Film Reviews by NP

This is a whole heap of grotesque fun, if you are in the mood for it. Comedy is virtually impossible to get right for everyone. And yet this fusion of body horror and overplayed humour is very enjoyable. I say ‘overplayed’ – that is not strictly accurate. Only the monstrous are encouraged to ‘heighten’ their performances – the townsfolk are allowed to play things fairly straight.

A small town is transformed into a zombie’s paradise by an unspecified meteor landing. First to be affected is Grant (Michael Rooker), brutish husband of heroine Starla (Elizabeth Banks), who undergoes a gradual, hideous but deliberately ridiculous transformation into the hive-mind, whereby all future infected people share his mindset. Conveniently, this means that when (what has become of) Grant is destroyed, all the others are too. But there is a whole horror-show to get through before that even becomes a possibility.

The numerous visual effects and their designers do an incredible job creating a convincing society descent into bloody chaos. Director and Writer James Gunn indulges his story with a growing sense of perversity – with truly appalling tragic moments accompanied by cheesy love songs which ensure we are never invited to take things seriously.

A haunted house can be very traumatic, but when it is ‘of Horror’ as well – you know you’re in for a bumpy ride. Sadly, that possibility is the scariest thing about this Tigon teen chiller.

Whilst the loose morals and superficial machinations of youthful Sixties’ ‘swinging London’ are engagingly handled, it seems an age before someone suggests going to ‘the old house’ to liven up a tepid evening’s entertainment.

American singing sensation Frankie Avalon is top-billed Chris, but is more of a supporting character to the excellent Richard O’Sullivan’s far more interesting Peter and Mark Wynter’s two-timing Gary – at least for the first two thirds of the 92 minute running time. The girls, who are either predatory or naïve, include Sylvia (Gina Warwick), Dorothy (Carol Dilworth) and Madge (Veronica Doran). George Sewell looks menacing as Kellett, and Dennis Price is wasted as the Inspector – a role originally envisaged for Boris Karloff (although given Karloff’s health during the late 1960s, it is difficult to imagine him in the role).

Director and writer Michael Armstrong fails to inject many scares into this, and typically of Tigon’s output at the time, the results could better be described as a fairly routine mystery than a horror (despite the premise).

Tigon films were prolific at the time. Their horror output occasionally resulted in some excellent productions, including ‘Witchfinder General (1968)’, ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970)’ and ‘The Creeping Flesh (1973)’. Although the cast try their best, this is fairly standard runaround stuff which, instead of getting more intriguing as things roll on, actually becomes less engaging.

Anything written and acted by extreme performance artist David Hoyle was going to be an acquired taste. Given what appears to be a free reign, Hoyle’s eccentric ‘fly on the wall’ style takes a while to get used to, but is worth the initial trepidation. The trepidation being – at least in my case, watching this – you truly do not know what you are getting into.

So, what is this? A doomed love/horror story of Hoyle’s Uncle David and young, softly spoken Ashley, played by pornographic actor Ashley Ryder. It seems initially that the two men meeting for a break in a static caravan by the sea is little more than a platform for Hoyle’s philosophies on life, society and conformism. And then it becomes apparent that Ashley may well be dying. This appears to be treated with a calm assurance by the two, with Hoyle assuring Ashely of his ‘ascension into the stratosphere’.

Among Hoyle’s many profundities – some of which I whole-heartedly agree with, and others I do not (but who cares what I think??) – is the condemnation of ‘control freaks’ throughout society. And yet it appears that it is Uncle David who is gently persuading his young childlike ‘nephew’ that his imminent demise is a good, even beautiful thing; this is a powerful statement as he is orchestrating the passive Ashley into a mutually agreed suicide. Although having said that, Ashley has said that he wanted to die.

The location is beautifully used – the down-to-earth majesty of a British seaside town, with its stretching beach and horizons contrasting with the cardboard-like homeliness of the holiday home to allow for a fascinating backdrop. Whilst Ryder could be said to be underplaying his role, Hoyle is a captivating character. His viewpoints on, well, everything may be hard to hear at times, but they are never boring.

