Film Reviews by NP

There’s something faintly ludicrous about the opening shots of this ‘found footage’ entrance into George A Romero’s entry into his ‘Living Dead’ series. A live news broadcast is interrupted when corpses in the background come back to half-life and start attacking those around them. To me, found footage works best when you don’t see too much – the characters on screen reacting to something out of the audience’s vision works very well in that style. Fully made-up zombies fit better into a more stylised, ‘professionally filmed’ scenario.

Things don’t improve hugely when we meet a film crew, including actors playing actors playing both in front of, and behind the camera. ‘Hilarity’ ensures when two cast members ‘have to pee’, leaving the rest to view on the news reports how the dead are coming back to life. Amongst the teens, we have a uproariously well-spoken elderly ham Andrew Maxwell (Scott Wentworth) who clearly feels he’s demeaning himself by appearing in the film being made. Whispering, identical horny youngsters, someone (Jason – played by Joshua Close) who films *everything* despite being repeatedly asked not to, posturing, wall-to-wall expletives – all the staples of a teen horror, and by Romero’s standards, BAD. Apart from anything else, the advantages and unique qualities of the archive formula are simply not used here. The ‘story’ doesn’t need to be told in this way, and is just a gimmick. Could it be Romero was seeking financial success by attempting to attract the youth demographic?

It is explained at the beginning that, to make events more frightening, the young film-makers have added incidental music to events – and yet failed to edit out moments when (as is always the way in these things) the cameras start to fail and cut off.

Anyway, as events fail to progress, I am gagging for some cadaverous zombie to limp in and violently dismember people. When they eventually turn up, they are half-hearted, under-made-up and easily dispatched. The alleged good guys remain personality-free, rather a growing band of posers ‘doing what they gotta do’. How did Romero allow this to be made? To spend so much time with these people and for not one of them to effect any kind of personality for the duration is one thing, but when the undead action is as scarce as it is here, it makes for a hugely dull experience.

Happily, the next in the series ‘Survival of the Dead (2009)’ is a huge improvement on this.

In the midst of the inexplicable success of 1999’s CGI-fest ‘The Mummy’, this sequel to the previous year’s ‘Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy’ slithered out onto the straight-to-video market. Like that first entry, this is cheap, hackneyed, badly acted and clichéd. However, whereas the first film barely featured a Mummy at all, this time we see more of the creature – much more. Christopher Bergschneider, billed as Anton Falk, plays a shorter, more overweight Mummy than I have ever seen, and is impossible to take seriously. By its very nature, such a creature should be skeletal, cadaverous, and that is not the case here. So it must be tongue-in-cheek. You would think. But no – it is played straight, or as straight as can be by this group of second graders. Strangely (or not), hunky braggart Morris (Michael Lutz) is the most convincingly played – you fully believe he is a lazy, arrogant, ignorant braggart. Also, he clearly fills the tight boxer-shorts he parades round in well enough for the casting director.

So then, an ancient Mummy has been found and placed in an insecure country compound and is placed on a slab, entirely open to the peccadillos of the young students staying there. Cretin Morris takes away an amulet so to impress chipper, chirpy Janine (Michelle Erickson), whilst Norman (Trent Latta), the butt of everyone’s jokes – who initially appears to be autistic – is actually an Aztec priest. Luckily for Morris, Janine is instantly in love with him when he gives her the amulet, so that’s nice. The big fat Mummy, buried with a circular blade (which makes you wonder why he didn’t use it to slice his bonds and escape his incarceration all those thousands of years ago) stalks the compound during an endless storm after the picturesque young people. For a compound, the location seems more like an average sized house, which is adequate, as only about 7 people are staying there.

Actually, I quite enjoyed this. It’s not quite so bad it’s good, but it is along those lines. The dialogue is ham-fisted and clichéd, but it’s eventful, well-paced and as cheesy as a cheese-burger in a stilton sandwich. It is an old style chiller – although not really very chilling – with a small budget and an undistinguished cast. It just isn’t particularly good on several levels, but perfectly enjoyable on another.

