WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (Arrow dual-format, 14 December, 18). You may well ask, as Solange is not seen or even mentioned for nearly an hour and a quarter. Made in 1972, Massimo Dallamano’s English-set giallo (Cose avetto fatto a Solange? in the original Italian), borrowing from Edgar Wallace’s The Case of the New Pin, leads us up a good few garden paths. Enrico (Fabio Testi) is an Italian teacher in London, married to a German, Herta (Karin Baal), and with a taste for the young women in his charge. After an orange-filtered credits sequence (borrowed by Peter Strickland for The Duke of Burgundy) which hints at later revelations, with the benefit of hindsight, Enrico is spending time on a rowboat with Elizabeth (Cristina Galbó) when they catch a brief glimpse of a young woman being pursued by someone with a knife. This is one of a series of killings of women with a particularly nasty MO: stabbings between the legs. We don’t see any of these, but we do see shots of the corpses with the knives left in situ. Strong stuff, and too much for the British censor of the day, of which more in a moment.
The victim turns out to be another pupil at the well-heeled girls’ school Enrico teaches at, so needless to say he is questioned and, trying to avoid admitting who he was with, becomes a suspect. Several more killings follow, one of them dispatching a major character surprisingly early. The motivation for the killings is revealed in a black and white flashback in this colour and widescreen film, and yes, Solange does have something to do with it. No spoilers, but the killings are rooted in sexual disgust and a backlash at what some saw as the decadence, to others sexual liberation, of the decade preceding the time of the film’s making. What Have You Done to Solange? treads a fine line between a film about misogyny and being misogynist itself, and in other hands it would no doubt have stomped over that line in seven-league boots. Dallamano is not above including genre staples such as having his female cast often nude, including a shower-room scene. But the film does hang together, and as a mystery it satisfies.
What Have You Done to Solange? was a major release in Europe. It was even blown up to 70mm in Spain, with a six-track stereo soundtrack. (Does that soundtrack still survive? On this disc, the film is in mono, as it would have been if you saw it in 35mm.) However, over in the country where the film is set, the BBFC, then under siege when screen violence was a definite issue, banned the film outright. It was not passed until 1996, for Redemption’s video release, when it was shorn of two minutes and fifteen seconds, and you can guess what went. Now it is available uncut, and given an exemplary Blu-ray transfer. The disc gives you the option of watching the film in either an English or Italian version, and opening and closing credits play in the appropriate language for the version you choose, though a key handwritten note is in Italian in both versions. The lipsynch is less than rigorous in either version, though it’s clear that many of the cast are delivering their lines in English. Extras: a very informative commentary from Alan Jones and Kim Newman, interviews with Fabio Testi, Karin Baal and producer Fulvio Lucisano, and a video essay by Michael McKenzie on Solange and its successors in a loose “schoolgirls in peril” trilogy What Have They Done to Your Daughters? and Rings of Fear, the former directed by Dallamano, the latter starring Testi. There is also a booklet with articles on Ennio Morricone’s giallo scores and a profile of Camille Keaton (who plays Solange, and is best known for her lead in the original I Spit on Your Grave).
There’s a list of films in a director’s career which made such an impact that many people think they’re first features, when they’re not. One of those is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, which was actually his third film, and of his previous two the second Wide Awake (which I haven’t seen) was certainly respectfully reviewed. Given how much of Sixth Sense is reliant on its plot twist it would be interesting to see how well it stands up today – and I was someone who had the twist spoiled before I saw it. Also, it will be interesting to see how well it stacks up in the light of its director’s future career which has seen one of the most precipitous falls from grace in current commercial cinema. The Sixth Sense came out just at the turn of the millennium. A decade and a half later, Shyamalan had made the widely-derided The Last Airbender (all together now: “the first time I saw you I knew you were a bender”, “there are some powerful benders in the North”, cue much sniggering among the minimal British cinema audiences due to one of the most unfortunate US-to-UK usage translations since the release of Free Willy) and the vehicle for Will Smith and son Jaden, After Earth.
