Creepshow (1982)

Media Reviewed: US DVD (Warner Bros.)

Director: George A. Romero
Starring: Adrienne Barbeau, Stephen King, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson


Penned by legendary horror author Stephen King and directed by legendary horror director George A. Romero, Creepshow is a fun, stylish collection of short horror tales made with a lot of affection for the comics of old that inspired it.

Creepshow starts with a story called Father's Day which is a simple revenge tale in which a dead man returns from beyond the grave to murder the daughter that killed him, as well as a few of her relatives. It's not got a lot going for it, apart from a couple of stylish, colourful moments (although this is present throughout the film) and is probably the weakest of the five tales on offer here.

This is followed by The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill starring Stephen King as a yokel who witnesses a meteor crashing into his land. Thinking about the financial opportunities available to him on discovering the meteor he tries to pick it up. It crumbles, spilling a strange liquid onto the land. This liquid causes quick and dense plant growth, covering Jordy's land, house and even himself. This segment goes more for a comedic feel, and works, with Stephen King putting in an enthusiastic, hammy performance. King's writing also elevates this simple tale into something more fun.

Up next we have Something to Tide You Over, perhaps the most edgy, disturbing parts of the film, which is surprising considering that Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen play the main roles. Nielsen is excellent as the sinister Richard Vickers, who takes sadistic revenge on his cheating wife and her lover, proving that he can act in more serious roles. The main motif of the victims being buried up to their necks in sand whilst a tide slowly creeps in is one of the more effective images in the film.

The next part, The Crate, is possibly my favourite part in the film. A university caretaker finds a mysterious, old crate under the stairs in one of the laboratories. It holds an ape-like creature with rows of fangs, that tears apart anyone who goes near it. One of the university professors uses this as an opportunity to get rid of his oppressive wife. This section provides the most gore in the film and also provides a couple of humorous moments in which one of the main characters fantasises about killing his wife. The murderous creature is well executed by effects wizard Tom Savini.

The final part, They're Creeping Up On You, is about a reclusive, mean-spirited businessman that isolates himself in an expensive, supposedly germ-proof apartment. As his misdemeanours towards his fellow humans becomes apparent, his apartment slowly becomes infested with cockroaches. This leads to a gruesome finale that made my skin crawl. This is definitely the second-best part of the film, not for those who dislike insects.

Creepshow, whilst uneven at times, is an entertaining film with plenty of comic-like visual flair and because of the number and variety of its parts it remains entertaining throughout its two-hour duration. Romero and King clearly put a lot of love into this project and horror fans are likely to enjoy it.

The Beyond (1981)

Media Reviewed: US DVD (Grindhouse)

Director: Lucio Fulci

Starring: Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Cinzia Monreale, Al Cliver

Back when I was around 17 and I really started to embrace the horror genre, looking into the more obscure titles that most people wouldn't have heard of, I thought to myself that I must see The Beyond, a title hailed by many horror aficionados as a classic. So I bought myself the UK DVD from Vipco, which was in the incorrect aspect ratio and didn't have particularly good video or sound quality, but at least it was uncut. On my initial viewing I was rather disappointed - I loved the gore and various scenes in the film, but I felt confused as to the plot. I thought that maybe I'd missed something, and that I had to go back to the film a second time to try and work out was going on.

I was missing the point. Being seven or eight years older now, having seen a great many more horror films (and Italian horror films in particular) I've realised how a film like The Beyond should be approached. If you're watching this film trying to work out what is going on in the plot you're missing out on what the film really has to offer. The new US DVD release (which is an excellent DVD, I must say) arrived through my letterbox yesterday and I felt that this film deserved another re-assessment from me.

What amounts to a plot in the film basically revolves around a woman who has inherited a hotel that turns out to be one of the seven doors to hell. That's pretty much it. What ensues, however, is very atmospheric, visually striking and outrageously violent. A man is nailed to a wall and dissolved with quicklime, a woman's head is forced onto a nail in the wall resulting in her eyeball popping out from its socket and a man is slowly devoured by tarantulas. However, for me the standout visual moment in the film occurs when a woman, visiting her husbands corpse in a morgue, has her face dissolved by acid and then a mixture of blood and acid ominously creeps along the floor towards her onlooking daughter, all set to a weirdly fitting score by Fabio Frizzi. The film essentially consists of various plot contrivances in order to set up these gruesome scenarios.

Whilst the film is visually excellent, these plot contrivances do distract, especially to the less forgiving viewer. A scene where a couple of doctors strap a corpse up to an oscilloscope will leave the viewer scratching their head (quite what the doctors were expecting to happen I don't quite know). Essentially this is just set up so that when the doctors leave the room, we can see that the corpse is still living, as a heart beat starts. These kind of bizarre occurences happen throughout the film.

