Battle Royale (2000)

Published on by Chris Scullion3 Comments

Director: Kinji Fukusaku

Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Takeshi Kitano, Chiaki Kuriyama

“There’s a way out of this game. Kill yourselves together, here, now. If you can’t do that, then don’t trust anyone. Just run.” (Kawada, Battle Royale)

Teenagers are pricks. That’s what Japan thinks in Battle Royale, and that’s why the film starts with the passing of the Millennium Educational Reform Act. A tricky piece of legislature, it basically sees one class of fifteen year-old pupils (chosen by random lottery) being taken to a remote island each year and made to kill each other. And to think we Brits rioted over tuition fees.

This year it’s the turn of Nanahara Shuya’s class, so as he and the rest of his unwitting fellow students set off on what they think is a class trip they don’t realise the bus is actually heading to Clusterfuck Island (which is unfortunately my name for it, not the film’s). Naturally, they’re a bit shocked to find out they’re all marked for death, and are equally surprised when their old school teacher, Kitano (of Takeshi’s Castle and a million other Japanese films fame) turns up to tell them the rules.

Kitano essentially tells the pupils that because the nation’s teenagers are arseholes they’re being taught a lesson. Each kid will be given a bag with supplies and a random weapon. It could be something really handy (like a crossbow or an Uzi) or it could be a load of pish (a frying pan, which might as well just be a shovel so they can dig their own grave in advance). They have to kill each other until one child remains, at which point that child will get to go back home.

The natural reaction in a situation like this would be to think of ways to get out of having to kill your mates, so Kitano goes on to explain (via an incredibly darkly comic instructional video) that they can’t pull a fast one because of the steel collars around their necks. These collars track the students and monitor their pulse rates (so the organisers can tell if they’re dead). More importantly though, they’re also armed with powerful explosives which can be triggered at any time causing the wearer’s neck to explode, killing them.

These collars are a genius plot device because they explain away all the “what if they do this” questions with the simple answer “their neck will explode”. What if they try to remove the collar? Their neck will explode. What if they try to leave the island? The collar’s tracking them, so their neck will explode. What if everyone decides to call a truce and spend the rest of their lives on the island? Bit pointless, because the game has a time limit of three days, after which point everyone’s neck will explode. Basically, they can’t get out of it.

Considering Battle Royale has the difficult task of introducing a huge cast of 42 characters and trying to make them all interesting, it actually does a very good job of this. While some pupils only get a few seconds of screen time or are already found dead, the vast majority (even the bit-part characters) still feel like individual characters with their own personalities, which keeps things interesting as each pupil tries to play the game their own way.

The classroom slut uses her sexuality to seducing male pupils until they drop their guards and she can kill them, while deep down she just wants attention. The loving couple decide they can’t take it and jump off a cliff hand-in-hand. The virgin, in an act of desperation, threatens to rape the athletic girl (played by Chiyaki Kuriyama who later played GoGo in Kill Bill), but gets what he deserves. The shy girls try to call a truce but only draw attention to themselves from the more dangerous pupils. The geeks try to hack the military network to bring the system down. The constant sideplots and different methods make the film immensely engaging and while you think you know who’s going to survive at the end, you’re never really sure until the film’s conclusion.

Everything about Battle Royale oozes class. The music is a powerful mix of classical music and dramatic “DA DA DA DUM” stings when something shocking happens. The occasional appearances by Kitano keep a vein of dark humour flowing throughout the film. The death scenes are realistic enough to shock, but not too gory to disgust. And the ending, while a little ludicrous (featuring one of the oddest death scenes you’ll ever see), is still fitting.

Battle Royale is a film you really should see. It makes you consider an interesting question (could you kill all your friends if it was the only way to stay alive?) and is handled with a surprising degree of tact given the subject matter. If you’ve never seen it before, watch the trailer below and try to tell me it doesn’t look like a powerful movie.

