Author: Chris Scullion

Chris Scullion is a Scottish video games journalist who's been covering video games professionally for 16 years. For the first six years of his career he worked at the Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK, then became the Games Editor of CVG before its untimely end. After setting up his own site, Tired Old Hack, Chris then joined Video Games Chronicle (VGC) where he is currently Features Editor. He has a passion for retro games and cataloguing their history, hence his ongoing series of console encyclopedia books (search his name on Amazon).

Swamp Shark (2011)

Published on by Chris Scullion3 Comments

Director: Griff Furst

Starring: Kristy Swanson, DB Sweeney, Jeff Chase, Jason Rogel, Sophie Sinise

“This isn’t a normal shark. It swims, it kills, and it’s out there.” (Tommy, Swamp Shark)

Swamp Shark is actually one of the better SyFy-produced movies out there, but that’s like saying an elbow is one of the least painful ways to receive a blow to the testicles.

As you’d expect from the title, it’s about a shark. In a swamp. The weekend before the annual Gator Fest at the Atchafalaya Basin (a shindig that, judging by the Gator Fest scenes in the film, attracts around seven people), a dodgy animal smuggling deal goes wrong and a giant shark ends up in the swamp.

"I'll kill it. I used to be Buffy, you know." "So you keep telling us. We don't care"

A local drunk falls into the water and is eaten alive by the shark but the police blame the McDaniels family, who run their own restaurant complete with a pack of alligators that sit outside. According to the police, one of their gators must have done it, but head of the family Rachel (Kristy “Buffy” Swanson) sees a shark outside and decides to head off to find it to prove that was the real culprit.

As it was a made-for-TV movie, Swamp Shark is very tame for a shark film. There’s one graphic scene in which the shark leaps out of the air and bites a man’s head clean off, but other than that most of the deaths involve the old classic trick of someone being pulled underwater and the water turning red.

Bob happily thought to himself: "You know, I think my headache's gone"

Meanwhile, the sex scenes are so desperate not to show any nudity that it actually gets silly – at one point one chap takes a topless photo of his girlfriend but when he then looks at the photo and sees a shark in the background, you can see that he somehow only managed to get a headshot of her, despite her, you know, being topless.

The shark effects themselves are a bit of a mixed bag. The first half of the film wisely goes down the Jaws route by barely showing the thing and only giving little glimpses here and there. It’s only when it starts appearing more often and decides to start leaping out of the water – as is the law with any killer animal in a SyFy movie – that the old dodgy CGI kicks in again.

Swamp Shark is harmless and it isn’t terrible. All the actors seem to be having fun, none of them put in a truly terrible performance, the characters you want to die end up dying, and the ending is silly, over-the-top fun. It’s no Jaws by any stretch of the imagination but if it’s on the telly and there’s nothing else to watch it’ll pass the time.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
If you want Swamp Shark on DVD you can get it from Amazon if you click here. If you’re more of a Blu-Ray person then get yourself down to Tesco because, oddly, it’s a Tesco exclusive and it’ll only set you back £3 (or £3.90 from the Tesco website). And it’s worth a go at that price.

Lockjaw (2008)

Published on by Chris Scullion5 Comments

Director: Amir Valinia

Starring: DMX, Wes Brown, Louis Herthum, Lauren Fain

“Don’t forget, at the end of the day it’s just a snake. A really messed up snake.” (Nick, Lockjaw)

I’ve seen some bad films in my time – as you’ll know if you’ve taken more than a brief glance at some of the other reviews on this site – but Lockjaw is by far one of the worst movies I’ve seen in the past couple of years. It’s not the CGI effects or the hopeless music, those I can deal with. It’s the plot, the script and the acting that make this one such a stinker.

The film starts with a flashback in which a young lad called Alan and his friend Becky break into a voodoo-loving man’s house and steal a dangerous voodoo pen from him before he and his son (more about him later) find out.

So how do you defeat a mystical snake summoned by voodoo? With a voodoo bazooka, of course. Seriously.

Alan, disturbed by his dad’s abusive behaviour towards his mother, decides for no apparent reason to draw a picture – using the voodoo pen – of a big monster eating his dad. Sure enough, after his drunken father leaves the house, he’s gobbled up by the beast and never seen again.

Fast forward to the present day and Alan and Becky are now married. While they do gardening at their home Becky digs up the pen, but before she gets to ask Alan about it she’s run over by a van containing a group of teens who happen to be the biggest bunch of absolute cocks you’ve ever seen in any film to date. Alan uses the pen to draw the monster again, this time attacking the van, and so one by one the teens start getting picked off by the beast. A guy summoning a monster to get revenge on people killing someone close to him? Ah, so it’s basically Pumpkinhead then.

