Film Reviews by NP

There was a time when France was not particularly praised for its horror film output. This, despite the outpourings of Jean Rollin’s personal voyage of vampirism, zombies and the like; this, despite the supreme ‘Eyes without a Face/Les Yeux Sans Visage’, the film/television series ‘The Returned/Les Revenants’ and films like ‘The Pack’ and ‘Martyrs’.

There is a famous photograph sometimes known as ‘Napalm Girl’, featuring a nine year-old Vietnamese girl running naked and terrified, away from the carnage caused by an aerial napalm attack in 1972. As effective as any anti-war poster, this picture might have inspired one of the opening scenes of this truly disturbing film. Brutally attacked and imprisoned, half-dressed Lucie Jurin escapes her prison and runs down the street, making her escape.

The next time we see her, she has met Anna in the orphanage where she has been placed. She is terrorized by the image of a decaying woman, possibly a ghost.

Anna and Lucie become lovers and vow to get even with the torturers; years later they burst in on a happy, respectable family and brutally murder them. Surely these law abiding people can’t have been responsible?

This film succeeds in wrong-footing the audience and providing twist after twist. Not only ARE these people (partially) responsible for Lucie’s degradation, but moments later Lucie is killed, and it is Anna that becomes the centre of attention in a narrative that then assumes the moniker ‘torture porn’. Rarely have I seen filmed abuse presented so uncompromisingly. Anna is ritually beaten, fed the bare minimum gruel and if she resists, is beaten yet more. Her broken face and body is heart-breaking to see, extremely uncomfortable – her captors’ only comment is that they are amazed she is still alive. She therefore has one, final, appalling punishment to go.

Despite spoiler warnings, the reasons for this abuse will not be mentioned here, other than to say, it is ‘respectable’ establishment figures that are behind it all, and everything then comes to a very final (and satisfying – if that is the right word to use) end.

This is an incredible, profound, horrifying film - not one I’m sure I’ll ever see again, but if you can stomach it, I’d recommend watching once.

A Swedish teen vampire comedy horror film isn’t a huge genre, and it is always good to find something that tries something a little out of the ordinary.

Sharing certain similarities with ‘30 Days of Night’, the main thrust of this film reveals what happens when a group of teens mistake pills of what appears to be condensed vampire blood for narcotics. Instead of getting high, the teens develop vampiric tendencies.

A film involving ‘teens’ usually scares me more than any monster, with relentless memories of the catwalking petulant pouters often found being sliced by Freddie Krueger (or similar) over the years. But these Swedish juveniles are an appealing group, with little of the overbearing bravura of their Hollywood counterparts. The character of Sebastian, in particular, creates effective mayhem when visiting his girlfriend’s parents after having taken a tablet, and is trying to make a good impression whilst fighting off the effects of his increasing vampirism (her father is a Priest, which doesn’t help).

In the end, the vampires appear to be running rings around the increasingly outnumbered police force, and remind them that here in Lappland, dawn is a whole month away, a reference to Sweden living in permanent darkness half the year round – perfect conditions for the undead.

Man-Thing was a monstrous swamp-dwelling creature who starred in a handful of Marvel Comics’ series beginning in 1971. During this time, the company had success with classic monsters Dracula, Werewolf and Frankenstein’s Monster. These characters and others had their own publications in America, which were edited into episodes to form the UK’s ‘Dracula Lives’, which was one of the main reasons for my burgeoning interest in horror. Original Marvel characters were also developed, like Ghost-Rider and Morbius, but none had the staying power of Man-Thing.

This curious film was released in 2005 as a straight-to-television venture, but also enjoyed limited theatrical release. Set in the swamps of Louisiana, but filmed in Australia, it bears little resemblance to the mighty comic strip, which under main writer Steve Gerber, showed Man-Thing had an empathic nature.

The central creature isn’t seen until right at the end of the film. Diminishing budget was probably the cause for this, but when he is seen, he is quite impressive. There are characters in the film called Mike Ploog and Val Mayarik. In ‘real life’, these men provided much of the art for the original strips. Steve Gerber is also named as a character.

Apart from Australian actors assuming American accents with varying success, this is quite a good looking film. Certainly the swamp-lands and scenes of encroaching industria are shot and lit in a very striking fashion. Only the script serves to let things down a little. There is an occasional bout of gore to spice things up, but little in the way of character development, so it isn’t easy to care about them, despite the best intentions of the actors. The whole story serves as a lead-up to meeting the Man-Thing itself, and when he is revealed, things liven up considerably.

