Film Reviews by NP

This is a film widely regarded as a return to form for French director Jean Rollin and was released in 2002, 34 years after his debut. And it really is – everything is here; scantily clad young actresses enduring freezing looking, exotic locations, a finale set on a beach, a meandering storyline (which, on this occasion, takes in a Van Helsing subsititute, a circus dwarf, comedy nuns and even a cameo from Rollin veteran, my lovely Catherine Castel. Castel’s appearance is so brief, I’m not entirely sure who she plays, but it seems likely she is the unnamed female who is released from a coffin to play a mournful violin as a tribute to the arrival of Dracula’s titular fiancée) and plenty of blood. There’s even a nod to his earlier Shiver of the Vampires in that an old grandfather clock is used for transportation and resting for the vampire

The dreamlike quality of story-telling is still very much in evidence here, and as such, a coherent storyline is almost an irrelevance. It seems mad killer nuns are grooming a young lady called Isabelle to be Dracula’s bride, which seems fair enough. When he finally appears after being whispered about in hushed tones, Dracula is a disappointment – just a pleasant looking gent in a cape who pales into insignificance alongside the sensuous, snake-like ethereality of his former, red-haired, white-faced partner.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film, it is a relief to see Rollin’s imagination and skill for creating illusory weirdness so prevalent in his later life. The music, so important for setting a scene, is very effective here also.

The whole film is delightful, mad and macabre, possibly Rollin’s most joyful yet. There is a happy ending too, of sorts – it’s very surreal, but gives the proceedings a memorable closure.

French director Jean Rollin continues to indulge his fascination with the undead with his fourth film. Whilst not quite as rampantly weird as his previous Shiver of the Vampire, this nevertheless provides a very nice contrast between events in the ‘normal’ world as they drift into those of a hidden ‘other’ world.

In his career, he has demonstrated a liking for young female double-acts, and for clowns. Unsurprising then, that this opens with two young girls – apparently lovers – dressed as clowns, hopelessly on the run. Much time is spent with them as they survive various mishaps before stumbling on the biggest of all – a deserted chateau housing 'the last vampire' and his clan. Much chasing and recapturing happens next before the ending reveals the vampire to be surprisingly honorable and the alleged leading man, Frederic, something of a coward.

The nudity is more prevalent here than in earlier Rollin films, and a scene involving Marie being whipped by Michelle pushes boundaries further yet (apparently two versions of various scenes were shot - one clothed and one not - for foreign audiences who maybe shocked by the human form, uncluding the UK). As Maria, Rollin regular Marie-Pierre Castel gains a rare starring role – apparently her sister Cathy was originally cast, but proved unavailable. Her partner is played by Mireille Dargent, who also dressed up as a clown for Jean Rollin's Les Démoniaques/The Demoniacs.

Here’s fun: a horror film starring Rik Mayall, Robin Askwith, Christopher Walken, Norman Wisdom and Jason Donovan. It appears to have three titles. Apart from the above, this has also been known as Evil Calls and Alone in the Dark (not least on the DVD extras). Investigating this online, the film seems to have a real-life history just as bizarre as anything contained in the fiction.

My guess is that Harrow Woods is actually two films spliced together to create a rather delirious whole. The bulk of it is set in Harrow Woods, New England (inexplicably meaning that the predominantly British cast – as well as Donovan – have to struggle with wavering American accents), while there are the scenes set mainly in a hotel washroom that feature Mayall, Askwith, Wisdom and Richard Driscoll. Driscoll wrote, directed and produced this, as well as starred in it, just as he did in his other two released films.

With a few more plot explanations, this would have been a much more enjoyable exercise. However, it seems Driscoll isn’t overly concerned with clarifying every single plot point – something I have no problem with usually. But there is too much left unsaid. Walken’s contribution is a narrated reading of Poe’s The Raven over many early scenes – but (apart from brief flashes of raven eyes in segue-ways between various scenes) there seems to be no relevance between this and anything we actually see.

Mayall and Wisdom appear to be playing versions of the same character; they have identical dialogue which they share with Driscoll’s character, George Carney. And it is the disappearance of Carney that propels the story. He appears to have stayed in a hotel that was built on a site of land where a witch was burned to death many years ago, and her ‘spell’ fuels his paranoia (that leads to a Jack Torrance-like madness) that his wife is having an affair with the character played by Robin Askwith. This is not plainly detailed, we have to work to come to this conclusion, amidst impressive scenes of sepia-toned parties, gallons of blood, a demon baby and plenty of topless women. Oh, and some old feller watching events on a computer screen who doesn’t have anything to do with anything. And this is the problem – there’s too much going on here, as if there were too many ideas being injected into the production. If some of these ideas had been left for another film, and more time allowed to clarify what is actually going on here, then this would have been compelling. Some skilful production values are on show here, it’s a shame they couldn’t have been streamlined to create a more coherent whole. And not insisting on American accents that drag down many of the cast’s performances would help too.