In one of the more impressive effects scenes, the filmmakers make this moron look capable of feeding himself

It’s hard to properly describe just how painful Lockjaw is to watch. Almost every member of the main cast has at least one infuriating quality – there’s the quirky guy who talks really loudly because he’s desperate to steal every scene, then there’s the slutty one who was clearly hired for the inevitable nudity alone but then doesn’t even get naked (resulting in an awkward sex scene in which she groans away as if she’s getting some then quickly jumps out of bed when she hears a noise, revealing that she’s clothed). Even rap legend DMX, who only appears in a couple of scenes, puts in a half-hearted performance at best because it’s clear that deep down he knows this is no 8 Mile.

The plot’s got more holes than an orgy – how did young Alan know to draw a picture with the magic stick in the first place? How could Alan get a good look at everyone in the van as it sped past after hitting his wife, to the point that he could draw good renditions of all five of them? And who was the joker who told the people in this film “you know, I reckon acting’s the job for you”?

Here's Lockjaw - a snake with a crocodile head. Great idea wasted on a shite film

The only thing Lockjaw has going for it is that the stupid CGI monster thing looks slightly more convincing than the stupid CGI monster things in SyFy-funded films like Dinoshark and Mega Python Vs Gatoroid. That’s literally it though – everything else is just cringeworthy. Every single scene is an exercise in amazement as you realise the director actually must have said to his actors “that’s fine, let’s move on” time and time again instead of “can you do that again, only not shit this time”. Don’t be swayed by the potential comedy value of DMX being in it either – he barely features and he’s as wooden as a bookshelf when he does.

When a film is so half-arsed that it doesn’t even bother to provide enough music to cover the whole of the credits (the music simply stops halfway through leaving the rest of them scrolling upwards in silence) then it’s clear that there wasn’t a lot of effort put into this one. Stay well away.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
You’re really a glutton for punishment, aren’t you? Lockjaw is available at the time of writing for £6.49 on DVD, but if you check Amazon’s New/Used you can find some people selling it for the princely sum of £0.01 plus shipping. If you reckon you can stretch to that then click here to go shit-shopping.

The Exterminator (1980)

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Director: James Glickenhaus

Starring: Robert Ginty, Christopher George, Samantha Eggar

CIA AGENT – “This Exterminator is the most dangerous serial killer in the United States and he’s in New York City! What do you think about all this?”

DALTON – “I think you need to take a shit. It’s coming out of your mouth instead of your asshole.”

One of the more popular vigilante films to hit during the grindhouse era, The Exterminator tells the story of a man out to clean up the city’s crime by dishing out some pain of his own.

John’s best friend Michael saves his life while they’re both fighting in Vietnam. After completing their service they return to New York to try to return to some sort of normality, but shortly afterwards Michael is mugged by a gang and left paralysed from the neck down. John vows to repay his friend by hunting down the gang and making them pay for their crime.

He doesn't look like your typical action hero but he means business

This should be a fairly straightforward movie, but after John deals with the gang he decides not to stop there. Instead, he decides to take on all crime and clean up New York by dishing out punishment to every sleazeball around. The media start calling him The Exterminator, the police want to catch him and the CIA start hunting him down because they think he’s working for a rival party to expose the government’s inability to deal with crime. Can John stay on the run from those who want to stop him?

The Exterminator gained a cult following in the grindhouse cinemas of the ’70s and early ’80s, and was also one of the more notorious films released on VHS in the early video boom. It’s unsurprising then that The Exterminator‘s most memorable moments are the more violent scenes, which are mostly executed (no pun intended) with style.

The Vietnam scene is effective stuff

By far the most notable example of this is the Vietnam prologue where special effects guru Stan Winston (The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Alien, Predator) was drafted in to help create a chillingly realistic decapitation scene. It’s a truly shocking moment and one that no doubt contributed a great deal to the film’s cult success.

While the rest of the film never quite manages to match this prologue in terms of shock factor, it comes close at times. A scene involving a giant meat grinder doesn’t look very convincing but is made so by the screams emitted by the victim, whereas a moment involving a prostitute and a soldering iron is still wince-inducing even though it mercifully takes place off-camera.

