Film Reviews by NP

This is a really well made horror – very gloomy, with a convincing period look and manner. Events take place in 1974, and this is pivotal in a number of ways, most important being the lack of ‘power’ brought about by trade union led strikes at the time, which meant that even hospitals spent time plunged into darkness.

Valerie (Rose Williams) has good reason to hate the dark, and after making enemies from the offset in her job as a nurse placed on the nightshift, spends much of her time in gloomy, unlit rooms and wards. Most people Val meets are horrible, whether as a result of their own experiences or simply because they can get away with it.

There’s a genuine sense of dread throughout, helped enormously by Elizabeth Bernholz and Max de Wardener’s creepy soundtrack. Writer/director Corinna Faith makes as much of the atmosphere as possible, and we are given reasons to understand many of the flaws displayed by many of the characters. Nice to see that many get their comeuppance or are given the chance to see the error of their ways. My score is 8 out of 10.

The acting on display here is exemplary. When you have people like Jim Broadbent and Tim Curry in supporting roles, you know the main cast are of a high standard.

My only problem is, when Susannah York and John Hurt welcome Alan Bates’ character into their homes, they are too ‘polite’ to notice how utterly bonkers he is. Turning the other cheek is one thing, but there are several instances where Bates would have earned his marching orders, however politely. As it turns out, he appears to be slightly madder than anyone realised.

‘The Shout’ would have made a terrific episode of vintage UK drama ‘Tales of the Unexpected’, where it would result in a pretty tense half hour of television. Stretched to nearly three times that, only the acting saves it from being a bit of a chore. My score is 4 out of 10.

I lost interest in the Saw franchise – for that is what it had become, rather than a story – a few sequels ago, after Jigsaw’s elaborate traps and contrived plans became ever more ludicrous, especially after the character had seemingly died. This is ‘Saw 8’; let’s make no mistake about that. Renaming the series after the title character gives a suggestion of starting again, or rebooting, but it doesn’t.

To be fair, we don’t have to wait long before the grimy police procedurals and the screaming victims begin once again to get to the bottom of the slick-talking antagonist’s latest CGI gore-anticipating gameplay. Then towards the end, vast swathes of plot exposition are dished out with moustache-twirling bravado. If you love it, here’s more of the same. If you’re looking for something new amid the hollering and perfect-teeth hysteria, you won’t find it here.

A different name it may be, but the contents are still designer-sweaty and loud. It’s all been done before, too often. My score is 3 out of 10.

This begins with a kind of Universal films tribute – the opening credits come complete with Hans J. Salter’s familiar 1940s music suite, and our heroine Anna James is listening to a Universal Sherlock Holmes soundtrack in the opening scenes (1946’s ‘Terror by Night’, as it goes). Before much else happens, she settles down to watch ‘Nosferatu’ and Vincent Price in further classic old films. It seems that a deliberate decision has been made that identifying these vintage icons is far more interesting than anything else going on here – because for some considerable time, nothing else *is* going on here.

Anna (Lara Belmont) wanders around the big isolated house she has rented. She sits down, stands up, arranges her laptop on a desk, walks around, and has a cuppa. Sometimes she is in daylight, other times in the dark. It is scintillating stuff. There are nice views of the rolling countryside, often with a blue filter over them. All to the strains of melancholy piano music reassuring us all this meandering is deliberate. This is the film.

I very rarely watch a film and get the feeling I am having the mickey taken out of me, but this is the case much of the time here – how long can I watch someone doing nothing? I like slow-burning, atmospheric stories, and there is a remote ambience here; there are also a handful of genuinely eerie moments, but you really have to wait far too long for them. My score is 4 out of 10.

It would be ridiculous to imagine Michael Myers, over forty years after his debut, was still of an age to adopt the physical prowess of a slasher killer. So, because ‘Halloween’ has long since been a franchise and needs to continue to make money, he has to become more than human: to possess powers beyond human understanding (‘the more he kills, the more he transcends,’ is all we get - never specified, explained or explored). He has all this power, yet chooses to go around stabbing sketchy residents while wearing a William Shatner mask. The notion of the ‘boogeyman’ is a frightening idea stretched decades over its reasonable lifespan, and has to continue because … well, because.

There’s a well-executed set-piece near the beginning where an entire fire-crew are killed by this one-note spectre. It’s impressively staged but empty because the villain is an impossible antagonist – no rules apply to him. He keeps coming back, so you know the outcome: anyone you meet is killed. So where do you go from there?

You bring back Jamie Lee Curtis again from the original and make another reboot, designed as a trilogy, that’s where. By its very nature, this delivers exactly what you expect. This is the middle portion, so things are more in limbo than usual – nothing major will occur because there’s still another instalment to come. Laurie Strode is sidelined because presumably, she will have a hand in despatching Michael in the apparent finale (before he appears to come back to life seconds before the end credits roll, I imagine).