The Legend of Harrow Woods took a long time to complete. Almost ten years in fact. And clearly it has been a labour of love for Driscoll, who returned to the project regularly when finances allowed, to insert extra footage and moments that both clarify and further obfuscate the narrative. The ending suggests that none of the events in the film have actually happened yet, which doesn’t help make sense of anything.

I would usually describe the Jean Rollin films I have seen as ‘delightfully strange’. Despite the nudity and seductive nature of evil on display, they also have a kind of perverse innocence to them. No quite so much with Demoniacs.

Introducing the main characters in the opening credits, we get to know The Captain, Le Bosco and Paul are wreckers, Godless men who lure ships to the rocks and then plunder the wreckages. And there is also the voluptuous Tina, who enjoys great amusement at the deadly antics of her three friends/lovers.

[Plot spoilers]Two young blond women who survive the latest crash stagger, bedraggled onto the beach where the wreckers are up to no good. They ask for help but are instead repeatedly beaten and raped. After this, they escape the wreckers and enter into a kind of relationship with a human demon trapped in the picturesque ruins of a hidden city. The power they are given as a result of this allows them to appear to haunt the wreckers and taunt them before they are again captured and beaten (the Captain is now quite mad) and they all drown.

I point out these plot elements because I was left feeling unhappy about this film. The many beautifully shot, moody locations and occasional bouts of surreality (the inclusion of a clown as the demon’s ‘keeper’, for example) don’t detract from what is a pretty distasteful story that leaves a rather nasty taste in the mouth.

After the success of Requiem for the Vampire, this is Jean Rollin’s fifth directed film. Instead of ending on a freezing, deserted beach as usual, the location actually features in one of the first scenes in this, before the two main characters (who aren’t given names as far as I can tell) arrive in the lush, autumnal cemetery which is where the remainder of the film is set.

Even by Rollin’s standards, little actually happens here. They find themselves hopelessly lost, a predicament that seems to drive the girl mad. Her madness maybe be brought on in part by the aggressive and unsympathetic behaviour of her boyfriend. It is his idea to visit the cemetery, his idea to explore and remain there, and when they get lost and she becomes frightened, his behaviour is such that I wonder if he is deliberately driving her to despair. As ever, this isn’t made clear.

What the film has though, is the usual beautifully shot location work, lending the sinister, dark-magical events a feeling of existing in a kind of dreamlike half-reality where little needs to make sense.

The Iron Rose was not successful. The male lead (Hugues Quester) had his name changed to Pierre Dupont for the release, he was so embarrassed to be part of it, while the female, played by Françoise Pascal went on to have a successful acting career in a number of UK comedy and variety shows in the 70s and early 80s before taking a lengthy break from acting (rejoining the profession in 2011). Mireille Dargent returns from Requiem for the Vampire for what is little more than a cameo as a clown, another Rollin staple.

I like the mixture of revulsion/comfort the cemetery represents against the occasionally glimpsed ‘outside world’, and the fact that the girl appears to succumb completely to it. Although this is not my favourite film by the director, it’s still hugely powerful mainly due to the location work.

Maddie has adopted a child in the hope of saving her marriage. Sadly, the marriage is doomed and the child is diagnosed as being autistic. However, Maddie is clearly not short of money because she buys a beautiful, spacious house in what the state agent describes as a ‘great district’. Never trust this particular estate agent.

Maddie is character intensely played by Ramlah Yavar - on one hand, you sympathise for her and admire her patience as her young son grows increasingly out of control. On the other, your sympathies evaporate because although her son’s relentless bad behaviour is patience-stretching, Maddie’s endless hippy ethics and gooey-eyed smiling demeanour go beyond irritating and actually become quite scary. With her son (Jonah) making it abundantly clear he abhors the new house and finds it unbearable, she enlists the help of her even more hippy sister Amber, who cannot wait to come and ‘feng shui’ the place. Amber’s smile is so constant, wide and patronising, it soon becomes clear the three leads in this film are hugely irritating and difficult to care about. There answer to most problems is for the sisters to place their grins inches away from whomever they are talking to and look searchingly, adoringly into their eyes.

