Film Reviews by NP

Back in 2001, the original ‘Jeepers Creepers’ presented us with a kind of slasher film, but with enough eccentric twists that ensured it provided something different. Two years later, the sequel undid all the good that was done and gave us a generic runaround peopled with stock characters. It has taken 14 years for this third instalment to appear (set between 1 and 2), and sadly the results are unremarkable.

A selection of characters are introduced, the less tolerable of which thankfully emerge simply as ciphers. Other than that group of brattish teen motorcyclists, we have two grizzled old cops: the bejewelled Sheriff Dan Tashtego (Stan Shaw) and Sgt. Davis Tubbs (Brandon Smith); farmer granny Gaylen Brandon (Meg Foster) and her casually stunning grand-daughter Addison (Gabrielle Haugh). Addison’s suitor is naturally called Buddy (Chester Rushing), and he is last seen departing for a basketball game in the van that was attacked in Jeepers Creepers 2.

The first time we see the Creeper here, he is as we remember him. This time, he is posturing on top of the roof of his van as it slowly drives away into woodlands. You dearly want a low-hung branch to nobble him. His powers have reached a new level, leading to some improbable/ridiculous over-the-top deaths (the double impaling of two of the motor-cycle gang springs to mind). The Creeper somehow lacks the spectacle he did in the first film. Perhaps it is unfair of me to hope for more, but when he spends so much time despatching the motor-cyclists to prove how nasty he is, it’s hard to be particularly impressed.

His truck is the star of the show here. It’s equipped with a CGI-enhanced box of death-dealing tricks Batman himself would be envious of. Instead of making the audience wince, however, the plethora of spikes and lasso mechanisms produce groans.

We don’t really have time to get to know anyone, each character is fairly generic. This is a real shame as again, the bickering, likeable brother and sister from the original helped make it so enjoyable, because they were real and their dialogue didn’t consist solely of ‘goddam’ and ‘son of a bitch’ (these are the words that even usher out the film). Events don’t flow particularly well, instead they seem cobbled together as if from separate productions. As the running time rolls on, this becomes particularly evident as tone skips from one thing to another with sinking, increasingly dull rapidity. Goodwill on behalf of the audience soon gives way to bafflement and the dawning realisation that this really isn’t very good. Director, writer and co-producer Victor Salva must take the blame for much of this – TV movie production standards and most of it occurring during bright sunshine. No real sense of atmosphere, no convincing jeopardy, nothing.

Gina Phillips, Trish from the first film, is mentioned at the beginning of this, but doesn’t turn up until the very end here.

Pretty new nurse Lizzie (Vanessa Grasse) is left to patrol a mental institution for deranged and violent children on her own, with no security to or senior staff to protect her. All on her first day. So being attacked and threatened is something she gets used to rather quickly. Even in 1955, surely this a serious security lapse. Ah well, it allows Lizzie, and us, to get to know patient Jackson (Sam Strike, formerly an actor on UK soap EastEnders). Jackson, a seemingly wholesome young fellow, isn’t his real name however – his real name is Jedidiah.

A furious Verna Sawyer (Lili Taylor) enters the institution and, on her own, incites a riot. She’s come to rescue Jedidiah, her son. Soon, they are both taken hostage by patients Ike (James Bloor), Bud (Sam Coleman) and Clarice (Jessica Madsen), who are escaping. This story follows their murderous rampage and the various events that lead to the birth of the legendary Leatherface.

I suppose whether you view this enterprise as a success or not depends on whether you feel Leatherface’s early life needs chronicling, if it is necessary (if you forgive the word-play) to put meat on the bones of a mindless, rampaging killer who became a horror icon back in 18974’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. It’s up to the viewer to enjoy, or otherwise, a series of bloody events that carefully put all the pieces into place directly before the original story was told. Is the lead character better as a faceless lunatic killer, or a person with a past and an identity? Again, it’s for the individual to decide.

This individual had a great time with this. Terrific cast, no bubble-headed girls or vacuous boys. A strong, fast paced story full of eye-watering moments and genuine thrills. A decent budget, strong enough to stage a convincing 1950s setting, but not so generous as to be a slave to CGI that would add an unwanted cartoon element to proceedings. Sense is even made of Leatherface’s transvestite tendencies, which met with such disdain in 1994’s ‘Next Generation’ project.