Children Of The Corn II: The Final Sacrifice (1992)

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Director: David Price

Starring: Terence Knox, Ryan Bollman, Ned Romero

REDBEAR: “My ancestors would have told you that man should be at one with the Earth, the sky, the water. But the white man has never understood this. He only knows how to take. And after a while there’s nothing left to take, so everything’s out of balance and we all fall down.

GARRETT: “Wait a minute. So that’s what happened here in Gatlin?”

REDBEAR: “No. What happened in Gatlin was those kids went apeshit and killed everybody.”

How can a film be so good yet have a sequel so achingly bad? Many will tell you this has always been the case (Freddy’s Dead and “The Exorcist II” spring to mind). But Children Of The Corn II is so terrible compared to the first film that your soul will weep.

Seemingly taking place soon after the events of the first film, news teams have arrived to cover the story (presumably the survivors of the first film notified authorities). Meanwhile Garrett, a reporter, is driving through the countryside for a job interview in New York with his son Danny coming along for the ride (against his wishes). Hearing of the story in the small village of Gatlin, they decide to check it out. Horrific hijinks ensue.

Children Of The Corn II is rare in that you’ll probably enjoy it more if you haven’t seen the original first. If you already know the story so far, your brain will be overloaded with questions for the first 40 or 50 minutes. “How long is this after the first film?” “Are those two corpses at the start meant to be the couple at the end of the first film?” “How come Malachai looks so different?” and “Where did that new kid come from, and how did he become the leader so quickly?”.

This was the shittest barbecue ever

Put simply, this film makes no attempt to connect with the original. The first scene after the credits (a terribly-acted news broadcast) tries to explain its own version of what happened, deciding to totally ignore the characters played by Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton in the first film. One of the most important characters, Malachai, has been replaced by someone who looks absolutely nothing like him and has no emotion whatsoever (unlike the original actor who, as mentioned in the previous film’s review, made the part his own by being a wanker). Naturally the actor could not be called upon to play the role again because this was filmed eight years after the original and going by the story he would already have been sacrificed because he’d be well into his twenties.

The whole thing reeks of shoddy filmmaking in general. Two elderly sisters are played by the same person and are never seen in the same scene; a Native American character stereotypically called Red Bear is introduced and quickly gets into character by talking about how foolish “the white man” is; and the quality of the acting reminds me of a girl from my Drama class in High School (she failed).

It’s not all bad news however. There are some interesting death scenes (one in particular involving a windscreen and a bale of corn, reminiscent of Final Destination 2) and the actor playing Micah, the new cult leader, is curiously strange (as the role demands, after all). He’s certainly one of the more interesting characters and fits into the “Isaac” role of the first film quite neatly.

Humour is also scattered throughout the film, a move that is unwelcome in my opinion. The original film was straight horror and nothing else; an attempt to add comedic elements is out of place (except for the excellent quote at the top of this review, of course). A death in which an electric wheelchair is taken over by one of the kids is a prime example of humour ruining the tone of the film.

The only real area in which this film is on an equal ground with the original is unfortunately that both have a weak ending. Again we are treated to what seems to be a giant mole tunnelling underground, followed by poor CGI effects in an attempt to add an unnecessary supernatural element to the film. Of course, the sequel takes it too far before this point anyway, with pointless Predator-style ‘body-heat’ POV shots that affect the film in no way at all other than adding to the shitness factor.

Children Of The Corn II would have received only one skull out of five had it not been for the pleasant addition of Christie Clark, a fine actress who sadly didn’t do many films after this. To give a film an extra half a mark based on the appearance of a minor character alone however speaks volumes on the overall shoddiness of the entire production.

Do yourself a favour and watch this awesome seven-minute version of the film, which cuts out all the boring shit and leaves you with the weird shit.

Children Of The Corn (1984)

Published on by Chris Scullion13 Comments

Director: Fritz Kiersch

Starring: Linda Hamilton, Peter Horton, Courtney Gains

“Our time of tribulation has come. A test is at hand. A final test.” (Isaac, Children Of The Corn)

Films based on Stephen King books are a mixed bunch. You have your great films that are unfortunately not much to do with the book (The Shining), your great films that stick nearly 100% to the book (Pet Sematary), your non-horror films (Stand By Me) and your pieces of shit (Dreamcatcher). Having not read the short story Children Of The Corn is based on I am not at liberty to suggest which category this film falls into, but needless to say it’s sure to be one of the first two because this is a fantastic flick.