Robert Ginty is decent as the titular Exterminator. He plays the role completely straight, without any over-the-top rants or ridiculous ‘action movie’ facial expressions. He’s got one or two cheesy lines (“if you’re lying, I’ll be back”) but for the most part he’s a good lead.

The Exterminator is grindhouse cheese but it’s entertaining grindhouse cheese. The set-pieces are effective, the acting is understated but spot-on and the whole film’s got an unashamed seediness and grit to it. The final scene ruins what could have been a powerful ending, but that aside it’s one of the better-made films of its era.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
The Exterminator has just been released in the UK on Blu-ray by Arrow Video. It comes with a commentary and a couple of documentaries, and you can get it by clicking here. It’s currently out of print on DVD but you can find it used in a two-pack with the similarly awesome Maniac Cop by clicking here.
The US has its own special edition Blu-ray/DVD combo, so if you’re on that side of the Atlantic you can click here to get it.

Piranha (2010)

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Director: Alexandre Aja

Starring: Steven McQueen, Elisabeth Shue, Kelly Brook, Jessica Szohr, Jerry O’Connell

“Get the fuck out of the water!” (Julie, Piranha)

Nudity and gore are the key components of many horror films aimed primarily at a teenage audience, but in my eyes the latter always has to be the more prevalent. It seems that Alexandre Aja, the director of the excellent Switchblade Romance and the not-so-good Hills Have Eyes remake, forgets this during the first half of Piranha and instead thinks he’s shooting a porno.

Even the plot sounds like top-shelf titillation. After befriending and falling for English model Danni (Brook), Jake (Steven McQueen, grandson of Steve) dodges his babysitting duties to go with her on a boat, where she’s part of a ‘Wild Wild Girls’ filmshoot. His young, attractive friend Kelly (Szohr) gets caught up in the invite, so Jake has to juggle enjoying the rampant nudity going on around him with assuring Kelly he’s not interested in all this hooey.

Kelly Brook here, breaking horror's classic "don't look down" rule

This plot basically gives Piranha a good half-hour to cram in as much nudity as possible. A lengthy Spring Break scene shows lots of girls flashing their tits for no reason, there’s a wet t-shirt competition with loads of mammary close-ups and the ‘Wild Wild Girls’ shoot culminates in what feels like a solid five-minutes of Kelly Brook and a genuine porn star swimming underwater fanny-naked and lezzing around while classical music plays. Now, I’m all for a bit of bappage but Piranha took it so far that I found myself in the unlikely situation of thinking “okay, put them away now love, I paid to see killer fish, not smell it”.

"My God, what is it?" "It's the fucking Catalina wine mixer"

Eventually Aja comes to his senses, remembers he’s making a horror film and unleashes introduces the titular piranha fish. This is when Piranha gets properly impressive, especially when the killer fish reach the aforementioned Spring Break scene and carnage unfolds. Piranha has easily some of the most superb (and disturbing) gore effects I’ve seen in a long time, with leg stumps dragging on floors, heads getting squashed by motorboats, faces being ripped off and other such delights. It soon becomes clear that this is a movie obsessed with excess – after satisfying its teenage audience (and boring its older one) with ridiculous levels of nudity, it then goes on to present similarly ridiculous levels of bloodshed.

During this ridiculousness there are a few funny cameos dotted around. Richard Dreyfuss appears in the first scene of the film, reprising his role from Jaws, while Christopher Lloyd and Eli Roth also make fleeting appearances. Don’t let the movie’s advertising – which proudly proclaims that it ‘stars’ both Dreyfuss and Lloyd – fool you however, as combined both actors probably contribute to a total of about three minutes’ screen time.

Imagine Saving Private Ryan with teens and fish instead of soldiers and you've got the epic Spring Break scene

Originally shot on 3D (this review was based on the Blu-ray’s 2D version), watching Piranha in 2D can be an off-putting experience because of the countless times things are flung right into the screen, no doubt in an attempt to startle 3D viewers. Milkshake cups, piranha fish, breasts and even a severed penis all threaten to knock your popcorn off your lap, and while this would have no doubt looked impressive in 3D as it was intended, in 2D the effect is hokey, ineffective and simply has you saying “ah, that was supposed to be a 3D bit”.