The acting isn't particularly good, especially with Catriona MacColl's dubious American accent, and a lot of the dialogue is outright absurd. There are also a couple of derivative plot points in the film taken from films such as Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead. Whilst to fully enjoy The Beyond, narrative and plot need to be ignored as much as possible, but in my opinion these flaws do prevent it from being a classic. I would absolutely recommend this film to any horror fan, but for those looking for an interesting story with a good narrative structure, like me aged 17, will have a number of issues with this film.

Creep (2004)

Media Reviewed: UK DVD (Pathe)

Director: Christopher Smith
Starring: Franka Potente, Vas Blackwood, Ken Campbell, Jeremy Sheffield


The tube can be a pretty horrific place; it's hot and stuffy, sometimes smells funny, usually crowded and at night when it's not so crowded it can be a fairly eerie place. Therefore it's presumably a good place to set a horror movie, right? Writer and director Christopher Smith says "Yes" in his film Creep, but does film use its location to fully realise its potential?

Creep opens at some kind of artsy gathering in London, populated by your typical rich, arrogant social climbers. We're introduced to the main character, Kate (Franka Potente), who is no exception in her social surroundings. She's a smug bitch, and written this way, but will she be so smug when she finds out what's in store for her this evening?

On her way to meet a friend at some kind of event involving George Clooney, she goes to the tube station. She has trouble with the ticket machine, so pays a homeless girl £20 for a travel card initially offered to her for £1.50 (her dubious sense of value is highlighted when she later pays another homeless person £50 for him to help her to safety). She waits on the platform for the last train but she's slightly pissed-up and she falls asleep. She's gone and missed her train, hasn't she? Quite how she slept through the roar of a tube train arriving at a station I don't know, but she's missed the train regardless. It turns out that the station has been closed and she's locked in (why she wasn't noticed on the security cameras is one of many unanswered questions in this film).

A train pulls up at the station and she boards it (why did it stop and open its doors if the train services have ended?). The train pulls away, but stops suddenly and she is plunged into darkness. The rest of the film involves her trying to escape from the London Underground with the aid of a tramp, whilst being stalked by some kind of creature that is generally killing people and causing all sorts of mischief.

The 'Creep', i.e. the film's assailant, turns out to be a weedy, half naked Jason Voorhees type character. Despite his puny exterior and a dodgy looking spine he is in fact quite strong, able to lift a fully grown man up by his head, whilst slicing his face. He's more funny than scary - especially when he makes a bizarre screeching noise. When we find out that his name is Craig, well, that makes him even less intimidating.

It's unexplained as to what Craig actually is, or what his back-story is, but I can only assume by the odd visual clue in the film is that he's some kind of medical experiment gone wrong. The fact that he manages to roam around and survive in the tube tunnels whilst going unnoticed adds to a level of silliness and bizarre logic that permeates the entire film. It is very thin on plot, which can be forgiven in a horror movie, but there little else going on in the film of much interest. It's not particularly visually effective and there aren't any real standout moments or shocking imagery.

The only intelligent moment of the film comes right at the end, when Kate, having survived her ordeal, ends up looking like the homeless people she treats so arrogantly at the start of the film, with her clothes looking ragged and torn and a dog resting on her lap. She's reduced to what she found so disgusting to begin with.

Apart from that, Creep is pretty much standard stalk and slash fare. It doesn't use the eeriness of a deserted tube station to its fullest and the plot holes leave the film with very little substance.

What Have You Done To Solange? (1972)

Media Reviewed: US DVD (Shriek Show)

Director: Massimo Dallamano
Starring: Fabio Testi, Christina Galbo, Karin Baal, Joachim Fuchsberger

What Have You Done To Solange? is the first of Massimo Dallamano's gialli about a series of murders involving schoolgirls. Gialli were the mystery thrillers largely made in Italy in the 1970s named after the yellow-covered novels that inspired them (giallo being the Italian word for 'yellow'). These films were popularised in the late sixties by directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento and became commonplace in Italian cinema throughout the seventies.

The film begins with the scene of our protagonist, Enrico (Fabio Testi) and the schoolgirl with whom he is having an affair, frolicking by a riverbank on the Thames. The girl spots what appears to be a girl running away from someone and later sees the flash of a blade in the corner of her eye, but Enrico is convinced it is her excuse in avoiding putting out. Enrico later finds out that a girl was indeed murdered there, and returns to the riverbank to investigate. The victim was one of his pupils, and Enrico becomes entangled in a series of schoolgirl murders as he continues his investigation, uncovering his pupil's sordid pasts in the process.

