Film Reviews by NP

Giallo involving a somewhat detached Klaus Kinski, who barely takes the time to remove his hands from his jacket pockets. For such an insanely powerful actor, he isn’t allowed to do a great deal here, but that’s because he’s the mysterious masked killer. Isn’t he?

Also featured here are British actress Margaret Lee (as Cheryl Hume) and giallo legend Rosalba Neri (as Anne Palmieri). Also known as ‘Cold Blooded Beast’ and ‘Slaughter Hotel’, ‘Asylum Erotica’ is a fairly enjoyable thriller/horror/whodunit involving a murderer lurking around the grounds of a stately mental hospital. The location is tremendous, full of long and clinical rooms and corridors in which various graphic killings take place.

There are some interesting directorial flourishes from the prolific Fernando Di Leo which especially enliven the more gruesome sequences. We get tantalising glimpses of bloodied corpses, mangled inmates and staff, and convincing stab wounds – so brief are these glimpses, that we are not quite sure what we have seen.

This certainly doesn’t push the boundaries of what can be achieved in this genre, but what it does, it does well. It would have been nice to have featured more of Kinski. With his wild and striking looks only barely made respectable by a white doctor’s coat, you know his character Dr. Francis Clay might well be capable of crazed antics. Don’t you?

Ah, the private torment of the ‘secret’ alcoholic – which really isn’t a secret at all, which makes things even worse, and has you reaching for the Vodka. Emily Blunt is excellent as Rachel Watson, the main character, in this terrific adaption of Paula Hawkins’ successful debut novel of the same name. The skin-crawling description of Watson’s daily nightmare is recreated with equal relish here by director Tate Taylor. The moving of events from recognisable English suburbia to America works a lot better than I had anticipated, helped by a cast of actors from both sides of the Atlantic.

Happily, Blunt’s excellence does not exist in isolation. The ex-husband, the other woman, the other other woman, her ex and the splendid DS Riley (Allison Janney) all utterly convince as a nest of truly flawed characters. Their rough edges keep things interesting and stop events ever sinking into the melodrama they might otherwise have done. Watson’s hapless stumbling leads her into and out of trouble, her condition never allowing us to take too seriously any of her wilder accusations. Which is interesting, as some of them may be true …

A fascinating drama then, beautifully shot, both as an adaption and in its own right.

This intriguing thriller stars Henry Ian Cusik as Danny Hart, a documentary film-maker, who is either a victim or perpetrator of a crime. He’s being interviewed by police detective Martin (Steve Lang), and his story is told in flashback. Events concern striking up a conversation with Lex (Nicki Aycox), who speaks in riddles, but they become involved nonetheless. Hart’s voice-over narration reminds me of the ‘beatnik’ style of jazzy detective noirs, which is no bad thing.

Psychotic Spider (Charles Aitken), ‘the other man’ then gets in on the scene and blow me, he speaks in riddles too. They’re all at it. Richly atmospheric and enjoyably ‘knowing’ as this approach is, the impenetrability does become wearing after a while, with it becoming increasingly apparent that this is a series of evolcing set-pieces rather than anything more obvious. It’s good: I like it, but it’s all a little one-note, with no moments of progression. The performances are excellent, but the sincerity that sneaks in between the dark atmospherics exist in isolation and are difficult to truly believe in. The soliloquies are only cleared up during revelations disclosed during the police interview. On a personal level, I would love to meet someone who spoke so enigmatically, but I think we’d both need a break from each other every so often.

Crucial, with a film concerning a deeply troubled child, is the casting of the titular character. It is with relief to note that 9 year-old June is played by Kennedy Brice with all the awkwardness and sense of isolation required of an ‘outsider’, but she never slides into petulance or brattishness. After a difficult early life on a trailer park, she is adopted by Dave Anderson (mightily-jawed ‘Starship Troopers’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’ actor Casper Van Dien) and his wife Lily (Victoria Pratt). The way their wholesome veneer of eager goodwill slowly becomes fragmented by June’s strange behaviour is well played.

And yet June is as much the victim of her ‘possession’ as anyone. Rather like early onset Alzheimer’s disease, her moments of clarity are very appealing and heart-breaking, merged as they are by the bewilderment she feels as to her condition: she shares her body with an ancient supernatural being, of course. “She’s a very special girl,” we are told.