If you’re male and plan on watching Piranha with someone of the fairer sex, be sure they’re not the type to judge your character on the movies you watch because the first 30 minutes will have them convinced you’re a pervert who’s talked them into watching a porno instead. Once it loses its half-hour teenage erection and gets the obsession with boobs and beavers out of its system however, the other 50 minutes provide a fantastic creature feature with loads of gore, heaps of laughs and a fun conclusion.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
Piranha is available on both Blu-ray and DVD. The DVD comes with both the 2D and 3D versions and comes with two pairs of 3D glasses. At the time of writing it costs around £6 from Amazon, where you can find it by clicking here. The Blu-ray also features both the 2D and 3D versions (in both the cardboard glasses and fancy 3D TV versions), and it’s also £6 right here.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010)

Published on by Chris Scullion1 Comment

Director: Jalmari Helander

Starring: Onni Tommila, Jorma Tommila, Tommi Korpela, Rauno Juvonen

“The real Santa was totally different. The Coca-Cola Santa was just a hoax.” (Pietari, Rare Exports)

In some Scandinavian cultures, Santa Claus wasn’t always the cheery chappy he’s known as these days. Back in the bad old days, he was known as Joulupukki (the Yule Goat) andaccording to some versions of the legend he would torture and kill any little children who were naughty. Why give you this rather grim history lesson? Because this evil Scandinavian Santa is the subject of Rare Exports, a Finnish horror film with a dark sense of humour.

He sees you when you're sleeping, he... actually, that's a bit creepy

The film starts a month before Christmas, with a group of excavators about to create a huge hole in a Finnish mountain in order to find some top-secret cargo frozen in its depths. Unbeknown to the excavators, young Pietari and his friend are spying on them to see what’s going on. Realising the workers are about to use dynamite, Pietari and chum leg it and return home, escaping through the hole they cut in the fence to reach the off-limits excavation site.

It was the biggest fox they had ever seen on any hunting trip

Fast-forward to the day before Christmas and Pietari’s dad discovers that all their reindeer have been slaughtered, losing them thousands of pounds. Noticing the hole in the fence, Pietari’s dad thinks the excavators have done it so he goes to the dig site to confront them but instead finds an old man frozen. After Pietari’s dad takes him back to his workshop the old man comes back to life and starts going mad, attacking everyone. Could this be the evil Santa, back to life and ready to kill any bad children he finds? Pietari certainly thinks so, but all is not as it seems…

Rare Exports is a very pretty film. The scenery is impressive, and the scenes in which snow is constantly falling snow are hypnotic at times. This is one well-shot film. It gets even better during the final half-hour, where the true Santa is revealed and the surprisingly decent CGI kicks in.

"You've got to get me out of here. I wrote that naughty list for innocent reasons"

The main letdown in the film is the finale. After building up to a potential encounter with a huge, dormant beast, the way in which it’s dealt with is too convenient and seems like it was done that way to avoid more difficult CGI work. As a result the big moment the whole film seems like it’s building up to never really happens. Add to that a silly final scene and you’ve got a generally disappointing conclusion.

That aside, Rare Exports is a great little film. While it never really gets as tense or scary as it threatens to, it still tells a fun and slightly silly story that makes it worth a watch over the festive period.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
Rare Exports is out on DVD and Blu-Ray on 7 November so you can pre-order the DVD for £9.99 by clicking here or pre-order the Blu-ray for… um, £9.99 for some reason, by clicking here.

Your definitive Halloween TV guide (UK)

Published on by Chris Scullion1 Comment
The Shining is easily the best film showing on Monday

Halloween is that glorious time where nearly every big TV channel in the UK slaps some horror films on the telly to try and compete for the nation’s temporary love of all things creepy. But since there are now officially twelve million television channels on UK television (approx) it can be a bit daunting surfing through massive channel guides to find the diamonds in the rough. No need, because I’ve gathered the full list of horror films showing  on Monday 31 October, along with a little advice on whether I reckon they’re worth a watch. I’m nice like that.

Not listed below (because it’d take too long) is Sky Movies Classics’ top-notch line-up – because they’re showing nothing but Universal horror films all day, including The Creature From The Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Dracula, Return Of The Fly and such. If you want a bit of old-school horror, that’s your best bet. As for the rest of the channels, here’s what’s on offer.

Finally, most of these films are on the Sky movie channels, and since not everyone has those I’ve coloured those red to make it easier to identify the films you’re more likely to be able to see. Happy Halloween!