What Have You Done To Solange? is an excellent example of a good giallo - it contains the black-gloved killer associated with many of these type of films, as well as the violence and sexual overtones. The films does not show a lot of onscreen violence, but the nature in which the killer kills their victims is disturbing, although relevant to their motives. Also the fact that the crimes are committed on schoolgirls adds to this.

The film has some very stylish moments, using some excellent camerawork, including an extremely effective point-of-view shot in which the killer flees the scene of the crime after being spotted by a witness.

Another outstanding element of the film is its score, composed by Ennio Morricone, in particular the discordant basses during the film's more suspenseful moments. Morricone composed a number of scores for gialli, including Dario Argento's first two films, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and Cat O' Nine Tails.

The film is noted for its more sleazy moments, including a shower scene in which a man leers at the showering girls through a hole in the wall. The film doesn't flinch in its depiction of nudity and its taboo subject matter, but the director makes evident his views on children growing up too quickly and becoming involved in sex and drugs. The movie is a lot about the loss of innocence and what it means to be a child and this theme is also used in Dallamano's 1974 follow-up What Have They Done To Your Daughters? to good effect.

Overall, What Have You Done To Solange? is a superior giallo and is essential viewing for those interested in the genre. It doesn't quite reach the heights of Argento's best work, but not many films of this type do.

Friday the 13th (2009)

Media Reviewed: UK Cinema Release

Director: Marcus Nispel
Starring: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle


Recent years have seen a number of horror films being remade for younger or Western audiences. Horror classics such as Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes have all undergone "re-imaginings" as well as many recent Asian films such as Ringu (The Ring), Ju-On (The Grudge) and The Eye. This looks set to continue with many classics due to get the flashy Hollywood treatment. The latest horror remake is courtesy of talentless producer/accountant Michael Bay and director Marcus Nispel (the man responsible for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake).

Now, being an avid horror movie fan and admittedly rather precious about my favourite genre of cinema I normally dismiss remakes, hurling abuse at my TV screen whenever I first see the trailer of the next classic to be given MTV-style treatment. Some would argue that these remakes should be given a chance, that they should be judged on their own merits, but I see them as what they are: cash-ins on established names. However, Friday the 13th is a film I made an exception for, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, none of the films in the series are exactly high art and they pretty much do what they say on the tin. Therefore it's quite hard to piss on their reputation like you could with a masterpiece like Suspiria. Secondly - and most importantly - I was looking forward to seeing Jason Voorhees stomping around in a forest hacking up twenty-somethings again. I would decide not to treat this movie as a remake, but just as another entry in a series that already has ten chapters.

Those familiar with the Friday the 13th series will realise that this film isn't strictly a remake of the first film, but of parts 2, 3 and 4. In fact a couple of plot elements are taken from some of those films, for example, the man looking for his missing sister is borrowed from part 4. Those worried that this remake has tampered with the established rules and mythologies of the series need not - all of the series staples are there: if you drink or take drugs you die, if you take your clothes off you die, if you have sex you die, if you aren't white you die. This is the reason for one of the film's major flaws; there are absolutely no surprises in this film. Nothing new, nothing that isn't wholly predictable. You can immediately tell who is going to die on first seeing them on screen.

Another of the films major flaws is that it seems as though it was written by a randy 14 year old boy, who frantically typed it with one hand over the course of a day in the Easter Holiday break. The jokes are infantile and wholly based around the subjects of sex and drugs. I'm no prude when it comes to my sense of humour, but the vast majority of the films intended humorous moments aren't funny to begin with and are repeated ad nauseam. If there's one redeeming factor with this is that it makes you want these rich, tanned, good looking, coiffured cretins to die at the hands of Jason even moreso -and he delivers. If only he could leap forth from the screen into reality and punish those responsible for their groan-inducing dialogue.

The director also clearly doesn't have the talent to make a decent film of this nature. He has no grasp of suspense or pacing and often insists on the shaky camerawork that is depressingly common in films today. Its as if the cameraman is working with a running tumble dryer shoved up his arse. It's not stylish, it's lazy. Stop doing it and learn how to compose your shots properly.

However, I can't say I wasn't entertained at points throughout of the film. The film is enjoyable when Jason is on screen and the latest actor to play the role, Derek Mears, does a good job. It's just a shame that the rest of the film (the majority of it) is so tiresome.