Although Hammer’s horror films were becoming more prolific by 1970, there was a definite downturn in their fortunes: audiences were falling out of love for their modest-budgeted gothic tales.

Released shortly after ‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’, the drop in quality for this latest offering is noticeable, both in budget (there is a very studio-bound feel to Dracula’s castle for example) and in interesting new ideas (Dracula’s life-saving blood-spewing personal bat is particularly unsuccessful).

Rather than an ongoing story, ‘Scars’ is more a series of set-pieces. The exploits of rakish Paul Carson are directed like an episode of the lame sex-comedy ‘Confessions of…’ film series. We then have the slaughter of a church full of villagers we never get to know, various sadistic acts by Dracula (as well as a partially successful scene of him crawling snake-like down the walls of his castle, lifted from the novel – presumably keeping Christopher Lee happy) and finally the least convincing climactic despatch of the Count by lightning as Dennis Waterman and a badly dubbed Jenny Hanley watch on.

Although it gives Lee more to do than most sequels in this series, it is nevertheless a palpably tired offering and wastes most of its cast. Hammer were surely aware of the paucity of ideas on display and decided to make a fairly big change with their next Dracula film.

In a move that seems to confirm the events covered in 1958’s original ‘Dracula’ weren’t the only time The Count fought his enemy Van Helsing, this updating of Hammer’s vampire myth begins with a spectacular scuffle between Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee atop a speeding stagecoach. The grim and gruesome climax results in the death of both, revealing a continuity error – events covered in ‘Dracula’ happened in 1885, 13 years after this prologue. Perhaps the Van Helsing featured there was a relation of this one!

The decision to move the Lord of the Undead into modern times has been lambasted over the years by horror fans, not least because the hip dialogue between the hippy gang was dated even then. The intervening years have been forgiving however – viewed now, this updating is now a period piece, and phrases like ‘Dig the music kids’ seems to be part and parcel with the overall ‘flares and winged-collars’ styles of the day.

There’s a knowing, pseudo-parody feel about this too. Describing a victim as ‘a bit drained’ and inviting someone to ‘come in for a bite’ evokes an atmosphere at odds with the grim and serious presence of Dracula and his various machinations, giving the impression Hammer weren’t entirely confident about the direction in which this series should go. Their recent ‘Horror of Frankenstein (1970)’ was laced with similar comedy and was received very poorly.

After bringing their vampire into the then present day, the writers then decide to keep him very much apart from it. All Dracula’s scenes take place in or around a deconsecrated church, and any interaction with life in 1972 is left to Christopher Neame’s enjoyably over-the-top Johnny Alucard. His fight with Van Helsing is a high-point (lots of nice directorial moments from Alan Gibson), but it does rob Dracula of screen-time, as usual.

This is good fun though, in much the same way Universal’s latter-day horrors were good fun – little in the way of actual horror atmospherics, but a fast-pace monster piece. And to its credit, the now traditional decomposition of Dracula in the finale is one of the most gruesome of the entire series.

The original ‘Nosferatu (1922)’ remains one of the greatest early films. However, possibly feeling that some aficionados might be put off by the understandably scratchy quality, German director Werner Herzog set about recreating the atmosphere original.

For the pivotal character of Dracula, or Count Orlok, Herzog cast his friend, the mighty Klaus Kinski, who brings an incredible haunted intensity to a role that seemed to be made for him. Whether staring longingly at Harker’s bleeding hand, or his bride Lucy, or snapping into inhuman speed due to his bloodlust, Kinski shines like a beacon in every single scene. It truly is an unearthly performance, he is probably the creepiest vampire of them all.

There were two versions shot of this; an English and a German version. Perhaps because English is not the actors’ native tongue, only Kinski emerges with a believable performance. Other members of the cast do well to sustain the slightly ‘removed’ atmosphere vital to such a dreamlike horror, but the acting does occasionally stray into wooden territory.

And yet everything else is wonderfully ethereal. Harker’s journey, Dracula’s arrival by boat at the Varna seaport, the infestation of plague rats, the vibrant but desolate town, the choice of location and architecture … all these things come together to make a truly spooky film. Happily, the ending doesn’t strive to placate the viewer, as Harker – one of the few survivors of the story – begins to look a little unwell.