In order of transmission (Monday, 31 October):

Vampire In Brooklyn (1995)
2.55pm, Sky Movies Comedy – What do you get when you cross Wes Craven and Eddie Murphy? Pish 

Tremors 3: Back To Perfection (2001)
3pm, SyFy – Fairly rubbish sequel to the desert worm classic

Sorority Row (2009)
6.45pm, Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror – Forgettable teen slasher, typical ‘prank gone wrong’ stuff

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
8pm, Sky Movies Modern Greats – Robert De Niro and Helena Bonham Carter put an interesting spin on the classic

The Ring (2002)
8pm, Sky Movies Showcase – Killer video tape kills you to DEATH after a week of bricking it 

The Final Destination (2009)
8.30pm, Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror – AKA Final Destination 4. Death comes back to fuck up more chancers 

Beowulf (2007)
9pm, 5* – Odd animated fantasy starring CGI Angelina Jolie and Danish monsters

The Shining (1980)
9pm, TCM – Kubrick’s masterpiece about isolation and its tendency to lead to insanity

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)
9.45pm, Sky Movies Premiere – More grainy footage of ghosts fannying around while people sleep

Scream (1996)
10pm, Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror – Wes Craven’s fantastic return to form. Read the review here 

Halloween II (2009)
10pm, Sky Movies Showcase – Rob Zombie returns for more Michael Myers slaughterfun™

King Kong (2005)
10pm, ITV2 – Peter Jackson’s remarkable take on the tale of a monkey who just wanted to have sex with a tiny woman

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
10.05pm, The Horror Channel – cryptically named Hammer Horror classic starring Peter Cushing

Addams Family Values (1993)
10.20pm, Sky Movies Family – More adequate adventures from the painfully odd family 

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)
11.20pm, BBC 2 – Ridiculous Big Brother knock-off with Michael Myers, Tyra Banks and Busta Rhymes. Seriously

Night Of The Demons (2010)
11.20pm, Sky Movies Premiere – Edward Furlong proves he still has a career in this remake

Burke And Hare (2010)
11.40pm, Sky Movies Comedy – Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis star in this graverobbing farce 

Return Of The Living Dead Part II (1987)
11.45pm, TCM – Fantastic zombie film as packed with comedy as it is tasty brains

Scream 2 (1997)
11.50pm, Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror – Craven strikes back in this decent sequel. Read the review here

The Amityville Horror (1979)
11.50pm, Sky Movies Showcase – The original that spawned countless sequels and imitations 

The Plague Of The Zombies (1965)
11.50pm, The Horror Channel – Zombies are used as cheap labour in this Hammer gem

Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004)
12.45am, BBC 2 – Prequel to Canadian werewolf film that shows how it all came about

AvH: Alien v Hunter
1am, movies 24 – Silly sci-fi pish where an alien crash-lands on Earth and another alien arrives hunting it

Session 9 (2001)
1.30am, SyFy – Atmospheric and creepy thriller about an abandoned asylum. Recommended

Scream 3 (2000)
1.50am, Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror – Sky completes its Scream trilogy. Read the review here

So there you have it. Personally, I’d recommend the following for the perfect night of horror, if you don’t have the Sky movie channels:
THE SHINING (9pm, TCM)
RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II (11.45pm, TCM)
SESSION 9 (1.30am, SyFy) 

If you’re just looking for something so bad you can take the piss out of it with a group of friends, then Halloween Resurrection on BBC2 is your best shout by a country mile.

Happy Halloween!

Chris

Dead Silence (2007)

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Director: James Wan

Starring: Ryan Kwanten, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Fairman

“Can you help me with a missing persons case? I’m looking for a male. About this tall. Sometimes seen with a hand up his ass.” (Detective Lipton, Dead Silence)

Dolls are creepy, that’s one thing many of us can agree on. Some of them look like they can come alive when you’re not watching. Ventriloquist dummies – those built for the sole purpose of being made to look alive by their owner – are particularly eerie in this respect. I’m certain that’s more or less the sole concept behind Dead Silence, a concept its creators were happy to run with until they realised they actually needed to build a film around it.

"Call me David Cameron again and I'll rip your bastard lungs out"

Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) and his wife Lisa are very much in love. As Jamie’s heading off to work he notices that someone has left a mysterious package outside their front door. He opens it to find a ventriloquist’s dummy, with no note explaining who sent it or why it’s been sent to them. Jamie decides he’ll figure it out later and leaves the doll at home with Lisa. When he returns he finds his wife lying dead in bed with her tongue ripped out. Bloody FedEx eh?

It soon emerges that the doll once belonged to Mary Shaw, a famous ventriloquist who was mocked one day in front of a huge audience by a young boy. Shaw kidnapped the boy and he was never seen again, and after realising she’d done it the townsfolk tracked her down and attacked her, ripping her tongue out.