So we have more of the same here. Loud non-entities, all virtually identical in character, horrible squealing kids, come and go in often lacklustre fashion; Michael, the least interesting of the lot, endures because the initial idea first introduced all those decades ago, was a successful one.

The deaths are brief and perfunctory, except the heroine survives all manner of violence, because she’s the heroine. Even her inevitable cry of ‘come and get me, mother*****r’ fails to inspire Michael to finish her off. The portrayal of a town quickly descending into panic is effective, but that’s about it. My score is 3 out of 10.

This film is commendable for trying something different. The idea of a futuristic tower block being built on top of an old slaughterhouse with a questionable past is a good one. The rich, beautiful people who guide us through this potential nightmare, with their perfect smiles and hints of cosmetic surgery are easy to dislike, however, and the acting doesn’t stop them from being entirely bland. One perfectly manicured character has a video conversation with her mother – who is exactly the same kind of perfected character vacuum as everyone else, only a few years older. Equally, the pouty little girl Mia whose parents coo over constantly is just a miniature version, carved out of the same stuff.

There are hints of JG Ballard in this storyline, and the production does its best to evoke a disturbing past by integrating images of animal distress from the building’s slaughterhouse days. This works pretty well.

Callum Blue is good as Alex and Mackenzie Moss impresses as little Mia, especially when things get nasty. Sadly, ‘getting nasty’ in the case of this film indicates this turns into another retread of The Shining. 5 out of 10 for me.

Well, this is a load of old cobblers. Universal get criticised for allowing their monster movies to run out of steam as the 1940s went on but the truth is, they were head and shoulders above Monogram stuff like this.

Interesting to note that John Carradine’s character Toby addressed Lugosi’s Dr. Marlowe as ‘master’ – given Carradine’s performance here, Bela was in a different league, even in this confused and ponderous plodder. Incredible then, that around this time, Carradine was chosen to replace Lugosi as Dracula for Universal.

It gives me no pleasure to see Bela, or George Zucco (here playing Nicholas), reduced to such slow moving fright-less nonsense. It’s not bad enough to be interesting, and the 62 minute run-time seems a lot longer, and is topped by a jokey last line that could politely be described as ‘meta’.

I love these old horror films usually, but this is a bit of a chore, I’m sorry to say. My score is 3 out of 10.

This is a pleasant surprise. I expected it to be soft-core titillation played by an effortlessly gorgeous cast, and it is – but there’s enough going on to make you want to keep watching.

Sharon Hinnendael is good as Charlotte Hawthorn, unlikely shy and virginal as the character is, and Victor Webster as Professor Cole looks to have wandered in straight from ‘The Days of Our Lives’ or ‘Sunset Beach’, but is very effective in the role.

If you like horrors laced with bitchy catwalk prom girls and hidden secrets, you’ll like this – if not, you may even be converted - for 91 minutes at least. My score is 7 out of 10.

This is a fairly convincing, wittily written werewolf western. No spoiler there – the revelation is all over the packaging. Great fun, and the werewolves are pretty impressive too – wisely built up throughout the film and kept in shadow much of the time.

At least some of the actors are not American, but sporting American accents as befits the location. I had a hard time trying to work out who was a native American and who was not, so convincing were the accents to my UK ears.

The finale is anti-climactic; I was hoping for rather more than we got. Overall, though, I had a great time with this. The locations and cinematography seemed very accurate and suitably creepy and there were really strong performances across the board. My score is 7 out of 10.

While watching this, my heart went out to Emily Hall, who plays Laura. She gives a decent performance considering all the things working against her – namely, her appalling dialogue, unfathomable dubbing (from American into American), the stone-dead pacing, derivative storyline and the performances of all of those around her. Oh, and the ballad accompanying the longed-for finale 100 minutes later.

There is a scene towards the end of ‘The Last Inn’ involving a priest explaining the entire plot (which seems to be cribbed from ‘The Others’), which involves some of the worst acting I have ever seen on film. So bad, it’s as if everyone is emoting through a mechanical speech-generating device.

It’s as though the dialogue and delivery were translated strictly from another language – possibly Chinese, given that the filming took place mainly at Hengdiah film studios. Remember the old Japanese 1970s ‘Godzilla’ films from Toho studios, and how they were often let down by poor dialogue and dubbing? That’s what this reminds me of.

Elsewhere, the cinematography is very good and nicely lit. There is no skimping on the budget either, because some money has clearly been spent on this. That the results are so off-kilter and odd, ensure that it’s a challenge to get to the end, where you can at least get some comfort spotting the spelling errors in the closing credits. Hopefully Emily Hall can put this behind her. My score is 3 out of 10.

Although brushed with typical big-budget over-production, genuine scares come thick and fast in this unusual horror story. Director James Wan keeps the unreal and sinister moments at regular intervals until a genuine sense of ongoing fear is evoked. Even when some scares don’t quite hit the mark, there’s always something uncomfortable to look out for around the corner – and some revelations are truly horrifying..