A doctor and his girlfriend are moving to the big city so he can set up a surgery. Whilst driving past a cornfield they hit a boy who steps onto the road. Realising he had already been stabbed, the doctor puts the body in his trunk and drives to the nearest town to get some help. Trouble is, the nearest town is Gatlin, a small countryside village much like any other you’d care to name. As long as you’re naming one in which the children have killed all the adults and are members of a religious cult.

This is Isaac. He's weird.

There must be something about Stephen King books that makes their film translations scarier than usual. I can personally sit through 95% of most 80’s horrors without batting an eyelid. ‘Tense’ chase scenes don’t usually affect me and I can work out when the big scares are coming in most of the films, as they were more predictable back then. However, of the countless ’80s horror films that attempt to scare the viewer, only two I’ve seen so far succeed in making me feel extremely uneasy: Pet Sematary and Children Of The Corn.

The film opens with a flashback of events that took place three years before the film is set, and right away the audience is thrown into the mix with a number of ‘scythe n’ knife’-related killings and a freaky looking Amish lad who looks as if he hasn’t slept for 7 months. In time however, you may grow to feel sorry for him. Maybe.

The thing that really wins me over with Children Of The Corn is the imperfection of the two lead characters. Whereas in most films the hero is the virgin who never smokes, always does the right thing and collects injured birds off the road and gives them baths, Children Of The Corn forces you to question your feelings on the heroes. This kicks off right from the first scene, where Burt refuses to propose to his girlfriend Vicky and doesn’t seem to have time for her. Meanwhile, when Burt suggests they take the injured kid’s body into town to get help Vicky at first refuses, showing a coldness not many ‘hero’ characters demonstrate. While this could have so easily resulted in a film with characters that the audience feels no sympathy for when they get involved in later events, the excellent performances by Peter Horton and Linda Hamilton coupled with the effective script only make the characters more believable, bringing the audience closer and making it easier for them to relate to Burt and Vicky (after all, nobody’s perfect).

This is Malachai. He's a twat.

The real stars are the children, though. There are good kids, bad kids (the nameless ones who always seem to be there whenever someone pegs it) and batshit mental kids (Isaac, the leader of the cult). And then there’s Malachai. Never before have I hated a character more than I hated Malachai. Perhaps the young actor playing him (Courtney Gains) was tapping into the years of mockery he received for having a girl’s name, or perhaps he’s actually like the character, but this boy’s sneer makes you want to punch his head off and you really want him to get what’s coming to him (which, at the end of the day, is what the filmmakers intended). I’d love to have been at that casting meeting: “I think we should give the role of Malachai to young Courtney Gains, because he’s a complete prick”.

Although for the most part Children Of The Corn isn’t too dodgy, it does contain one of film’s biggest taboos: the brutal killing of children. Some of the adults get theirs too, especially at the start, but when you’ve got a town full of kids and they’re all a bit mental, some of them are going to have to take a kicking.

This film would have received a full 5/5 if it hadn’t been for one disappointing aspect; the ending. Perhaps this is how it ends in the book, but as soon as the dirt started moving Tremors-style and getting a little out there I was disappointed. Had the film stayed away from special effects at the end and kept to the idea of a religious cult it would have been a far more satisfying ending. As it is, it gives the impression that the kids actually knew something we didn’t and maybe weren’t so mental after all… a pretty weak end to a fantastic story.

This is also true for the last scene. The last 30 seconds are so underwhelming that when you see the words “The End” you can’t help but think that ending was just thought up at the end of shooting in order to get a final scare in there (and I use the word ‘scare’ loosely). Don’t let that put you off however. Children Of The Corn is 88 minutes long. Of these 88 minutes, 80 are fantastic. It’s just a shame those last eight were so disappointing.