“Your time on this planet is over, Don!” I’m pretty sure that dialogue has as much to do with Bram Stoker as everything else on display here. And yet I still enjoyed this more than the Brendan Fraser efforts.

Once you have been introduced to the non-descript but bombastic strains of Universal’s familiar opening music, and a hand wiping away cobwebs on the credits to reveal the film’s title, you might be lead to believe this isn’t going to be a measured, skilfully balanced exercise in horror. By this time, the name Lon Chaney (no longer ‘Jr’) topping the bill pretty much guarantees a monster stomp-around to give the kids a scare and amuse the adults. Veteran Evelyn Ankers also stars (she and Chaney often shared a fractious relationship professionally, but she starred in many films with him). However, it is a black wigged Louis Allbritton who plays the female lead, Katherine Caldwell, the flowing robed maiden with a faraway look in her eye who has the dubious privilege of marrying the curiously named Alucard. But hang on – Alucard backwards is … oh, of course.

It could be argued that the chunky, out-doorsy Chaney is miscast in many of his horror roles. He is, I think, no more suited to playing a seductive vampire lord than he is to playing a cadaverous mummy or a sympathetic Frankenstein monster. And yet, with that in mind, he makes a particularly good job of the role here. Restrained for the most part, quietly spoken and disinclined to overplay the titular character, it comes as little surprise that, rather than the son, he is playing Dracula himself!

The story, by Universal veteran Curt Siodmak, is very good – creepy, and tinged with a macabre sense of romance and lost love. The loser is Frank Stanley, the hero, who is not afforded any kind of ultimately conclusive ending. Robert Paige plays him exceptionally well, making his decline a convincing emotional journey. The other Siodmak, Robert, co-directs this effectively too, making the most of the supernatural elements. The first meeting of Alucard with his bride, features the vampire emerging as mist from a floating coffin, and then appearing to hover above the water. Although the effect is attempted very economically, it is a great moment. Later on, Stanley shoots at Alucard; Katherine shelters behind him, and the bullet passes harmlessly through the Count and into his wife, apparently killing her. Later, the image of the bat biting its victim is captured in silhouette. All terrific stuff.

The story follows the machinations of the original film – Dracula has a face-off with his knowledgeable nemesis, in this case Professor Lazlo (J. Edward Bromberg), and is overcome by the power of goodness; later, a child is found with mysterious bite marks. And yet events are handled so engagingly that there’s never a sense of restatement.

This is a refreshingly sinister and engaging film, sometimes unfairly lumped in with the Universal ‘quickies’ produced around this time. It is very intelligently and respectfully written, and to my mind, Chaney has never been better.

The effects of ‘The Blair Witch Project (1999)’ should never be underestimated in my view. With it came to many peoples’ attention a whole new way of telling (mainly horror) stories: found footage. It was a phenomena, a huge low-budget hit. The inevitable backlash from the fickle public mainly whinged about the effects of ‘shaky’ webcam making the delicate souls in the audience feel queasy. Imagine then, if a film could be told using static security cameras endlessly filming every room in a haunted house. Perfect! For a limited time, it was certainly very effective.

Katie and Micah live in the unlikeliest haunted house. No dank corridors or Victorian era décor – this is a thoroughly modern homestead devoid of dank shadows and possessed cellars. The couple are likeable and real, and Katie Featherstone and Micah Sloat are naturalistic performers and have a certain casual chemistry. The production is genius in its simplicity. Watching stilted views of familiar rooms command the attention, dare the audience to examine every inch of the scene for any sign of unnatural movement – and even if nothing happens, there is growing tension merely in being so drawn into it.

