off the back of the action-packed first act. Very little happens (too little, to be frank) save for some exposition and the added problem of having to find an hidden access hatch so that they can get to the ship which will take them home before their immunity to the surface conditions expires.

I've seen bits of 'Infestation' on TV a couple of times, and every time I was compelled to switch over and watch something else. It's only now that I have seen the full film that I realise it was because I was always coming in midway through the second act. It's the Achilles' Heel of this movie.

What makes the second act appear to be even more of a dog is the fact that it is sandwiched between the first and third, which are both very well done save for a bizarre shoot-out sequence near the film's climax. It's hard to put your finger on why it doesn't work specifically...things happen, the plot advances, people die, but possibly it simply takes too much time to do so.

'Mad Dog' Maddox lets 'em have it!

Still, if you can make it through, your patience is well and truly rewarded with the third act, the highlight of which is surely Loki and the remaining survivor of the original team taking on a horde of zombies within the claustrophobic confines of the makeshift command centre, including a nifty escape into an attic that the likes of Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa would be proud of!

Overall, in terms of 'bang for your buck', it's safe to say the producers got more out than they put in. Aside from the sagging second act, this is really quite a respectable little movie. I've no doubt it could be a lot more polished overall if they had a bigger budget to play with, but as it is, and for the money that was spent, it's a creditable achievement. It's further differentiated from other films of the same budgetary ilk by some undeniable quality in terms of the music used, the impressive opening title sequence, and the CGI.

I believe this is the cover for the Asian market...it bears little resemblance to the film itself!

Refreshingly, the CGI is actually used fairly sparingly, which is quite a rarity these days. The only moments it is jarringly bad are the end of the opening chase sequence and a couple of the explosions at the film's finale. Other than that it is extremely well done, especially when one bears the miniscule budget in mind. You'll see a lot worse in one of the Sci-Fi channel's made-for-TV movies or an Asylum flick, for example (not to knock or disparage either of them in any way, just using them as a frame of reference).

The effective and judicious employment of the CGI could perhaps act as a metaphor for the film as a whole. It never makes the fatal mistake of trying to cram too much in or overreaching its limitations to the extent that it makes them too glaringly obvious. It's not bogged down by too many subplots or ancilliary characters, and whether this is due more to budgetary constraints or the filmmakers simply be very disciplined and trimming the unnecessary fat is ultimately irrelevant. In short, it works.

The DVD is not exactly overloaded with extras...there's a commentary track and scene access, and that's it. However, the commentary alone is worth more than its weight in gold (yes, I'm aware DVD commentaries have no physical weight per se, but I'm mixing metaphors here!). It's brutally honest, self-deprecating and hyper-critical, and fully acknowledges all of the problems with the film that I had identified while watching it. It also provides a lot of eye-opening insights into a number of things I hadn't noticed. Evers-Swindell states at the beginning that people who buy this DVD will fall into one of two groups: those with an interest in low-budget filmmaking, and those who will be taking the DVD back to the store tomorrow and asking for their money back. As you may have guessed, I class myself firmly as the former.

US cover, I believe...something of a '28 Days Later' riff if we're honest.

Truth be told, it's something of a low-budget filmmaking masterclass, so much so in fact that producer Stuart Fletcher is one of the feature interviewees/case studies in The Guerilla Filmmakers handbook, alongside such notables as Jake 'Razor Blade Smile/Evil Aliens/Doghouse' West, deltacinenomophile Neil 'Dog Soldiers/Descent/Doomsday' Marshall (Infestation cover blurbee, no less!), Edgar 'Shaun of The Dead/Hot Fuzz' Wright, the guys who produced Saw, Blair Witch, Open Water, and some guy called Christopher Nolan, whoever he is. That's some pretty fast company in anybody's book.

Perhaps Evers-Swindell is correct in his assertion regarding audience reaction, that 'Infestation' will prove to be the archetypal 'Marmite movie'...you'll either love it or you'll hate it. If you, like me, love no-budget genre cinema (which I'd assume is the reason you're here reading this) then you'll likely get a kick out of 'Infestation'.

On the other hand, if you prefer your movies in the multi-million dollar, overblown orgy of CGI with some gangsta rapper in the token black role contemporary Hollywood moviemaking paradigm, then 'Infestation' will come as something of a cinematic culture shock. You'd probably be better off waiting until the Hollywood braintrust tires (read: totally exhausts) of remaking/reimagining/remixing films and instead adopts the musical mixing technique known as the 'Mash Up' and applies said technique to 'Aliens' and 'Day Of The Dead'.

(While we're on the subject of throwing together film franchises, how much cooler would 'Alien vs. Predator' have been if they'd called the sequel with the hybrid creature 'Alienator', thus spawning a hybrid franchise and giving us a cooler name than 'Predalien'? Lighting it so people could actually see what was going on would have been a big plus too, I feel.)

In terms of value for money, I got my copy of 'Infestation' off of Ebay dirt cheap, so I feel it represents excellent value, especially given the gut-spilling commentary track. If you see it at a price you feel happy paying, my advice would be to go for it. At the moment, it seems many of the titles that were being distributed by the now defunct Blackhorse Entertainment are popping up for some pretty high prices simply due to the relative rarity factor, so you might have to do some digging to turf a copy up at a reasonable price. In my opinion, it is well worth the effort in doing so.

Failing that, 'Infestation' does sometimes crop up on Movies4Men late at night, but this is a cut version whereas the DVD presents the film in all its uncut and gory glory.

All told, it's another one that is going to be finding itself a permanent home on my 'keep' shelf (the Vatican Library of low budget genre cinema, I tell you!). If you have any interest in low budget movies and the makings thereof, then this one is an education and a half. You might also be interested in checking out the three-part 'Making Of Infestation' BTS (inexplicably not included on the DVD version I have) on Evers-Swindell's own YouTube page, although it's nowhere close to being as near to the knuckle as the commentary track...

LEFT FOR DEAD

2009-09-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

Running Time: 105 mins
Distributor: York Entertainment (US)
Website: Left For Dead
Directed By Ross Boyask
Written By Adrian Foiadelli
Produced By Phil Hobden

@Amazon.co.uk

Ask and ye shall receive! Having read of my difficulties in my review of 'Ten Dead Men' of getting the free download version of Left For Dead to play, the good people at Modern Life? have kindly provided me with a review copy.

In an ideal world, I would have watched Left For Dead (henceforth L4D) and Ten Dead Men (henceforth 10DM) in chronological order, and thus have been able to chart the progression and improvement between the two films. Sadly, it appears that the world we live in is far from ideal, so as per usual I've done things arse-about-facewards and watched them in reverse order.

The beauty of blogging is that I can go back and make retroactive amendments to my original 10DM review now that I have a slightly more informed perspective on it, so fortunately it doesn't make too much difference in the grander scheme of things, but I thought it fair to inform readers where I'm coming from in this respect.

Now, on with the review...

'Left For Dead' tells the tale of Williams (Glenn Salvage), a veritable killing machine in the employ of Hope City's criminal kingpin Kincaid (Adam Chapman). Williams has decided he wants to quit, but Kincaid decides to have his fellow assassins Dylan (Kevin Akehurst) and the trigger-happy psychotic Taylor (Adrian Foiadelli, more recently seen getting shanked with a screwdriver in 10DM's garage fight) retire him instead, and his retirement gift isn't going to be a gold carriage clock, but rather a lead enema.

Taylor...prone to going off on one.

As you might well imagine, Williams is none too taken with the idea of being shot full of holes, and thus makes good his escape from his would-be assassins (and former colleagues), but not before taking a round in the shoulder.

I really like this shot, good composition.

As if his day wasn't already going badly enough, he's then subsequently poisoned by his treacherous ex-lover Sonya (Vicki Vilas). As we will go on to see, there are no such things as 'old friends' in Hope City when you're on the wrong side of Kincaid.

We are then introduced to Kelso (Andy Prior), an up-and-coming kickboxer who somewhat unwisely chooses to rub Kincaid up the wrong way by refusing to take a dive in his fight. Kincaid sends Taylor and his thugs to break Kelso's fingers, thus effectively ending his career, and tells him to get out of town before he reaps some more lasting, or perhaps even permanent, consequences.

Again, there's an added significance to this scene because Taylor is an old friend of Kelso, and is thus the man selected to put Kincaid's offer on the table. When Kelso refuses and wins his fight, Taylor is again selected to be the messenger boy, but this time he has to redeem himself in the eyes of the enraged Kincaid, and in such a situation it soon becomes apparent that in Hope City old friendships count for nothing, or perhaps even less. It's a nice cameo of Kincaid's rule-by-fear approach in action...people fear Kincaid's thugs, and Kincaid's thugs fear him. Ergo, everybody fears Kincaid.

To add insult to literal injury, Kincaid's boys also brutally murder Kelso's promoter/mentor Roarke (PL Hobden, again getting reduced to a bloody pulp for art's sake) just for good measure, and with Taylor delivering the fatal coup de grace it effectively doubles Kelso's motivation to come after Kincaid's organisation and Taylor specifically.

Following a chance encounter whilst both seeking the highly dubious medical services of a no-questions-asked underworld surgeon, the two erstwhile heroes decide to team up and take down Kincaid and his criminal empire the only way they know how...with feet, fists, and any weapon that's handy. As you might readily expect, a wanton orgy of indiscriminate arse-kicking ensues.

Right off the bat, there's a nice contrast between the two main protagonists, and you can see it's intentionally done. Happily, it avoids the classic cliches of the buddy movie as Williams and Kelso never become 'buddies' or share some breakthrough 'moment'. They just have an uneasy alliance based on the old adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Aside from the differences in outward appearance (Williams: Long hair, beard, black suit; Kelso: Short hair, clean shaven, sportswear), there is also a difference in their respective moralities, with Kelso being reticent to kill or use drugs and Williams killing people as if it was second nature. This is nicely illustrated by a brief scene where Kelso takes him to task for killing Sonya, and Williams puts him straight about the gravity and reality of their situation. Besides, believe me when I say that the bitch had it coming anyway...

The first thing that strikes you about the content of the film itself is that whereas 10DM is largely an action movie with some martial arts elements, L4D is the other side of that proverbial coin. Yes, there is a fair bit of gunplay spread out over the course of the movie, but the onus is on martial arts of the leaping roundhouse kick variety rather than the sort of close-quarter brawls that viewers of 10DM or the Bourne Trilogy might be more familiar with. I know the latter is more 'realistic' in the minds of a lot of people, but it is nowhere near to being quite as cinematic.

Part of this prevalence of a more classic style of screen fighting is due to the internal reality of the film. It's a martial arts film that doesn't pretend to be anything else nor make an apology for being what it is.

For example, there's a scene where Taylor has his gun snatched from him after sneaking up on a kickboxing foe, who then proceeds to cockily toss it away and instead engage him in hand to hand combat. If this kind of thing has you jumping out of your seat, tearing your hair out and screaming at the TV to 'Just bloody shoot him!', then L4D probably isn't the film for you. Whilst we're on the subject, I'd also probably try to avoid watching any James Bond films as well, as they also have a habit of putting Bond and his comely companion in some sort of elaborate-yet-easily-escapable deathtrap peril (usually right after the villain has boasted to him about all the details of his nefarious masterplan) rather than just shooting him in the head and being done with it. Let's just say that people like Scott Evil would most certainly not approve.

The internal reality of the film is also graphically displayed when Williams takes on Kincaid. I'm not going to give away the ending, but you'll either love it or hate it, and it tends to suggest the influence of certain fighting video games, as do other aspects of the film which I will address in due course.

The other reason the fights are bigger in terms of scale is because there is room to have the fights with the big moves, rather than the somewhat more claustrophobic locations of 10DM. Indeed, even the outdoor fights in 10DM are relatively constrained and close-quarter in comparison.

Kelso takes out two at once

Unlike 10DM, which by and large has 'feature' one on one fights with identifiable characters as Ryan works his way through his list, L4D has a whole lot of nameless henchmen getting the stuffing beaten out of them. This allows for a lot of one-hit 'set pieces' which serve to both drive home the abilities of Williams and Kelso, and mark out those foes who don't go down in one to be more serious, credible threats with their own impressive arsenal of moves and manouvres.