‘Ring’ stings – yes I said that – are on display here; spooky voices on the phone, a dark, long-haired figure, and some musical motifs are reminiscent of Japan’s 1999 cinematic hit. If I continue the comparison with such films, the odd and complex pace of the twisting story is also similar to The Grudge. Or maybe I’m seeing things that aren’t there.

The reveal of the antagonist is a cracker; it looks great in close-up, but more than a little absurd in long shots. Of course, horror – more than any other genre – requires you buy into them to be effective, and that is down to personal choice. It’s entirely possible to enjoy a film whilst acknowledging its silliness – but even that enjoyment is stretched in the barmy, CGI-choked finale.

A mixed bag certainly, but the good outweighs the not-so-good. My score is 6 out of 10

It’s difficult to get past the opening scenes of close-ups of animal abuse, but at least that sets the tone for this very dark and murky adaption of the famous story. They say the acting life can be very glamorous – it certainly isn’t the case here. No CGI safety-net, the performers attached to this story certainly seem to suffer for their art in a variety of uncomfortably cold situations.

It’s good when horror films bring some new locations into their stories, but equally, it’s always worth it to revisit the vast crumbling lairs of traditional settings, and that is done really effectively here; the story is given the most impressive horror treatment. Creatures hide in shadow – you only know they’re there when you see a rolled eyeball or a moving, inhuman talon. There is enough of a fairytale quality to this to appeal to the inner child, and there are moments when the eyes will moisten! It’s all accompanied by wonderful, sepulchral music, and directed like a hugely gothic TV film. My score is 8 out of 10.

Drugs, psychopathic criminals, underage sex – it’s all going on in this low-budget British shocker. One of the schoolgirls is played by Jane Haydon, sister of horror legend Linda (most famous perhaps for her role as Angel Blake in ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’).

A busload of stranded girls spend the night in an unfinished hotel ‘in the wilds of nowhere’, where nearby asylum inmates, tanked up with LSD as part of their experimental therapy, escape and cause horrific carnage.

The escaped inmates’ atrocities are very much in the style of the ultra-violence on display in ‘The Clockwork Orange’, where this film takes a lot of its cues – especially main escapee Mr. Trubshawe (David Jackson – possibly most famous for playing Gan early on in BBC TV space opera Blake’s 7). Apart from the subject matter being distinctly unsavoury, there is a lack of pace to the proceedings.

Some of dialogue is alarming. “See - you’re better,” one girl assures her friend who has just been raped, when she accepts a cup of coffee.

With all this going on, events are surprisingly slow and turgid. Never quite aspiring to the disturbing levels of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, this is ultimately an average rip-off. My score is 5 out of 10.

Nightwing.

This is one of the most un-horror-like horror films I ever saw. It isn’t until the mighty David Warner turns up as Payne, a Van Helsing-type that things begin to get interesting. The music is as jaunty as has ever been found in a 1970s American tea-time drama and the beautiful locations are wonderful to look at but distinctly un-horrific.

A slow spooky realisation dawns on the inhabitants of an Indian colony in New Mexico, mainly thanks to starchy Payne’s information. Knowledgeable he may be, but he ain’t no charmer: just that kind of character Warner excels at.

But things are too slow and too unspectacular and really need a few more scenes of jeopardy to liven things up. I’m a fan of restraint in films like this, but I’m left waiting for something to happen too often. When it does, the special effects sometimes strain to convince. Just when you think things have shifted up a gear, the pace returns to its leaden pace. My score is 5 out of 10.

Shadow of the hawk.

I found this to be a bit of a plodder if I’m honest. More of a stock 70’s adventure drama than the horror it is billed as. It does feature a fine turn from a young, lithe Jan Michel Vincent (Mike) though, and Chief Dan George plays, well, Chief Dan George (Old Man Hawk).

Some nice Indian dark magic is on display to antagonise our heroes (Marilyn Hassett as Maureen completes the trio), and things become quite dramatic from time to time. The finale sees the film finally shift up a gear, but it’s not quite enough to life ‘Shadow of the Hawk’ past average. My score is 5 out of 10.

The grainy atmosphere of some nicely shot locations is completely undone when the ‘guys’ turn up. Horny teens are one thing, it seems obligatory for films like this, but the two gate-crashing twenty-something adolescents arrive at a sorority party and the viewer – or this viewer at least – is aching for the film’s antagonist to graphically wipe the smug grin off the faces of these cretins. The girls, by comparison, are more concerned with semesters and exams and that kind of thing – before mild sex is introduced to fill in more time before anything interesting happens.

One of the freedoms of low budget films like this is that they don’t have to go down the same predictable routes as more mainstream horrors. Many exercise the freedom they have by producing something different and interesting – this one doesn’t.

The kills are arbitrary, we know nothing about the murderer, and characters are tepid. Against that, it’s nicely directed and the moments of gore are fairly convincing. My score is 4 out of 10.