Now it’s 2015, and here’s THE VISIT (Universal Blu-ray/DVD, 18 January, 15), made for a much reduced budget though released by a major studio – and, unlike many of the titles discussed in this column, it did actually get a British cinema release. It’s a found-footage film. That’s a form that’s been much played out since The Blair Witch Project did extremely well with it, in the same year that The Sixth Sense came out. People have been quick to point out predecessors, such as The Last Broadcast and Cannibal Holocaust (which is a mixture of found footage with conventionally-filmed material). I’d also mention what isn’t horror but is still pretty dark: Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary, one of the major US indies of the late 1960s.
Here, the found footage is the work of aspirant filmmaker Becca (Olivia DeJonge) who is sent with younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) to stay with their grandparents, who go by the names Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie). Needless to say Becca takes her camera with her and records everything she sees. Soon Nana and Pop Pop are beginning to act very strangely and Becca and Tyler find themselves in danger. And…well, there’s a plot twist.
It’s not that the found-footage trope has been pretty much played out in the last decade and a half, but that it isn’t convincing: scenes manage to be cut from more than one angle (not just because Tyler is holding a camera too) and with a fine cinematographer (Maryse Alberti) involved it all looks several cuts above what’s meant to be amateur video. Maybe a Cannibal Holocaust-like approach would have worked. But as so often with films like this, you ask yourself why people are still filming while bad shit is happening. And this is a film which mines old age and its health challenges, both mental and physical, for its scares, in a way that borders on the distasteful. The Visit did well enough at the box office, especially considering it didn’t cost much to make, but you have to wonder how much of a busted flush Shyamalan’s career is at this point. Extras: deleted scenes, alternate ending.
Just as there are older book readers who look back fondly on times when you had to go abroad to find certain books that then couldn’t be and weren’t published in the UK, so you had to smuggle them home, there are those of us of a certain age who remember when Europe was a place where films we couldn’t see back home were available on the now-vanished medium of VHS. Nowadays, when formerly banned films, or those likely to be banned, are freely available to buy online, and in Blu-ray at that, somehow it’s not the same.
Nekromantik was one such. Jörg Buttgereit’s 1987 tiny-budget German-language feature, shot in Super 8mm, caused more than a stir when it ended an all-night horror festival at London’s Scala Cinema. Its focus on necrophilia (with three-ways involving a woman, a man and a corpse it gave new meaning to the phrase “digging up a few friends”) turned quite a few stomachs and documentary footage of the killing and skinning of a rabbit added to the walkouts. There were at the time genuine concerns that the film might be seized. It couldn’t possibly get past the BBFC, could it? But flash forward to 2014 and that’s exactly what happened. This grotty, grimy, very gory film which your friends might wonder why you sat through if you described it to them, was now released on Blu-ray in a blitz of high-definition film grain, fully uncut, with a raft of extras. If you haven’t seen Nekromantik, be advised that spoilers lurk for it in the rest of this review.
NEKROMANTIK 2 (Arrow dual-format, 7 December, 18) followed in 1991, with an increased budget allowing shooting in 16mm this time. This begins with a reprise of the over-the-top climax (in more ways than one) of the first film. The leading lady of the first film (Monika M) disinters the body of her boyfriend and takes it back to her flat. However, her necrophiliac activities with the corpse don’t satisfy her, particularly when they’re kept secret from her current boyfriend Mark (Mark Reeder), whose day job is dubbing porn films. Nekromantik 2 is half an hour longer than its predecessor which is too long, but you can sense Buttgereit stretching his wings a little. He throws in a musical number and has a somewhat indulgent cinema sequence where Mark watches an art-film parody (a man and a woman sit naked at a table, talking incessantly while eating eggs, all in grainy black and white, something of a send-up of My Dinner with Andre). The squeamish still need not apply, but those affected by the rabbit-killing in the first film should note that a video of a seal dismemberment is shown this time. (As it’s documentary footage not staged for the camera, it’s not illegal, hence the BBFC passing it.) It’s still watchable – but choose carefully who you describe it to – but inevitably can’t have the same impact as the first film did, and twice is more than enough. Lots of extras: a commentary, a brief (though spoilerific) introduction, a new documentary on the film, Masters of Life and Death, a walking tour of the Berlin locations, a featurette on the significance of Berlin on the film, contemporary documentary with alternative audio tracks with interviews, a featurette on the score, outtakes, footage from the twentieth-anniversary concert with a twenty-track audio recording as BD/DVD-ROM content, two Buttgereit short films, two music videos directed by him, a Buttgereit trailer gallery and stills gallery. A limited edition (which may well be sold out by the time you read this) adds a soundtrack CD and a 100-page book, Anatomy of Desire, which were not supplied for review.