The other key difference with L4D's fights is one of motion and, perhaps more importantly, progression.

Dylan prepares to take on Williams in their final battle...or is it?

For example, Williams assault on the dojo (recalling Bruce Lee's visit to the Karate school in Fist Of Fury) progresses from being a one-against-many brawl to a rooftop one-on-one with Dylan, and I for one certainly enjoy fight scenes which progress and evolve in terms of the challenges facing the hero (number of opponents increasing/decreasing, the gaining/losing of a weapon, a hostile/advantageous environment, etc.). One of the more familiar examples I could point to would be the House of Blue Leaves sequence from Kill Bill Vol. 1. The challenge faced by 'The Bride' is constantly changing (different types/levels of fighters, different weapons, different amounts of fighters), as is the environment (thanks to some clever lighting tricks and some fun on the balcony) and that's what keeps it fresh and interesting. Only the final battle of 10DM has this progressive quality, but due to the relatively brief and largely mismatched fights, it never gets to be fully developed as one might hope it would be.

Happily, one gets this same sense of progress in both spatial and storytelling terms in a number L4D's fight sequences, and I for one appreciate the variety. Whether it's the exterior to interior of the opening sequence, the dojo to rooftop fight, or the fight to reach Kincaid, the key sequences have this quality, and thus allow the action to advance the story rather than hold it up.

Indeed, in many respects, the final assault on Kincaid's HQ is like Bruce Lee's 'Game of Death' on amphetamines, especially after the swathes of low-level lackeys have all been disposed of.

Williams takes on Kincaid's henchman

Again, like with Williams and Kelso, each of the significant 'feature' foes is nicely differentiated from the other (and from the masses of faceless henchmen) by some means, be it personality, mode of dress, fighting style, choice of weapon or even race/gender. It's the same clever trick used so well in Predator, where each member of the unit has their own subtle little modification to their uniform (headwear, sleeve length, etc.), different weapons (grenade launcher, minigun, etc.) or character trait (constant shaving, tobacco chewing, joke telling, pendant rubbing). In short, it creates slightly more developed characters without the need to sacrifice running time to accomodate scenes of explicit characterisation or backstory. L4D wisely does this from the very beginning, as despite being universally clad in all black, the trio of Taylor, Dylan and Williams are easily distinguishable from one another by their weapons of choice, (namely guns, swords, and bare hands respectively) and their respective approaches and demeanors in combat.

These more distinguished feature villains are what the Playstation generation kids might refer to as 'End of Level Guardians' (namely Williams' former partners in crime Dylan and Taylor, Kincaid's tazer and balisong-wielding henchman, a not-quite-so-criminally-underused Cecily Fay, and of course the Big Boss himself).

Proof that you can't keep a good villain dow...Dylan vs. Williams Redux

To continue the videogame metaphor further, it might work best to try and imagine L4D as a sort of live-action version of something like Final Fight or Double Dragon and you'll be getting pretty close to the mark.

(Actually, on second thoughts, forget the part about imagining a live-action version of Double Dragon. They did that already, and it made me seriously reappraise the merits of Uwe Boll's videogame adaptions. We're taking worse than Super Mario Bros. bad here...but, on the plus side, it has inspired a generation of amateur filmmakers to make good on their boast that they 'could do a better Double Dragon movie than that piece of shit!', and judging by some of their efforts, they were right, too...so much so that I'm going to have to do a post on fan films sometime soon!).

You know, now that I think about it, the Final Fight comparison suddenly becomes a lot more plausible when the two martial arts heroes draft in the powerfully-built (and slightly older) brawler Loader (Adam Hawkins). He's like the Haggar to Williams and Kelso's Guy and Cody respectively. For example...

Haggar cleans house with a double clothesline...

...as does Loader.

Haggar puts a lifting chokehold on some chick...

...as does Loader again!

Having said that, nobody's daughter/fiance has been kidnapped, Loader is not the Mayor of Hope or Metro City, and the villain isn't a wheelchair-bound millionaire/crossbow enthusiast, so perhaps I'm reading a little bit too much into it. Then again, Kelso does have his hands all taped up, just like Cody...also, there's an occasional computer-generated map showing our heroes' progress (which FF also has), and there's a Metro City too? Hmmm...

I've seen various reviewers remark that it has a 'comic book' sensibility to it, but to my eye it is actually about the nearest thing in spirit to a 'video game movie'(and by video game, I'm talking specifically of the clasic 2-D side-scrolling beat 'em up model) that I have seen, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. It's not trying to be a videogame or pay lip service to the idea (Unlike such smug toss as the pov sequence in doom). I mean instead in terms of clear, linear progression...of fighting in order to advance the plotline and progress to a goal, opponent or new level, with Kincaid sitting at the very top of metaphorical tree, which in reality is actually the top floor of a rather forboding high rise building.

Of the fights themselves, there's something of a showreel element. If someone can do a backflip, then they're putting it in rather than constricting the performers to a set fighting style or set of moves. Kelso, for example, has a neat line in launching himself off of objects like cars, walls or benches into a leaping spinning roundhouse kick, to devastating effect.

Kelso gets some airtime via the hood of the car

It's used at least three times that I counted, but I have no problem with the repetition. I'd rather see people doing what they know they can do well instead of doing something half-baked and thoroughly unconvincing.

Kelso launches into another one of his trademark kicks.

The key element for me is that it looks good every time he does it, as does Salvage's trademark kicking combo. In short, there's plenty of highlight reel stuff mixed in with the more mundane moves, as well as various other set pieces (like the knock-the-guy-into-the-transformer-substation electrocution or Dylan using the long grass as camofluage) that obviously weren't improvised on the spot. My favourite would have to be an unsuspecting smoking hoodlum getting his neck broken by Williams. As his lifeless body slumps to the floor, we see his cigarette packet with the legend 'Smoking Kills' emblazoned upon it, and the Benson & Hedges logo has been craftily altered to read Boyask & Hobden. It's a very nice touch, and one that certainly caught my attention.

The desire on the part of the filmmakers to constantly punch well above their weight and transcend the limitations of their budget is apparent throughout. With a film like this, providing you have a handful of people of the requisite proficiency in martial arts, then you can put together a number of fights with only a small group of performers. Again, just like the relatively small-scale 'Game Of Death', you don't need a cast of thousands to successfully execute a progressive fighting/revenge movie, especially if you're working on a tight budget.

For starters, there's seemingly a small army of people involved in this movie as low-level hoodlums who get killed off by the bucketload. I'm sure there must be some 'recycling' somewhere (dressing the same actor differently and using them again), but if there is, it's not particularly obvious.

Another particularly eye-catching sequence involves a gang of motorcyclists being called in to hunt down the escaping Williams. When asked how many to send, an exasperated Dylan demands 'All of them!' We're teased at first by being shown three of them, which seems like an ample number to do the job, but looks a little low-rent if three constitutes 'all of them'. However, it is shortly revealed that there's actually enough bikers to hold a pretty substantial motocross rally. It's a cinematic sucker-punch wherein the filmmakers draw you in, lower your expectations, and then completely blow them away.

Just like the sizeable swathes of hoodlums, it's a bloody impressive sight which serves to further distance L4D from the sort of "3 men and a dog" aura of fiscally-enforced minimalism which tends to haunt some lower budget productions, British or otherwise. It's all very well and good to portray Kincaid as the iron-fisted ruler of an immense criminal empire, but nothing backs that idea up quite so well as actually physically displaying that he can bring a small army into play if he feels like it.

Obviously, it is not without a few faults. I'm not a fan of digital blood effects, nor the opening title sequence & episodic nature of the story with chapter titles a la Tarantino, but that's just me.

On the other hand, I think digital muzzle flashes are brilliant because you can stage full-on shootouts without all the unnecessary noise and disturbance, as they do in L4D's opening sequence. Having said that, there's a digital ricochet effect in the scene where Williams is escaping from Dylan and Taylor which is so weak I'm rather surprised they left it in.

Again, Director Ross Boyask isn't backward in coming forwards about the films that have influenced him and including a little nod here and there. I won't detail them all (spotting them for yourself is half the fun, after all), but the most obvious has to be Kincaid's introduction being given 'The Marsellus Wallace Treatment'*.

(*By 'The Marsellus Wallace Treatment', I don't mean forcibly sodomised in the basement of a pawn shop, but rather the fact that he is only shown from behind for the opening portion of the movie)

As per my review of 10DM, Boyask again excels at action sequences rather than people sitting around talking and so forth. The good news is that this is a very action-heavy film, ergo we get a lot of superlative fight sequences, which is what you want from a martial arts film.

As you might expect from a low budget production, the standard of acting varies a great deal. However, one compensation L4D can offer is that it's not too dialogue-heavy, plus if someone's acting really gets on your nerves, you know they're not going to be talking (or walking) anymore after Williams and Kelso get through with them.

Two things that really stuck out for me with regards to the acting were as follows.

I expected Glenn Salvage to be a lot, lot worse. I've not yet seen 'The Silencer' (check the trailer out HERE), but the very concept of it, with Salvage being rendered mute by a gunshot wound early in the film, seems to send out the message that 'this guy is great at martial arts but utter toss with dialogue'. Fortunately, it seems I have jumped to the wrong conclusion, as I've seen a lot worse.

Secondly, having watched the trailer of L4D, I had already seen bits of dialogue scenes which had me thinking 'That's a bit of a clunker' or 'They can't act for toffee'. Maybe you will have had the exact same thoughts. Bizarrely, when you watch those snippets in their proper context, most of them actually work quite nicely.

Having said that, I didn't come into this movie expecting Branagh-esque displays of outrageous thespianism, and nor should you.

Everyone has to start somewhere, though, and low budget films like L4D provide an important opportunity for people to get their foot in the proverbial door and cut their metaphorical teeth. The biggest example in L4D would have to be none other than Joey Ansah. One minute he's getting the crap beaten out of him by Glenn Salvage in the dojo fight, the next thing you know he's getting killed with a bathtowel by Matt Damon in 'The Bourne Ultimatum'. That's showbiz, baby!

When all is said and done, on just about any individual aspect you might care to pick, be it acting, effects, cinematography, etc., L4D is plainly inferior to 10DM (as you would naturally expect...progression not regression), yet perversely the sum is greater than the constituent parts, so much so that given the choice, I'd probably rather watch L4D over 10DM.

Perhaps it's because L4D is more obviously low budget when compared to the more illustrious 10DM (which benefits greatly from the flatters-to-deceive production value afforded to it by the various unique locations employed throughout) that I'm more than willing to cut this one some slack.

Despite being set in a desolate, crime-ridden hellhole, it's overall a much less bleak and nihilistic film than 10DM. There's a little more humour, for starters, mostly provided by Dylan who has all the best lines (although my favourite has to be Taylor's "I can't believe you made me take my fucking coat off!"), but also in scenes such as the one where Kelso demonstrates to Loader how he plans to fight with his badly damaged hands, or the the knowing look given before a nameless thug is electrocuted in the opening battle.

The relative simplicity of the storyline (Introduce Williams, Introduce Kelso, Team up and take down Kincaid) means that it flows a little more readily than the multiple characters and storylines of 10DM. Less apparently is more, after all.

The other key distinction is the fact that the plotline is entirely linear, save for some very brief flashbacks featuring Williams' now-deceased wife (cleverly done using leading man Salvage's real-life wedding video. Now that's what I call production value!), and a sequence wherein Taylor is shown to be a cold-blooded killer, but we knew that already. 10DM, on the other hand, is largely non-linear with many flashbacks. As such, there are no real distractions from the general thrust of the plot. The 'softest' part of L4D in terms of advancing the plot would most likely be the sequence detailing our heroes healing up and getting ready to take on Kincaid, and that's wisely condensed down into a brief montage. Other than that, the film literally flies by. 'Fast paced and hard hitting' sounds like a marketing cliche, but in L4D's case it's extremely appropriate.

So, if you have the opportunity, I'd advise you grab this one first. I just like it better. It's markedly less polished or professional than 10DM, but it's ultimately a lot more fun and easy-going. If you're looking for practical and realistic, look elsewheres. If you want a fighting-for-fighting's-sake low budget martial arts rampage, l4d delivers the goods in impressive style.