“The closer we are to oblivion, the happier we are.”

A majestic rainstorm illuminates the city backdrop throughout much of this Australian supernatural horror. A downpour can add so much atmosphere and unease to scenes if handled effectively – and here, Director (and Writer) Michael Petroni uses it very well indeed.

Sam Neill is an actor who has quietly built up a massive body of work. He is always solid, reliable and a powerful presence onscreen. Casually sophisticated and authoritative, he is typically fine here, playing Duncan Stewart, sceptical of the sinister possibilities that are unfolding. Neill’s in good company – Adrien Brody is excellent as tortured Psychologist Peter Bower, who happens upon young Elizabeth, a patient who holds secrets of her own.

This unleashes a whole series of sightings, glimpses, jump scares and apparitions. And yet the overall effect is more of a slowly unfolding mystery than a ‘straightforward’ horror (if there is such a thing), elevated by the performances from the universally excellent cast and rich production values. The film doesn’t quite live up to the moody success of its early scenes, but it keeps things simmering nicely.

The finale and climax either work or they don’t, depending on your point of view. After such a carefully built-up – and occasionally ponderous – storyline, the last moments step up a couple of gears to provide what I thought was a pretty satisfying endgame, even if the ‘twist’ at the end is fairly routine.

This little known Tigon production stars the mightily chinned Patrick Allen as the rather smug, lascivious Bob Megan. First seen getting close and personal with a bleach blond female pilot, it isn’t long before he’s leering at any other pretty woman under the age of thirty. This is a world where everyone he meets is waiting to be picked up. Luckily, Allen’s charisma saves the character somewhat.

Parachutists are disappearing. This is why the military have called on Megan’s expertise. The worrying thing is, they are disappearing mid-flight, with a crackling halo of light surrounding them.

Supporting Allen are George Sanders as General Armstrong, Maurice Evans as Dr. Matthews and an especially wooden ‘special guest’ Neil (Sean’s brother) Connery as Jim Radford.

The locations are just as wonderfully ‘of their time’ as Megan’s swagger. Filmed during a misty autumn, the period English landscapes are probably the film’s highpoint. Aside from the interesting ideas, the pacing ensures ‘The Body Stealers’ is never in danger of becoming too exciting.

The slowly evolving revelation that there is a distinctly sci-fi explanation for events places this firmly into perfunctory (but enjoyable) ‘b-picture’ territory. There’s a brief appearance from a re-used prop from 1965’s ‘Dalek Invasion of Earth’ in the finale.

Charming but unspectacular.

This is another film from the stable of prolific low-budget film-maker Andrew Jones, who has steadily made a name for himself as a reliable provider of horror cinema over the years. His sense of ambition is to be commended. After setting his previous ‘Robert and the Toymaker (2017)’ in Nazi Germany, here, he transforms Trefeglwys, Mid Wales into Keddie, USA. Sue (Terri Dwyer) and her appealing children’s stay in an isolated cabin is turned into a terrifying nightmare by the arrival of a group of malicious characters dressed as clowns. As the tag-line puts it, ‘don’t bother locking the door, they’re already inside.’ Low-budget or not, Jones’ films rarely pull their punches.

The main hurdle to overcome is the mangled collection of American accents. The younger cast-members are far less guilty of this than some of the more seasoned performers. These are non-Americans playing Americans; once you get that under your belt, the performances are universally pretty strong, especially Harriet Rees as daughter Tina. Rees, it seems, is part of Jones’ repertoire. Jones himself plays the mysterious ‘driver’, although with a heavily modulated voice.

Another stalwart is Lee Bane, without whom very few Jones films are complete. Here, he is Sue’s unpleasant ex, Marty.