Rather like a pre-teen ‘Carrie (1976)’, this tells the tale of one person’s frightening possession very well, but where it doesn’t deliver is ramping up the actual scares. The usually effective blackening-of-eyes effect used to signify inner darkness is creepy enough, but around the midway mark, it becomes apparent that this is as frightening as things are going to get.

Ultimately, ‘June’ starts with a lot of promise, but finds itself constricted by its approach to the story of demonic possession and goes more than a bit ‘sci-fi’ towards the end. This nullifies any ability to scare and loses the connection with the audience in its carefully built-up first half. It is well done, but emerges somewhat tamer than I would have liked.

Setting a found-footage horror film in a creepy school overnight is an idea with promise. There’s something about the school arena, buzzing with life and mischief during the day, being unimaginably eerie during the night. The actors employed here are refreshingly dynamic without seeming stagey and have a naturalistic way about them. Unfortunately the seemingly improvised nature of their scenes often results in them standing around talking over each other, with little to distinguish them and little to distinguish their voices. That none of them seem to be saying much of any importance isn’t terribly reassuring.

When all cell phones suddenly run out of power at the same time their watches stop, it becomes clear we are on familiar genre territory here. The camera spluttering and the image distorting allows you to know that something frightening is about to happen, just as it has in other – frankly, better – films of this nature; but ‘something frightening’ doesn’t happen for a very long time. Just more chatting and discussing with no great onset of fear – and little (other than an omnipresent tennis ball) to get worked up about.

With a group dynamic, conflict can be an important and successful way of displaying tension. Such moments here arrive out of nowhere and are then forgotten, meaning anything built up by this dissipates almost immediately.

The finale, when loud noises and disorientation becomes all-encompassing, is effective. And yet, it isn’t terribly well done and ‘Classroom 6’ emerges more as a series of found-footage box-ticking than anything else. It genuinely saddens me to say all that because there’s a lot of love and enthusiasm that seems to have gone into director/writer Jonas Odenheimer’s project. The assorted actors give it their all, without ever the characters becoming too arrogant and dis-likeable. The end result is just not very satisfying.

“I looked into the eyes and there was nothing there!”

It would be unpleasant of me to direct this quote from Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay) towards James McAvoy’s performance as Frankenstein, but it isn’t without a certain truth here. As with his turn in 2016’s inexplicably acclaimed ‘Split’, his every movement, intonation, posture, grin and gesticulation never lets us forget he is acting. With sentences instilled with dangerous singularity, McAvoy spits out the words in textbook eccentric, rapid staccato. He is indulged by Paul McGuigan’s excellent direction and looks great, but rather like a stage turn projecting to the back rows, there is not one ounce of anything naturalistic about his Victor Frankenstein. Perhaps it is deliberate; the confidence, bravura, enthusiasm, heightened unreality might be traits attributed to Frankenstein – or to these heightened performances in general - but unlike co-star Daniel Radcliffe’s Igor (for example, and other characters too), we never *know* him, never like/dislike him, never really care for him, not even when the truth is revealed about his brother (Henry, brother of Victor: two of the most often-used names for Baron Frankenstein over the decades). As with all things, I can only offer my opinion on this.

The long-awaited creation scene is spectacular. Occasionally threatening to lose hold of reality, it nevertheless takes advantage of modern filming technology; we can actually travel along the power-lines with the electrodes as they head for the inanimate creature. Whereas the first experiment involved a hellish and extremely effective chimpanzee amalgamation, the eventual human monster is battered and torn by the elements even before (or perhaps during) a time when life has been given him. A clay-like golem, he is a spectacle, but has no time to be anything more. An enhanced, stomping killer hulk that brings the house down.

In two pleasing (deliberate or otherwise) nods to past glories, the police inspector Roderick Turpin (Andrew Scott) loses a hand (à la one-armed Inspector Krogh from 1939’s ‘Son of Frankenstein’) and the monster is animated only to wreck the laboratory and bring things to a close of sorts (à la the monster rallies at the end of the 1930/40’s Universal run of pictures). Despite my reservations about McAvoy’s performance, I enjoyed this a lot. It breathes new life into the pioneering story, which is no mean feat after all these decades, whilst never losing the guiding light of Mary Shelley’s original novel.