Universal films’ second run of horror films (kick-started by 1939’s ‘Son of Frankenstein’ – itself commissioned due to the success of repeat showings of the original ‘Dracula’ and ‘Frankenstein’ films) fizzled out with this final serious monster-mash. It’s not difficult to see why. Whereas the early films were master-crafts of the macabre, with careful courting of actors and directors alike, the series had by this time become mere monster-rallies. Films for the kids to enjoy. Cosy. Familiar. Popcorn. Not that there is anything wrong with this approach, but once you’ve thrown three of the best known monsters together for no reason other than to bolster sales, artistically, there is nowhere left to go except a meeting with Abbott and Costello.

If anything, the story is perhaps a little tighter than the preceding team-up. John Carradine’s Dracula appears to be searching for a cure for his nocturnal habits, as does Lon Chaney Jr’s forlorn Larry Talbot. Whilst the Wolf Man is sincere, The Count seems to have ulterior motives, given away by secretly keeping his coffin in the cellar of Doctor Edleman, the man who he has come to for salvation.

This is really Edlemann’s story. He becomes a strange Mr Hyde character as a result of Dracula’s machinations, and Talbot struggles with his conscience after he sees Edleman up to no good – after all, here is the man who appears to have cured him.

It’s a good run-around but nothing more. It features Lionel Atwill in one of his last appearances (he died the following year) – in the scene when the police are searching the premises, you can hear Atwill hacking in the background. Also featured briefly is the wonderfully named Skelton Knaggs, a Universal regular, turning in a truly laughable performance.

And what of the third named monster, Frankenstein’s lumbering creation? Once more played by the impressive Glenn Strange, he is utterly wasted, lying comatose throughout, only coming to life at the end to wreck the laboratory and bring the film to a close. Strange’s brief screen-time is cut down further – the Monster’s finale is actually the climax to 1942’s ‘Ghost of Frankenstein’ replayed, featuring Lon Chaney Jr in the role. A slipshod ending to a classic range of terrors.

Since the 1931 original, Frankenstein’s Monster had lurched his way through four sequels before this, the last of which teamed him up with The Wolf Man in 1942. As a result of the healthy revenue this idea generated, Universal films decided to upgrade the theme and involve Count Dracula too, in their following team-up. Artistically, it was clearly the beginning of the end of these monster films – but while there was money to be made, the studio was quite content to continue.

Here, lean John Carradine played the Count – suave and cultured. It isn’t quite clear why Bela Lugosi wasn’t involved, but I have read he was considered too ‘old’ … to play a centuries old vampire. Carradine brings a cadaverous charm to the role, but is featured only briefly before being reduced to a skeleton by the inevitable dawn (in his final scenes, half his moustache is missing – possibly a side effect of the encroaching daylight!).

Boris Karloff returns to the series, this time to play mad old Doctor Neimann, who plans to kill the various men who found him guilty of his many crimes – just as Ygor had done in ‘Son of Frankenstein’ five years earlier. It is revealed that Neimann’s brother assisted Frankenstein in his original experiments. Whilst no-one is, at this stage, too concerned with continuity, that would indicate his brother was Fritz from the original film, played by Dwight Frye.

My favourite character in this, however, is the sympathetic Daniel, a hunchback, played by J. Carrol Naish, who falls in love with gypsy lass Ilonka (Elena Verdugo) – but she has designs on Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney jr). I find Ilonka’s tactlessness AD 1972irritating. She can’t understand why Daniel does not enjoying hearing her stories of how she loves the erstwhile Wolfman, and gets quite tetchy about it.

“What’s the matter, Daniel - don’t you like Larry?” she asks, exasperated, wilfully blind to the hunchback’s hopeless love for her.

And so the pecking order continues. No-one cares about Daniel, so he in turn takes his frustrations out on the one character lower on the scale than himself – the mostly comatose Frankenstein Monster. Forever strapped to a laboratory table, this now thankless role is played by a newcomer to the series Glenn Strange. Strange is the only actor besides Karloff who was chosen for what he could bring to the Monster, as opposed to being a ‘name’, and his powerful frame and wonderfully craggy face lend themselves very impressively to Jack Pierce’s make-up. Apparently Karloff himself coached Strange on set as to how to move like the Monster. Such a shame the story didn’t allow him much to do other than drag Niemann into a bog full of quicksand. I would have loved to see Strange play the role in a story more worthy of him.

Richard Driscoll writes, directs, produces and has the starring role in this homage to Hannibal Lector films. I use the word homage loosely, because it veers on being a reimagining, parody, imitation and curio. To take on such a variety of roles, there must be a certain amount of self-belief, especially as the film being interpreted is one widely recognised as a classic, with a world famous, award-winning actor playing the role Mr Driscoll has given himself.