The Scala Cinema on King’s Cross was a legendary repertory cinema. Showing double and triple bills which changed daily, with all-nighters at the weekend, it mixed art films with trash, the presence of disreputable locals in what was then a sleazy part of London adding to the ambience. And that’s not to forget Warren the cinema’s cat, whose favourite film was The Evil Dead, and who was liable to jump on audience members at inappropriate times during film showings. The Scala often made use of its status as a club in order to show films that the BBFC had not passed and were not, at least then, likely to.
One such was Curt McDowell’s 1975-made THUNDERCRACK! (Synapse Blu-ray/DVD, 8 December, no MPAA rating but definitely adults-only), which showed roughly monthly, its 16mm print so battered by the time the cinema closed in 1983 (there’s now a nightclub on the site) that it by all accounts could barely go through the projector. It’s hard to credit that a film like Thundercrack! exists: two and a half hours (plus intermission) of Old Dark House parody crossed with hardcore porn, shot in 16mm black and white in low-rent noir style, filled with overripe sub-Tennessee Williams dialogue from writer/co-star George Kuchar (himself an underground filmmaker given to campy parodies of Hollywood). Yet if you’re on its wavelength – and definitely are not prudish or easily offended – it’s a riot. On a dark and stormy night (naturally) several men and women converge on Prairie Blossom, the home of Gert (Marion Eaton), a woman much given to the bottle and with some secrets of her own. While they shelter, the house guests and hostess pair off in various combinations. Oh, and there are circus animals on the rampage and a man in love with a gorilla.
While there have been European VHS and DVD releases of this film before, mainly using the battered Scala print as a source, this is the first time that Thundercrack! has been available for home viewing in the USA. In the UK, there has been interest in distributing the film, but they hit a stumbling block as the BBFC advised that the film would receive a R18 certificate. This denotes hardcore pornography and differs from a more usual 18 certificate by being only available from licensed sex shops. Given that Thundercrack!, even with its explicit gay and straight couplings, is hardly the sort of thing anyone going into a sex shop would be looking for, that would have made the release unviable. Mail order of R18s is specifically forbidden by the Video Recordings Act, which betrays its origins before the Internet (1984 to be precise) as it’s not illegal to order this film from overseas. As unsimulated sexual material can and does appear in 18-certificate films the difference between an 18 and a R18 comes down to whether the BBFC considers the film to be a “sex work” or not. While I’m sure that some will find some of the scenes in Thundercrack! arousing, it’s ultimately a culty underground film, not a “sex work”. Given that the BBFC passed The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome, which is nothing but a collection of “sex works”, albeit with a featurette and an interview with the now-late Mr de Rome (who quite openly said he was a maker of gay porn films) as contextual material, at 18, I’m not sure that a similarly-packaged disc like the one Synapse have produced couldn’t pass at 18 now, especially as it’s no more explicit than the de Rome disc. But then it’s not my money which will be spent submitting Thundercrack! to the BBFC in the hope that that’s the case.
Synapse’s Blu-ray has been several years in the works, in part due to the particular challenges of restoring this film. The original negative has been lost and there were only ever five prints made. One was seized by Canadian customs and presumably destroyed, two were shortened by the producers and one was the copy that found its way to the UK and the Scala. With the assistance of McDowell’s sister Melinda McDowell-Milks (who acts in the film), the Blu-ray is restored from the only surviving print of McDowell’s full-length version, and while there is still some damage visible and this will always look like what it was, a cheaply-made semi-underground 16mm feature, its doubtful it could look any better than it does. The soundtrack was always problematic for being roughly-recorded and mixed and, due to the Scala’s less than state-of-the-art sound system, you frequently couldn’t make out parts of the dialogue. But now you can, though the optional subtitles (in English and three other languages) may well be helpful in parts of the film.
The Blu-ray and DVD editions contain the film, with an 82- minute interview with McDowell on his background and approach to filmmaking, recorded circa 1972, as an alternative audio track. The Blu-ray has several additional features exclusive to it. On the main disc is a feature-length documentary from 2009 about George Kuchar and his twin brother Mike, also a filmmaker, It Came from Kuchar. There is also a bonus DVD containing five of McDowell’s short films (he died in 1987 at the age of forty-two, of AIDS) interviews, outtakes and audition footage.