As with Andrew Jones’ previous exertions into the past (World War 2 is once more approached here), there is a certain approximation of authenticity on display. Whilst the visuals are convincing, the discourse, with its liberal usage of modern day expletives, breaks the spell somewhat. That, and the occasional line of dialogue drowned by Bobby Cole’s terrific music score, are pretty much the only issues I have with this. This latest instalment of Jones’ ‘Robert’ series shows them both firing on all cylinders. The pace often moves along at a fair lick, the various dolls look pretty frightening, and you truly do not know where the plot is headed.

Lee Bane, bless his cotton socks, who has appeared in the vast majority of films from the North Bank Entertainment stable, labours under heavy make-up as Amos Blackfoot, The Toymaker. A kind of misunderstood Geppetto, he is being searched for by Nazis aboard a train (which you may notice, sports modern carriages during the night shots). The Toymaker is in possession of the mystical book containing spells that bring inanimate objects to life. But the dolls are already alive. The Toymaker’s grief whenever a doll is destroyed echoes a searing pain from his past: the creatures have become children to him. I don’t think I noticed before, but Blackfoot has different coloured eyes, and this is echoed in Robert, his favourite ‘child’.

Whilst the moving dolls are as convincing as you want them to be, the various CGI blood effects work surprisingly well, with the advantage of not staining the various period uniforms! It is surprising how little Robert’s gang are featured here. The ending, rather than providing a spectacular denouement, simply presents us with another twist in the ongoing story, making it highly likely we haven’t heard the last from Blackfoot, or his children. As the end caption warns us, ‘Robert Will Return’ – and that’s fine with me.

I vaguely remember watching the original version of this on television many years ago. The only abiding memory I have is of a little girl mewling ‘They’re coming,’ and a television screen dancing with static. So on that basis, I have nothing much to compare this remake to. It begins with that most frightening thing: the wholesome family unit!

Dad (Eric played by Sam Rockwell) is initially something of a twit but we warm to him as time goes on; mum (Amy, Rosemary DeWitt) tolerates everything with a smile; the teen daughter (Kendra, Saxon Sharbino) is constantly bored, growing up to look perfect and is spitefully sardonic and unbearable unless she gets her own way; the young son (Griffin - Kyle Catlett injects a refreshing earnestness into his character) is the best of the lot: un-sporty, polite and reserved, and the little girl (Maddie, Kennedi Clements) is a typical drama student juvenile. No more, no less. The paranormal investigator Carrigan Burke (Jared Harris) called out to investigate livens things up.

The encroaching possession elements are handled very well. Apart from the cartoon-ish CGI tree terrorising Griffin, most of the effects in the house are real and physical (the finale very much the exception). The camera pans round a bedroom full of everyone sleeping as all the electrical items crackle on and off of their own accord. There are loud bangs and musical stings. And not one of these things is remotely frightening. What is guaranteed to squash the effect is the almost constant accompaniment of screaming children – which may be something I might be in the minority having any kind of problem with.

I would say this is as competent as it can be, with a spectacular finale. It doesn’t appear to tarnish the high reputation of the original, but doesn’t take any particular risks with the format either.

Bullied teen Lincoln Taggert (Ronen Rubinstein), provoked, attacks his aggressor. Unfairly, Taggert is then sent to an isolated reform school. Bizarrely, the school has no security whatsoever, so the others constantly test him and the victimization continues.

Let’s get this out of the way. This is designer, smooth, emo bullying. Either you’re ‘f**king retarded’ (bad), or ‘pretty gangster’ (good). Lincoln is textbook cool – hair faultlessly dyed throughout and worn long, growls, talks about ‘losing his s**t’, well-built, smokes, good-looking. Just imagine if he was really needy, found communication difficult, was socially inept instead of ‘can’t be bothered’, wore glasses, stuttered, suffered from acne? Just imagine if he was in any way sympathetic? Well, he’s not. He’s a practised outcast. He doesn’t belong to the cool kids, but has his ‘uniform’ of goth to play out – just a different level of cool. The others who have been sent to the reform school are equally perfect – not outcasts at all. The girls ooze confident sex appeal, the boys respond in kind. Any hope of a realistic study of – or even a passing resemblance to – real bullying is not wanted here. Bratty kids, dealing with s**t.