Turnbotham Round is the envy of Britain. The absence of crime there is such that the BBC themselves have come to make a programme about the place, specifically Sergeant Dudfoot (English comedian, actor, author, film director and amateur astronomer Will Hay). 10 years have passed since any crime was reported, and while Dudfoot is being congratulated for lack of poaching activity in the area, his two colleagues march past the window laden with game. Such unfortunate coincidences are the backbone of Hay’s comedy. His colleagues are Hay regulars, precocious schoolboy type Albert Brown (Graham Moffatt) and diminutive, wittering old man Jerry Harbottle (Moore Marriot).

The turn-side to their crime-free village is that the authorities begin to feel that three policemen are unnecessary. Wary of losing their jobs, which comprise of doing nothing in particular except arguing in quick-fire chatter, the trio go about inventing crimes, unaware that a smuggling caper is going on right under their noses. As a cover for their nefarious activities, the gang exploit the local legend of the headless horseman. Conveniently – and hilariously - a rhyme regarding the horseman contains a reference, in its elusive last line, to a cave where the smuggling activities are taking place.

It’s the headless horseman that earns this dated cavalcade of squeaky chit-chat, comedy sniffs and funny walks any connection to the world of horror. It is surprisingly well realised, and the first of its fleeting appearances are steadily built up by whispered forebodings of the nature of its curse, and the blazing ‘phantom hearse’ it travels around the night in. (“Look at the driver’s head.” “What’s wrong with his head?” “He hasn’t got one!”)

Hay is best known for being the head of this particular team: in real life, the private and serious man didn’t want to be part of an ensemble, and dumped them when he moved from his prolific phase with Gainsborough films, with future side-kicks including John Mills and Charles Hawtrey.

The comedy seems very stagey today, very pantomime-esque and too ‘large’ for the small screen. It is silly rather than sophisticated, and not without a large degree of charm, even a few laugh-out-loud moments – mainly due to the dialogue between the three leads, in a finely timed barrage of misunderstandings.

Harbottle: Help! Help! Police!

Dudfoot: Shut up, you old idiot. We are the police.

This Jess Franco/Erwin C. Dietrich collaboration is sometimes considered a very loose continuation of the ‘Ilsa’ series that began two years earlier with ‘Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS’, also starring Dyanne Thorne in the title role. As you may expect, this is also known as a variety of titles: ‘Greta, the Mad Butcher’, ‘Ilsa: Absolute Power’, and ‘Wanda, the Wicked Warden’. These changes in title, and in the name of the lead character, suggest this film might not have been initially intended as part of the series at all.

So, then – Abbie Philips (Tania Busselier) is admitted into an austere psychiatric hospital for women. Unbeknownst to all, she is here because of false pretences: with the help of Doctor Milton Arcas (Jess Franco), who has long suspected foul play at the establishment but been unable to do anything about it, Abbie, or ‘No 41’, is a ‘plant’, here to find out what happened to her sister and possibly rescue her. She comes across perverse Juan (played by the always excellent Lina Romay, as cute as a button in a bob cut), ostensibly the ‘top dog’ amongst the women, and secretly the lesbian lover of terrifying chief warden Isla (or Wanda, or Greta, of course).

This follows very much the pattern of other Franco ‘women in prison’ fantasies I have seen. The very effective – even restrained – scenes of torture are few and far between but pretty shockingly realised. For all his invasive camera techniques, Jess rarely lingers on gore, and that is the case here (although the abrupt ending is a pleasing exception), although what there is, is realistically (and painfully) conveyed. The dubbing is a lot better than on non-Dietrich collaborations, and Jess’s direction is deceptively straightforward, happy to let the acting and circumstances speak for themselves without frantic zooms, etc. The locations are breath-taking and whenever a gun-shot is fired, it is a dubbed sound effect. The story moves at a fair lick too, and doesn’t meander too much although there are moments of dullness. In short, these films show Franco’s style in an effective, disciplined manner, but still allow him to indulge (and delight) in his non PC eccentricities.