This is a shame, because it spoils a film that is very evocatively shot and dreamily directed, and contains one or two disturbing moments that you don’t expect. The huge, naked man who turns up in Jonah’s drawings, and then in actuality is alarming, and we’re not sure if he is real or a ghost. At one point, he appears to attempt to rape Maddie, so he must be real to some extent.

Likewise, the toothless woman who appears, screaming for her son, is quite alarming.

The film’s ending doesn’t go out of it’s way to answer many of these plot points - as is often the case, events are caught in a kind of loop, which doesn’t promise to show signs of ending any time soon.

So, this is a mixed bag. On one hand, it is good that something different is being attempted for a familiar genre of film. On the other, the intensity of the two main leads tend to alienate the viewer. Equally, and this is a point not unique to Empty Rooms, but with so many clear signs that the house is not a pleasant place to stay - naked men appearing, warnings from local vagrants, harrassment - why doesn't Maddie just get somewhere else to live? It would have saved ninety minutes worth of heartache!

Sadly for lake fans, Lost Lake is the name of a deserted town in which Uncle Vern has disappeared whilst 'ghost hunting' and not a real lake at all. Uncle Vern is played by Ezra Buzzington, a wonderfully named actor known for The Hills Have Eyes. Uncle Vern is an eccentric - we realise this when we first meet him, his scatty, fevered idiosyncracies barely disguising a deeply disturbed nature.

He seems to be under the spell of a local witch, who herself seems to be a kind of medium for local, unnamed spirits. When his daughter and her fiance come looking for him, it's not long before things turn nasty.

What this film has going for it are the performances. For once, the young (teenage?) couple seem real, not overtly glamourous and most importantly, likeable. This is essential, because it is their plight that is the sole plot here.

I always babble on about how low-budget films seem to make great use of their location - crisp, sunlit woodlands in The Wrong House; misty, damp isolation in The Hunters, for example. Here, the Mojave Desert is used as a thankless location. Thankless for the poor characters, that is, but a visual treat for the viewer. In the desert, truly no-one can hear you scream ...

Although the runaround that fills the running time here is not without cliches - couple have an aversion to spotting the blatantly obvious/are beaten and bloody one minute and are full of energy the next - Lost Lake is enjoyable. It's not going to change the world, and the twists are handled without spectacle, but the performances raise it above the mediocre.

This is a nice addition to the post apocalypse genre. Well, I say nice ...

I love grim fiction. The bleaker the better as far as I am concerned. And yet this is unrelenting in it's gloom, indeed some scenes are so darkly lit it is difficult to see precisely what is going on. Most of the time, though, this serves the horror well. The 'zombies' here, or the undead, are shrouded in shadow, and literally do leap out of the dark. This may be due to the small budget - there are only three primary cast members - or it may be more deliberate, and there is no denying its impact.

Equally, the distant howls of macabre anguish carried by the gales on the unforgiving Scottish scrublands - always filmed in gritty, cold colour - are a reminder of the constant threat 'out there', and is much more effective than a handful of gored-up extras hovering in the background.

There's little new attempted in the storyline, but it is a compelling journey. The message seems to be 'compassion is a weakness', although it is precisely that which drives Daniel and April together. It also invites stranger Kate to join them for a time, before they are exposed to the dangers of what happens if you let the outsiders 'in'.

The performances are great, and the direction and sparse soundtrack are terrific also, apart from the occasional hard-to-define scenes. More Night of the Living Dead than 28 Days Later, there are many scenes with little or no dialogue, and little is explained; we are given clues as to the past (for the most part) with flashbacks. And it ain't pretty! Recommended.

This is a strange film in many ways. Le Saint is an ex-soldier beginning a new career as a police Officer, who against his boss’s wishes, decides to investigate the disappearances of local residents in the dark and mysterious Fort Goben, located in an isolated stretch of woodland. Le Saint is played by Chris Briant, who is also the Director. This may be the reason that Le Saint arrests the interest of Glee actress Dianna Agron, who plays Alice: a woman so stunning, it is hard to believe she really exists, especially in a gritty film like this. She shines like a beacon in some truly impressively over-bearing scenery which appears to be shot in deliberately cold colours. It is bleak to look at, but beautifully so.

In fact, it is the location that takes the honours here. The characters are likeable enough but a little colourless: it is hard to feel much real empathy towards them. Whilst rarely truly horrific, the cold, comfortless sense of isolation is overwhelming at times, and the discovery as to what is going on at Fort Goben - although briefly featured - is horrific indeed.