It's hardly appropriate for me to comment on value for money as I got it absolutely free. My version bears the logo of the widely-despised York Entertainment, so I assume it was the US version. How the current or subsequent UK versions may differ in terms of running times and extra features, I couldn't say, but it would really have to go some to top 10DM in terms of extra features. These BTS features do exist, as you can see on producer Phil Hobden's YouTube Channel, but whether they are or will be included on a DVD version remains to be seen (by me, at least).

I think the most telling comment I can make on value for money would be that I am now resolved to find a retail copy to replace my current screener version with. Yes, I'm the kind of completist anorak who likes cases, sleeve art and all that jazz rather than MP3s, blank disks or portable hard drives for my media. I'm so old school I still buy CDs. This movie is definitely one I want to see added to my collection in the proper manner. In short, a keeper with plenty of replay value.

SPLATTER MOVIES: Breaking The Last Taboo Of The Screen

2009-09-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

By John McCarty
Published by Columbus Books
197 pages, B&W
Dimensions: H=27.6cm, W=21.2cm, D=1.3cm
SRP: ?
@Amazon.com

Who can resist a book with a title as unabashed and unapologetic as this? Not me, hence the review!

As some of you may have already guessed, the subject of the book is cinematic splatter in all its visceral and gory glory. But just what is it that constitutes 'splatter', and from whence did this blood-soaked subgenre suddenly spring? These are the questions McCarty sets out to answer.

Per McCarty's reckoning, splatter flicks are the cinematic continuance and indeed erstwhile progeny of the notorious 'Grand Guignol' theatre shows.

The net is thrown wide, roping such movies as 'The Wild Bunch' and 'Bonnie & Clyde' into the splatter camp, even though it might not occur to ardent contemporary gorehounds to classify them as such.

One 'problem' the book does have, should you choose to view it as such, is the fact that it is quite dated (Published in 1984, which means portions of it may have been conceived and written in 1983 or earlier). However, this is something of a double-edged sword when one considers that McCarty's opinions of the films featured within are untainted by the same influences that prey on contemporary critics. A notable example is that this book is post-Alien (which he absolutely trashes!) but pre-Aliens, so his opinion of Alien is in no way coloured by the subsequent sequels and burgeoning franchise.

The same is again true with the author's approach to George A. Romero, from a post-'Dawn'/pre-'Day' (and thus obviously pre-'Land' and 'Diary' and whatever else 'Of The Dead' that Romero might yet furnish us with) perspective. Thus more time and attention is lavished upon some of the more little known and little seen aspects of the Romero back catalogue, such as 'The Crazies' and 'Martin'. You'd be surprised how many kids these days think Romero not only invented the zombie film, but also never deviated from the genre either. Whilst Romero's name will always (justly) be a byword for zombie cinema, it shouldn't be at the expense of some of his equally enjoyable non-zombie flicks.

It's a somewhat bewildering paradox when one takes the time to consider it, but in order to see these filmmakers and their films through new eyes, we are in fact best served to view them through 'old eyes'. That which should in theory be dated and stale is actually fresh and different. I don't think McCarty is making a point to be purposefully contrary, rather he is simply voicing his opinion without a view towards the adulteration thereof to appease the audience at large.

Likewise, he also gives Dario Argento short shrift (a capital crime in my household!), and makes brutally short work of both Lucio Fulci and Luigi 'Lewis Coates' Cozzi. If McCarty's corpse should one day turn up floating in the Tiber, I wouldn't be too surprised. Hell, I might even be partly responsible...

The book is ordered in a loosely chronological fashion, but the path from splatter's past to present has some interesting diversions along the way, namely chapter length interviews with such leading lights of the genre as David Cronenberg, Tom Savini, Herschell Gordon Lewis and an illuminating behind-the-scenes insight (both artistically and commercially) of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre courtesy of Ed Neal.

It's a nice read because it's different. I don't agree with everything he says, but I admire and respect a man who's prepared to come out and say what he thinks rather than what he thinks he's supposed to say. McCarty is most definitely the former of the two.

I also like the fact that it is dated. Every book detailing an ongoing phenomenon (such as film production) is immediately 'dated' from the moment it leaves the printing press, and will only get more and more dated with each passing day as successive slates of new films are released year after year. It's inevitable, but a book as significantly dated as this offers an absolutely enthralling slice of cinematic history, even for those of us reading on with the benefit of 20/20 foresight.

In lieu of the smaller field of choices available in terms of what could constitute splatter back then as opposed to now, it allows some lesser-discussed films to get a little bit of attention. It's a brave man who dedicates an entire chapter of such a book entirely to Sam Peckinpah and The Wild Bunch rather than some outlandish zombie gorefest, but McCarty more than justifies the inclusion of it, and in doing so widens the range of exactly what may or may not be considered 'splatter' far beyond the more explicitly codified and homogenised understanding of the term we seem to have succumbed to nowadays.

The other drawback this book has (and again, one it can hardly be blamed for) is that it is not particularly easy to come by, and usually carries a hefty price premium with it. I got my lightly battered copy off of Ebay dirt cheap, as per usual, but I didn't realise just how cheap I got it for until I starting seeing a few subsequent auctions and prices from resellers on Amazon. It represents superb value for money at the price I paid, but I've seen some folk asking in excess of $50 for it. I'd probably recommend picking up one of McCarty's newer and slightly more readily available books first and seeing if you like the cut of his literary jib before you make your mind up to spend big money on a B&W softback. I'm very happy with mine, but whether I would have been less happy having paid a lot more is up for discussion. One thing I do know is that I'm in no hurry to part with it, so it's going on the keepshelf!

@Amazon.com

14:59, MEGAN FOX

2009-09-18T02:36:00.000-07:00

14:59 is a new, occasional feature wherein we spotlight people whose 15 minutes of fame are soon to be up (or damned well should be).

In this episode: Megan Fox...take it away, disgruntled Transformers crew members!

This is an open letter to all Michael Bay fans. We are three crew members that have worked with Michael for the past ten years. Last week we read the terrible article with inflammatory, truly trashing quotes by the Ms. Fox about Michael Bay. This letter is to set a few things straight.

Yes, Megan has great eyes, a tight stomach we spray with glycerin, and an awful silly Marilyn Monroe tattoo plastered on her arm that we cover up to keep the moms happy.

Michael found this shy, inexperienced girl, plucked her out of total obscurity thus giving her the biggest shot of any young actresses' life. He told everyone around to just trust him on his choice. He granted her the starring role in Transformers, a franchise that forever changed her life; she became one of the most googled and oogled women on earth. She was famous! She was the next Angelina Jolie, hooray! Wait a minute, two of us worked with Angelina – second thought – she’s no Angelina. You see, Angelia is a professional.

We know this quite intimately because we’ve had the tedious experience of working with the dumb-as-a-rock Megan Fox on both Transformers movies. We've spent a total of 12 months on set making these two movies.

We are in different departments; we can’t give our names because sadly doing so in Hollywood could lead to being banished from future Paramount work. One of us touches Megan’s panties, the other has the often shitty job of pulling Ms. Sourpants out of her trailer, while another is near the Panaflex camera that helps to memorialize the valley girl on film.

Megan has the press fooled. When we read those magazines we wish we worked with that woman. Megan knows how to work her smile for the press. Those writers should try being on set for two movies, sadly she never smiles. The cast, crew and director make Transformers a really fun and energetic set. We’ve traveled around the world together, so we have never understood why Megan was always such the grump of the set?

When facing the press, Megan is the queen of talking trailer trash and posing like a porn star. And yes we’ve had the unbearable time of watching her try to act on set, and yes, it's very cringe-able. So maybe, being a porn star in the future might be a good career option. But make-up beware, she has a paragraph tattooed to her backside (probably due her rotten childhood) -- easily another 45 minutes in the chair!

So when the three of us caught wind of Ms Fox, pontificating yet again in some publication (like she actually has something interesting to say) blabbing her trash mouth about a director whom we three have grown to really like. She compared working with Michael, to “working with Hitler”. We actually don’t think she knows who Hitler is by the way. But we wondered how she doesn’t realize what a disgusting, fully uneducated comment this was? Well, here let’s get some facts straight.

Say what you want about Michael – yes at times he can be hard, but he's also fun, and he challenges everyone for a reason – he simply wants people to bring their ‘A’ game. He comes very prepared, knows exactly what he wants, involves the crew and expects everyone to follow through with his or her best, and that includes the actors. He’s one of the hardest working directors out there.

He gets the best from his crews, many of whom have worked with him for 15 years. And yes, he’s loyal, one of the few directors we’ve encountered who lowered his fee by millions to keep Transformers in the United States and California, so he could work with his own crew.

Megan says that Transformers was an unsafe set? Come on Megan, we know it is a bit more strenuous then the playground at the trailer park, but you don’t insult one of the very best stunt and physical effects teams in the business! Not one person got hurt!

And who is the real Megan Fox? She is very different than the academy nominee and winning actors we’ve all worked around. She’s as about ungracious a person as you can ever fathom. She shows little interest in the crew members around her. We work to make her look good in every way, but she's absolutely never appreciative of anyone’s hard work. Never a thank you. All the crewmembers have stopped saying hi to Ms. Princess because she never says hello back. It gets tiring. Many think she just really hates the process of being an actress.

Megan has been late to the sets many times. She goes through the motions that make her exude this sense of misery. We’ve heard the A.D’s piped over the radio that Megan won’t walk from her trailer until John Turturro walks first! John’s done seventy-five movies and she’s made two!

Never expect Megan to attend any of the 15 or so crew parties like all the other actors have. And then there's the classless night she blew off The Royal Prince of Jordan who made a special dinner for all the actors. She doesn’t know that one of the grips' daughters wanted to visit their daddy’s work to meet Megan, but he wouldn’t let them come because he told them “she is not nice."

The press certainly doesn’t know her most famous line. On our first day in Egypt, the Egyptian government wouldn’t let us shoot because of a permit problem as the actors got ready in make up at the Four Seasons Hotel. Michael tried to make the best of it; he wanted to take the cast and crew on a private tour of the famous Giza pyramids. God hold us witness, Megan said, "I can’t believe Michael is fucking forcing us to go to the fucking pyramids!" I guess this is the “Hitler guy” she is referring to.

So this is the Megan Fox you don’t get to see. Maybe she will learn, but we figure if she can sling insults, then she can take them too. Megan really is a thankless, classless, graceless, and shall we say unfriendly bitch. It's sad how fame can twist people, and even sadder that young girls look up to her. If only they knew who they're really looking up to.

But ‘fame’ is fleeting. We, being behind the scenes, seen em’ come and go. Hopefully Michael will have Megatron squish her character in the first ten minutes of Transformers 3. We can tell you that will make the crew happy!

-Loyal Transformers Crew

HOLLYWOOD FAIL: TRINITY

2009-09-17T16:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's the third installment of Hollywood Fail, and this time out I'm going to be tackling a very topical subject: product placement.

As UK readers will know, the laws in the UK have recently been relaxed so as to allow US-style product placement in TV shows. Part of me thinks the change is due to the relatively perilous financial situations of the big three commercial broadcasters (ITV, Channel 4 and Five respectively), and is seen as a quick fix solution to the plummeting advertising revenues.

Of course, this rather conveniently overlooks the fact that if you can't attract paying advertisers (due to the poor quality and thus low audience numbers of your show), then you probably won't be able to attract product placements either. Speaking personally, as a heterosexual male, I really can't think of a show on the ITV network that I can be bothered to watch, unless they have a football match or occasional movie I fancy seeing, so if I were trying to advertise a product aimed at 18-35 males, which show would I do it on? I'm stumped.

Critics of the idea believe it will lead to TV dramas becoming nothing more than one giant advert, somewhat akin to nightmarish future envisioned so capably in The Truman Show.

The best example of product placement would have to be the Bond movies, which, up until recently has done so in a fairly subtle manner, and even at their most blatant they're still a damn sight more subtle than the competition. However, there are those movies and TV shows which also get it horribly wrong, and prove the fiercest critics of product placement to be absolutely right.