The crashing guitars of prom-rock opens this zombie picture, ushering in some semester-related romance between two pristine teens with teeth like gleaming tombstones. To break the mood somewhat, two more teens arrive, all shorts and perfection and squeaky voiced small-talk, ripe with reversed-baseball-capped diluted attitude. As they drive off to wherever, the family-friendly rock music returns. In the car, all four are shown hollering and having, like, a really good time. It is as tedious and appalling an opening as you can imagine. Rolling up at a big house (the main location for the story), the final couple join the gang. One wears shades and drinks beer from a bottle and his girlfriend looks exactly the same as the other females. There are boastful sex jokes and mock provocation and then the rock music is back. It’s way past time to hit ‘eject’ in the DVD, but purely because I’ve started this review, I decide to persevere.

A suspected terrorist attack threatens to tip this bunch out of their back-slapping reverie. I still don’t know what any of their names are. A CGI missile is seen to explode overhead and it is back to knuckle-punching, sports talk and everyone calling each other dude. “This whole thing has really got me thinking, you know? About, like, life.” Says one gummy hunk. “That’s really deep, man,” says another, bromance twinkling in his eyes. “He’s going to be a great guy some day,” says one pearly white lass to another. And the running time rumbles on.

This is absolutely my least favourite kind of film. Horrible, awful dialogue you’d find on some daytime US soap from the early 1990s, between manicured, characterless beauties you don’t care about enough even to WANT to see them dismembered by the promised living dead (even the zombies, when they eventually arrive, look like they’ve staggered out of a toothpaste commercial). Someone has actually funded this crap, cast a number of grinning, competent non-entities and put together an utterly soulless, vapid, smug environment when anything approaching horror takes distant second place to divine catwalk idiots arguing about jealousy and flirtation.

By the time the zombies, or the ‘demented’, or whatever the heck they are, arrive, nothing they can do could be enough to redeem this respectable, insipid, gore-free, thrill-free, lamentable soap fare. It doesn’t bother me that a corpse lying at the entrance of a pharmacy disappears between scenes; I don’t care that the confusing ending sees them both being rescued and not being rescued. An effort is at least made to make the last ten or so minutes exciting, and the finale does at least trey to do something unexpected: not even perfect people have a happy endings. Aside from that, however, this is just a hugely complacent, unambitious film.

Alongside producer Erwin C Dietrich (who also wrote this), with whom he directed many films from this era, Jess Franco brings us ‘Love Camp’, or ‘Frauen im Liebeslager’ as it was originally known. Part of a ‘women in prison’ series, this involves a group of women from all walks of life, at best only partially clothed, who are kidnapped and taken to an isolated jungle encampment in order to satisfy a group of revolutionaries when they are not otherwise engaged. The chief warder Isla (Nanda Van Bergen) is, as you may imagine, a glamorous and sadistic lesbian, with whose advances the kidnapped girls also have to contend.

As often is the case with Dietrich/Franco collaborations, the locations are beautiful (although we are not given any idea where this is supposed to be set) and this appears to be funded with a decent budget. Franco, so fond throughout the 70s of frantic camera movements and intrusive zooms, seems happy to set up a heady mix of torture and/or sex scenes and simply let the lens capture the action. Although the various predicaments are horrific, they are treated in a very casual, somewhat tame manner and accompanied by cheerful, even romantic, jazz music which helps make the very tone of the film disturbing in a way that ‘of its time’ doesn’t really cover. This, and the fact that there is a compliance, even enjoyment, between many of the women and their captors, fits in very well with the perceived popular view at the time that, on film and television, women are often ‘mad for it.’ Not for me to judge, and who cares what I think anyway? Not me.

Of course, you wouldn’t expect any background on any of the girls or revolutionaries, and the dubbing – decent though it is – robs us of much in the way of character. People here are really cyphers, boobs and bottoms you might say, paraded and presented in the way that exploitation films do – and it would be pointless and unnecessary of me to offer criticism of that. I wouldn’t, after all, criticise a wildlife documentary for containing wildlife.