Where the film occasionally falls down is not the acting, but the lack of ‘back-up’ that acting occasionally receives. Some key scenes are played passionately, but with no background noise or music, and almost appears to be performed in a vacuum and somewhat isolated. On plenty of other occasions however – for example, Sheila’s (Brendee Green) grim discovery towards the end – scenes are conveyed very effectively.

As is often the case with Jones, this is wholly enjoyable but not without a few elements that let it down. His films are always interesting, and a look at IMDB shows he has plenty more in the pipeline. I look forward to them.

The idea of something monstrous loose on a storm-lashed oil rig is a very appealing one. A more remote, dangerous outpost it is difficult to imagine. Director Peter Atencio makes good use of a clearly low budget and ushers in a moody and claustrophobic atmosphere, fills it with a gruff working crew, and Writer CW Fallin brings them to life with some often witty dialogue. This, I always think, is the key to a level of success that belies budget – make the characters appealing (or most of them, at least) and the audience are affected by what happens to them.

What happens to them is a fairly impressive series of death-by-monster. Many of these attacks are genuinely shocking, not so much in their execution – which is fine but hardly spectacular – but in the way they occur at the least expected moments.

It’s disheartening to see a fair amount of negative online reviews for this. It doesn’t take someone as insignificant as myself to point out that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it would be a shame to think that people slate this purely because of its low budget – which, on the evidence here, isn’t THAT low. The insulting ‘anyone who votes this more than one star is in some way associated with the movie’ is a very narrow-minded and untrue viewpoint.

It plods in places, and the finale is somewhat protracted, but there are some impressive directorial flourishes that further compound the remoteness of the location. This Alien-like horror run-around won’t change your life, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Put very simply, this is a story heavily influenced by ‘The Thing (1982)’ featuring Lance Henrikson and series of special effects refreshingly untouched by CGI. To that end, the monstrous and monsters look pleasingly 1980s in style. That’s not to say ‘old school effects’ are unimpressive: although slightly ‘cheesy’, they are powerful in scale and charmingly gooey. Also, such moments are joyfully free of the ‘cartoony’ aspect of computer generated effects. Director and writer Alec Gillis seems so proficient that it is something of a surprise he chose to limit his resources to a story with such obvious inspiration.

As you may expect, infighting amongst the group – many of whom have their own agendas – provides some drama when the monsters are otherwise engaged. As always, Henrikson – playing deadpan Graff – is a mighty presence. He seems to have made his professional home in films like this, and thrives in them.

I have to admit to being somewhat misled by this film’s title; I expected a slasher flick, or something a lot more gory than what is delivered here. But it’s a very gladsome misdirection. This is a compelling, slow-burning low-budget project often shot in uneasy, unsteady close-ups. The cast are uniformly excellent. Amy Seimetz is terrific as Sarah, a hesitant, awkward ex-alcoholic. AJ Bowen is very powerful as unrepentant serial-killer Garrick Turrell, Sarah’s ex, who escapes from prison apparently to pursue her and end the lives of a few others along the way. It’s a story that has been done before, but this is so convincing and original in its style, it feels un-reassuringly fresh.

I think sometimes the unrelenting brow-beaten melancholy gets a little too much, and the camera angles occasionally become too distracting, but these are minor quibbles really. This is a restrained, interestingly told story with a satisfying twist at the end. Writer Simon Barrett and Director Adam Wingard are clearly names to look out for.

I nearly didn’t make it through the first few moments of this Halloween themed horror. Sultry teen Dora Vogel (Chloe Rose) finds out she is pregnant and it seems very likely she is set to use the miracle of a life growing beneath her pierced naval as a reason to pout and act petulant, rolling those eyes beneath her thick goth make-up. And yet these tedious inevitabilities never actually happen. And if you can get through that, the rest of the 80-minute running time is a very rewarding experience.

For someone I was expecting at best to tolerate, Dora emerges as a true hero. She does everything right, even scores a few victories against the creepy, larger-than-life trick-or-treaters that have created a seeming world of their own. And like all heroines, she is put through a punishing and genuinely unnerving sequence of events before the ending brings about absolutely no conclusion at all!