For me, the award winner has to be Blade: Trinity, in which we see Jessica Biel downloading songs from her MacBook onto her iPod, as we are told that she likes to listen to her iPod while she hunts vampires.

Just take a second and allow the abject stupidity of this statement to sink in. You're going off to hunt down these deadly creatures that stealthily stalk around these dark, shadowy lairs, and you're going to do whilst negating one of your five senses which could conceivably alert you to their presence and/or location.

I'm guessing Nike passed on the opportunity to be her blindfold sponsor?

Jessica Biel is ridiculously hot, and as such I feel I could probably forgive her anything. Anything, that is, except this. It's stuff like this that Meat Loaf was going on about when he said he'd do anything for love, but he won't do that. Even her nude striptease and candlewax sequence in "Powder Blue"(totally NSFW, but totally worth it at the same time...!) seems like scant penance by comparison.

Sadly, it seems there are things that Hollywood also isn't prepared to do for love (of the artform), but there are plenty of things they are prepared to do for money, like completely violating any semblance of common sense and cinematic reality to accomodate an ill-thought out yet probably lucrative product placement.

Of course, we cannot let this topic go by without reflecting upon this scene from Wayne's World, in which they spoof product placement sellouts whilst actually being product placement sellouts themselves. In effect, Myers and Carvey are laughing with us, but at us too...and getting paid handsomely for it in the process. For me, it's the Alpha and Omega of the product placement debate.

UPDATE/PREVIEW

2009-09-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

Just letting everybody know what's going to be coming up on the blog shortly.

BOOK REVIEWS:

Bullets, Bombs and Babes: The Films Of Andy Sidaris
Filmmaking On The Fringe by Maitland McDonagh
Monsters And Mad Scientists by Andrew Tudor
Splatter Movies by John McCarty

MOVIE REVIEWS:

Ten Dead Men (Dir: Ross Boyask)
Infestation (Dir: Ed Evers-Swindell)

I'm still plugging my way through 'Nightmare USA', but as is customary, I won't post a review until I've actually read it from cover to cover. If you're wondering though, thus far it's solid gold. I've also got Crystal Lake Memories, Blood And Black Lace, and Eiji Tsuburaya: Master Of Monsters on the proverbial back burner too.

Remember, if you're a producer or publisher or whatever, amateur or pro, that wants their product reviewed, just drop me an email at occulusorbusyahoocom (insert the "@" and "." respectively) and we'll take it from there.

I'm tempted to post my wishlist of stuff I'm really interested in getting hold of, but fear I would run the risk of alerting people to cool stuff and thus invariably end up in bidding wars against them on Ebay. Yes, I really am that paranoid.

MORE ORGAN-TRAFFICKING FUN & HIJINKS!

2009-09-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

As those of you who read my urgent kidney appeal will know, I was busily exploring the possibility of selling human organs to raise the necessary funds to secure myself a copy of 'The Bava Bible', AKA Tim Lucas'"All The Colors Of The Dark", a subscription to Filmrage, and perhaps pick up a few of those out of print FAB Press books (which, somewhat perversely, are always the ones I really want on the subjects I am really interested in) which tend to go for obscene amounts on Ebay, even in the midst of a recession. (Was it you who won that auction for "Beyond Terror" on Ebay last night? If so, I hate you.)

Well, it looks like a gap has opened up in the human organ market with the arrest of the New Jersey Rabbis, who in addition to organ trafficking also hand their hands in money laundering too, which has me seriously rethinking my strategy. Sure, the ill-gotten gains from organ trafficking are surely rich pickings, but I can see the need to diversify my income streams. In addition to the above publications, I am also putting the finishing touches to my planned trip to Rome and subsequent shopping trip/all-out assault at Profondo Rosso which I foresee as being best summed up by one of the contributions of the esteemed Ennio Morricone to the soundtrack of one of the most unfalteringly groovy movies of all time, Danger: Diabolik!. Yes, we are talking the proverbial Money Orgy here, baby!

Anyway, whilst it's always nice to see one's erstwhile competitors come unstuck, I found this sordid tale to be doubly interesting because one of the morality-challenged Rabbis bears more than a passing resemblance to the vampire character played by maverick director (and Asylum alumnus) Leigh Scott in "Dracula's Curse" (appears at about the 26 second mark in the trailer). Beady eyes, long white hair, daft hat, slightly disheveled-looking...it's all there!

(Leigh Scott is on the right)

Will we see a new wave of horror movies in the as-yet unexplored Rabbinical organ-stealing subgenre? Anything's got to be better than the endless procession of insipid and uninspiring remakes that currently blight our screens, large and small.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of "Dracula's Curse"(is it just me, or does this title sound unfortunately like a coarse euphemism for a lady's monthly troubles?), here's a video of one of the stars (Eliza Swenson) performing under her nom de plume of 'Victoria Mazze' with her band The Divine Madness.
To my eye, she resembles a slightly hotter version of Eliza Dushku. More clearly delineated facial bone structure and so on.

Now, who wants to buy a lightly spoiled kidney then?

TEN DEAD MEN

2009-08-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

Running Time: 87 minutes
Distributor:Brit Films
Website:Ten Dead Men site
Director: Ross Boyask
Writer:Chris Regan
Producer:Phil Hobden

Amazon.co.uk

Please be advised that this review relates solely to the UK version

"Ten Dead Men" is the latest film from the duo of Phil Hobden and Ross Boyask under their Modern Life? banner. I'd like to be able to tell you something about their previous film 'Left For Dead', (check out the bone-crunching Trailer!) but I haven't been able to get hold of the DVD and watch it. They're even giving it away as a free and copletely legal download HERE to help promote the release of "Ten Dead Men", but as yet, having downloaded it, I am unable to get it to play on either my PC or Mac regardless of what player I use, be it Windows, Quicktime, iTunes, DivX etc. Even VLC was having none of it, and that plays just about anything. As is customary with any sort of computer problem, I'm blaming Bill Gates. Even for the fact that it won't play on my Mac. Die, Gates, Die!!!

Obviously, it seems God does not want me to watch "Left For Dead". However, even The Almighty himself has been unable to prevent me getting my hands on "Ten Dead Men", so here's my review.

I've been wanting to check this one out for a while now. If you're going to do low budget films, it's common knowledge that you do a zombie or slasher flick because they're relatively easy to do. Action and martial arts films, on the other hand, are not so easy to do. Any idiot can shuffle about and groan whilst wearing zombie makeup, but leaping roundhouse kicks and the like take a little bit more effort. You can recruit your family and friends as zombies, but probably not as backflipping, axe-kicking ninjas It's a lot easier to choreograph a zombie attack or some cheerleader getting stabbed than it is to choreograph a halfway decent fight scene, which is why you get more low budget zombie and slasher flicks (just look at Zone Horror after 10pm!) than you do low budget martial arts flicks. As such, it's refreshing to see something a little bit different, and this is coming from someone who absolutely adores low budget zombie and slasher flicks.

It's pretty much a standard revenge flick, with the ostensible and remarkably taciturn hero Ryan (Brendan Carr) tracking down and taking out the people who killed his girlfriend (Poojah Shah, ex-Eastenders apparently, but not watching soaps I wouldn't know...) and left him for dead. Astute readers may have already gleaned that people being left for dead is something of a recurring theme or 'leitmotif' for the Modern Life? boys.

As you might well imagine, copious amounts of brutality and bloodshed ensue as Ryan works his way through the list of assorted lowlife scum in a series of impressively-executed action scenes with a number of inventive little twists. Up until "Ten Dead Men", I'd never seen a film where a guy smears a handful of piss and urinal cake into the eyes of his assailant to temporarily blind him and escape his clutches, but I have now! I guess we just have to thank our lucky stars that the writer didn't think to pay homage to John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" (totally NSFW, and you will probably regret clicking the link for the rest of your life unless you really enjoyed that movie with the 2 girls and 1 cup!) and have someone leave a convenient floater in one of the stalls.

Carr (with the aid of some stunt doubles) certainly distinguishes himself in the action scenes, throwing in a wallrunning flip and somersault kick amongst others. Sadly, the fact that his role is almost entirely dialogue-free means he is left with little to do inbetween other than pull a variety of facial expressions to communicate to the viewer his state of mind. This is all very well and good when all that is required is to stand around and look moody, but there are also times when it just doesn't work. Frankly, it's not an enviable situation for an actor of any standing to find themselves in, but it is the situation he finds himself in with this particular movie. Still, like a porno movie, nobody really watches movies like this for the dialogue. Instead, they watch it to see people get injured and/or killed in a variety of new and inventive ways and in as graphic a manner as is possible, and it is on this front that "Ten Dead Men" happily delivers.

For pure oddity value alone, you've got former "Steps" star Lee Latchford-Evans getting garroted in a car park (could this perhaps be the birth of a new cinematic sub-genre wherein minor celebrities or reality TV show rejects are graphically killed onscreen? Might be quite a lucrative market for this, I think...most people only watched the remake of "House Of Wax" so they could see Paris Hilton get killed, after all), and apparently he had a concert to perform later on in the day with his new band "The Latch". Now that's what I call suffering for your art!

(Incidentally, Lee's former Steps bandmate, the now-brunette Fay Tozer (the really, really fit one) has recently begun to dip her toes into the acting pool with an appearance in Xavier Leret's 'Flidsploitation' epic Kung Fu Flid which is apparently being renamed "Unarmed And Dangerous" for the upcoming DVD release. You can watch the movie in streaming format via Film Lounge, but given that I live out in the sticks and my internet connection is less than stellar, I believe I'll wait for the DVD. Coincidentally, Kung Fu Flid also credits none other than L4D and 10DM's Phil Hobden as a producer...it seems that if arse is getting kicked on a Low-To-No-budget independent feature in the UK, then it's a surefire bet that this man will be involved in some way, shape or form. Or capacity, even, if you prefer.)

Speaking of minor celebrities and the like, the fun doesn't stop there, as Chico Slimani (Yes, that's "Ten Dead Men" star JC Mac as the interviewer...he's also Chico's real-life brother and agent too, apparently!) makes a brief cameo as himself whilst Axel is flipping through the TV channels, as do UK pornstar Mark Sloan and Hungarian saucepot Kat Varga (most certainly NSFW!), doing what pornstars normally do. I know which one I'd rather watch!

Away from the quasi-celebrity cameos, we swiftly move on to a terrific tear-up in garage, where Ryan sets about dispatching multiple assailants as he tries to get to Stone, played by producer Phil Hobden under his stage name of 'PL Hobden'. Credit where credit's due...most of the time, when a producer casts themselves in their own flick, it's usually a starring role as the coolest/baddest MF'er on the block who can easily outfight guys much bigger and better than him, has all the best lines, car, wardrobe, and all the best looking women throwing themselves at him. Thankfully, Hobden steers well clear of this and just gets the crap beaten out of him like everyone else.

Indeed, if there's one overriding complaint I do have with this movie, it's that everybody gets the crap beaten out of them by Ryan, and probably a little bit too easily for my liking. You never get the sense that he's in any real danger of being defeated or that he has bitten off more than he can chew, even when the gang draft in some outside help with prior knowledge of how he operates. Again, the rapidfire succession of fairly short fight scenes does nothing to help dispell this perception, however erroneous it may or may not be. Considering he's already been fairly well worked over from the beating he's been given at the start of the movie, you never get the sense that the injuries are truly starting to take their toll on him as his quest for vengeance progresses.

True, the filmmakers have sought to address this near-invincibility by depicting Ryan constantly popping some form of illicit pills to keep himself going, but rather than having him run out of pills sometime before the end and thus be forced to continue his one man mission and contend with his own mortality/injuries at the same time, he instead runs out at the very end, when there is only one bad guy left and one that is not particularly physically intimidating either. It's another golden opportunity missed to graft on a little sub-plot and add another challenge for the hero to (somehow) overcome.

The standout fight of the film, for me, is Ryan versus Bruiser(Tommy Gerald), which involves the two of them demolishing the interior of a derelict house as they attempt to demolish each other. Gerald also contributes another nice fight in the Cage Rage segment as his character is established as a serious physical threat.