There is a twisted romance story at play here, between Angela (Ada Tauler), guerrilla Chico (Wal Davis) and Alberto, Angela’s husband, which proves very interesting. And yet what we have here is not the best example of its kind. It comes across as a kind of bawdy, unconvincingly choreographed ‘Confessions’ film, and the desperate situation that could be wrung out of this comes across as a rough template for soft-core pornography.

Lars von Trier’s unofficially titled ‘depression trilogy’ of films begins with this, continues with ‘Melancholia (2011)’ and concludes with the mammoth and quite excellent ‘Nymphomaniac (2013)’. ‘Antichrist’ isn’t easy viewing.

Rutting like animals, He (Williem Defoe) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) fail to notice their toddler son Nic climb onto the open window ledge and fall from the balcony to his death. Subsequently, understandably consumed by grief, the couple hike to an isolated cabin in Eden woods, far from anywhere. The husband is a therapist and feels he can manage his wife’s at times uncontrollable misery.

What follows is their story in four chapters, each one highlighting different levels of their ‘journey’. This often involves manic sex and masturbation in a bid to escape the pain of sadness, woodland animals in throes of death and various scenes of discomfort (graphically shown), the disembodied cries of a child (possibly Nic), violence, and ultimately terror.

I found this a good deal less engaging than the substantially longer ‘Nymphomaniac’, and approach the final film in the trilogy with an open mind. The story begins on one level of graphic imagery and despair, and remains at that level throughout. There is no real let-up or drifting away from the overwhelming intensity of it all – which becomes less intense because of its ubiquity. Defoe and Gainsbourg are excellent throughout – you really get the impression actors suffered in the creation of these roles. Director Frier has said that ‘the film was finished without much enthusiasm’ due to his fragile mental state at the time, and while the acting betrays no such lack of commitment, the overall effect sadly in accordance with Frier. I should add, the direction here is magical, if perhaps a little heavy-handed.

A group of heavily armoured folk pounce from a vehicle into the path of a group of marauding zombies. The first line of dialogue we hear is, “Come on, you f***ing dummy!” And then, bedlam. A plethora of gunfire, cascading streams of blood, a dash of gore, and many of the walking-dead become quite simply, dead-dead. It isn’t a bad start, and lets you know exactly what film experience you are in for.

Sometimes it’s good to sit back and watch a group of muscle-brained heroes blowing bloody chunks out of a relentless horde of zombies. Except this Australian rollercoaster has an eccentricity that makes it a richer experience than that. There is a thin vein of black humour running through, not entirely unreminiscent of Peter Jackson’s 1992 ‘Braindead’. Here, the grotesque comedy doesn’t get as much of a hold and we are left with a desperate chase through a country suddenly teeming with gas-breathing living cadavers that enjoys moments of madness.

If you are in the mood for this, it delivers in spades. If not, it might come across as a group of characters whose dialogue consists of ‘what the f*** is this,’ and ‘what the f*** is that?’ The occasionally unconventional plot concerns Brooke (Bianca Bradley) who narrowly escapes being devoured by a group of newly formed zombies before being ‘rescued’ by a military group that takes her for experimentation every bit as deadly as her original predicament. Her brother Barry (Jay Gallagher), who has recently ended the lives of his zombie wife and daughter, teams up with a handful of similarly scarred characters, and proceeds to find Brooke and shoot as many marauding, slavering, dead-eyed ‘infected’ as possible.

‘Wyrmwood’ is twisted, fast-moving, brutal, bloody and the effects are very convincing. And it’s an enjoyable rollercoaster.

Events behind the scenes during the production of this Hammer project contain enough tragedy and intrigue to make a film of their own. Andrew Keir plays a role originally written (and partially recorded) for Peter Cushing, who had to abandon the project when his wife’s health took a turn for the worst. Director Seth Holt died on set mid-way through production and Hammer bigwig Michael Carreras took the helm for the remainder (although Holt was still singularly credited).