I can only think to recommend this to avid fans of the series who are excited about seeing Jason tearing up the screen another time, but to anyone else - steer clear. The gore scenes aren't particularly gory, the funny scenes certainly aren't funny and, most importantly, the scary scenes just aren't scary. The film is pretty much just a rehash of the early films in the series, adding nothing new to a formula that was tired twenty years ago.

Troll 2 (1990)

Media Reviewed: UK DVD (MGM)

Director: Claudio Fragasso
Starring: Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, Connie Young


In my time spent immersing myself in the horror genre I have come across some truly woeful films - horror is characteristically saturated with them. However, a candidate for 'Worst Horror Movie Ever Made' must be Troll 2, a film so bad in every imaginable way that it almost transcends itself and becomes God-like, going about its business in truly mysterious ways that defy human comprehension. A film so mind-bogglingly inept that it has spawned an upcoming documentary, Best Worst Movie, but more on that subject later.

Troll 2, an Italian production using an American setting and cast, is a sequel only in namesake to Troll, the 1986 film directed by special effects wizard John Carl Buechler. In fact, the word Troll is the only thing that the sequel has in common with its predecessor, because this film doesn't feature any trolls. None whatsoever. No, the creatures we are dealing with in this film are goblins. The word troll is not even mentioned in this film once.

However, we can forgive Troll 2 this little misdemeanour for now, as unrelated sequels were a common thing in Italian produced horror movies of the time. A good example of this is La Casa 3; in Italy La Casa (The House) was the name for the Sam Raimi's horror classic The Evil Dead, La Casa 2 was the title for Evil Dead 2, but La Casa 3 was the title for Italian director Umberto Lenzi's Ghosthouse, a tale about a haunted house which has no relevance to the Evil Dead series of films whatsoever. But I digress, the mistitling of this film is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to its failings.

To fully explain the major shortcomings of this film I will have to run through what resembles the plot of the film. It opens with an elderly man name Seth telling his grandson, Joshua, a story about a young man named Peter, who is running away from a group of goblins (who look like a cross between Jimmy Krankie and a potato). Injured, he comes across a young maiden, who cares for him and feeds him a peculiar green substance. What Peter doesn't know is that the maiden is in fact a goblin and the green substance he has just consumed is causing him to perspire a dark green liquid! However, Grandpa Seth insists that the story is real and that goblins still exist. Joshua's mother enters the room, but Grandpa Seth has disappeared. It turns out that he is dead, and that Joshua is seemingly imagining him to be there. These opening scenes, which also include a very eighties style introduction of the daughter, along with some diabolical acting and dialogue suggest to the viewer just what they are in store for.

The family set off to a small country town named Nilbog (if you haven't worked out the groan-inducing plot device already, you will) in order to swap houses with a family who intend to spend some time in the city. However, Joshua senses that there's something not quite right about this suspicious looking family. Joshua's family haven't seemed to noticed, as the father is pleased by what he calls "good country hospitality" when he notices the food that they have laid out for them on the dinner table. However, all of the food is covered in some kind of strange green substance. This leads on to one of the most memorable scenes in the film in which the ghost of Grandpa Seth stops time for thirty seconds in order for Joshua to urinate on the food so that his family cannot eat it. I'm not lying.

The rest of the film involves Joshua trying to convince his family that the people of Nilbog are in fact goblins ("It's goblin spelled backwards!"), a bizarre family sing-along of Row, Row, Row Your Boat, a cringeworthy subplot involving the daughter's attempt to make her boyfriend give up his friends, a magical stone from Stonehenge, possibly the weirdest love scene ever to be put on celluloid involving massive amounts of popcorn, the true power of a double-decker bologna sandwich and possibly the worst delivery of a line in any film ever made in the infamous "Oh my God!" scene:




In fact, it would take an article twice this length to fully explain the large number of staggeringly odd events that occur in the film and besides, I would be spoiling it for you.

Would I say that Troll 2 is the worst horror film ever made? Possibly, although it does have The Exorcist 2 to contend with. It is certainly a film that is 'so-bad-it's-good' as it entertained me whilst I waited anxiously for the next inane line of dialogue, or bad piece of acting, or inexplicable plot point (and I didn't ever have to wait long). This film draws more unintentional laughs than possibly any other film I have ever seen, so therefore I would have to wholeheartedly recommend it to any fan of bad movies, or anyone with a morbid curiosity about how bad films really can be.

It's this unintentional comedy that has given the film its cult following and spawned a documentary. Best Worst Movie is directed by Michael Paul Stephenson, the child actor who played the lead role in Troll 2. It reunites many of the original cast and discusses the films low budget roots, the cult following it garnered and the subsequent effect it has had on many of the cast's lives.