Right, with that major irritation out of the way – Lincoln soon finds solace in the arms of the most perfect of the pretty girls (Kaitlin, played by Grace Phipps) at this catwalk institution. Cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, he stares meaningfully as she smoulders in the sunshine. Cue death metal soundtrack …

Why do many of these films seem to think it is frightening to have someone – usually young and female – stare at you wide-eyed and declare, “You’re gona die,” accompanied by a sharp sting of music? It is as ineffectual here is ever. The ghostly apparition of a former bullied inmate promises Lincoln “No-one’s gonna f**k with us,” in a scratchy voice, which reduces any demonic effect she may have and reduces her to the level of the rest of the pack.

Things do briefly improve, however. On this bubble-gum canvas of what a reform school is like, there’s no doubt that however one-dimensional Lincoln is, his detracters are on a different level. It is pleasant to see them finally brought down in some fairly decent gory set-pieces.

That said, this is really just another fau-angsty teen slasher film that you’ve seen many times before. It feeds the dissatisfied youth experience and hope they don’t grow out of it before the 82 minutes is up. It is full of enough expletives to make the parents frown. I thought it would pick up – Adam Egypt Mortimer’s directorial values are fine without ever being innovative – and it did towards the end. I imagine this is designed for a certain audience, and perhaps they will enjoy it.

This is an interesting chiller about people doing horrible things when they are asleep, or think they are. It does contain a fair few children, however. I mention this because children in horror films tend to fall into two categories: genuinely frightening (The Exorcist, The Ring etc) … or brattish. ‘Slumber’ manages to straddle both possibilities, which is something of a first. Stumbling, screaming kids and ghost-like images are fairly well conveyed, never truly annoying and occasionally producing something genuinely sinister.

The soundtrack, a dark ambience by Ulas Pakkan must take a lot of credit for the omnipresent atmosphere of not-quite-reality-or-is-it, and the cast are uniformly very good, even when – in the case of Maggie Q as Alice Arnolds and Will Kemp as husband Tom – the characters are not overtly dynamic.

It can be, I’m sorry to say, a little dull, very talky. But there are plenty of moments that deliver the goods. The idea of demon feeding off nightmares is a good one, and it plays on a fear of going to sleep, the debilitating misery of resisting slumber and that hollow pang it can cause.

Events are enlivened by the appearance of former Doctor Who and Radagast, Sylvester McCoy, who hams up delightfully the typically eccentric Armado. We only catch a glimpse of the lengths Armado has gone to to resist falling asleep, and it is disturbing.

Malison McCourt is a hypersensitive young woman who, it is fair to say, has a lot on her plate. Living alone in a run-down apartment with her cat, the job she needs involves working for a euthanasia company. Her deeply superstitious landlord disapproves of this and makes her homeless. For all the unpleasant things that happen in this film, I don’t mind admitting the moment I ‘teared up’ is when she abandoned her cat in the wilderness.

Malison is teamed up with Olivia Bletcha: sexy, confident and every bit as lonely as Malison. Together they travel to a remote castle for the latest ‘closure’ (the company word for euthanasia). This interesting premise is diluted by the arrival of Edgar (Tim Burd) who is the heavily clichéd creepy host, complete with emaciated gait and growling whisper. Naturally, there is a somewhat eccentric ritual to accompany this latest passing.

Sadly, moments of interest become more and more isolated as the ominous ruminations of a typical haunted house are further rolled out, including sinister whisperings from a ‘ghostly’ little girl which are delivered with all the disinterest you would expect from a bored 8 year old drama student. Malison becomes possessed by the evil – we know this because she suddenly starts using profanities. The demonic host looks not unlike a white-haired Kiwi Kingston from 1962’s ‘Evil of Frankenstein’. Events continue to spiral, becoming very visually impressive, but sadly the drama becomes increasingly disjointed and less and less easy to relate to. It is a shame things become so patchy because so much is well done here – rich direction from Jesse Thomas Cook, excellent locations, good production values and mostly very competent performances.

The first thing that strikes me about this studio-bound chiller is its cast of (mainly) British actors labouring under soft American accents. Presumably designed for ease of selling to an international market, it nevertheless seems an otherwise unnecessary distraction and slight deviation from the heady atmosphere of this Milton Subotsky-scripted production. Produced by an uncredited Max Rosemberg, this could be seen as a fledgling Amicus project. Amicus were to become rivals to Hammer’s horror output over the next decade.