The result is sadly a bit of a mess, frankly. Much of the initial running time is filled with a flurry of characters experiencing strange and deadly events/coincidences often vaguely connected with a singular star system (‘The Jewel of the Seven Stars’ is the Bram Stoker story on which this is based). A pout-some, voluptuous and fully made-up Margaret is in bed dreaming of a pout-some, voluptuous and fully made-up Egyptian queen Tera (both played by Valerie Leon) having her hand removed by a group of priests. In more wakeful times, Margaret has a father (Keir) and a boyfriend, charmless Tod (Browning, believe it or not – namesake of the man who directed 1931’s ‘Dracula’ and 1932’s notorious ‘Freaks’ among others – played by Mark Edwards). There’s creepy Corbeck (James Villiers), mad old Berigan (George Coulouris) and even madder Doctor Putman (Aubrey Woods). The least interesting Browning commands much of the running time leaving much of the rest of the cast under-written.

‘Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb’ eschews much blood and gore (and a traditional mummy) in favour of a more supernatural tale. That it is rather dull and talky doesn’t help anyone: the most gruesome thing we see is Princess Tera’s disembodied hand creeping around. It is admirable to see Hammer attempting a different telling of the story, but sadly this fails to deliver much in the way of horror.

‘The Company of Wolves’ is an extraordinary dream-like series of set-pieces crammed with haunting detail and imagery. Young crimson-lipped Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson, impressive here and yet this is one of only a handful of film credits) sleeps – or sulks, as her spoilt sister Alice (Georgie Slow) would have it –in a glorious but ramshackle mansion that appears to get more untended the closer we get to her bedroom. She dreams of her precocious sister running through a haunted forest, fighting off giant teddy-bears, doll-houses and sinister grandfather clocks. It is a heady nightmare, with Rosaleen’s disturbed sleep ‘watched’ by a Mrs Tiggy-Winkle doll strongly reminiscent of her eccentric granny, whom we meet later. Wolves are, of course, prevalent in her dream, just as they are throughout the film.

Further into reverie we go, with mourners at the picturesque village burying Alice, with others played by such luminaries as Brian Glover, Graham Crowden, Stephen Rea, David Warner and magnificently eccentric singer/songwriter Daniella Dax as an unnamed wolf-girl.

“Once you stray from the path, you’re lost entirely,” warns Granny (top-billed Angela Lansbury). And that seems to be the metaphor for the film, which appears to be staged for the most part via tremendous studio sets. I mention this because such an arrangement allows for the world in which we inhabit to be entirely controlled by the film-makers – a village straight out of fairy-tale, a snowy-landscape made from every Christmas nightmare, and an autumnal air of folk-horror. Granny’s stories/warnings permeate the narrative – Stephen Rea’s travelling man marries Kathryn Podgson’s young bride but disappears, only to return years later as a werewolf. In a second cautionary tale, the Devil (Terence Stamp) offers a young man a lethal potion. The third features a heavily pregnant enchantress ‘done a terrible wrong’ who arrives at (the child’s father) an aristocrat’s wedding party and transforms everyone into wolves. The final tale features a she-wolf (Dax), who ascends from ‘the world below to the world above’ meaning no harm, yet is shot by ignorant villagers.

The stories are potent, haunting, mesmerising. The effects and transformations are excellent (particularly Rea’s character – his werewolf alter-ego is beheaded, which lands in a vat of milk, only to surface as his human head once more) and the atmosphere absorbing. But what does it all mean? “(Men) are as nice as pie until they’ve had their way with you; once the bloom is gone, the Devil comes out,” warns Granny. So, anti-men then? A coming of age parable? Certainly the Hammer-style horror-trappings and Red Riding Hood motifs seem only a convincing canvas on which to broadcast other things – a fear of adulthood, perhaps? Or maybe, given her ultimate fate, Granny’s warnings are proven to be worthless? Whatever, Angela Carter and Neil Jordan’s screenplay is an unspecific nightmare world of mindfulness and possibilities and remains not only one of the most original takes on the werewolf myth, but one of the most artistically successful too. Wonderful and extraordinary. An adult fairy-tale indeed.

A small American town pays host one Christmas to a maniac dressed as Santa Claus. Rather like Salem’s Lot, this town is frequented by often very flawed characters who one by one, succumb to terrifically staged, grisly fates.