A little reminder

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This is you if you use RSS feeds

If you’re reading this shortly after it was posted in early January 2011, it’s probably because I know you, you know me, and you’ve been sent here via a link I’ve put up on either Facebook or Twitter. If that’s the case then I’m sorry about all those links, they won’t last long, just until I feel comfortable that people are checking the blog regularly and I’m not being paranoid.

If by some stroke of madness you do actually like what you’ve read so far then there’s a little link on the right-hand side of the page (under the Video Nasties list) where you can subscribe to this blog. That basically means that every time I write a review you’ll get an email with the review in it. Handy stuff, I say. But then again, I would because I wrote the bugger.

And if you’re one of those nerdy futuristic Tomorrow’s World types of people who have a voice-controlled house and ride a Segway, you probably also have some sort of RSS reader installed. If so, you’ll find the RSS feed for this site conveniently tucked under the Subscribe section.

It’s never been easier for me to wring every last bastard page hit from your cold, dead hands. Try it out!

28 Days Later (2002)

Published on by Chris Scullion4 Comments

Director: Danny Boyle

Starring: Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston

“No, no, see, this is a really shit idea. Know why? Because it’s really obviously a shit idea.” (Jim, 28 Days Later)

I went to see 28 Days Later on its day of release in the UK (way back in November 2002) and as a result was not privy to the excessive hype it soon gathered afterwards. The first time I saw it I came out slightly disappointed, but after repeated viewings I warmed to it.

I think the main reason I was initially let down was because I was expecting a zombie film. The trailer gave the impression it was a zombie film, it was being billed as a zombie film, and as a result I was ready to see a zombie film. Let me get this straight, however: 28 Days Later is not a zombie film. The “infected” (as they shall be known) are fast as fuck. Yes, they may portray zombie-like symptoms (such as scarred flesh and the need to destroy humans… we do not necessarily know if any are eaten), but the red eyes and occasional violent vomiting of blood suggest that they are indeed infected with a virus.

Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakens from a coma to find that it’s been 28 days since Britain has been exposed to a highly infectious virus known as Rage. He doesn’t know it yet but because he’s been lying in a hospital he’s become one of the last remaining people in Britain. The first 15 minutes are amazing for anyone who has been to London before and knows the surroundings. The shots of Jim walking through a deserted Piccadilly Circus are a sight to behold, and it makes you wonder exactly how they managed it (unless you watch the DVD, in which it’s revealed in the extra that they did it by filming the scenes just as day broke and just off-camera was the film crew trying to stop drunken clubbers wandering into the frame as they stumbled home).

Before long Jim begins to encounter the infected and meets up with a small number of other survivors including Selena, the other main character. He is told of the country’s mass exposure to the Rage virus and its subsequent evacuation. More infected appear. Jim and Selena get running and eventually they meet up with Hannah and her father. Unfortunately for any chairs looking to get their big break in acting, it appears that the young actress playing Hannah is more wooden than they could ever hope to be.

The rest of the film is a take-off of sorts on both Dawn Of The Dead (the group raid some shops, have a laugh then make some thoughtful, deep comments on the future of the human race) and Day Of The Dead (the group end up at a military base full of arsehole soldiers who keep some of the infected locked up). Even though it’s not a zombie film, honest guv.

Generally the acting is of a very high standard (with the exception of the aformentioned girl of wood, of course). Christopher Eccleston appears near the end of the movie as the leader of a military group and more or less steals the show with his performance, which is just as well because the rest of this final act is a bit rubbish. What was before a thought-provoking film about survival and what exactly the end of the world would mean (“you’ll never be able to read a new book or see a new film”), becomes a “men with guns versus zombies” blastfest, which seems somewhat out of place in a film that has for the most part been human-free.