Cecily Fay is criminally underused in her role as a Dominatrix. For a brief moment during Ryan's escape from the torturous designs of the sinister Projects Manager (a suitably detached Keith Eyles), I thought we might see a proper fight between the two of them. Sadly, she is dispatched with a quick flurry of headbutts and that's that. Given her rather unique combination of martial arts skills (including weapons) and gymnastics/acrobatics, I felt a fight between her and Ryan would have been something interesting, especially considering the additional factor of gender disparity. A female opponent would certainly have added a little variety to the proceedings, especially one with the sort of skills that Cecily has.

In her defence, she looks good doing, saying, and wearing next to nothing, but you could have just put any half-decent looking girl in this role and not noticed the difference. To put a skilled martial artist in a martial arts/action movie but not have them actually do any martial arts-related stuff just seems like a massive missed opportunity to me.

Anyway, you can check her showreel out HERE.

Comedic relief (or as near as you're going to get to it in a bleak and ultra violent revenge flick) is provided by the vaguely Kidd and Wint-ish (or is it actually rather a homage to Frank Miller's homage to these selfsame Bond villains in "Sin City", which the filmmakers readily acknowledge as an influence on 10DM?)double act of the cold-eyed and distinctly moddish Garrett (Jason Lee Hyde, who bears a slight facial resemblance to Bruce Glover, thus inviting the comparison further) and JC Mac's somewhat simple-minded Parker, an apparent bastard hybrid of Joe Pasquale and Frank Spencer, but thankfully slightly less irritating than either. Oddly enough, despite looking and acting the less mean of the pair, the hitherto bumbling Parker has a down 'n' dirty and thoroughly spirited (but again, sadly all too brief) little scrap with Ryan, so much so that it almost seems out of character for him. Still, it's better than getting punked out with an exploding (and somewhat homoerotic) wedgie or set alight by flaming kebab skewers, as was the inglorious fate that befell their undoubted cinematic precursors.

To top things off, aside from the numerous hand-to-hand fights, there's also an extremely well done sequence where Ryan launches a full-on armed assault on the gang. Guns, grenades, gasoline...you name it, he uses it. I wasn't crazy about some of the CGI in this sequence, but it's bearable because it's brief. Again, this scene stands out because it's a little longer than the others (and segues into the fights with Jason Maza and Silvio Simac, thus extending it further), and I feel that is perhaps the missing ingredient for most of the action sequences in this film.

If anything, I feel that most of the fights are perhaps just a little too short in places, but this is more than likely a consequence of the fact that there needs to be a lot of them as Ryan has a long list to work his way through. I mean, it took Uma Thurman two whole movies to hack her way through a list half that size (okay, and maybe a few other people in the process), whereas Ryan does twice as much in half as many movies. What there is in terms of action is well done, it just seems to be over far too quickly in most cases.

I believe that it is the fact that the storyline necessitates so many fight scenes which has in turn given rise to the oft-aired complaint that this movie is just one fight scene after another with little much of anything in terms of dialogue, character or plot development sandwiched inbetween. In a film that runs 87 minutes, that's nominally one fight every 8.7minutes, and that's without taking into account that the fights themselves will comprise/eat up some part of those 8.7 minutes themselves. Of course, each character has some form of backstory or brief character sketching which eats further into their allotted time. It's not so much "Hello, Goodbye!", but rather "Hello, DIE!", as we are introduced to character after character only to see them meet a violent end a few short minutes later. There are too many divergent storylines for a film of this length to be able to comfortably handle, and as such it does seem to be somewhat truncated in parts. Personally, I'd have gone with less victims (and by victims I mean those he has to kill...the bodycount on this sucker is a lot bigger than a mere 10) and longer fight sequences, but that's just me.

This surfeit of storylines is probably why the filmmakers decided to use a narrator to drive the plotline forward. Not a bad idea in and of itself, but for my money the narration by Doug Bradley doesn't work. There's nothing wrong with the narrative or his reading of it, it's just that his voice doesn't really 'fit' with the subject matter.

However, putting myself in the producer's shoes for a second, I can see that having a narrative by an actor of international reknown with 'above the title' name value versus having a narrative done by someone whose voice is a more natural fit but is completely unknown is a commercial no-brainer (although unless my ears deceive me, a different narrator is used briefly at the very start of the film). I have no doubt that having Doug Bradley's name attached to the project will have certainly opened a few doors and gained a few more sympathetic ears than an unknown would have. Plus it lends an air of respectability to what is otherwise a very low budget affair.

In short, whilst I don't think the Doug Bradley narrative works for the film in an artistic sense, I have no doubts that the Doug Bradley narrative worked extremely well in a commercial sense.

(Oh, and in case you're wondering, it's done in a normal speaking voice rather than the ominously otherworldly tones you might be more familiar with from the likes of the Hellraiser movies or the introduction from Cradle Of Filth's "Her Ghost In The Fog".)

The other storytelling device used to flesh out the very minimal dialogue (apparently the film was ultimately conceived this way for budgetary reasons) is one of constant flashbacks, signified by the screen whiting out and then fading back in again. Indeed, one could say that the whole movie is a flashback of sorts as when we first find Ryan, he's in the process of killing off his eighth victim.

Director Ross Boyask wears his influences firmly on his sleeve...you've got the Tarantino-inspired "shoot from the boot" (or "trunk" for our Americanese-speaking readers) shot, the "Commando" homage with Ryan gearing up before his attack on the gang, and the Robert Rodriguez trademark "guy walks towards camera as something blows up behind him" shot, amongst numerous others.

The latter was a little disappointing as I didn't think the shot was composed as well as it could be (should have been a little tighter, as in the above photoshopped picture...compare it to this promo and see the difference), and being something of a stickler for good composition, I couldn't help but notice the inconsistency in some of Boyask's shots. When he gets it right, which he does more often than not with shots like Terry Stone looming menacingly in the toilet doorway, it's great. When it goes awry, such as with some of the scenes of Ryan and Amy's domestic bliss, it is so jarringly perfunctory that it looks like someone has spliced in one of the dialogue bits from a feature porn movie into the film. Moody action stuff he can do, kitchen sink (literally) not so much. On the plus side, he's only going to get better with each passing film, and it's not like you're going to be watching a film like this predominantly for the dialogue (of which, as I have said before, there is very little).

Still, these gripes are purely a matter of taste than anything else, and other people might find they disagree with me entirely. Having said that, there are a couple of things in "Ten Dead Men" which I thought could have been done a lot better as they are nothing to do with financial limitations or artistic decisions.

For example, when Keller the bent copper goes to collect Ryan's girlfriend Amy, he rings the doorbell and is greeted with a terse 'Do you have any idea what time it is?'. It's broad daylight, she's fully dressed/made up, and you can hear traffic in the background, which would seem to suggest it is neither ridiculously early in the morning nor unsociably late at night. Had she perhaps came to the door in a nightdress or dressing gown then they might have gotten away with it, but as it is this line simply doesn't make sense.

The dumping of Ryan's body at sea is another problematic sequence. We see the nefarious hoodlums heading out to sea in a powerboat, but the dumping of the body is shot looking towards the shoreline, which clearly shows they are not very far out from the shore and all the buildings and people upon it, plus it's broad daylight too, so they can be easily spotted. Had they simply shot the scene from the other side, looking away from the shore and with the vast and seemingly infinite expanse of ocean behind them, it would have looked a lot more plausible, even in daylight.

These are just two things that I thought could have been easily improved/solved at no extra cost.

Still, in spite of the faults addressed above, I rather liked it. There are plenty of good bits to balance out the bad. Indeed, perhaps the greatest crime the producers are guilty of is trying to cram too much in and reach too far beyond the limitations of their budget. Indeed, the mass of deleted scenes included on the disc
(Parkour Chase, Notting Hill, and Speedboat Drug Deal, for example) tends to suggest that this is indeed the case. Inevitably, when you're trying to do so much different stuff, you end up spreading yourself a little too thin in places, and it begins to show.

Having said that, they certainly can't be faulted for trying to go the extra mile and make their film stand out from the pack. There are a number of interesting locations used in the movie (Greyhound track, demolition derby, live Cage Rage event at Wembley Arena) which add significant production value to this little flick. My personal favourite location would probably be the timber yard where the climactic showdown takes place. It's nothing out of the ordinary, but it does look suitably distinctive.

I feel that ultimately the producers are perhaps victims of their own success when it comes to some of the less complimentary reviews floating around out there, as some people might have be lulled into thinking that it is a bigger budgeted production than it actually is. When you consider the budget and schedule/timeframe this was put together under, you suddenly gain a much deeper appreciation for exactly how good it is in spite of these limitations.

Happily, I can report that the ethos of 'going the extra mile' seems to extend far beyond the feature itself. For a single disc release, it is positively crammed full of extras including a 'Making Of...' documentary, cast and crew interviews, the aforementioned deleted scenes (10 in all!), Cage Rage featurette, two feature-length commentaries (one featuring a slightly more locquacious Brendan Carr), and a 30 page graphic novel (or 'ashcan' for the comic book afficionados reading this) which acts as a prequel to the film itself. Plus all the usual stuff like trailers, etc.

In this age of P2P, torrents, and tube sites, it is heartening to see people actually make the effort to add a little 'purchase incentive' value to their product.

So, this leads us to the most pressing question of all: Is it worth the money?

Well, this is going to be a difficult one to answer as I got mine off of Ebay for the princely sum of £2, postage included, so at that price it's unquestionably a bloody steal. Had I paid £5-6 for it, I wouldn't feel particularly short changed, but there's no way I'd pay the £15-17 that some people on Ebay are asking for it. Then again, I wouldn't pay £18-20 for a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster on DVD either, but that's because I'm tight-fisted! For this movie/package, I'd say anything under a tenner is an absolute steal.

Ultimately, this is one you're going to have to make your own mind up on, and balance out how much you want to see it versus how much you're prepared to pay for it. I believe HMV recently had it for around £4, so it can be had at a very reasonable price if you're prepared to bide your time and wait for it. As I write this, it is available for around £2.50 secondhand at Amazon.co.uk, but you've got to figure in postage and packaging to that particular equation.

Personally, as someone who will always give low budget movies a go, and particularly low budget British movies, I'm rather chuffed with my purchase. At the piffling price I paid for it, I'm sure I could turn it around for a swift and handsome profit, but this one is finding itself a home on my 'keep' shelf. Sure, it has more than a few flaws, but there are also plenty of diamonds in the rough, the action and fight scenes are really well done and I'm definitely going to be making a point to check out whatever they are doing next.

Amazon.co.uk

BEASTS IN THE CELLAR: The Exploitation Film Career Of Tony Tenser

2009-06-23T03:14:00.000-07:00

By John Hamilton
FAB Press
303 pages, B&W w/Colour Insert
Dimensions: H=27.1cm W=19.3cm D=2.2cm
SRP: £17.99(UK)
@Amazon.co.uk

*All information above refers to the standard version. A signed, limited edition hardback with alternative cover art (shown below) is available directly from FAB Press themselves.

Well, after my review of BOOK OF THE DEAD, I said that subsequent FAB Press titles that came up for review would have a lot to live up to. Well, if you want to skip out on reading the rest of this review (thus missing out on the semi-nude pics of Racquel Welch and Linda Hayden), let me give you the capsule version right away...I am pleased to announce that they have done it yet again.

Some of you may no doubt be asking yourselves 'Who was this Tony Tenser guy, then?' about now. Indeed, it is likely that some of you may never even have heard of him before, but hardly surprising. Tony Tenser was the driving force behind a number of exploitation flicks such as Witchfinder General (AKA 'The Conqueror Worm' in the US), Blood On Satan's Claw, Hannie Caulder, The Sorcerors, Repulsion, Cul-De-Sac and a whole slew of others. The reason you may not be familiar with his name is because despite his oft-demonstrated ability as a master publicist, he was not particularly given to being a self-publicist, prefering instead to let the erstwhile stars of the show take the limelight. Whilst it is a slightly erroneous comparison, as all such comparisons inevitably are, he might be best summed up as the British equivalent of Roger Corman, i.e. a successful producer of lower budget exploitation fare with a track record of giving emerging talents (like director Michael Reeves, for example) a chance to show what they can do.