Captain Cheery's Kid-Friendly Circus demonstrated breathtakingly poor costume choices

Yes, not content with borrowing from Child’s Play, Dolls and any other killer doll film ever made, Dead Silence also owes a suspiciously large chunk of its plot to A Nightmare On Elm Street with its whole “vigilante parents kill evil child catcher who continues to haunt their children from beyond the grave” plot. Not to mention it even has its own children’s rhyme, though “beware the stare of Mary Shaw” isn’t quite as catchy as “one, two, Freddy’s coming for you”.

Dead Silence is very much style over substance. There is a steady stream of wanky pseudo-arty shots throughout, where maps become wide shots of the road and eyes are zoomed in to reveal an image of the next scene. And no matter how many times they do it (which is a lot), they just can’t seem to make a shot of a doll slowly moving its eyes feel that creepy.

The graffiti on the roof of the London-to-Glasgow sleeper train was too obscene for some passengers

The film has two saving graces. The first is Donnie Wahlberg, who plays the cop following Jamie as he investigates his wife’s murder. Wahlberg’s character is naturally suspicious of Jamie’s claims that the doll killed his wife, and he consistently gets the best lines in the film as he aims snarky and sarcastic comments Jamie’s way as he tries to find evidence that will pin the crime on him.

The other decent aspect is the twist ending, which makes sense and is cleverly handled. You’re likely to have suspicions about the characters in question before the ending is revealed, but it’s unlikely you’d guess exactly what’s been going on. It’s a nice little twist and one that brings a satisfying end to what’s essentially a fairly forgettable film.

Mega Piranha (2010)

Published on by Chris Scullion4 Comments

Director: Eric Forsberg

Starring: Tiffany, Paul Logan, David Labiosa

“I’ve figured it out. It wasn’t the explosion that killed him, and it wasn’t terrorists… it was giant piranha. Yes, giant piranha.” (Jason Fitch, Mega Piranha)

Mega Piranha is at times hilarious and depressing. The hilarity comes with the disbelief that a film can really be so bad, whereas the depression hits you when you realise there are properly ‘real’ actors struggling for roles who would have been up for at least trying to give a film about 30-foot piranha a modicum of credibility.

Syfy’s creature feature productions are bad at the best of times but this film is a shambles on every level, starting with the plot. Some generic ambassador or other is killed in Venezuela, so the US military send out a special agent built like a brick shithouse to investigate it and see if it someone assassinated him. When he gets there he realises it wasn’t an assassination but rather death by piranha – big piranha. He then teams up with former ‘80s pop sensation Tiffany (who’s apparently a scientist) and some other guy with a rubbish goatee to destroy the piranha, all while some weird Venezuelan soldier guys are chasing them for some reason.

"I'd say this man died by being turned into a fish by a wizard. What? It IS a fish? Never mind then"

If it seems like I perhaps struggled to stay on top of the story for this one, you wouldn’t be wrong. It’s little wonder though given how ridiculously fast it chucks everything at you. Establishing shots are replaced with two-second shots of people walking fast or ominous buildings with a big Impact font subtitle sliding in saying “HANK ROBERTS, HEAD OF INTELLIGENCE” or “MILITARY INTELLIGENCE HEADQUARTERS PACIFIC DIVISION” or something like that, and by the time you get your head round what you just read they’re halfway through the next inane piece of dialogue about how “these things are getting bigger” and how in four hours’ time they’ll be big enough to swallow Harlem or something, I don’t know.

Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day. Give him mutated piranha fish and you'll feed them instead

Meanwhile, the quality of the acting is so shocking you start to wonder if this maybe wasn’t some sort of joke. Tiffany couldn’t act her way out of an open door and buff action ‘hero’ Paul Logan’s voice is so needlessly deep and bass-heavy that earthworms picking up the vibrations in the dirt were making better sense of what he was saying than I was. Then there’s the ‘Venezuelan’ bad guy who regularly forgets he’s supposed to be Venezuelan and slips into a New York accent.

Yes, that's a piranha fish eating a helicopter. It's nowhere near as awesome as it should be though

Let’s not forget the hideous CGI effects (the piranha are laughable and the bigger they get the less the CGI chap seems to bother, eventually just sticking splashes and shadows in the water that genuinely look like anyone could do it) and piss-poor editing (in one scene one of the characters is seen sitting down in one shot, then standing up in the next, then sitting down again FIVE times in a row) that both combine to make this less a case of “what’s going to happen to the piranha” and more “how much shitter is this film going to get”. I lost it near the end when a nuclear attack (seriously) destroyed a whole lake of piranha but seemingly didn’t affect the ducks still clearly seen swimming about.