You see, what makes the “infected” scenes so scary is the fact that the film’s locales are quiet and tranquil for the the vast majority of the time (since the towns and motorways are deserted), so when the infected arrive, there’s a clear change in atmosphere – what was once calm and peaceful has been flipped onto its arse, and shit’s about to go down (this is best demonstrated in the excellent tunnel scene). Once at the military base however, there are too many people we have to get to know (there are at least 4 or 5 new characters with distinct personalities), and by the time we’re used to these new, busier surroundings after being treated to sparsely populated scenery for 70 minutes, the film’s over.

Despite this, 28 Days Later is an outstanding horror film that is thoroughly recommended. The soundtrack is superb, the direction is gritty and it’s just a very well-made British horror.

Rasen (1998)

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Director: Joji Iida

Starring: Koichi Sato, Miki Nakatani, Hinao Saeki, Hiroyuki Sanada

Also known as: The Spiral (UK)

“You can’t even slit your own wrist. How are you supposed to perform an autopsy on me?” (Ryuji, Rasen)

(Spoilers for Ringu below)

While both the Japanese and American versions of The Ring and its sequels were big successes among horror fans, Rasen became the black sheep in the series. The sequel to Ringu, both films were oddly released on the same day because the story was already well-known in Japan (imagine they’d released the first two Harry Potter films on the same day: this was the Japanese equivalent). Ringu became a huge worldwide success while Rasen died on its arse and was forgotten about, to the extent that a different sequel to Ringu (Ringu 2) was released a year later.

Rasen takes place immediately after the events of Ringu. Pathologist Dr Ando has been assigned the task of performing an autopsy on his friend Ryuji to determine the cause of his death. After finding a message on a piece of paper secreted in Ryuji’s stomach he soon uncovers the mystery of Sadako Yamamura’s curse tape which kills people seven days after they view it. However, after watching the tape, it soon becomes clear to Ando that Sadako has other plans for him. Joining up with Takano Mai (Ryuji’s student girlfriend in the first film), Ando tries to solve the tape’s riddle.

"My jacket zip was caught on something, so I just yanked it down. Last time I do that"

Despite the critical blasting Rasen has received, I didn’t think it was too bad. It certainly goes in a different direction from Ringu, with Sadako having plenty of screen time and having chats at times with some of the characters. She even has a sex scene, so that should give you some idea as to how her character has changed. Anyone expecting another chilling Japanese horror film will be bitterly disappointed with Rasen, and I think this is why it has received the unfair treatment it has.

Granted, it’s no Citizen Kane, but it’s a nice little film that gives an alternative progression of the events after Ringu. It was good to see Sanada returning as Ryuji, even if it was only for the occasional flashback or dream sequence. I suppose you can only do so much with a corpse.

One thing potentially troublesome about the film however is that the classic ending to Ringu is practically forgotten about. The conclusion is made at one point that the tape transmits a strange smallpox virus to the watcher, which takes seven days to kill you. This is emphasised by a number of characters throughout the film coughing and getting rashes on the backs of their necks. It’s somewhat strange that this never happened in the first film, though it’s probably a good thing because we’d have missed out on that classic TV-crawling scene.

Also odd is the ending. Perhaps it loses something in the translation, but I was left confused and ultimately having to come to my own conclusions as to its meaning. Although it is sometimes not a bad thing for a film to have an ambiguous ending (Donnie Darko springs to mind), this is not the case for all films and in Rasen it just felt bewildering.

Still, despite this it’s probably one to see if you’re a fan of the Ring cycle, if only to see what Ringu 2 could have been had this received more praise when it was released.

Scream Bloody Murder (2000)

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Director: Ralph Portillo

Starring: Jessica Morris, Peter Guillemette, Crystalle Ford

Also known as: Bloody Murder (USA)

“Misery comes in lots of forms… it’s all miserable.”
(Drew, Bloody Murder)

Once in your life you experience a film that is so bad you have to tell the world. This is what happened to me when I saw Scream Bloody Murder for the first time.

Everything about this film made me laugh in a way that I’m sure the director didn’t intend. As a result of this, when I was a younger chap at the sprightly age of 18 I decided to analyse every single second of the film in a 28,500-word essay. Look, it was a lonely time in my life.