The template that the book adopts to explore Tenser's varied career is an interesting one. Ostensibly chronological, the text is staggered in such a way so as to accurately reflect the gradual evolution of each film project and those concurrent to it. Ergo, rather than having to wade through one whole chapter devoted to one whole film, we are instead given a body of text which is continually changing focus and thus illustrating the respective progress of each of these diverse 'storylines', effectively mirroring the workload (and attendant problems) that Tenser was juggling as part of his day-to-day business. It is not therefore uncommon for one period of time covered by a chapter to include the pitching and pre-production of one film, the shooting and post-production of another, and the theatrical release of another still. Variety is, after all, the spice of life, and I find this approach keeps things both interesting and informative at the same time.

Indeed, 'interesting and informative' could very well be bywords for this review. It's a fantastically well-written piece and meticulously researched. Asides from the wealth of information contained within the main body of text itself, each chapter has a significant amount of footnotes appended to it (individually rather than all crammed together at the back of the book) in which a further treasure trove of supplemental knowledge is bestowed upon the reader about various supporting players, both onscreen and off, in Tenser's storied career.

Perhaps the best testament I can offer to the quality of prose within is the fact Tenser's early years are comtemporaneous with those of Stanley Long (Author of 'X-Rated'), both having cut their teeth in the midst of the nudie/naturist boom, and also having collaborated on numerous occasions. As a consequence, I was already familiar with a lot of the information at hand, having already read about it in Long's book, yet never once did I think to myself 'I'll skip this'. There's a lot of reading to be had in this book (some chapters took me over an hour, and I'm a pretty fast reader!) and all of it is good.

If you read my review of 'X-Rated', you'll know I recommended it to aspiring low-budget exploitation filmmakers. I can make the same recommendation with Beasts In The Cellar as well, as whilst it not only covers the creative genesis and production process of these movies, it also gives the reader an eye-opening glimpse into the nuts and bolts business side of funding, promoting, marketing, selling, distributing, and exhibiting films as well. In truth, it is not just the story of Tony Tenser, but also the story of his company as well, and the evolution from Compton to Tigon to LMG, whilst simultaneously tracing the gradual, glacial progress achieved in terms of the relaxation of the film censorship situation in Britain at the time (again, much like 'X-Rated').

Whilst we're talking about the financial side of things, perhaps now would be a good time for me to interject with my opinion as to whether or not I think this book constitutes good value for money?

Again, the answer is a resounding yes...it's only a few pages shorter (yet it's a 'taller' book, dimensions-wise) than Book Of The Dead, but £2.00 cheaper. Okay, it only has one colour insert to Book Of The Dead's two, but then Book Of The Dead doesn't have pictures of Pamela Green in all her glory, either!

Quality beats quantity every time, I say!

Still, that's a fairly redundant argument with regards to both books, as they tick all the boxes in this respect. I shall squeeze in a few other reviews before I tackle the monstrosity that is 'Nightmare USA', but suffice to say, FAB Press are currently two for two with me, and long may their quality work continue...now all I've got to do track down their books on Fulci and Argento for a reasonable price. Kidney, anyone?

@Amazon.co.uk

X-RATED: Adventures of an Exploitation Filmmaker

2009-06-16T01:34:00.000-07:00

By Stanley Long (with Simon Sheridan)
Foreword by Robert Lindsay
Reynolds & Hearn Ltd.
256 pages, B&W plus Colour Inserts
Dimensions: H=23.8cm W=16cm D=2.4cm
SRP £17.99 (UK)
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk

Time to get away from horror-related book reviews (yet not entirely, as I will go on to explain) and instead tackle a genre that is near and dear to every red-blooded male's heart...sexploitation!

Have you ever experienced that strange phenomena, when you've just sat down with a book or film and something occurs to make you say to yourself 'You know what? I think I'm going to like this...'? There is some sentiment or opinion expressed that mirrors your own exactly, and you know that you are about to enjoy a work by someone who is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Prior to cracking open this book, the last time I can recall such a phenomenon was when I began to watch the no-budget French movie 'I Am The Ripper' and two party guests are discussing the relative merits of Alien and Predator (before the advent of the AVP franchise), leading one to exclaim that 'Alien is nothing! It's just a thing with a big head!'.

Well, I made it no further than than Mr. Long's prologue until I got that exact same feeling again when he trots out the following line:

"I see ITV filming episodes of Midsomer Murders in my village every year and there are bloody hundreds of people scurrying about with clipboards like blue-arsed flies."

*RANT ON*
Clipboard-bearers are the bane of my existence, I tell you. If you ever watch a Premier League game on the TV, have a good look at the shots where they show the players lining up in the tunnel, and I guarantee you that there will be at least one functionary with the obligatory clipboard standing there doing nothing (I actually saw two at a recent Blackburn game, which is probably about half the average home attendance at Ewood Park!). What do they do? What are they there for?
*RANT OFF*

From what I can gather, the book is mostly a transcription of lengthy audio interviews which I assume co-author Simon Sheridan has then tidied up and pared down into book form. What's great about this is that there are a number of passages in the book where it is evident that they haven't been cleaned up much at all, and you get a real sense of Stanley Long in his own inimitable vernacular. I appreciate it when people shoot from the hip and tell it like it is instead of trying to sugar-coat it, and suffice to say Mr. Long is not one to mince words, which makes this book all the more entertaining.

Stanley Long's name is synonymous with the sexploitation genre (with movies such as 'The Adventures Of A...' series and Eskimo Nell), especially in the UK, and that is probably what he will forever be best known for (indeed, the cover image of the book, lifted from 'Adventures of a Taxi Driver' should make that abundantly clear).

However, it is not until you read the book that you gain a full appreciation of what a diverse and varied career he has actually had. In addition to the sexy romps he is best known for, he has also worked with the likes of Roman Polanski, Peter Cushing, and Boris Karloff...see, I told you we weren't getting away from horror entirely, didn't I?

(I should add at this point that the listing for this book on Amazon.com mentions an afterword by Roman Polanski. My UK version does not have this, so buyer beware!)

What we have here then is the archetypal tale of working class boy makes good (only he's done a lot better than just 'good'), and it makes for a fascinating read from a variety of perspectives. On the one hand, purely as a biography, it's a very interesting read as this is a guy who was clearly moving in all the right circles in Swinging Sixties London. From a film historian's viewpoint, particularly one also interested in the history of censorship in the UK, it is a similarly invaluable document, as many of his contemporaries mentioned therein are also important names in the field, like Harrison Marks and John Lindsay. Anybody with even the remotest fondness or recollection of the films and stars of that era will be well pleased with the amount of behind-the-scenes anecdotes Long serves up, but I would also recommend this book as a useful primer to anyone contemplating chancing their arm at producing their own low budget genre movies. The author has added an appendix entitled 'Ten Tips For Making A Successful Low-Budget Movie', but if the truth is to be told, you'll glean just as much (if not more) simply from reading the book. Again, that predilection for telling it like it is makes this a real eye-opener for the aspiring producers amongst us.

For me personally, I was surprised at the amount of overlap with my own interests. Aside from the mutual disdain of clipboard-bearers, there are recollections of the likes of Tony Tenser, Maureen Flanagan, and Golan-Globus, all of which I have got books on. He also shot footage for Circlorama, which I remember enjoying at a theme park or possibly a zoo or safari park as a child...you know, the film projected onto a dome and you watch a rollercoaster ride and start swaying about and falling over? IMAX has nothing on it. Ah, the heady whiff of childhood nostalgia!

Also, as I used to distribute R18 rated videos in the UK, I too know the inimitable joys of dealing with BBFC, a subject which Stanley is more than qualified to expound on, and which he duly does in some style. He takes great pleasure in exposing the blatant hypocrisies of the censorship regime in the UK, even going so far as to recount a couple of amusing anecdotes about winding up Mary Whitehouse. Anybody who is a foe of Mary Whitehouse is a friend of mine.

I could go on, but I feel as though I'd be giving too many of the best bits away (and I haven't even mentioned the dramatic emergency landing incident, or his penchant for famous next door neighbours either...or the BBC-sanctioned hardcore porn shoot, for that matter! Oh, and he apparently invented the highly collectable VistaScreen viewer too!). Oh, and as it was the (literally) Swinging Sixties, everybody was shagging everybody else at the drop of a hat too. Not that I'm envious or anything, you understand.

Oh, and if that's not enough, he then went on to establish a highly successful editing and post-production rental facilty too...I told you he'd done better than just 'good', didn't I?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I enjoyed this book immensely, indeed possibly a little bit too much in fact...I tore through the thing in the space of two days, it was that engrossing. Still, I can happily envisage re-reading it sometime in the near future and making some copious notes on low-budget filmmaking philosophy from a man who has worn many hats in the industry (cinematographer, director, producer, distributor) and seemingly had a damned good time doing it.

It's certainly good value for money (indeed, a veritable snip at the price Amazon.co.uk currently have it going for), and is a well produced and well-laid out book. I tend to notice little things like that, and this is very well done in that respect, right down to the fonts used. I know Simon Sheridan has done a couple of other books on this genre, so I definitely wouldn't be adverse to checking them out now. Whether they would be anywhere near as interesting as this book remains to be seen...had X-Rated been solely about the heyday of the Sexploitation era, it would still have been a very interesting read, but as it stands, it is so very, very much more than that, and I can most happily recommend it.

Stanley Long's Official Website

Amazon.com
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HOLLYWOOD FAIL II: Electric Boogaloo

2009-06-14T03:59:00.000-07:00

I'd like to take the opportunity to address the phenomenon known as 'PIS', which stands for 'Plot-Induced Stupidity'. This occurs when characters in a film do something preternaturally stupid, completely against all logic, simply to advance the plot.

Case in point: The bridge sequence in Mission Impossible III.

Ethan Hunt and his IMF agents are apparently the cream of the cream of the crop, but once they touch down in the USA with high profile captive Owen Davian, it seems their ability to think rationally goes straight out of the window.

Rather than just landing their plane at a fortified military installation, they instead elect to transport Davian via a convoy, and just a regular convoy at that. No armoured vehicles, and no air support either. Then, just to compound their stupidity that little bit further, they decide to drive over a narrow bridge completely surrounded by ocean on both sides, meaning there's nowhere to go. Do they have gunboats in the water, shadowing their route? No. That would be far too logical.

If you've ever seen the classic convoy assault technique (and chances are, if you've seen enough action movies you will have...there's a great example of it in 'Clear And Present Danger', for example), it usually involves taking out the front and rear vehicles in the convoy to pin the remaining vehicles in and stop them from escaping. The only hope for the remaining vehicles is to ram their way out and make good their escape.

If it's a civilian target (like the opening robbery in Michael Mann's 'Heat', then you can just block the target in by using your own sufficiently heavy vehicles. If it's a VIP target, like a visiting dignitary, then the security services will normally have cleared the route of all traffic, hence necessitating the use of an RPG launcher to take out the vehicles and cause the blockage.

In MI:III, there is civilian traffic on the road. Yes, that's right, we're supposed to believe that the guy previously smart enough to break into CIA headquarters at Langley now doesn't have brains enough to think ahead and close the road off to civilian traffic...and who's to say that it is civilian traffic? Could be a plethora of highly-trained and heavily armed mercenaries bearing down on the convoy from both directions for all they know.

What's most funny is that Hunt is now apparently an IMF instructor. Suffice to say, with mission planning like this, he needs to take his ass back to class, because this is an unadulterated FAIL on all levels.

EATEN ALIVE! Italian Cannibal and Zombie movies

2009-06-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

Edited by Jay Slater
Plexus
256 pages, B&W w/ Colour Insert
Dimensions: H=23cm W=17cm D=1.8cm
SRP £14.99(UK) $19.95(US)

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This one takes a somewhat different approach...it's a series of articles, reviews and interviews, from a variety of different authors. The articles are arranged in chronological order, but as there is no linear meta-narrative joining them together, you are free to pick and choose where to pick up and leave off. If you've read my review of Zombiemania, you'll know this is something I rather like, and the same applies here. Eaten Alive! is another one for the 'bathroom bookshelf'.

