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.

Alien Terminator (1995)

Published on by Chris Scullion1 Comment

Director: Dave Payne

Starring: Maria Ford, Rodger Halston, Lisa Boyle, Bob McFarland

MCKAY – “Jinx is dead, and it’s not a pretty sight.”
PETE – “Ooh, open casket or closed casket?”
MCKAY – “No casket.”

When a movie’s title is simply those of two cult sci-fi classics slapped together, it should hardly shock you to the core to discover that the film itself is essentially 90 minutes of clichés. While it doesn’t really reference The Terminator in anything but name alone, Alien Terminator’s plot is more or less a direct lift from Alien with a bit of The Thing thrown in for good measure. It should probably have been called Alien Thing, really.

After years working underground in self-imposed isolation, a group of scientists are spending their last day together before their work is over and they get to return to the surface. As is so often the case in these set-ups a spanner is thrown into the works, and this metaphorical spanner happens to be a mutated rat.

"It's a good job for you there are no guns down here otherwise my aggressive gesture would have had significantly more impact"

You see, one of the scientists is actually working on a secret project, trying to create the ultimate biological weapon. This results in one of his rats going apeshit, killing the other mice in his cage and then escaping through the air vent. It’s a bit like the scene with the dogs in The Thing, except on a much smaller scale and off-camera to save budget.

Eventually the rat kills a cat and then infects one of the workers and that’s when everything goes all Alien, to the outrageously plagiaristic extent that one of the guys is seemingly killed by a smaller creature then comes back to life, is feeling fine and then has an alien burst out of him at the dinner table. Through his back though, of course, because if it came through his chest you’d actually see it and it would have cost money to do.

So apparently this is how you studied DNA in the mid-1990s.

It’s the low budget that really makes itself most apparent in this movie. The main “alien” is a guy in a ridiculous furry suit, the scientist’s futuristic tools include some Virtual Reality glasses and some hideous CGI animations… it quickly becomes apparent that most of the budget was blown on the big explosion that takes place near the end of the film.

Meanwhile, the dialogue is as predictable as you can get – it’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly every single scene contains at least a few lines of typical sci-fi/action cliché dialogue. There’s the classic “How are you holding out” / “Gee, I didn’t know you cared” interchange, the vintage “I’m going back for her” / “dammit, she’s probably already dead” / “but I need to know for sure” debate, and of course who could forget the classic “we need to stop this thing” / “what do you mean we, I don’t get paid enough to have that thing kill me” argument.

"Ha ha guys, isn't this just like the scene in Alien? The scene where that guy dies and OH MY GOD IT'S HAPPENING"

These clichés aren’t solely restricted to the dialogue, mind you – they’re weaved throughout the plot, the casting decisions, and every other aspect of the movie. There’s the faceless organisation boss who orders the controversial decision, the secret double agent and the attractive hard-ass woman who doesn’t have time for men but will ultimately fall in love with one of them by the end. And, of course, you can easily spot a mile off the weaker actress who has clearly just been hired because she’s got the biggest breasts and is willing to get them out (which she predictably does for no reason).

Alien Terminator is goofy fun if you fancy a game of Spot The Stereotype. It’s not a well-made film by any means, but it’s worth a watch for a laugh.

People search for the oddest things – Part 2

Published on by Chris Scullion1 Comment

If you haven’t read the first part of this before you can find it right here, but in essence here’s what it was about – WordPress keeps track of the things people search for to find my site, so in the first part I listed some of the oddest things people searched for to somehow end up being directed here.

That was around three and a half months ago however, and I’ve had plenty more visitors through odd searches since then. I thought I’d use this post to list some of the newer ones.

First of all, in case you’re curious, these are the ten search results that directed most people to the site:

Someone searched for "woman being eaten by snake" to get here. Oh you guyzzzz

1. the langoliers
2. children of the corn
3. mega python vs gatoroid
4. the exorcist
5. malachai
6. dinoshark
7. that was a bit mental
8. jaws 2
9. hell comes to frogtown
10. planet of the apes 1968

What do these results tell me? Mainly that the two Stephen King films I’ve reviewed on this site are the two that far and away get the most people coming here, but also that people fucking love killer animal movies. If I was ever to review Pet Sematary I think the internet would explode… so expect that one soon.

Anyway, you’re not here to see that. You’re here to see what sort of weird shit people search for. Here, then, are just some of the searches that genuinely directed people to this site. Continue reading “People search for the oddest things – Part 2” →

Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001)

Published on by Chris Scullion1 Comment

Director: Sam Irvin

Starring: Cassandra Peterson, Richard O’Brien, Scott Atkinson

DR BRADLEY – “The village people say this castle is evil.”
ELVIRA – “Meh, who listens to the Village People any more?”

If you’re not familiar with Cassandra Peterson, she’s a comedy actress most famous for her alter-ago, the campy vampire Elvira. Elvira used to introduce old horror films on TV back in the 1980s and her cheesy jokes and – let’s face it – enormous chest made her a cult favourite among horror fans. In 1988 Peterson wrote and starred in a horror comedy called Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark, a film that’s since become the guilty pleasure of many a hardened horror nut. A sequel was planned, but after many years being screwed over by various studios she finally decided to go indie and make the film herself. The result thirteen years later was Elvira’s Haunted Hills.

Elvira's answer to an 1800s jacuzzi - getting your maid to blow bubbles into your bath

Set in 1851, Haunted Hills sees Elvira travelling through Europe to perform a show in Paris but finding herself lost in Romania in the process. After hitching a ride with a creepy-looking coach Elvira meets Dr Bradley, a posh-sounding Englishman who offers to take her to a castle to stay for the night. What he neglects to tell her is that the castle is owned by Lord Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien), a rich maniac who lost his wife many years ago and never recovered. Oh, and his wife haunts the mansion and looks just like Elvira. Cue the antics!

Richard O'Brien tries to explain the Crystal Maze format to a confused Elvira

Make no bones about it, this horror-comedy has much more of the latter and hardly any of the former, but that was always its intention. It’s a spoof of the various Roger Corman and Hammer movies of the 70s and 80s set in the same time period, with nods to The House Of Usher and The Pit And The Pendulum throughout (though you don’t need to have seen those films to ‘get’ it).

Haunted Hills packs an impressive number of jokes in its 90-minute running time, and while some of them are fairly cringeworthy (comedy ‘boink’ sound effects and sped-up scenes will never be funny, and the numerous long screaming scenes are intensely irritating) there are a decent number of jokes that hit the mark, mainly those from Elvira herself.

"I agree the painting's shit but setting fire to it seems a wee bit severe"

Indeed, it’s little wonder Elvira is the star of the show, because she’s the only truly entertaining character in the film. Her down-to-earth nature and modern, dry sense of humour provides a funny juxtaposition with the 1851 setting and she still seems young and full of life despite being over 50 when the movie was filmed.

If you want to see what the big deal is with Elvira then Elvira’s Haunted Hills is a decent way to find out. It’s by no means a great film but her performance shines through and turns a potentially humour-free mess into a chuckle-filled cheesefest.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
If you’re a UK subscriber to LoveFilm then you can stream Elvira’s Haunted Hills for free as part of your package. Otherwise, you can buy the region 2 DVD by clicking here. American Elviraphiles can buy the region 1 DVD by clicking here.