Micah’s scepticism in the face of visiting psychic (Marc Fredrichs) marks him out quite early as fairly vexatious, especially when Katie seems to have been sensitive to paranormal activity from a young age. And yet every horror film needs a sceptic. I remember being very irritated by him when I first saw this, but watching again, I find he is a lot more understanding than I gave him credit for.

Unspectacular occurrences are a lot more effective because they are filmed as ‘live’, and we get the couple’s instant, undiluted reactions to them. The scene where Katie is simply standing beside the couple’s bed, staring at Micah’s sleeping form, doesn’t sound much on paper, but is incredibly sinister. Such moments, gradually built up throughout, are simple and unnerving – far more so in this film than in the numerous sequels and prequels, which desperately introduce new characters and build unreasonably on the ‘curse’ (which is not that interesting) to try to maintain the interest. To my mind, the only sequel that works is 2014’s ‘The Marked Ones’, because it is a fairly self-contained ghost story in its own right.

Yet ‘Paranormal Activity’ should have remained a very effective one-off, in my view. Its huge success persuaded Paramount Pictures, who had bought the film from its original independent distributors, to add a new ending, which would then lead into further numerous ways of wringing money from what had become a new franchise.

At the end of my first viewing of this, I had to turn all the lights on in every room, just to make sure there wasn’t a figure standing there. A sure sign the film has done its job …?

I’m a firm believer that rain can add atmosphere to any scene, whether on film, television, book or photograph. The downpour that accompanies many of the events at the beginning of this Duccio Tessari directed giallo is welcome after the very lengthy introduction, via a never-ending opening credits sequence introducing many starring characters.

The rainstorm adds additional horrific grit to the murder of beautiful student Françoise Pigaut (Carole André), after which toupee-sporting sports presenter Alessandro Marchi (Giancarlo Sbragia) is arrested. We then learn his wife is having an affair with his lawyer, and that even after Marchi’s incarceration, further murders take place …

‘The Bloodstained Butterfly’ has garnered much praise for resisting the flamboyant nature of many giallos and concentrating, in a very measured way, on the various characters and possible murderers. The police investigations are methodical and Silvano Tranquilli’s Inspector Berardi and his men spend as much time in the dark about things as we are. The reluctance to dwell on gore, sex or elaborate plot details tend to make many events quite dull viewing in my view.

Usual giallo standouts are very much in evidence here: Gianni Ferrio’s score is wonderful, the locations, drenched in sun or hammered by rainfall, are spectacular throughout. The reveal at the end is entirely in-keeping with the restrained manner throughout the 95 minutes – satisfying but hardly spectacular.

Clearly made on a shoestring budget, at nearly two hours much of the interest in the fabled witch in the woods wears thin - which is a shame, because this film has its heart in the right place.

Stefanie Tapio plays Deb, an appealing young photographer who occasionally exhibits a callous nature. Although she looks about 12 years old, she and her friends are presented as a variant on the usual ‘rock chick’ – their exploits are accompanied by high school grunge music, and they spend a fair amount of time discussing the merits, or otherwise, of ‘boys.’ But they are an otherwise unaffected bunch, and worlds away from the usual manicured prom brats we often get in stories like this. The acting is occasionally ropey but competent for an independent film. What lets things down though is the sluggish, drawn-out plot. The first half in particular drags and it is a pity some judicial pruning didn’t cut the running time down by about half an hour.

Things become rather more interesting when friend Karen (Karis Yanike) appears to get kidnapped by a spooky bunch of hooded figures in the woodlands. No-one else seems remotely bothered about her disappearance. Added to that, after a mysterious illness sweeps over Deb’s family, she teams up with brother Mark’s friend Brent (Jeremy Gillmore) to try and make sense of this blurred mystery.