As for the articles themselves, as you might very well expect it's quite a pot pourri given the diverse list of contributors, and there are some real surprises in there too. When I saw that Troma figurehead Lloyd Kaufman had contributed an article, I was expecting a rollicking and irreverent pun-filled yuckfest in keeping with the mood of his own superb book "All I Need To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger" (Which I can more than happily recommend, if you're wondering), a comedic counterpoint to some of the more serious critical analysis which undoubtedly lay ahead. Instead, you get an insightful, intelligent and utterly straight-faced dissection of Cannibal Holocaust which contextualises the film and the themes therein brilliantly.

Script snippets and portions of interviews with the leading lights (both from behind and in front of the camera) of this particular sub-genre are skillfully interwoven between the articles. All of the usual suspects are there (Morghen, MacColl, McCulloch), but it is disappointing to hear what low regard some of them have for these movies. Still, the inclusion of numerous juicy Lucio Fulci anecdotes does go same way towards redressing the damage.

Is it good value for money? I would answer with a most enthusiastic "Yes!", but you have to bear in mind that I picked my copy up off of Ebay for less than a third of the SRP, postage included...and I'm still feeling incredibly smug about it, thank you very much. Had I been forced to pay full price, I wouldn't be shedding too many tears though. If you can scare yourself up a copy for around the £10 mark, then you will have got yourself a genuine bargain (although not as good as mine!!!).

Of course, no doubt some of you are saying to yourselves right now: "Cool! So, which one should I get? Eaten Alive! or Cannibal?"

If you're anything like me (and I assume you are since you're here), then my honest answer would be to get both. Eaten Alive! seems like a slightly more substantial work...it certainly has more pages, but they are smaller than the pages of Cannibal and not in glossy full colour either. The truth is that whilst they cover very much the same ground, they are as different as apples and oranges. Cannibal is the product of a single author, with a linear narrative. It's in full vibrant colour and is extremely well written...the only downside for me is that it is just too short. The old adage of 'Always leave them wanting more' has never been more appropriate.

Eaten Alive!, on the other hand, you certainly gives you a little more for your money (and it's cheaper too), but this is partially due to the fact that Slater is able utilise the work of multiple authors on the same subject (for example, there are no less than three pieces on Cannibal Holocaust), whereas John Martin only has the luxury of one.

Ultimately, it's the choice between a sixpack of domestic beers versus maybe a four-pack of a premium quality imported beer. You could make a similar analogy about hookers too, I guess, but I'm just too damned classy.

In short, if you like Italian exploitation flicks it's all good. If not, you have no soul.

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URGENT KIDNEY APPEAL

2009-06-11T04:52:00.000-07:00

I have decided that I want a copy of Tim Lucas' universally-celebrated Mario Bava book 'All The Colors Of The Dark'. To this end, I am selling kidneys. Not my own kidneys, but they are kidneys nonetheless.

All enquiries to the usual address, cash prefered as apparently PayPal have some sort of archaic totalitarian rules about using their service to pay for human organs. Fascists!

When I was younger, I did a door-to-door collection for a Kidney charity in the UK, and they didn't even send me so much as a thank you card, so the way I figure it is that I am owed some kidney-related payback, and it has come time to collect!

I know some of you might feel a little uneasy about the ethical implications of such a venture, but I believe that there is a reason that God gave people two kidneys, and that is so they could sell them and raise money and buy this book. I also believe God blessed mankind with the intelligence to create dialysis machines so that we could also sell the other kidney so that we can afford to take out a subscription to Filmrage as well. The Lord Giveth, and The Lord Taketh Away apparently, and who are we to question His divine omniscient wisdom?

It is God's Will, I'm convinced by it.

ZOMBIEMANIA: 80 Movies To Die For

2009-06-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

By Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg & Andrew Hershberger
Afterword by Mark Donovan
Telos Publishing Ltd.
497 pages, B&W
Dimensions H=21cm W=14.9cm D=2.5cm
SRP £14.99 (UK) $29.95 (US) $29.95 (CAN)

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Another day, another book about flesh eating ghouls. I knew I should have gone with the porno review blog idea...but anyway, the latest entry into my library of the living dead is this tidy little package care of Telos.

After the brilliant-but-Bataan-Death-March-esque tome that was 'Book Of The Dead', this comes as a welcome (and thankfully light) relief. The book is split up into 80 small sections dealing with all the zombie flicks you would expect, plus a few more besides. Each section follows the same format, neatly divided up into subsections such as 'Synopsis', 'Necrology' (i.e., what 'rules' do these zombies follow?), 'Behind The Scenes' '6 Degrees Of Necrophagia' and so on. This means you can get right at the information that interests you without any unnecessary reading, and it also facilitates quick comparisons between one or more of the films featured, should you so choose.

The tone of the book is a pleasing combination of both the serious (embodied by the meticulous attention to detail when it comes down to technical matters such as the relative merits of the various DVD incarnations) and the sublime (though always recognising that the authors' razor-sharp tongue planted firmly in the cheek is not as important as the razor-sharp shard of wood planted equally firmly in Olga Karlatos' eye).

The anecdotal information presented herein is damned good...if you're a fan of certain films, you more than likely know all the ins and outs of that particular movie's genesis and journey to the screen, such as 'the refrigerator incident' from 'Day Of The Dead'. Such incidents are part of horror fandom lore. However, the authors have reall dug up a wealth of interesting tidbits and gossip which you can shock and amaze (or alternatively irritate and bore) your friends and family with. Indeed, having read both this and 'Book Of The Dead' in such close proximity to one another, I now feel as though I am in a position of such zombie movie knowledge ('zomniscient', anyone? I'm claiming it), that George Romero should start calling me for advice (and I haven't even seen 'Diary Of The Dead' yet either, which is apparently when most people seem to think George Romero should start calling them for advice, or so I've heard).

The films are not listed chronologically but rather in alphabetical order, and I find that the format of the book itself encourages me to forget about that and just crack it open at random and see what I get. One of the inherent advantages of Zombiemania's layout is that you're never more than 4 or so pages away from the start of one movie and the end of another. As such, it's very easy to just pick up and read a chapter of it without having to devote too much time to it. If you, like me, have the awful habit of taking books into the bathroom with you, then I can guarantee you that you won't expose yourself to the risk of haemorrhoids by sitting on the throne too long because you just want to finish the chapter you're reading. Zombiemania is like the guilty indulgence food you can eat between meals without ruining your appetite.

(Wow...from anal to oral in the same paragraph...it's like that Ass-To-Mouth discussion in 'Clerks II'...what would Freud have said? We already know what Rosario Dawson would say. Maybe it's my subconscious telling me I really should have gone with the porno blog?)

Indeed, even the size of the book suggests it was intended to be something readers could just 'grab and go' with...let's be honest here. Nightmare USA is an awesome book, but there's just no way you could justify taking something of that size and weight (and price!) on a camping trip or on holiday with you. Zombiemania, on the other hand, I could see fitting into a rucksack or suitcase quite nicely.

After the main body (or reanimated corpse, if you prefer) of featurettes is done, there is a film index of over 550 titles, perhaps to be explored in more depth in a future volume, plus a useful cast and crew index. However, in the grandest of grand traditions, they have well and truly saved the best until last with a superb afterword by Mark Donovan of 'Shaun of the Dead' fame. Maybe it will not resonate as much with readers of a different generation, but for me, as an 80's child, it certainly hits all the right notes and brings back many happy memories of the VHS era. It's also a rather inspiring piece as he relates his journey from humble horror fan to the cover of Fangoria, no less (Dr. Hook be damned...the cover of Rolling Stone is for pussies)!

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that what landed Mr. Donovan the Afterword gig is the fact that he has played Tor Johnson in a stage production of 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' (...the authors seem to have a somewhat unhealthy obsession/running joke going with the iconic B-Movie legend, as you will no doubt see for yourself when you read it), but that is neither here nor there at the end of the day.

Suffice to say, the Afterword really sends the book off on the proverbial high note, and puts one in the mood for an 80's-nostalgia-fuelled viewing of Zombie Flesh Eaters at the soonest possible convenience, especially given the amount of extremely colourful anecdotes the authors venture about the guy who plays the fat zombie on the boat. I wonder if Robert Englund or Doug Bradshaw have ever tried to solicit a hooker whilst in full costume and makeup?

My only quibbles/complaints about the book would be lack of colour (but that would unquestionably make it a lot more expensive) and the fact that a few of the images show very slight signs of pixelation. That's all I've got, and that's being really nitpicky.

Price-wise, I'd have to say it's about right at £14.99, but who honestly pays retail when Amazon have usually got some sort of deal on? If you can get it for less than the SRP then my advice would be to go for it. It's an easily-accessible book both in terms of layout and approach to the subject at hand, and as such I think it's a great entry-level book for those zombie afficionados who aren't really that bothered about the socio-cultural subtext that they might be missing, but do care about seeing some guy getting his entrails ripped out.

***UPDATE: I have been heeding my own advice on this one. It has subsequently become my go-to 'Bathroom Book'.***

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TOP TEN REASONS YOU HATE ROB ZOMBIE

2009-05-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

1. They let him do the new Halloween movie instead of you.

2. You have to pay to go to conventions. Conventions pay Rob to go to them.

3. He's shacked up with Sheri Moon. You're not.

4. Prior to that, he was shacked up with the bassist from White Zombie.

5. He has his own action figures, yet has no need to play with himself (See #3).

6. He can get his comic book ideas published without using a photocopier.

7. Sybil Danning acknowledges his existence. You...not so much.

8. He was on MTV before it sucked. Now you get to watch MTV while it sucks.

9. His resume reads: Porno Mag Art Director, Rock Star, Movie Director.

10. Your parents have told you that you're not getting tattoos and/or dreadlocks.

MONSTERS, MUTANTS, and HEAVENLY CREATURES

2009-05-23T09:02:00.000-07:00

By Tom Weaver

Midnight Marquee Press, Inc.

272 Pages, B&W

Dimensions: H=22.9cm W=15.3cm D=1.5cm

SRP=$20.00 (US)

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As the cover amply illustrates, we are going 'old skool' here, with such icons as the Gillman (AKA 'The Creature From The Black Lagoon') amongst others. The eagle-eyed amongst you may very well have spotted a familiar robot from various cliffhanger serials lurking in the bottom right hand corner too. Some people foolishly maintain that you cannot judge a book by the cover, but let's be honest here...monsters, killer robots and beautiful women make a persuasive visual shorthand which certainly triggered my buying reflexes. I mean, what else do you need to know, exactly?

The book itself is a collection of interviews (14 in all) with various famous names from the Golden Age of science fiction and horror, both from in front of and behind the camera. The fourteen names in question are as follows:

William Alland

Michael Ansara

Doug Benton

Bob May

Terry Moore

Bri Murphy

Patricia Owens

Cynthia Patrick

Peter Mark Richman

Stella Stevens

Joyce Taylor

Marie Windsor

William Witney

Irwin S. Yeaworth, Jr.

The interviews have all seen print in an abridged form at one time or another, in publications such as 'Starlog' and 'Fangoria', but this is apparently the first time they have been presented in all their unexpurgated glory.

It's a mixed bag (as you would expect), but all good. For me personally, as a fan of the serials, the William Witney interview is worth the price of the book alone. The bad news is it has me jonesin' to get a copy of Witney's book 'In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase' for my reading pile, and books related to cliffhanger serials tend to priced at a premium., dammit!

While we're talking about the price of the book, you're probably asking yourself whether I think it is worth the $20 price tag? The answer is yes, I think it's very reasonably priced. I got mine for around the equivalent of $12-14 from Ebay, but had I have paid full price for it, I wouldn't have felt ripped off in any way, shape or form...$20 feels just about right, if I'm honest. It's a tidy little package, all told, and my first experience of Midnight Marquee's stuff. If it is any way indicative of their usual output, then suffice to say it won't be my last either.

If you're a fan of the movies and TV shows of that era, or any of the personalities featured, then I'd suggest you check it out.