Mega Piranha expertly walks the line between so-bad-it’s-good and so-bad-it’s-shite. As an achievement in filmmaking it fails miserably on every possible level, but if you’re the sort who takes pleasure in laughing at bad editing and direction as much as the usual bad acting and script, then you’ll be in hog’s heaven here. Anyone simply looking for a decent film though will be let down. Just watch the trailer below instead, it makes things look a lot more exciting than they really are.

Halloween (2007)

Published on by Chris Scullion2 Comments

Director: Rob Zombie

Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Sheri Moon Zombie

“These eyes will deceive you, they will destroy you. They will take from you, your innocence, your pride, and eventually your soul. These eyes do not see what you and I see. Behind these eyes one finds only blackness, the absence of light, these are of a psychopath.” (Dr Loomis, Halloween)

The most effective remakes are not those that simply try to update the original film so it fits in with today’s society and technology, but those that actually attempt to give a unique take on its predecessor and handle the same story in a different way. This is what Rob Zombie’s version of Halloween does, and in doing so it makes it abundantly clear that the filmmaker has an intense respect for John Carpenter’s original.

While the original film focused mainly on Jamie Lee Curtis’s character Laurie Strode and her ordeal throughout the movie, Zombie’s take is very much all about the killer instead. Far more time is spent on Michael Myers – his violent upbringing at the hands of his father, his time at the asylum as he grew up there, his loving mother’s desperate attempts to get through to him and cure him from his psychosis, and his eventual escape years later as a young adult. Rather than going down the “look at what’s happening to this poor girl” route, the message of Zombie’s Halloween is more “look at what this young boy has become”.

"All these masks and you went with the bleached William Shatner one? No wonder they say you're mental"

This shift of focus isn’t the only difference between the remake and the original, however – Zombie’s version is also far more shocking and visceral. Whereas the few killings in the original film are very ‘clean’, swift and to-the-point, when Myers attacks his victims in the remake it makes for extremely unsettling viewing.

Many films of this generation have similarly grisly and graphic death scenes, but Halloween is impressive in that they never feel glamorised. These killings are raw, they’re shocking. They’re not some big-chested bimbo getting a knife in the tit as she pulls a hammy pained expression, they’re unflinching and realistic – and it’s to Zombie’s credit that they’re presented in this way rather than the ‘torture porn’ many of today’s horror films are accused of offering.

"No you little shit, I'm MALCOLM McDowell. Roddy McDowall was in Planet Of The Apes. I keep telling you this"

The cast for the most part are effective. It would be easy to accuse Zombie of nepotism by casting his wife Sheri Moon as Michael Myers’ mum and also putting his friend Bill Moseley in the film, and it would be similarly simple to suggest the casting of Halloween 4 and 5’s Danielle Harris as one of Laurie’s friends was simply Zombie’s attempt to pander to the fans, but they all put in solid, realistic performances to ensure the film remains as plausible as possible. The addition of strong character actors like Malcolm McDowell (playing the Dr Loomis role almost as well as the late Donald Pleasance did) and Brad Dourif as the sheriff makes for some compelling moments too, particularly when the two are in the same scene.

Oddly, the only real negative performance is that of Scout Taylor-Compton as the ‘heroine’ Laurie Strode. Stepping into Jamie Lee Curtis’s shoes is a big enough feat as it is, but she’s barely even able to do the laces up. It’s not a bad job by any means but it’s almost impressive how forgettable she is and how unimportant Laurie becomes because of this. Indeed, this underwhelming version of Laurie is one of the reasons Michael Myers is the key focal point of the remake rather than the terrified babysitter.

"Right, who's covered up my eyeholes with black card again? It's not funny lads, that's health and safety, that is"

It also helps that the Michael Myers in this film is one of the best in the history of the lengthy Halloween series. This guy isn’t just a simple crazed killer, he’s a proper monster in every sense of the word. Played by the 6’9” Tyler Mane he’s simply terrifying to look at, and that’s just in the asylum scenes before he even escapes and finds the iconic white mask and jumpsuit. Once he does pop them on he’s a truly frightening sight, a Myers with obvious strength to back up his intimidating appearance.