The small town gradually cut off from normality due to this spreading sickness is effectively, and economically, conveyed. The low budget allows the blossoming curse to project an intimate, sticky, dirty sense of horror. The finale is unspectacular but surprisingly creepy. Lovecraftian, even. Whilst effective, it is a pity it didn’t end more conclusively. After staying with Debs for so long– Director and writer Dorothy Booraem (this film marks debuts both for her and Tapio) clearly put a lot of work into every scene, and she was determined to use it all – it would have been more satisfying had the denouement not been so opaque.

This is a very early giallo film, and already makes really good use of what would become staples in the genre. Lurid colours (lots of blues and deep reds and mauves), lots of young ladies the victims of violent distress, a mysterious black gloved killer, and some briefly gory scenes.

It seems to me that Director Mario Bava’s eye for exaggerated colour palettes inspired films like ‘Suspiria (1977)’, and the music by Carlo Rustichelli also adds to the striking visual set-pieces.

A dazzling and gory production for its time, the story beneath is somewhat ponderous and something I found difficult to engage with. As with ‘Suspiria’, I found the directorial flourishes a distraction rather than an enhancement, although certain scenes undoubtedly work very well. The characters are somewhat drowned in the stylish presentation too, although the acting throughout is accomplished.

The number seven crops up more than once in Giallo films – ‘Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye’, ‘Seven Blood Stained Orchids’, and this. Doll faced beauty Barbara Bouchet plays Kitty, surviving sister to Evelyn, a precocious, violent creature, who has seemingly perished. However, events seem to emulate the old family curse in which, every hundred years, the ‘Red Queen’ is raised from the dead to kill seven times. Classic images of stabbings by an unknown black-gloved figure with dark hair and a red cloak (1973’s ‘Don’t Look Now’ imagery seems to owe a lot to this) follow.

Red actually crops up rather a lot in this, on clothes and cars – splashes of crimson in the midst of pleasingly rainy night scenes; either a subtle clue as to the identity of the killer or a ‘red’ herring.

Magnificently moustachioed Marino Masé plays the chief inspector (Toller), the dapper gentleman trying to unravel this enigma, whilst looking uncannily like Freddie Mercury in certain scenes. This whole dark mystery is presented very much as a television horror/thriller than a film – more so than most giallos, I’d say.

The ghost-faced killer is featured only very sparingly, which is a shame as she is featured prominently on promotional material and looks effectively sinister.

Another well crafted, solid giallo film.

Miguel (Alexander Waechter), a man afflicted with a particularly unrealistic facial scar, is sent to an asylum for rape and murder. With little evidence that he is cured, he is released five years later and immediately resumes his hobby of peering and leering at highly made-up women bedecked – barely – in stunning early 1980’s attire. One reason for his behaviour appears to be his forbidden love for his sister Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff), who is happy to parade herself around him in suggested poses and revealing clothes but is appalled at continuing their forbidden relationship.

Various characters come and go, sinister suggestions of stalking young girls is accompanied by Gerhard Heinz’s mostly magnificent score (Pink Floyd were originally approached), and improbable and brightly coloured murders take place.

Euro sleaze, eurotrash, eurotica or euro-horror: there are plenty of labels for allegedly exploitation films such as ‘Bloody Moon’, but a lot of them are unfairly maligned by the lazy definition. A lot of films directed by Spanish Director Jess Franco are far better than their reputations suggest. This, however, fits squarely within that category (Franco himself has labelled it s**t). It is Franco’s contribution to the slasher genre.

The first half is remarkably tame. For the most part, watching this is something of a chore, with much of the running time seemingly made up from scenes spliced in from other films. Stunning locations and pretty girls and boys aside, this is something of a chore, especially when the characters display such unstinting stupidity, often on the promise of sex.

Yet it is worth continuing. The murders increase in frequency and bizarre gratuity (beheadings, stabbings and a knife protruding somewhat improbably from a nipple). The character of Angela (Olivia Pascal) staggers from witnessing one obscene set-piece after another and understandably is the scream-queen of this particular project. The scenes she witnesses actually gather together the somewhat isolated moments from earlier on and give them a coherency I wasn’t expecting.