Like Driscoll’s other horror, ‘Evil Calls/The Raven/The Legend of Harrow Woods (2008)’, there are moments of a good production, but here they are less refined and fewer in number. The acting varies, but one thing is for certain, Driscoll’s performance as Kavanagh is woeful. He is simply a non-actor trying to speak like Anthony Hopkins. Whatever scene he is in, it is sunk by his performance.

And yet his is not the worst performance here. Lucien Morgan’s monocle-sporting Inspector Reed is impossible to describe. So far off the scale that it defies words.

The story is of a man’s killing spree in revenge for his wife’s death. The story is sprawling, but not uninteresting. And the look of ‘Kannibal’ is mostly very impressive – this isn’t a slipshod effort in directorial terms by any means, and has clearly had a great deal of time and money placed upon it. The effects, of which there are many, are delightfully gruesome and the smattering of vivid sex-scenes add further sleazy spice. What emerges is a picture that is a bit of an enigma – a mixture of the obscure, dramatic, blatant, graphic, confident and bizarre.

Either Christopher Lee wasn’t asked to reprise his famous role, or declined the offer to appear in a sequel to 1958’s ground-breaking ‘Dracula/Horror of Dracula’ for over seven years. While he pursued other projects the world over, Hammer had continued to make a name for itself as a major horror film company.

One of the most astounding aspects of ‘Prince of Darkness’ is that Lee’s distinctive voice, which was such a hallmark of his Count, is entirely absent here; Dracula is silent. Again, it’s never been made quite clear whether Lee refused to say the lines, or that he just wasn’t given any. Jimmy Sangster has said ‘vampires don’t chat’, and didn’t write any for his main character. Lee, never afraid to slate Hammer Dracula productions, has said he refused the lines given him.

Either way, this is a very ponderous, uneventful film. We have interesting characters like Klove, Dracula’s ‘manservant’, and a Renfield-type called Ludwig, both of whom do not have a great deal to do and seem almost superficial. The other characters are a stuffy bunch – Helen is made a little more interesting when she becomes a vampire, but is still very mannered – especially when compared to Melissa Stribling’s saucy Mina from the original. The acting is very good all round from a terrific cast, the characters just seem perfunctory. I really miss a formidable foe for Dracula. Andrew Keir as Father Sandor is enjoyable, but he is no Van Helsing.

The film also suffers from ‘sequelitis’ in that it takes half the running time for Dracula to be resurrected (in the film’s best sequence – certainly the most bloody), which means that his reign of terror lasts … just over half an hour. In the original, he had been terrorising his townsfolk for centuries.

Dracula’s demise is similarly cursory. It’s a fairly impressive finale – even if it does make The Count appear rather foolish – but pales when compared to grisly finale of the original.

Whilst I try not to be influenced by other reviews when watching a film, it’s difficult to avoid the drubbing ‘Killing Car’ seems to have attracted, even from fans of its French director Jean Rollin.

There’s no doubt that to enter into the often improbable fantasy world of Rollin’s films, there is little to be gained nit-picking lapses in continuity or a lack of comprehensive story – if the film itself is a carefully constructed dreamscape, why dash it with issues limited to reality? ‘Killing Car’ attempts a kind of gritty revenge motif, and therefore exists somewhere in the real world, so the lapses in logic here are harder to overlook.

The radiant Tiki Tsang, in her only film, plays ‘the car woman’ – hers is the dream-state that floats through urban landscapes killing people – seemingly – inexplicably. So, when she is involved in a shoot-out at a functioning fairground, and no-one intervenes; when everyone she meets (be they photographers, prostitutes, antique-dealers) all happen to carry fire-arms that never appear to run out of bullets, it’s hard, as a viewer, to look past this.

Still, if you are able to suspend disbelief to such an extent, then there is plenty to enjoy here. There are a couple of good twists towards the end – in fact, I thought there might have even been a third twist, but that was not to be. And Ms Tsang is very charismatic as the harbinger of death, whether she is staring into space on the boat where she lives, elegantly making her way through a junkyard or a city or simply looming over her next victim.

There is a school of thought that opines that Rollin films are highly regarded because they are French – if they were made in America, for example, they would just be dismissed as bad films. I’m not sure, perhaps there is truth in this – there is a (too) lengthy travelogue set in New York in the middle of ‘Killing Car’, which makes for picturesque viewing. There’s no doubt though, when the action returns to the French rooftops, the atmosphere is served up in droves and provides, for me, the film’s highlights. Perhaps Rollin was simply more confident filming in his native country, who knows? His cinematography is breath-taking on home turf, there is little doubt about that.