‘Hellions’ straddles demonic baby possession, creepy children, a pink-hued alternate dimension, and some frightening surreal imagery. Director Bruce McDonald and Writer Pascal Trottier have clearly worked very closely to bring about this convincing dark journey to life and the pace rarely slackens – although in an hallucinogenic project like this, the pace can be negligible. Suffice it to say, you may be too busy being impressed by the scale of strangeness, or trying to figure out what is going, or just feeling sympathy for Dora as she is continually convinced she is free of the nightmare, only to find he is even more deeply embedded in it.

I recommend this dark horror fantasy.

London has rarely looked more magnificently seedy than in the openings shots of this José Luis Madrid directed film. Rainy, grainy and simmering with promises of blatant sleazy sex.

Paul Naschy plays Pedro. Having played a variety of monsters and horror characters, Naschy had become known as ‘the Spanish Lon Chaney’. As Pedro, he is the crippled victim of a circus accident, who spends his time limping around seedy London pubs, picking up fights and horrendous cockney prostitutes.

It isn’t long before he is suspected of carrying out gory, Jack-the-Ripper-style murders. His fight to prove his innocence to Scotland Yard’s finest is what fuels the film.

Sadly, it is all very drab and never attempts to rise from that. Flatly directed (apart from the rain-swept London panoramas), the interiors were shot in Barcelona and Rome.

As always, the dubbing puts a wall between the characters and the audience, but even with that in mind, the performances seem very perfunctory. Naschy in particular gives us no reason to invest in Pedro and his apparent innocence. Against this, there are a few nicely gory scenes and the finale has some tension to it.

From the beginning, this is clearly some kind of post-apocalyptic story featuring Ann (Lucy Walters) suffering the indignities of a world without amenities: a world that is starkly beautiful and deadly dangerous. Director Rod Blackhurst takes full advantage of the mesmerising locations and presents us with a convincingly isolated existence. Indeed, for a good while, the only dialogue is featured in flashbacks to a more fruitful past. The music too, by Eric D. Johnson, is suitably morose and ambient.

Whilst the going is undoubtedly and convincingly tough for Ann and those few she meets up with, it’s pretty galling for the viewer too. For a long time, the trivialities that make up their existence become pretty wearing and the (understandably) melancholy dialogue gets rather dull.

Love is found within the desolation between Ann and Chris (Adam Thompson) and not even the overdue reveal of members of the living dead spices things up hugely. Chris’s step-daughter, teenage Olivia (Gina Piersanti), in shorts and a flimsy top, is chased through the woodlands before the creature is despatched, gore-free, and only then do we get a scenario that could fall under the horror banner. It’s a long time coming.

I’m quite surprised to read online reviews that praise the first two thirds of this only to be disappointed by the final act. For me, it is the other way round. Whilst I am a huge devotee of slow-burning horrors, the build-up is so morose and uneventful that the final act makes it worthwhile: the pay-off, although brief, is pretty effective and proof again that it isn’t the monsters you need necessarily fear, it is the person standing at your side.

I enjoyed ‘Sinister 2’ so made the move to watch its prequel – to find I’d actually seen it before and had forgotten. I’m not sure what that says about me or the film. It doesn’t avoid what the sequel managed to avoid – the curse of the bratty kid. In fact, both children belonging to Ethan Hawke’s Ellison Oswalt are pretty obnoxious at times. As Bad Things happen, the children become more precocious. This is a difficult problem, and one that can actually ruin a film for me. Troubled children don’t have to be petulant, do they? Luckily, they don’t go on to play a huge part in the story.

Earning him the chagrin of the local constabulary, Oswalt moves into the house where previously, gruesome murders have taken place. Unfortunately, his wife and offspring are not told about this history. He has moved himself and the family here so he can research the horrific incidents for a book he is writing. He also finds an ally in Deputy ‘So & So’ (James Ransone), who is the one cast member to appear in the sequel.