Rob Zombie’s Halloween may not boast the effective simplicity of the original film but it almost makes up for it with its rawness. It’s the original story told in a far more aggressive manner, yet one that still clearly holds Carpenter’s classic in high regard. A success.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Published on by Chris Scullion7 Comments

Director: Tobe Hooper

Starring: Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Paul Partain

“I just can’t take no pleasure in killing. There’s just some things you gotta do. Don’t mean you have to like it.” (The Cook, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)

Though it was never technically a video nasty, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was refused a certificate for a theatrical release by the BBFC and as such remained banned for an astonishing 25 years in the UK. It actually wasn’t until 1999 that the film was finally given an 18 certificate and finally got a British cinema run. Quite a result for a film whose director was initially aiming for a PG rating.

This lengthy ban is particularly interesting when you consider that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is actually fairly tame by today’s standards, at least in terms of graphic content. Indeed, there’s actually very little on-screen violence at all – instead the film relies on the power of suggestion to terrify audiences. In a way its real downfall was that it worked too well.

Say what you will about Leatherface, he could give Gok Wan a run for his money with a sewing machine

The film tells the story of Sally, her brother and their three friends who are taking a trip to Texas to stay at Sally’s grandfather’s house out in the countryside. There have been reports that some ne’er-do-wells have been robbing graves, so after a brief stop at the graveyard to check her granddad’s grave is still intact, Sally and chums head on down the road. They pick up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be a bit mental, but it soon turns out that’s just the start of their problems when they happen upon the Sawyer house.

You see, it soon emerges that all the graverobbings have been committed by a weird, possibly in-bred family who live together in a huge country house decorated with their own macabre creations. There are lamps made with human skin, chandeliers made out of bones and armchairs that quite literally have arms on them. That’s what happens when you live too far from an Ikea.

She couldn't believe how bad The X Factor was this year

One by one Sally’s friends discover the Sawyer house while out wandering, and one by one they encounter Leatherface, the huge mentally troubled son of the household who’s taken on the “mother” role. Being the “mother”, Leatherface is in charge of preparing the dinner, and being that the family are a bunch of cannibals, that means capturing his new guests and turning them into that night’s dinner.

This leads to some of the more infamous scenes in ’70s horror, including one in which a young chap is smacked in the head with a mallet, his legs convulsing as the skull fragments enter his brain. Then there’s the notorious ‘meathook scene’ in which a girl is dragged into the kitchen and literally hoisted up and onto a meathook through her bare back, then writhes around screaming while Leatherface cuts her boyfriend’s head off with a chainsaw.

Bob's Princess Diana joke didn't go down all that well

Incredibly, despite the gruesome descriptions there is very little blood spilled in these scenes. You never see the hammer hit the head, you never see the meathook going in the back, you never see the chainsaw actually touching anyone. Using the same principle that The Human Centipede would copy 35 years later, the film relies on the audience’s ability to fill in the gaps themselves. Whereas actually seeing a meathook pierce the victim may not have worked out so well because the effect could have been hokey and unrealistic (especially given the film’s shoestring budget), by cutting away just before impact the viewer imagines the worst possible outcome in their head and it becomes far more powerful than it ever could have had it been shown.

The final scene is almost hypnotic to watch. It's both terrifying and oddly beautiful at the same time

Despite its incredibly low budget (the whole film cost around $83,500 to make) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an impressive looking movie at times. It’s clear that director Tobe Hooper (who would go on to do Poltergeist) had a good eye for effective shots at this early stage in his career, and some – such as the van picking up the hitch-hiker and Leatherface’s frustrated tantrum at the end of the movie – are breathtaking.

The cast are also believable too. The five teens each have their own distinct personalities and although it’s clear that Sally and her brother are the main characters and given more opportunity for character development, you can ultimately relate to all five. Meanwhile, the Sawyer family are all as mental as a washing machine filled with bacon and this really comes across well in their performances, particularly Gunnar Hansen as the neglected, scared and yet terrifying Leatherface.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a classic in the horror genre. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, and while it’s tame by today’s standards some many still not like the unrelenting nature of the horror (the final 30 minutes in particular are essentially non-stop screaming, mental torture and noise). If you can stomach the insanity though you’ll find yourself stunned at how such a low budget could produce such an effective film. Essential.

WHERE CAN I BUY IT?
British would-be Texas Chainsaw viewers with a Blu-ray player can get the stunning “Seriously Ultimate” edition for less than a tenner by clicking here, otherwise you can get the three-disc DVD by clicking here. Both have the same features (hours upon hours of great documentaries), but the Blu-ray fits it all on a single disc and naturally looks a lot better too.
American peeps, meanwhile, can get the Blu-ray here and the DVD here.