Ever since Universal were unable to resist matching two of their biggest horror names in ‘Frankenstein meets the Wolfman (1942)’, there has been a periodic fascination with uniting well-known monsters over the years. And in many of these meetings, the battle we are all waiting to see is saved until the last ten minutes. Such is the case here. Sadly, when it comes, the battle is little more than a punch-up in a darkened room.

Monster mash-ups like this are usually designed not to be taken too seriously. The problem with this is that, at six minutes shy of two hours, ‘Frankenstein vs The Mummy’ is just too long. The actors are competent, but the characters are underwritten and impossible to be concerned about. Instead of personalities, their function is to react to the alleged horror around them. The possible exception is Doctor Walton, played by a marvellously idiosyncratic actor with the wonderful name Boomer Tibbs.

The horror, sadly, is fairly negligible, despite some impressive effects. The music – a hugely underrated way of sustaining an atmosphere, in my view – is stock ‘shock’ stings and exactly the same kind of forgettable arrangement featured in many other films of this nature.

The two monsters are fairly effective, and a welcome relief from the CGI that marrs so many bigger budgeted pictures. The Frankenstein monster is very close to imagery described in Mary Shelly’s original story, and played with a snarling evil, completely devoid of pathos. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the nature of the criminal’s brain he has (once more) inherited, he lacks the eloquence of the original creation and utters some typically coarse expletives during the course of his brief conversations.

It is doubtful that the similarities between the title of this film and House by the Cemetery and Last House on the Left are coincidental. After all, any way to attract attention makes good business sense. Yet, fans of those more visceral tales would probably be disappointed by the tameness of the horror on display here, which may explain why this release has attracted little attention.

John Davies (Lee Bane) is a somewhat reclusive writer who rents a large country house, whereby he meets the charmingly old-fashioned Cassie Konrad (Georgina Blackledge) and also discovers he is sharing the house with an even more reclusive old blind woman (Vivian Bridson).

This is a beautifully shot, low-budget, ‘gentle’ horror (if there is such a thing). It is slow moving, but never ponderous due to the appeal of the very small cast. The relationship which develops between Davies and Conrad is delightful – two isolated people who simply enjoy each other’s company – and it is that which provides the backbone of the unveiling mystery. There is very little gore or effects, but such things aren’t necessary in what is essentially a human take on a familiar haunting theme. This isn’t Evil Dead or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but doesn’t ever try to be.

French director Jean Rollin worked on the storyline to for this film whilst undergoing lengthy dialysis treatment. The extra time enforced on the project results in one of his most polished work, in my view. We have Louise and Henriette (Alexandra Pic and Isabelle Taboul), two girls (sisters possibly) who are blind by day and fully sighted vampires by night. The reason seems to be that they are Aztec Gods, or descendants thereof, and as such, can never really die.

Much is made of their night-time activities. Their blue-tinged journeys are either seen as sinister hunts or the mischievous naughtiness of two young scamps. This balance between schoolgirl killer and playful sinner is achieved very well. The actresses exude an other-wordly charm that makes them strangely appealing, despite their misdeeds.

Of course, there is the opportunity to pick out plot holes - why did the girls kill the good Dr Dennery after he provided them with a home, and whom they had just convinced of their good intentions? And why did the passer-by in the cemetery, after noticing they were not really blind, assume them to be demons from hell and threaten to beat them with a stick? – but why bother? It would, as always, be like trying to dissect a dream, a place where the usual rules either don’t exist, or simply don’t matter.

A film with a twist at the end is often judged on that twist. Reading a number of online reviews of Salem Witch Hunters (or The Secret Village, as it has been known), it was predictable. I am happy to say I didn’t find it so. I felt the audience was successfully lead to believe a couple of red herrings before the truth was finally revealed. That’s not to say I found Salem Witch entirely satisfactory.

As a horror, it was lacking any real chills. Instead, we get a thunderously urgent musical soundtrack accompanying tension-lite scenes, furiously trying to convince us that very solid, tangible, cowled figures walking around in broad daylight is endlessly terrifying. Equally, the two heavies in constant pursuit of heroine Rachel (Ali Faulkner) bungle her capture every time, meaning that the next time they show up, the viewer is hardly given cause to be overly concerned.

Ponderous though some of the scenes may be, all performances are fine. Faulkner excels, as does Jonathan Bennett as Greg – truly we don’t know where his allegiances lie, and this is communicated very well.

Yet the revelation at the end which really sells this. The viewer is left to trace the various clues throughout the film. Hardly incongruous at the time, they are given new meaning in retrospect.