In the English language, Guillermo del Toro has made films like the Hellboy series, Blade II and Pacific Rim, large-scale works aimed squarely at the multiplexes worldwide. In his native Spanish, he has made The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, the latter one of the major works of fantasy/horror cinema of the century so far. CRIMSON PEAK (Universal Blu-ray/DVD, 15 February, 15) is an attempt to make a film in the former language in something of the style of the latter. File it under interesting, sometimes fascinating, partial success.
We’re in America at the beginning of the twentieth century. Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska) is the daughter of a wealthy businessman (Jim Beaver). She wants to be a writer. She also sees ghosts. Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), a visiting English baronet, approaches Edith’s father to invest in an excavator for his family’s clay mine. Edith is attracted to him, but her father is suspicious of Thomas and his devoted sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) and turns him down…and is murdered. Edith and Thomas are married, and he and Lucille whisk her off to his dilapidated ancestral pile in Cumberland…
Co-written by Matthew Robbins, Crimson Peak shows del Toro in full-on Gothic mode, with ghosts, a ruined mansion with blood-red mud oozing through the floorboards, a resourceful virginal heroine in peril wandering round in a nightdress brandishing a candlestick…and some jarringly graphic violence. It looks gorgeous, with some of the best cinematography, production and costume design that failed to gain an Oscar nod this year. Wasikowska and Hiddleston are fine, with Chastain – in a brunette wig – going over the top in the latter stages. It’s a rich brew that didn’t click with an audience, tanking on both sides of the Atlantic, but there’s plenty of interest even if it doesn’t quite come off. Extras: deleted scenes.
Made in 1970, Mario Bava’s FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON (5 bambole per la luna d’agosto) (Arrow dual-format, 1 February, 15) gathers a well-heeled group of men and women – among them William Berger and Edwige Fenech – to the island retreat of a wealthy industrialist looking to have them invest in a new project. But there’s a murderer among the decadent rich folk, and the bodies start to pile up.
Agatha Christie’s novels were published in Italy in the yellow-jacketed volumes which gave their name to the giallo genre, and Five Dolls certainly draws on And Then There Were None (given an excellent BBC adaptation this past Christmas) with its remote setting and series of murders, and a final twist I won’t spoil for you. Opinion has varied over the years. Bava himself thought it his worst film. Tim Lucas, in the commentary on this disc, makes a case for the defence. Bava was a former cinematographer – and here, for the only time in his career, editing a film he also directed. His film is heavy on visual style, with its bold use of colours, blues especially, coming over strongly on this Blu-ray, though an overuse of the zoom lens becomes an irritant, as does Piero Umiliani’s score. One of those bold colours is red, for blood, though there’s less of it than there is in the following year’s A Bay of Blood (one of a plethora of alternative titles), a proto-slasher and a clear influence on Friday the 13th and the films which followed it, and Baron Blood, made a year and two years later – hence the lower certificate. (It was an X uncut back in 1970, unlike A Bay of Blood which was banned outright at the time.) One for the aficionado, no doubt: beginners to Bava might best start with Blood and Black Lace or A Bay of Blood or, amongst his earlier black and white films, Black Sabbath, rather than this. As often with Italian films, the cast spoke a mixture of languages on set and lipsynch is less than rigorous – though not as unrigorous as in a Fellini film, say. Arrow present the film in both Italian and English versions, with the opening credits appearing in the language you select. Extras: Tim Lucas’s aforementioned commentary, an hour-long documentary Mario Bava: Master of the Macabre, the trailer and a booklet which was not available for review.
You know what to expect from a film called NAVY SEALS VS. ZOMBIES (Icon DVD, 15 February, 15). You’d know less if you watched the film without the benefit of the disc packaging as the onscreen title is actually Navy SEALS: The Battle for New Orleans. Under either title, it’s not to be confused with the Charlie Sheen-starring film from 1990. Never mind that it actually takes place in Baton Rouge.