Stunning Venetia Stevenson plays Nan Barlow, whose occasionally wooden performance is recompensed by her extraordinary screen presence. Her prolific acting career would be over the following year, and she remains something of a cinematic enigma. Here, she is joined by a scowling Christopher Lee and Valentine Dyall, as well as a formidable Patricia Jessel in the dual role of Elizabeth Selwyn and Mrs. Newless.

“I warn you, young feller. They don’t like strangers in Whitewood.”

Douglas Gamley and Ken Jones’ music score veers from traditional horror accompaniment, which enhances the gloom, and light jazz, which doesn’t; it does, however, lend a sense of laconic style to some scenes, especially those featuring Stevenson.

The ending is unlikely given the circumstances and I can’t imagine that didn’t dawn on the players and those behind the scenes. And yet everything is played very seriously and the low budget is used to fine effect, giving everything an ethereal, not-quite-real sense of displacement.

Karin (Harriet Andersson) has recently been released from an asylum having undergone electroconvulsive therapy. She returns to her isolated family home and rejoins her father, writer David (Gunnar Björnstrand), teenage brother Minus (Lars Passgård) and husband Martin (Max von Sydow), with whom she has an awkward sexual relationship. In fact, she seems more flirtatious with Minus, who is confused by his feelings for her. Unable to sleep one night, she finds and reads David’s notes about her ‘incurable’ condition, and his desire to record her ‘disintegration.’

This is a Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman in bitingly bleak black and white. The only cast are the four characters, and the only setting is their remote island home, which Bergman manages to make both idyllic and claustrophobic at the same time. Karin’s decline is slow, and she is lucid enough to be tortured by it.

Also tortured of course, are those around her. There is an impotence about Karin’s family, as quite clearly they do not know how to handle the prospect of her instability – but in the case of David, has his detachment contributed to Karin’s inability to relate to her own husband? Or has she always been unreachable? We never know, despite the very talky nature of the production (and the English subtitles). The fact that Karin’s condition seems to be the reason Minus and his father finally grow close is scant reason for celebration.

People are flawed.

A very intense, open-ended study in human behaviour.

I have for years bored people rigid with my belief that some of Hammer’s most interesting films came during the last few years of their existence as purveyors of horror, as they attempted to boost their fading market. This lead to experimentation, which worked beautifully with some of their output. As always, there were exceptions – and this curio is one.

Peter Cushing, apparently now too old to play the Baron, is superseded by Ralph Bates in a bid to bring sex appeal to the role of Frankenstein. He is surrounded by a bevy of beautiful young women, including Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson) and Alys (Kate O’Mara). Bates is always enjoyable and nicely intense, although inevitable comparisons with ‘how Cushing would have done it’, would never be kind – after all, Bates is playing a philanderer, a young stud. A different take on the Baron.

The jokes are very familiar to audiences of the time – everyone is horny, and the prospect and consequences of sex is tip-toed around for comedy effect, that and an amputated arm giving Victor a two-fingered salute. Dennis Price, a hugely talented and respected actor in his younger days, is much fun here as a lackadaisical grave-robber and gives the best performance in the film.

The resultant story is not that different from ‘Scars of Dracula’, with which it was released, and which also disappointed at the box office. If anything, ‘Scars’ went further into later ‘Carry On’ territory than this – at least there are a few amusing asides here other than skin-flick slapstick.

Dave Prowse’s lumbering, bald-headed creature has a hulking effectiveness about him. The sound of his heavy, chain-crunching footsteps presses at least a few of the required horror buttons, although he is entirely devoid of any personality. Whenever he appears, Malcolm Williamson’s soundtrack echoes H.J. Salter’s music heralding Lon Chaney’s monster in 1942’s ‘Ghost of Frankenstein’ from Universal.

The story itself shadows that of the 1958 Hammer original in a sedate style. This isn’t a bad film (although the budget limitations are as obvious here as many Hammer films from this period), just rather under-whelming. As if aware of this, director (and co-writer) Jimmy Sangster seems deliberately to end the story in the most downbeat way possible.