‘Sinister’ is a fairly routine haunted house horror a couple of notches above the usual ‘family in peril’ fare, lifted by the performances of Hawke and Juliet Rylance as his English-but-American-speaking wife Tracy. It is somewhat overlong and slow-moving, but I don’t really have a problem with that. Oswalt trips down the familiar path of encroaching obsession and insanity, a descent sprinkled with the occasional ghost-faced child. The main villain, the gothic and spectral Bughuul, makes a fleeting appearance and is pretty menacing, making me wonder why the character isn’t used more.

I actually prefer the sequel. The production seems tighter and less traditional, as recompense for a lack of a ‘name’ lead. Both films have notable musical soundtracks; this deliciously dark OST is by Christopher Young.

Otherwise known as ‘Alarmed’, this story takes a long time to get going. In fact, for a while, it is difficult to imagine it developing into a horror film at all. Jennifer Stuckart plays lead Samantha neither as a screaming damsel in distress or as a traditionally sassy no-nonsense ‘final girl’. She is simply an intelligent woman caught up in a spiral of very odd events.

The boat itself seems to be trying to get Samantha to confront the truth regarding the death of her family some years earlier. It does this by separating her from boyfriend Mark (Brian Rife) by locking him out of the cabin area with her on the inside. And there he stays (vast bulks of his dialogue consists of urgent pleas: ‘Sam, look at me, stay with me, Sam’ ad nauseum). Nothing Sam does has any effect on the machinations of the ‘ghost boat’ (as a SPOILER, she is instructed to harm herself again and again, which she resists. When her allotted time runs out, the ‘boat’ forces her to do it anyway). After every episode, we appear to go back to beginning again.

Unfortunately, things quickly become wearisome. Or to be more precise, things SLOWLY become tedious, because nothing happens with much urgency at all. Despite the admirably restrained playing of the cast, we appear to be waiting for something to happen and resisting the urge to go and do something else instead. Director (and writer) Matt Lofgren occasionally injects the dullness with feeling of tension (moments that are very reliant on the performances more than anything else) but it isn’t enough to lift events from tedium.

The boat itself looks lovely, but there is no sense of remoteness and no dark corners conducive to a haunting, or whatever it is that’s happening here. The cast deserved better, sadly.

For a story about a bereaved mother with two young sons, this could have been a lot worse. I have a low tolerance for bratty depictions of troubled youngsters in films like this, and the often dewy-eyed mother’s intense efforts in trying to ‘understand’ them. Luckily, that kind of drippery is in short supply here, with Director Ciaran Foy clearly more concerned with horror atmospherics.

For any unacquainted with the original, it is difficult not to notice how little explanation there is for events here. In some ways it is a good thing that we head straight into the thrust of the narrative, but in others it must be frustrating playing ‘the long game’ in order for newcomers to be enlightened about the ongoing story.

The main protagonist is Bughuul from the earlier film, who looks very much like the lead character in Top Cow’s ‘The Darkness’ comics. He makes surprisingly brief appearances here – such restraint is commendable, although it would have been nice to see a little more of him. Perhaps nice is the wrong word.

There are several story strands here, but sadly, only the evil ghostly children’s growing influence on young Zack (Dartanian Sloan) has any sense of progression. Other interesting elements, like Zack becoming the bully his father Clint (Lea Coco) was, and the father’s abusive behaviour towards the likeable Courtney - as well as her relationship with the ‘Ex-Deputy’ - are plot-threads presented more or less in isolation amidst everything else, and they remain severely under-developed and subsequently not as interesting as they deserve to be.

Despite the convincing acting, I feel that too much reliance is placed on the young cast members. It is too much to ask that scenes of such horrific ‘weight’ to them should be adequately conveyed by the juniors.

The highlight for me here is Tomandandy’s amazing, doom-laden score. Throughout, the music adds an extra layer of intensity and dark foreboding. The soundtrack is available to buy and makes for pretty unsettling listening on its own.