My feeling at the beginning was that Sheriff James Cooper, played by the mighty Malcolm McDowell, who often seemed to magically turn up at the scene of the various crime, was somehow linked to the malevolent Claus. To cast McDowell as a mere Sheriff seemed unlikely to me. Maybe I was right?

Deputy Aubrey Bradimore (Jaime King) is the unfortunate who is seconded to the spree. Anytime any of the townsfolk are ‘naughty’ – and there are plenty who are – it seems Father Christmas isn’t far behind. You can hear his heavy breathing behind his improvised, bearded mask.

The running time is made up of sinners hiding behind a veneer of respectability, suspected by none except Santa. This makes him a kind of red-hatted avenging spirit. The premise and outrageous killings are over-the-top and often quite silly, and yet this remake of the 1984 ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ weaves in several plot moments from the real-life 2008 Covina massacre.

Director Steven C. Miller and writer Jayson Rothwell ensure that events are staged in a very television-drama style, and as such, the minor indiscretions of the characters have a soap-opera feel about them. For the ongoing fascination for a truly Bad Santa, this is enjoyable, but a fairly standard slasher.

With opening scene and credits, it would be easy to believe this was going to be a light-hearted Australian western romp. And indeed it is, but it also involves swathes of the living dead, and a running time that contains more depth and drama than is immediately apparent.

1870, and a hardened bounty hunter James Dalton leads a troupe of outlaws and a preacher across the unforgiving, open stretches of land of the old west. The outlaws are a quickly likeable bunch of ne'er-do-wells lead by the formidable, beautiful Annie Blake (Vanessa Moltzen). For no readily apparent reason (although this is covered later in flashbacks), the crazed living dead frequent the freight train they were about to board and after that, things become frequently horrific.

Humour makes regular appearances, however, but it is not unsuccessful and doesn’t detract from the overall mood. For example, the group, who have learned to trust each other by this time, are transporting themselves across the wasteland via a carriage pulled by zombie nuns chasing a dangling limb just out of their reach! For all the waywardness of that image, there is an undeniable frisson to be had watching hordes of the rotting creatures approaching across the dust tracks.

Possibly my biggest issue with this is the lack of make-up for the zombies, which lessens a couple of jump-scares and plot twists. As one-eyed Dalton, Christopher Summers is adequate, but lacks the presence of many of his co-stars. He is consistently outshone by Moltzen, for example.

‘Hawk the Slayer’ is a modestly budgeted sword-and-sorcery horror that has garnered a cult following and the promise of a number of sequels that have yet to materialise. The ending certainly indicates that the story is not yet over …

The cast is a very good one: Jack Palance delivers a typically enthusiastic performance as the half-faced Voltan, and there’s Bernard Bresslaw, Patricia Quinn, Christopher Benjamin, Annette Crosbie, Shane Briant, Roy Kinnear, Harry Andrews, Patrick Magee - and John Terry as the very earnest Hawk. Many of these were very familiar faces on UK television at the time.

I remember reviews at the time being scathing, and now it is viewed rather patronisingly as ‘so bad it is good.’ I’m not at all sure either is fair. It is very ‘of its time’, directed (and co-written, by Terry Marcell) very much like a television project and features a terrifically cheesy soundtrack (by Harry Robinson) reminiscent of Jeff Wayne’s ‘War of the Worlds’. It is played with gusto by the cast and features some mystical-looking locations and sets, often enhanced by the mist from an ever-present smoke-machine. The effects aren’t always impressive, but there is a sense of infectious, sly humour throughout that discourages us from taking things too seriously. So if you laugh at this, it seems to me, you’re laughing with it rather than at it.

With such an eccentric mix of characters and a ranting, spitting, snarling villain, it is perhaps inevitable that Terry’s ever-stoical hero is the blandest of them all. Yet other players flourish – Giant Gort (Bresslaw) and Baldin the dwarf (Peter O’Farrell) share such a good rapport, for example, ensuring that Palance isn’t allowed to entirely overshadow everyone else.