In the end, against my earlier misgivings, ‘Bloody Moon’ ends up with a satisfying bloodbath filled with imaginative moments and a fairly convincing twist. Not Franco’s best film, then, but somewhere in the middle.

Jenny, or ‘Babes’ as she is often called (Jessica Cunningham), does not have a lot of luck as this film begins. Drunken, spiked and raped in the toilets of a club, hassled by a burn-scarred janitor Jennings (Stephen Greenhalgh) and victimised by boss John (Roy Basnett). The acting is extremely naturalistic, and the scenes are like eavesdropping on genuine work-related conversations. What lets things down at times, however, is the uneven sound quality which occasionally obscures dialogue. The feisty women in the advertising world are not to be messed with, and Boss John – mouth like a potty – is feeling the pressure too.

There is much humour here, a lot of it laugh-out-loud banter between the characters (especially the security nightshift George and Colin (Tim Paley and James Thompson)) - reminiscent of ‘The Office’ comedy (BBC, 2001-2003), which is no bad thing. Occasionally this balances nicely with the feelings of impending horror with what seems to be a killer clown in the locked-down offices – and occasionally it undermines the action. But I’ve a feeling that is deliberate. A familiar modern furnished office in an industrial estate is a remarkable sinister place when the night comes and 90% of the staff have (apparently) gone home.

In-keeping with the off-beat nature of the story, the ending could mean any number of things. The whole thing was Jenny’s drug addled dream or Boss John was dressed as a clown in a bid to incriminate Jennings (who is psychopathic anyway) … who’s to say? Whatever the outcome of the hyper finale, I had a ball watching this. Clearly it was done on a budget (the gore was never seen to stain the office location walls or carpets), but it remains great fun throughout. The pace rarely slackens and although the killer clown’s identity is pretty obvious from the first time we see him, this is a hugely enjoyable horror frolic.

Plan 9 is set in Nilbog, a town invaded by aliens. It begins with Mister Lobo playing Criswell, the kiss-curled real-life American psychic (1907-1982), whose mental powers are completely ignored here. Equally, the actor couldn’t look less like Crisswell. What we get is the kind of OTT performance that lets you know exactly the style the makers of this remake of ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)’ (often labelled the worst film ever made) are embracing. There are some pleasing nods to the original of course. The bereaved gentleman played by Bela Lugosi hangs himself whilst wearing a Halloween Dracula cape, Lucy (Sarah Eshleman) playfully dangles a lightshade over a miniature town model, echoing the hub-cap spaceships in Ed Wood’s project.

‘Night of the Living Dead (1968)’ and ‘The Fog (1980)’ are also referenced, as are scenes from other well-known horror films.

For me, ‘Plan 9’ is guilty of the same thing as the film that inspired it: it is a little boring. Not so bad it is good, not so bad it is bad, it just continues long past the point the audience cares. A cheap, campy film with often (deliberately?) cardboard performances and lacklustre monsters, encompassed in a pulpy sci-fi concept, is only entertaining for a limited time before the audience want something more ‘solid’ to invest in. Taken as it is, it might well be best watched with friends, over pizza and other occasional distractions.

The opening scenes are like a parody. Klaus Kinski, imprisoned, dreams of shackled, naked girls in a flurry of out-of-focus zoom-ins courtesy of Director Jess Franco, with a thumping, grandiloquent musical score that quite defies the fact that nothing of any merit is actually happening. It is as if Bruno Nicolai’s soundtrack has swept in from some spectacular epic to accompany these scenes; a towering presence Kinski undoubtedly was, but even he doesn’t merit such extravagance when he is, in effect, doing nothing.