Following the huge success of Frankenstein the year before, director James Whale once again worked with Boris Karloff in this very loose adaptation of JB Preistley's Benighted novel. Whale's black humour, coupled with Universal films' love of horror at that time, produced one of the most enjoyable eccentric films I remember seeing.

The cast list is incredible - Daniel Massey, Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart and Charles Laughton spend a night in the house of the title, presided over by prissy, jittery host Horace Femm, played by Ernest Thesiger (who all but steals the show with his wide eyes, hollow features and nervy mannerisms).

The travellers are forced to take refuge there because of the impressive storm that every good horror film should have.

"Beds! They can't have beds," shrieks half deaf Rebecca Femm.

"As my sister hints, there are no beds," announces Horace with perpetual disdain.

Also in the house are two other Femm relatives. Roderick, 102 and bedridden, warns them of brother Saul. Roderick is actually played by a heavily made up Elspeth Dudgeon.

When Saul is finally revealed, he is a frightened, tortured man. That is, until backs are turned and his face turns into an insane leer - Saul is as mad as the rest of them. Dangerously so!

This film was considered lost for quite a time, but thatnks to James Whales' friend and fellow director Curtis Harrington, can still be enjoyed in all its creepy, bizarre glory.

It's not always easy to take someone who chooses to call themselves Rob Zombie seriously. And it was with uncertainty I viewed his imagining of Halloween, the classic film from 1978 which spawned increasingly anaemic sequels.

It seems this new version is more of a slasher-flick than the scarier original. However, I don't really have a problem with that, and there is no point in making a direct copy of the original. Hence, we see here a sympathetic take on Michael Myer's childhood and are invited to understand him, although it's clear he has dangerous killing tendncies from an early age.

His revenge on the school bully who derided his mother (played by Sheri Moon Zombie), is brutal, bloody and relentless. Like a lot of the film, in fact. There is no supernatural, CGI-enhanced cartoon violence. Here, it is all graphic pounding, black blood, and the reducing of the bully from kid-with-attitude to whimpering, hemmorhaging bloody pulp.

There is nothing stylish or sophisticated about Michael's family. Indeed, Deborah (his mother) is possibly the only vaguely sympathetic character in the film. Indeed, that might be my problem with this - with no character you can truly invest in emotionally, it all becomes a screaming, shrieking soundtrack of the slaughtered.

I did enjoy this, though, certainly enough to watch it's sequel, which Zombie has claimed is his last involvement with the venture. There is always room for a brutal slasher film laced with profanities and violence. The acting is good throughout (Malcolm McDowell is excellent) and the many scenes of murder are handled in such a way they never get repetitive.

It is difficult to imagine the impact the first talking Frankenstein film had back in 1931. Sound was still new at the cinema, and much was made of it to creepy effect in that original. It had eclipsed Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and made a star out of Boris Karloff. Yet it took four years for Universal to produce a sequel.

When I first read the reviews of the Bride of Frankenstein, it horrified me that mentions were made of the Monster talking, smoking and getting drunk and the line of black humour that set this film apart from its predecessor. Surely they hadn’t made the Monster into a comedy character? All this was a long time ago, of course, and this became my favourite film (both horror or otherwise) very soon after.

The Monster’s voice is soft and fragile, his scenes with the blind hermit (which is where the ‘getting drunk’ tag came from) are his only moments of lightness amidst otherwise unrelenting misery, where he is used by the other star of the film, Dr Praetorious for his villainous experiments.

It’s astonishing that director James Whale would never helm another horror film after this, and that his fame was soon to fade away. Having had to be convinced of the merits of producing a sequel to Frankenstein, he injects this story with both moments from the original novel and others from his imagination, lending a twisted perversity to proceedings which propel the film further into weirdness. Praetorious is a delight, manipulating the exhausted Dr Frankenstein and toasting a world of ‘Gods and monsters’ whilst dining at an open coffin.

Of the performers, only Valerie Hobson lapses into the kind of theatrics that her on-screen husband played by Colin Clive manages to (just) avoid. Incredible to think she was only 17 years of age when recording this.

William Pratt, or Boris Karloff, exceeds his earlier performance, even if the new variation on his monster make-up (burnt away hair and additional scarring) isn’t quite as effective as the cadaverous, sunken-eyed original. And as for The Bride (played by ‘??’ in the closing credits) … well! A streak of white electricity through the shock-beehive and fresh scarring under the jaw combine with the wide eyed beauty of Elsa Lanchester to create something truly unique, both seductive and frightening. The scenes between the new husband and wife are macabre, bizarre and heart-breaking. What a typically twisted idea to have Lanchester also playing Mary Shelley herself at the film’s opening. The creator becomes the created!