The plot is a white hot rollercoaster of emotion. A group of camp counsellors turn up early at Camp Placid Pines to prepare for the children arriving. While there they learn about the legend of Trevor Moorhouse. Soon the counsellors start dying one by one. Surely Trevor can’t be behind the killings? Actually, he isn’t, so it’s up to Julie (one of the counsellors) to find out who’s actually doing it.

From the get-go, Scream Bloody Murder does a great job of highlighting the sheer ineptitude of the director, screenwriter, crew, special effects department (Trevor’s chainsaw isn’t even on so instead of cutting down leaves and branches, he hits them out of the way as if he was using a wooden stick) and actors (the idiot playing Trevor walks like a drunk and the first victim runs in an S-shape through an open field while falling over three times).

Once we meet the counsellors, we realise quickly that they fit into the stereotypes we all know and hate (virgin girl who we know immediately will live, her boyfriend who we know will turn out to be an asshole and die, probably cheating on her in the process, and so on). Ironically, the film can’t even do this properly, because the stereotypically zany teenage boy who happens to be a horror fan and knows all the rules of horror films (a not-so-subtle nod to Scream and every film made after it) has a worryingly poor grasp of horror trivia.

And then there’s Trevor. Without a doubt, Trevor Moorhouse is the single worst slasher movie bad guy of all time. He is an amalgamation of rip-offs from every corner of the horror world: his hockey mask is from Friday The 13th, his boiler suit is from Halloween, his chainsaw is from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, his walk is from Drunken Master. And the name sounds enough like Jason Voorhees to make it lear it’s a rip-off, but different enough to be the least terrifying name in motion picture history. Trevor is not and never will be a scary name (Trevor Jordache from Brookside aside, of course).

The acting is consistently wooden throughout. The lead female walks like she’s got a cactus lodged in her drawers, her friendship with the stereotypical black female best friend is so unconvincing it unwittingly verges on lesbianism, and the boyfriend character is so obviously going to be unfaithful at some point in the movie that he might as well have been played by Ashley Cole.

The story isn’t any better. It’s filled with gaping plot holes that you could drive two tanks through side-by-side without fear of scraping the edges, and once the “killer” is revealed you can’t help but laugh because chances are you thought it was him in the first place but dismissed it because it was too obvious. Finally, the ending is meant to provide a great shock but instead caused me to piss myself laughing for a good few minutes.

I’ve shown Scream Bloody Murder to many of my friends and they more or less all agree that it’s an almighty piece of shit, but an entertaining one at that. If you’re judging it on its technical merits you might as well buy a bag of frozen peas, sit it on a table and watch that for an hour and a half. If you’re judging it on entertainment value though, get a group of mates together and take the piss out of it and you’ll have a great time. If Ed Wood had made this film, he’d have been mortified and burned it. Look, just watch the trailer below (complete with fake Chemical Brothers music) to see what I mean.

trev_new 

The Evil Dead (1981) (Video Nasty review #1)

Published on by Chris Scullion12 Comments

Evil Dead poster

Director: Sam Raimi

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker

“Kill her if you can, loverboy!” (Cheryl, The Evil Dead)

Since a large part of this blog is my quest to watch and review all 72 video nasty films, it makes sense for me to start with arguably the best and inarguably the most famous of the lot. Of course, had the Director of Public Prosecutions not been on the arsehole pills in 1984 I probably wouldn’t be reviewing The Evil Dead as part of this list because, as anyone who’s seen it will agree, there’s no way it should have been considered a notorious and dangerous video nasty. After all, it’s far too silly to be taken seriously.

For those still to enjoy its daft delights, The Evil Dead tells the story of five young chums who decide to spend the weekend in a cabin in the woods (sound clichéd? That’s because this created the cliché). When they get there they find the Book of the Dead, a book that when read can summon sleeping demons to possess the living. The good news is that nobody can read the book, the bad news is they also find a tape recorder with a tape of an old historian reading the book’s contents aloud. As they listen to the tape the demons are summoned and it’s up to the five friends to survive until daylight.