Adding the usual spice to the cast are Franco friends Maria Rohm, Howard Vernon and a seemingly inebriated Jack Palance. The performances here are larger than life, and such a style befits this a huge, expensive looking, ribald romp full of exotic characters and costumes and locations, where everyone we meet could conservatively be described as ‘heightened’ – except, perhaps understandably, for Romina Power (daughter of Tyrone), who gives a very grounded performance as Justine. Rather unkindly, Jess Franco has made it clear her casting was forced on him and that he would have chosen someone else. Charisma she may lack compared to the extravagance of those around her, but for the sake of contrast if nothing else, her performance just about works. "Most of the time [Power] didn't even know we were shooting," Franco is quoted as saying.

As for Kinski’s appearances, they are silent and they do not integrate with anyone else. The possibilities between the eccentricities of Kinski and Franco were never fully realised, it seems to me. The closest we have come to realising the meeting of these two greats comes together in 1976’s ‘Jack the Ripper’, but despite how enjoyable that film was, one would have hoped for a less restrained team-up.

‘Justine…’ film has been heavily censored for some releases, not for reasons of graphic nudity or gore (at least, I don’t think so – it is very tame on that score), but probably because the 124 minute version I have seen is way, way too long to justify the character of Justine falling into one mishap after another, which is the storyline in a nutshell.

My favourite Franco take on this idea is ‘Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir' (1970), which seems much more low-budget, but condenses the tale more successfully.

Opening with a lengthy dialogue-free scene, Kendal (Haley Lu Richardson) appears to be the sole survivor of some apocalyptic occurrence that has left the world ravaged and arid. As it turns out, she is one of a handful of characters who are all trying to survive in their sun-stung waterless desert.

Kendal and her sick friend Dean (the wonderfully named Booboo Stewart) are attempting to protect their life-saving well from the wandering evil water baron Carson (Jon Gries) and his band of scavengers, who are attempting to secure all water-giving appliances as his own.

Despite a slow beginning, and the burning feeling that this might just be a catwalk teen-soap, this soon developed into something far more interesting. Richardson is convincing and appealing as Kendall, and even the young actor Max Charles, who could have been precocious as juvenile survivor Alby, is very good.

The finale plays out very much like a Western, with a well-staged showdown between various characters. The ending is low-key in a way that befits the story being told, and the stunning scenery, shot in California, is a double-edged sword: beautiful but deadly. Recommended.

Somewhat flighty exotic dancer Nicole (Nieves Navarro) finds herself pursued by a masked killer with unnaturally bright blue eyes. Much of this film’s running time is devoted to a partially clad Nicole taking her work home with her, first with hot-headed boyfriend Michel Aumont (Simon Andreu), and then with saucy, middle-aged Dr. Robert Matthews (Frank Wolff), into whose arms she runs when she suspects Michel might be her black-clad pursuer. This latest, more mature admirer looks after her far better than Michel did.

This giallo has much in common with other films of the genre – a sumptuous musical score (by Stelvio Cipriani), a lovely lady in jeopardy, and (far too) much softcore titillation which, to be honest, bungs up the plot and stifles much in the way of tension – at least in the first half. There are suspects galore – one handed Hallory (Luciano Rossi), the good doctor himself (who seems too good to be true) and silly old spurned Michel (who, if innocent, is right to feel unjustly jilted, despite his volatility). And shocks, too – main characters die when you least expect it. This causes a readjustment on behalf of the audience; when someone we have invested in from the beginning of the film, we are left with more peripheral characters who then take centre stage, and we have to reboot our interest in them. It’s good to have these shocks and surprises, but it takes a special skill for the story to continue with the same amount of interest. After some shaky moments, ‘Death Walks on High Heels’ just about manages it.

The locations, mostly set in the coast of England, are lovely. Such scenic backgrounds provide a heavy slate-grey canvas for the increasingly colourful goings-on. Things become so entangled as to threaten to topple into confusion, but a terrific twist and action-infused finale livens things up toward the end. Featuring some meticulously choreographed fight scenes and convincing gore, ‘Death Walks on High Heels’ is an enjoyable entry into the world of giallo.