That city is in lockdown, with a news blackout due to a plague of – you guessed it – zombies, or “infected” as they’re more usually called here. This all happens during a Vice-Presidential visit and a team of SEALS led by Lt Pete Cunningham (Ed Quinn) are flown in retrieve the VP and are given a secondary assignment to rescue lab technicians who may have a cure for whatever pathogen has caused the crisis. A directorial debut by stuntman and NASCAR driver Stanton Barrett, it all proceeds much as you’d expect, with plenty of action sequences and infected people being dispatched with shots to the head and CGI blood spurts. There are some contrivances, with professional soldiers behaving less than professionally, and a big deus ex machina at the end. But it’s watchable enough. You know what to expect, and you get it.
Plague hits Britain in THE CARRIER (Altitude DVD, 25 January, 15), manifesting itself as large tumours on the face, back and elsewhere. Britain is now under martial law and soldiers have orders to shoot any infected person on site. The only safe place is in the air, and much of the action takes place on a plane. You guessed it – not everyone is as virally clean as they seem. Scrappily scripted and rather lacking in pace, it’s full of holes: a prologue which isn’t really relevant to the rest of the film, a surprisingly easily and less than bloody amputation and someone managing to hang on from an open door on a plane in flight without depressurising the cabin. (And how cold does it get that high up?) And you can guess the ending a mile off.
Girl meets boy. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy writes songs about girl and never wants to be parted from her. This is getting creepy. Then boy’s elaborate plans for a surprise for girl go wrong and he ends up decapitated. That all happens in a brisk nine minutes and then the main title of CLINGER (Matchbox DVD, 1 February, 15) comes up. The title has a double meaning: the clinging boy is actually called Klingher (Vincent Martella) which makes for odd echoes of M*A*S*H: first name Robert. And death is no barrier for his obsession. Fern (Jennifer Laporte) keeps seeing him (no one else can) standing outside her window, still singing his bloody annoying song called ‘Fern’, still declaring his love. Debutant director Michael Steves keeps this amusing comedy-horror moving at a good pace, bringing it in at just over an hour and a quarter. Clinger takes aim at stalker behaviour being presented as the One True Love, a trope present in a few too many young-adult novels these days, and Fern is an appealing heroine. Aiming for an athletics scholarship at MIT, she also has a life beyond her obsessive and now undead boyfriend. Extras: the trailer.
Girl meets boy again in NINA FOREVER (StudioCanal Blu-ray/DVD, 22 February, 18). In this case it’s trainee paramedic Holly (Abigail Hardingham) who works part time in a supermarket. There she meets Rob (Cian Barry), who is in mourning for his girlfriend Nina who died in a car crash. He even has the words of the title tattooed on his back. Holly and Rob become an item. (They have sex quite a lot, which mostly explains the 18 certificate. One scene shows that the writer/directors have seen Closely Observed Trains and if you have too, you’ll know which scene I’m referring to. Two words: rubber stamp.) When Holly and Rob do get it on, Nina (Fiona O’Shaughnessy) emerges bloodily and messily from the sheets beside them. Attempts at a ménage à trois don’t quite work out. Written and directed by brothers Ben and Chris Blaine, Nina Forever attempts to balance horror, comedy and romance and doesn’t bring it off: all three elements work against each other, and it doesn’t help that the cast are clearly rather older than the characters they are playing. Extras: three short featurettes, ‘A Look behind Nina Forever’, ‘Things That Are Not There’ and ‘Things That Were Not There’.
In MARK OF THE WITCH (Metrodome DVD, 15 February, 18) Jordyn (Paulie Rojas) finds out that she may have diabolical origins. It’s not hard to tell that this 2014 feature film is expanded from a short, director Jason Bognacki’s Another (also the feature’s alternative title) from 2012. Abetted by some ugly-looking digital cinematography and an overuse of slow motion, Mark of the Witch is padded out to 80 minutes (76 on this DVD screener, due to PAL speed-up, for which much thanks). And even that’s deceptive, as the end credits crawl past for some seven minutes. There is a scene after those credits, if you’re still awake.