As the film progresses and the various teens are possessed, it becomes clear that the hero of the day is to be young Ashley, the shy and innocent one of the bunch played by Bruce Campbell in his first role. Nowadays Campbell is a bit of a cult icon among horror film fans and this is more or less solely thanks to the Evil Dead films and his performances in them. Ash takes a kicking throughout the majority of the film and there’s something satisfying about seeing the underdog getting splattered with gallons of blood, getting pinned under bookcases that are apparently much heavier than they look and generally not having a nice time of it. Even the movie’s final scene shows that he just can’t get a break.

What’s perhaps most impressive about The Evil Dead is that so many people look on it with fondness despite it on paper being, for want of a better word, nasty. One character is stabbed in the ankle with a pencil, after which the viewer is treated to the sight of them twisting it around in unflinching detail. Another has their head caved in with an axe. Then there’s the film’s infamous ‘tree rape’ scene, in which Ellen Sandweiss’ character wanders into the woods to investigate a noise she hears, only to be assaulted and violated by the woods themselves (this scene was cut for a long time by the BBFC and was only recently allowed to be shown uncut). Yet despite this, the film’s charmingly low budget and its combination of likeable characters and laughable creatures means it’s still fondly remembered as a fun movie.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing The Evil Dead yet I urge you to hunt it down, along with its sequels Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn and Army Of Darkness. Ash is one of the greatest heroes in horror history and this film shows the seeds of his creation. I guarantee laughter, I guarantee entertainment and I guarantee you’ll feel smugly satisfied when you tell your mates “I’ve seen a video nasty” while conveniently forgetting to tell them the one you watched was probably the least nasty of the bunch.

HOW NASTY IS IT? – It’s not terribly nasty but the tree rape scene, in which Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) is violated by some branches, is a little uncomfortable if a little silly in theory. Anyone who watches it though will probably come to the conclusion that it should never really have been banned because it’s far too daft to corrupt.

Nightbreed (1990)

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Nightbreed posterDirector: Clive Barker

Starring: Craig Sheffer, Anne Bobby, David Cronenberg

“Miss Winston, everybody has a secret face.” (Decker, Nightbreed)

Despite being one of the UK’s finest horror minds (having written the likes of Hellraiser and Candyman), Clive Barker’s Nightbreed doesn’t really get much love in the UK.  Maybe it’s because it’s not really as scary as the stories he’s better known for, or maybe it’s because it’s the horror movie equivalent of Fraggle Rock, I suppose we’ll never know.

The story’s your typical “boy meets girl, boy has been having weird dreams while his shrink tells him he’s a serial killer when he isn’t really, boy goes to a cemetery and is killed but then becomes part of a weird underground-dwelling group of undead monsters” plot you’ve seen a million times before. It emerges early on in the film that Boone, the lead character, isn’t actually killing the families he’s been led to believe he has and that instead his psychiatrist (played with just the right amount of cheese by genius director David Cronenberg) has been doing the killings while hypnotising Boone into believing it was him instead.

Due to his dodgy dreams, Boone finds himself drawn to a spooky graveyard where he is shot dead by police, but not before encountering a group of undead chaps and ladies who live under the ground and are generally keeping themselves to themselves. Boone’s quack discovers this and decides to tell the police, leading to an almighty clusterfuck later on where loads of cops fight hundreds of monsters in their underground lair.

For the most part Nightbreed’s acting does the trick but I was a bit unconvinced by Craig Sheffer in the lead role of Boone. Watching him change from a human to monster (as he does numerous times in the film) just isn’t believable because he doesn’t seem bothered by it, and though it isn’t his fault I was also distracted by the fact that every time he turns into his monster form he reminds me of a bad Kurt Russell lookalike:

Kurt Russell lookalike

To be fair, he’s not the only one to evoke such a reaction. When Not-Kurt-Russell eventually finds himself in the monsters’ underground lair, the film more or less turns into a game of Oh Look, It’s A Celebrity Lookalike. “Oh look! It’s metal icon Rob Zombie!”