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HOLLYWOOD FAIL

2009-05-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

To quote the immortal line, "What's wrong with this picture?".

Firstly, it's "Spider-Man", not "Spiderman". They have at least got this right on the UK poster.

Most importantly, if you were some hotshot Hollywood marketing exec, and you had a horror flick by Sam Raimi to promote, would you really choose Spider-Man from Raimi's back catalogue to promote it with? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong (...and I'm not. I never am.), but didn't Raimi helm the Evil Dead trilogy, the first of which scared the living shit out of the kindly censors over at the BBFC? Yes, I believe he did.

Do today's moviegoers really have such a goldfish-like attention span that you have to namecheck a more recent movie in favour of a more apt one, or is it just a case of the Hollywood brain trust thinking it is so?

Me personally, I'm looking forward to getting one of them there posters for Robert Rodriguez' "Machete" flick, hopefully with the legend "From The Director Of Spy Kids" proudly emblazoned upon it. After all, it's not like they're going to acknowledge the fact he directed "Planet Terror" now, are they...?

I should add, no knock on the movie itself (which I haven't seen yet) as I've heard encouraging things about it, but whoever thought "From The Director Of Spider-Man" was a good idea needs to be dragged to Hell (or perhaps a conveniently located alleyway somewhere) and have their teeth knocked out.

BOOK OF THE DEAD: The Complete History Of Zombie Cinema

2009-05-22T03:03:00.000-07:00

By Jamie Russell

FAB Press

320 pages, B&W w/ Colour inserts

Dimensions: H=25.4cm W=19.2cm D=2.2cm

SRP £19.99(UK)

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'The Complete History Of Zombie Cinema' it says on the cover, and believe you me, they ain't kidding. This is a fabulously in-depth exploration of the zombie genre that we all know and love. The opening chapters actually explore the genesis and introduction of the literary idea of the zombie, and chart the evolutionary path from page to stage to screen. It's exhaustively researched stuff, and extremely interesting from a historical perspective, and no stone is left unturned...suffice to say, those amongst us who think zombie movies began in earnest with Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead' are going to be in for a lot of reading until they get to their perceived 'Year Zero'. Romero doesn't pop up until the end of Chapter Five, and these are some substantial chapters we are talking about here. Happily, when the more familiar names begin to enter the picture, Russell doesn't shy away from giving them the exact same treatment as some of the more obscure entries discussed in the book, as some authors more inclined to cinematic snobbery are often wont to do.

If you're looking for a pretty picture book with lots of witty repartee, this isn't it (although the monochrome of the standard text and pictures is broken up by two lavish colour inserts). This is an altogether more serious and scholarly work, and if at any point you are planning to write an essay or dissertation on zombies or horror cinema in general, then this is a book you should own, not only to see how it should be done, but also as a great resource for stealing ideas from to flesh out and corral yourself an easy 'A'. It also affords the reader some intelligently-argued material for putting those folks who are dismissive of the horror genre firmly in their place.

You'll notice I haven't used the term 'academic' at any point thus far in the review, and that's because I did an MA and it totally turned me off academia and literature in general (in the decade since, I've read three works of fiction, and two of those were small paperbacks. I've learned a great deal from reading non-fiction books in that time, but that's beside the point.). Ergo, when people start throwing around terms like 'critic', 'commentator', 'theorist' or refering to concepts of 'otherness', I generally feel like kicking someone in the balls. Russell does stray into this territory on a number of occasions, but thankfully keeps it very brief. If nothing else, I think you should consider buying this book to keep him in gainful employment so he doesn't have to slide down the slippery totem pole which invariably leads to him selling the Socialist Worker (oxymorons, eh?) outside the Student Union or somesuch. I truly believe it's not yet too late to save him.

The other reason you should buy this book is that it is extremely good value for money. Again, I got my copy via a loyalty card points redemption, so it didn't cost me anything per se, but had I paid the SRP (£19.99) for it, I would not have felt short changed in the slightest, and I personally think that £20 is a lot of money to spend on a book. The reality is that it is a lot of reading for the money, and damned informative reading at that. Amazon.co.uk currently has it for £12.99 brand new...my solemn advice to you would be to make like a ravenous zombie and bite their hands off at this price before they come to their senses, as I would consider paying £15 for this to be a bargain in any man's language!

Not to put too fine a point on it, but for me this is the definitive book on the subject. I've got a couple of other books from FAB Press on my reading pile, namely 'Beasts In The Cellar' and 'Nightmare USA' (a review of which will not be coming soon...it's like a bloody phone directory on steroids! It looks damn good though, and I hope to be able to finish it before I shuffle off this mortal coil), and suffice to say, they've got a lot to live up to...here's hoping!

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CANNIBAL: The Most Sickening Consumer Guide Ever!

2009-05-01T05:52:00.000-07:00

By John Martin
Introduction by Quentin Tarantino

The Dark Side/Stray Cat Publishing Ltd.

162 pages, Full Colour.

Dimensions: H=29.8cm W=21.1cm

SRP: £19.99 (UK)

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Now here's a book to get my teeth into...a lovingly in-depth exploration of the Cannibal genre courtesy of the good folks at The Dark Side and John Martin (Seduction Of The Gullible, Giallo Pages, etc.). The cover image is a suitably bastard hybrid comprised of iconic images from such flicks as Zombie Flesh Eaters, Last Cannibal World, and Cannibal Apocalypse. They say you can never judge a book by its' cover, but this one seems to buck the trend quite graphically!

The running order follows that of a menu, with 'courses' instead of chapters and 'hors d'oeuvre' standing in for the introduction, which is delivered in the characteristic, rambling and thoroughly enthusiastic style of one Quentin Tarantino (in full-on former video store clerk geek-out mode) as he reminisces about some of his favourite slices of Italian genre cinema, providing something of a thumbnail sketch for what lies ahead.

Martin begins by tracing the cinematic lineage and subsequent evolution of the cannibal film as we know it, from its' roots in the Mondo movies such as 'Mondo Cane' and 'Africa Addio'. What made the Italian Cannibal movies so shocking in their day was not the subject matter at hand, but the way in which it was presented, with a distinct onus upon replicating the realism of the Mondo movies, such as the inclusion of real-life animal slaughter. He also frames the cannibal genre in socio-cultural terms as well, being at first a comment on Western exploration and exploitation, and latterly a comment on Western consumerism in general when the cannibal movies 'came home', which is to say ditched the jungle as a location.

The meteoric rise and inevitable fall (precipitated by the decline in quality that usually follows when everybody and their Mother jumps on a particular genre bandwagon) of the Cannibal genre is charted thus, and just like the ancient Chinese proverb which says 'Even the fiercest Tiger must one day submit to the Worm', even the most exquisitely-prepared gourmet meal is inescapably destined to turn into shit. Such was the lamentable fate of Italian Cannibal cinema, as Martin deftly outlines in the sobering chapter 'Too Many Cooks...'

It's a really well-written book, but its' greatest strength may also be its' greatest weakness. I had to exercise a little self-discipline and pace myself lest I read through it one sitting. The phrase "An evening read" is one that often gets tossed around a little too readily for my liking, but this will very likely prove to be the real deal unless you set yourself some strict reading limits and adhere to them. Suffice to say, such is the quality of the prose within that I shall definitely be making it a point to check out some of Martin's other work as a matter of priority.

As the book progresses, it takes in other movies which may or may not pass your own personal acid test as to whether they constitute 'cannibal movies' or not, such as films featuring flesh-eating zombies. Some might complain that this is a somewhat tenuous link, explored only to further pad out what is already a slim volume. However, the author's assumption that fans of Italian cannibal cinema will also be fans of Italian zombie cinema (and indeed, by extension, Italian exploitation cinema in general) certainly holds true with this reviewer, and is probably true for you too...after all, you're here reading this, aren't you? Purists and pedants may wish to split hairs, but personally I am all for the inclusion of it.

After the main body of text is done, and the chronology completed, there's a whole host of goodies yet to come, including a feature-length interview with John Morghen ("The Perfect Victim") as well as a plethora of supplementary interviews with a literal "Who's Who?" of Italian genre cinema (...and when I say a literal "Who's Who?" of Italian genre cinema, I mean it: Fulci, D'Amato, De Angelis, Deodato, Lenzi, Margheriti, Martino, De Rossi), and a filmography.

Unfortunately, I don't have a full collection of The Dark Side or Giallo Pages, so I have no way of knowing whether these interviews have seen print before, although I would certainly suspect this to be the case given that some of the subjects are now sadly dead. Still, they're all new to me, and I enjoyed them greatly.

As you might expect, the text throughout is complimented by the usual stunning array of rare promo stills, candid behind-the-scenes shots, and obscure foreign one-sheets and lobby cards, the cumulative effect of which is a sensation somewhere between extreme envy, homicidal rage, and a burning desire to spend a lot of money on Ebay because you suddenly realise that you don't have enough rare genre movie collectable stuff in your life...or your spare room, garage, or attic.

If you have the merest inkling of an interest in this genre, then I'd say it's an essential purchase (although you're hardly spoilt for choice in this area...the only other book I am aware of is Jay Slater's 'Eaten Alive', which I shall be reviewing shortly). The question is weighing up your enthusiasm for the genre against the price you are willing to pay. Personally, I'd wouldn't pay £20 for this, as whilst I can appreciate that it's a highly specialist subject and thus one must pay a little over the odds for it, I still think it's slightly overpriced. If someone offers you a copy for around £15 or less, then bite their hand off!

I think the most telling verdict I can give you is this: It cost me nothing (obtained it by redeeming points on a supermarket loyalty card), I've already read it cover to cover, but I won't be putting my copy up on Ebay any time soon, even though I could no doubt turn a handsome profit on it.

In short, it's a bona fide keeper...I just wish there was more of it!

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WELCOME!

2009-05-01T04:55:00.000-07:00

If you would like to send me an item to review, please email me first. This way I can tell you whether or not I have it already, and if not I can give you the address to send it to.

My email address: occulusorbus(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Just replace the bracketed text with the appropriate symbols '@' and '.'

I don't discriminate between professional and amateur, so anything goes...be sure to send along details of where, when, and how my readers can get your product, and most importantly how much it will cost them to do so.

Most of the reviews here will be good because I usually choose to buy and review stuff I like (or think I'll like), but they will also be honest as well.

So, I hear you ask, what is it exactly that you like? Here's a brief snapshot...

Any sort of low budget genre film, Horror, Sci-fi, action, Martial Arts (especially Ninjas!), Zombies, Cannibals, Giallo, Spaghetti Westerns, Women-In-Prison, Japanese monster movies, Exploitation, Sexploitation, Blaxploitation, Nunsploitation, Ilsa and related Nazi flicks, Softcore, Hardcore (Features, not Gonzo), Hammer, Amicus, Russ Meyer, Roger Corman, Dario Argento and all the other Italian greats, Coffin Joe, Foreign Films, bizarre niches and fetishes like Superheroines, Sword & Sorcery, John Carpenter, George A. Romero, Pulps and Cliffhanger Serials, Comics, Seduction Cinema, Full Moon, The Asylum, Jean Rollin, Salvation Films, Cannon, and much, much more besides.

If we share any of these in common, then it's fair to say that we will see eye to eye somewhere along the line in terms of taste.

Rather than attempt to make money from my blog, some of my items will earn me store credit with Amazon if people click through and buy them...this means I can re-invest my ill-gotten gains in more cool books and movies to review, rather than taking the cash and frittering it away elsewhere in less wholesome pursuits, like hookers. I don't have an Amazon Wishlist because I'm not a hot chick, and every red-blooded man knows the easy way to get something for nothing is with a vagina, or rather the lingering promise thereof. Also, I find the whole concept of them to be kind of creepy (wishlists that is, not girls and their vaginas...well, unless they have tons of 'intimate piercings', that is!), and the online equivalent of a 'gateway drug' for nascent cyber-stalkers, or indeed any kind of stalker for that matter.

Thus, I will instead be sharing my thoughts about what item I plan to buy next with the accrued credit, and soliciting reader opinion on what to go for via polls, and am more than happy to go along with the majority vote. But for now I've got a stack of my own awesome books and movies to plough through and review, so let's get to it!