There’s a fine line between homaging a genre or subgenre, and simply rehashing it. Case in point: LOST AFTER DARK (Metrodome DVD, 29 February, 18). Set in Michigan but shot in Ontario, Ian Kessner’s slasher movie has its references down pat, complete with naming all the teenage characters after directors in the genre or actresses who played famous final girls. It’s even set in the 1980s, after a pre-credits killing set in 1977. Think of all the tropes of the genre and tick them off your list: that prologue, a smorgasbord of gory killings (anyone squicked by eyeball trauma, watch out), and an it’s-happening-all-over-again ending. The film burning in the projector and a “reel missing” caption is a gimmicky way to hide a plot twist – and in any case, that device, used most memorably at the end of Two-Lane Blacktop, is pretty much anachronistic in these days of digital cinema projection. And wouldn’t you have been watching a film like this on video anyway? Dots: join them. You’ve seen it all before.
THE VATICAN TAPES (Signature DVD, 4 January, 15) are records of evidence of the workings of evil in this world, according to this film. We see some of their recordings of possessed people during the opening credits. When Angela (Olivia Taylor Dudley) starts behaving erratically and aggressively, it soon becomes clear that she is possessed. Father Lozano (Michael Peña) is assigned to this case. Directed by Mark Neveldine (his first solo credit after being one half of Neveldine and Taylor, makers of the Jason Statham Crank films), The Vatican Tapes goes for post-Exorcist bangings, crashings, bodily contortions and deep-voiced utterances in subtitled ancient languages. A framing story (the only appearances of second-billed Djimon Hounsou) harks after another well-known horror franchise which began in the 1970s, and a possible sequel. Extras: a three-minute behind the scenes featurette.
Made in 2010, THE WEATHER STATION (Pryachsya) (Simply Media DVD, 18 January, 15) is belatedly released in the UK. Russian-based Irishman Johnny O’Reilly has since made a second feature, Moscow Never Sleeps. His Russian-language debut feature (with English subtitles on this disc) takes place at the remote snowy location of the title. Two investigators arrive following the disappearance of the station’s crew, two meteorologists close to retirement and nineteen-year-old Romash (Pyotr Logachev). The film then alternates between this timeline and one a few days earlier, where we find out what actually happened. There are also flashbacks to a key event when Romash witnessed his parents being shot by someone unknown. All three strands come together during the course of an economical 80 minutes and with the omnipresent snow and surround-sound howling wind you’re glad to be warm inside watching it. It certainly holds the attention.
Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy) draws the short straw and gets to stay alone overnight in a soon-to-be-decommissioned police station in Anthony DiBiasi’s LAST SHIFT (Matchbox DVD, 18 January, 15). It soon comes to light that the station could be haunted by the ghosts of a Manson Family-like cult. An effective piece, which interestingly shifts aspect ratio (mostly in 2.35:1, sometimes opening up to 1.85:1) during the course of events.
Metalhead Brodie’s (Milo Cawthorne) life sucks. His mother is put away and he goes to live in a small town with his Christian uncle Albert (Colin Moy). He makes friends with local bad boy and fellow metal fan Zakk (James Blake) and forms a band called Deathgasm. You can guess what happens next in the New Zealander comedy-horror DEATHGASM (StudioCanal DVD, 29 February, 15). Brodie and Zakk come across a song written by metal star and Satanist Ricky Daggers (Stephen Ure). They decide to play it – full of tritones or “devil’s intervals” naturally. (Six semitones, between a fourth and a fifth in either major or minor scales, and banned from Church music in the Middle Ages, for the musicians out there.) And this conjures up an ancient demon. Much splattery violence ensues, betraying director Jason Lei Howden’s background in special effects, and the heavy influence of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi. Brodie, Zakk and Brodie’s lust object Medina (Kimberley Crossman) do battle. There are no doubt plenty out there who really do regard metal as demonic, but Howden’s film is clearly the work of someone with affection for both the music and gory horror-comedy. It’s very silly, but it’s fun.
Merrily Watkins is the protagonist of a series of novels by Phil Rickman. Adapted by Stephen Volk, the second novel, MIDWINTER OF THE SPIRIT (ITV DVD, 5 November, 15) became a three-part TV serial, first broadcast in September/October 2015. Merrily (Anna Maxwell Martin) is a Church of England vicar and trainee exorcist, widowed and with a less than trouble-free relationship with her teenage daughter Jane (Sally Messham). She is called upon to investigate the case of a man found crucified in the local woods, just the start of a Satanic plot which threatens not just her but the whole community. Frequently scary stuff, with fine performances especially from Martin and David Threlfall as her exorcist mentor Huw. Merrily is an appealingly flawed heroine, by her own admission a less than perfect mother. (Unusually for nowadays, this is a serial which the two main characters are both smokers – which may well be in the original novel I haven’t read.) It’s good to see horror back on the television screen. Given that Rickman has written several other Merrily novels, there’s certainly scope for a follow-up, though sadly at the time of writing ITV have not recommissioned the series.