Rob Zombie lookalike

“Oh look! It’s Vanessa Feltz! (though she’s in everything these days so it’s no surprise to see her making yet another appearance)

Vanessa Feltz lookalike

“And oh look! It’s Sportacus from children’s televsion keep-fit shitefest Lazytown! Well, a bit.”

Sportacus lookalike

Once you get past that, Nightbreed is actually cheesy fun. David Cronenberg is clearly the star of the show as Decker, the mental serial-killing psychiatrist, and his mask is fairly creepy too:

David Cronenberg

Meanwhile, as you’d expect from Clive Barker, there’s also plenty of gore and nudity to be had (even though the former is about as realistic as Aberdeen’s chance of winning the Scottish Premier League and the latter is courtesy of some terrifying monster women) and Danny Elfman’s music helps give a Burtonesque feeling to certain scenes.

The best bit though is probably the scene where female lead Anne Bobby (who coincidentally shares her names with both my aunt and uncle) first enters the underground tomb, since this is the first opportunity viewers get to see most of the film’s countless weird and wonderful monsters. This was also the scene that gave me Fraggle Rock vibes (as explained at the start of this review), because it basically shows a bunch of muppets living under the ground.

There are times when the plot gets a bit mindless, and while the film clearly wants the audience to be on the side of the monsters it can be tricky when some of them are pricks (such as the pervy one whose face is falling off or the one who looks a bit like Knuckles from the Sonic games and is generally a wanker to Not-Kurt-Russell). This may be partly due to the fact that the film was savagely cut and edited by the studio shortly before its release, something that irked Clive Barker according to later interviews because he didn’t get to tell the story the way he wanted to. Despite all this however, it’s still a good laugh to watch if a little disjointed.

Unfortunately Nightbreed is only available in Region 1 DVD in America and can’t be bought on DVD in the good old U of K, but if you can find it somehow (nudge wink elbow guffaw) then it’s well worth a watch for the cheese factor and the monster designs. Three out of five skulls, I reckon.

Why, Hello There

Published on by Chris Scullion2 Comments

What is the haps my friend. This is a new blog that I hope will actually take off and won’t become abandoned after two weeks like many of my projects do when I realise I don’t have any real spare time to do them.

When I’m not playing video games for a living I’m spending as much of my free time as possible watching movies, preferably those that are a little kookier and off-the-wall than the more mainstream fare. While I’ve got a wide-ranging taste and can watch more or less any kind of film, my specialty by far is horror, and over the past ten years or so I’ve easily watched thousands of cheap and nasty horror flicks from all sub-genres, nationalities and eras.

As a result I’ve seen some bizarre things that your standard cinema blockbusters just don’t tend to show. I’ve seen a Japanese woman giving birth to a fully-grown man (Gozu), I’ve seen an Italian zombie wrestling with a shark underwater (Zombie Flesh Eaters) and I’ve seen a man having his goolies chopped off in a bath by a wronged woman (I Spit On Your Grave). These are the moments that make lesser-known films fun for me, because they go beyond what mainstream studios think the audience wants to see.

This blog, then, is a celebration of the more weird and wonderful movies I tend to watch. Any time I see a film that strikes me as offbeat, odd or unusual I’ll pop a review on here. While horror will be far and away the most covered genre (since that’s what I usually watch), I’ll still add any non-horror films I see that fit into the category (a good example being Shaolin Soccer, a Hong Kong football film in which players’ shots are so powerful they turn the ball into flame-covered tigers and one opposing team consists of female players wearing fake moustaches).

My other purpose for this blog is part of my New Year’s resolution. As I recently mentioned in my other general blog, I aim to watch all 72 ‘video nasty’ films that were banned by the UK’s Director of Public Prosections in 1984. Since all these films are notorious and certainly not mainstream, all 72 of them will (hopefully) in time be reviewed in this blog.

I hope you enjoy my reviews, and if you have any suggestions for films you want me to cover then by all means mention them in the comments and I’ll do my best to get round to nabbing them.