Fusing two words together to make a new one is a fad I blame ‘Sharknado’ for – tongue-in-cheek parodies promoted as cheap and cheerful Friday night films. I look forward to ‘Ghostvasion’, or ‘Zombislaught’. This, then, could be described as a ‘mockbuster’ riding on the success of Stephen King’s ‘It (2017)’. This film features a host of pretty young things in a town frequented by pretty young things, initially centring around a fast-food restaurant. There is one old fellow, Pops, who works there – he’s not young and he’s not pretty, so at first, my money was on him having something to do with the title’s evil-doer. Wouldn’t that be obvious?

I cannot really dislike this. One of the taglines is ‘balloons have never been so scary’, which immediately charms me. And there are plenty of bulbous red balloons that accompany the occasional murders. The titular menace, an apparently demonic creation, staggers around breathing hoarsely and the constant stings in the soundtrack remind us he is very frightening, which he isn’t, really.

That said, one of the later attacks, which takes place in someone’s kitchen, is rather good, especially when thick black vomit makes an appearance. As for The Clown, it’s never entirely clear what he actually is. Demonic, but made flesh – therefore, how can he physically be killed, or as happens here, arrested? Best not to worry and enjoy this lightweight chiller for what it is. With a title like ‘Clowntergeist’, it is clearly not trying to rewrite the horror genre. Directed and co-written by Aaron Mirtes, it has its moments, and the young cast are enthusiastic and likeable.

‘Nymphomaniac’ is a huge project written and directed by Lars von Trier. Trier has proven a controversial figure over the years, with his filmic output attracting similar contention and many awards (Shia LaBeouf, who stars as Jerome, has said about von Trier that he is ‘dangerous. He scares me. And I'm only going to work now when I'm terrified.’). Trier suffers from depression, and appears to inject some of his personality into the characters. This is my first experience of his work, and I absolutely love it.

A beautifully directed opening, simply featuring snow falling on an industrial landscape, water dripping from roofing, slowly reveals the beaten and broken figure of a young woman Joe. She is found by lonesome scholar, bachelor Seligman, whose quiet ways mask his erudite intelligence. When Joe stirs, she too, is very well spoken, very refined. After she refuses medical treatment, he takes her to his spacious but dilapidated home. Therein, with the falling snow outside acting as a constant backdrop, she tells him about herself. She is a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac, and despises herself for it. Using his own interests as a yardstick, Seligman interprets her self-loathing, often into something more positive. Joe’s stories are divided into various chapters, sometimes resulting in her destroying lives and relationships, sometimes not. Seligman’s precise and dispassionate synopsis is because he is a virgin and remains sexually unmoved by Joe’s forthright, graphic accounts.

Possibly the most disturbing chapter is 6. "The Eastern and the Western Church (The Silent Duck)", in which Joe visits ‘K’ (Jamie Bell) to assuage her never-ending sexual dependency. The violence inflicted upon her willing person is punishing and sadistic – and it comes at a heavy price: the loss of Joel and son Marcel. Here we are actually seeing the regular repercussions and personal consequences of her condition and it is horrific.

‘Nymphomaniac’ is fascinating throughout. The playing is exemplary, the direction beautifully contrasting the ramshackle calm of Seligman’s existence, and the unstoppable, often self-destructive calamity of Joe’s addiction to sex. Sometimes the scenes are extremely graphic for a brief time, but such is the surrounding story and reasons for her carnal addiction, they convey the nature of her being rather than shock. There is a poetic sense of symmetry to certain events, words and statistics that ensures many things come full circle. And ultimately, that the flaws of the characters dovetail each other in a very satisfying manner.

The cast list contains Charlotte Gainsburg and Stacey Martin as Joe at different ages, Stellan Skarsgård as Seligman, and features Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, William Defoe and Udo Kier amongst many other very talented, naturalistic actors. The excellent Mia Goth plays ‘P’ (Goth is starring in a forthcoming remake of ‘Suspiria’ in 2018). My only complaint would be that the actors playing young versions of the characters look unlike the older versions – that is, if everything else wasn’t so perfect. And perfect isn’t a word I have cause to use very often.

‘Nymphomaniac’ was released in two parts in the UK, but has a total running time of either 241 minutes or 325 minutes, depending on whether you see the uncut version or not. It has deservedly won multiple awards, including three for Trier himself. Devoting the time to watch is an undertaking, but is worth it, because your eyes will never dare to leave the screen.