Since the dawn of the sound era films have been made in many languages, translated in these anglophone lands by means of subtitles, dubbing or even back in the day earphone commentary. There are also films with no spoken dialogue. And there is a small category of films where you would record the language specs as Gibberish – no subtitles necessary. The most famous example is Claudio Farraldo’s Themroc from 1973 (the first of Channel 4’s Special Discretion Advised ‘Red Triangle’ films shown in 1986). Now we have AAAAAAAAH! (Icon Blu-ray/DVD, 18 January, 18). Written, directed, edited by and starring Steve Oram, this feature might have been better as a short. It takes its one satirical point – humans behaving like apes, while still set in the present-day world of television cookery and reality shows – and stretches it out over 80 minutes. Two males – an alpha and a beta, Smith and Keith (only named in the end credits – played by Oram and Tom Meeten) – hook up with a female (Denise, played by Lucy Honigman) and disrupt a community led by Ryan (Julian Rhind-Tutt) and Barabara (sic – played by Toyah Willcox). Cue much humping, scratching, marking of territory and all the dialogue being variations on ooh-ooh-ah-ah. (I hope I spelled that right.) It’s shot in Academy Ratio (1.37:1) and a further point of interest is that Toyah Willcox’s husband Robert Fripp (under the banner of King Crimson ProjeKcts) produced the score. Extras: Steve Oram commentary, cast interviews, featurettes ‘Carolla Cooks’ and ‘Pub!’. You can even access an ape-language menu and listen to an ape-language commentary, though I doubt anyone will do that for very long.
In THE HOUSE ON PINE STREET (Second Sight DVD, 1 February, 15), third-trimester pregnant Jennifer (Emily Goss) and husband Luke (Taylor Bottles) move into a house on the eponymous street, leaving Chicago for her hometown. However, it soon becomes clear all is not well. Jennifer has unresolved issues with the town she grew up in, and some troubles in the past. And then the house itself begins to behave strangely itself, with doors opening and closing with no explanation. At 112 minutes this feature by brothers Aaron and Austin Keeling is a little longer than the average horror film but for once this pays off with a strange atmosphere and a gradual buildup to the supernatural scenes – which aren’t just the quiet quiet BANG too many filmmakers resort to, a means to startle but not unnerve. Well worth seeing.
Inside (A l’intérieur), the debut feature by the writing/directing team of Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, was a leading example of the French-extremity school of horror, intense and graphically violent stuff. (See also Martyrs and Haute tension aka Switchblade Romance.) That film featured a pregnant woman menaced by another woman, played by Béatrice Dalle. AMONG THE LIVING (Aux yeux des vivants) (Metrodome DVD, 7 March, 18) harks back to that with a prologue where a heavily pregnant woman – this time played by Dalle – stabs herself in the abdomen before cutting her own throat. Why? That’s explained in one of those infodumps where someone happens to watch the television just as something affecting him or her turns up. Jump forward a few years, and three rather annoying young boys – speaking dialogue rendered in heavily Americanised English subtitles – bunk off school and spend time on an abandoned film lot and witness a masked figure dragging a woman. The masked figure then stalks the boys and their families, looking to eliminate any witnesses to his actions. It’s tense and at times very gory, but the narrative is a little diffuse, concentrating on the three boys before widening out into an ensemble piece halfway through.
ARROWHEAD (Metrodome DVD, 22 February, 15) is a muddled and tedious SF actioner from Australia. Set in a future after a war between two generals, with the losing one reputedly in hiding and his supporters liable to be executed as part of the victory celebrations, Kye (Dan Mor), the son of one of those supporters, is sent on a mission in return for the release of his father, though that all goes by the wayside when he is marooned on the desert moon (the much-filmed mining town of Coober Pedy, South Australia) of a large planet with just an AI (voiced by Shaun Micallef) for company. By then it’s hard to care.