Specters (1987)

A film that I had wanted to see ever since I saw the VHS cover somewhere close to Demons, it's hard to approach a film that has seemingly evaded me for almost four decades without some sense of optimism. I wasn't expecting any kind of classic, but I was hoping for some decent gore gags and good fun. Sadly, Specters has neither of those things present.

It's very standard stuff, in terms of Italian horror from the 1980s anyway. A professor of archaeology (Lasky, played by Donald Pleasence) heads up a research team as they uncover and explore an ancient tomb. It was sealed, of course, and it turns out that it was sealed with good reason. It's not long until some powerful presence is working through the group, killing them off, one by one.

While there aren't many names here that will be too familiar to film fans, one or two will stand out. Pleasence is, of course, the biggest name in front of the camera, although this isn't one of his best roles. Dardano Sacchetti, one of the writers, is arguably the main name behind the camera (having written numerous movies for Lucio Fulci, as well as Demons, and many other features). Director Marcello Avallone has about a dozen movies to his name, and he also joins Sacchetti, Andrea Puragtori, and Maurizio Tedesco in the writing department, with none of them managing to deliver a coherent and consistent narrative. Not that anyone explores horror movies from Italy in the 1980s with a yearning for coherence and consistency, but it's good when you get the feeling that whatever lunacy you are experiencing comes from the mind of someone who has some idea of their destination. That isn't the case here.

John Pepper and Trine Michelsen are the nominal leads, working in the shadow of the mighty Pleasence. They're not very good, neither one standing out enough from the crowd, and any one of the other main cast members - Massimo De Rossi, Riccardo De Torrebruna, Lavinia Grizi, Riccardo Parisio Perrotti, etc - could have been positioned in the main roles with very minor tweaks.

The music (by Lele Marchitelli and Danilo Rea) isn't bad, and there are one or two shots that make use of a decent puppet, but those are two minor positives in a film stuffed full of reasons to avoid it. The recycled sets never convince, the cast can't compensate for the weak script, the pacing makes it feel much longer than the 92-minute runtime, and the grand finale is shockingly tiresome and weak. One or two kills might impress viewers, but even they are pretty pathetic when compared to the grue and nastiness found in other films from this time and place.

You can't win 'em all, I guess, although I am sure that there are some people out there who are fans of this one. I'd love to know what won them over.

3/10

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Shudder Saturday: Tales That Witness Madness (1973)

If you can't settle on what one movie to watch at any time then you may as well pick an anthology movie. That is my motto . . . that I just made up for the sake of starting this review with some kind of justification for my choice here. But there's some truth to it. I always tend to enjoy anthology horrors whenever I stumble across one that I have yet to see, and the format allows me to remain optimistic even if one segment isn't working for me. Not every anthology is a winner though, and Tales That Witness Madness is one of the bad ones, which perhaps explains why I never made time for it before now.

The framing device may sound familiar to those who are fans of a certain other, much more celebrated, anthology horror film from the mighty Amicus (and it should be noted that this is decidedly NOT an Amicus film, despite sharing certain qualities). A psychiatrist (Donald Pleasence) is guiding a new colleague (Jack Hawkins) around the Asylum he is due to work in, and tales are told that show a number of key patients being housed there after incidents that would appear to feature the supernatural.

Although I was unfamiliar with writer Jennifer Jayne (credited here as Jay Fairbank), I was very familiar with director Freddie Francis, a legendary figure in British cinema who worked well as a director on films of highly varying quality, but who is also celebrated for his cinematography in films he didn't helm (perhaps most notably on The Elephant Man). Francis did some of his best work throughout the 1960s, especially when working with Hammer or Amicus, and initially seemed as if he was going to do just as well throughout the 1970s, but 1973 feels like the starting point for a downward slide. This may have been due to a lack of the right material, or it may have been the case that Francis was floundering, alongside many colleagues from the big British studios that he worked with, as great changes in the tastes and limits of acceptability rippled throughout the average horror movie viewers.

Aside from Jayne and Francis, this suffers from having a cast that just doesn't have enough star power to make up for the quartet of weak tales. Hawkins and Pleasence are very good, but sadly not onscreen enough, and other positives are Suzy Kendall, Joan Collins (hampered by the fact that she's in what is surely one of the most bonkers horror anthology segments ever), Kim Novak, and Leon Lissek. I am not saying everyone else is awful, although one or two are, but they're generally just there, unable to do anything to distract from the poor writing.

I was hoping that I would watch this and then be able to recommend it as a bit of a forgotten gem, but that was not to be. This is dire, although the first tale did remind me of a short story by Ray Bradbury, which gave me a glimmer of hope that was soon dashed, and the third tale (that one featuring Collins) is memorable for the hilarious lunacy of the central concept. Nothing here is really worth witnessing, sadly.

3/10

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Paganini Horror (1989)

The kind of bonkers Italian horror movie from the eighties that we fans seem to automatically love, Paganini Horror is a film I long intended to mark off my own watchlist, and others who knew me told me that I should enjoy it.

It’s all to do with a cursed piece of music written by Paganini, which connects seemingly random events, from a small girl killing her mother to a rock band having a nightmare of a time in an isolated house as they film a music video. Logic is, of course, thrown out of the window early on, so viewers can quickly decide whether or not they're willing to go along with the general lunacy of it all.

Directed by Luigi Cozzi, who also co-wrote the movie with star Daria Nicolodi, this is the kind of film you need to watch with your brain in a certain mode (maybe not switched off, but certainly just idling over without being moved into any gear). It’s not actually a good film, but it is enjoyably silly, especially in the grand finale.

The script is hilarious, with those moments you often get in these films that have characters discussing the most ridiculous ideas with complete earnestness, and the acting is . . . well, it is on par with other films of this ilk.

Aside from Nicolodi, you get a fun role for Donald Pleasence, playing someone offering a kind of Faustian pact for those seeking a better life, and Jasmine Maimone (Kate), Maria Cristina Mastrangeli (Lavinia), Michel Klippstein (Elena), and Pascal Persiano (Daniel) make up the rest of the main cast. Pietro Genuardi is just fine as Mark Singer, and you get someone creeping about as a murderous spirit of Paganini. 

Sadly, I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I hoped I would. The gore is uneven, in terms of both the pacing of the kills and the quality of the effects, and it feels too padded out, despite not exactly having an epic runtime. There’s still fun to be had though, but connoisseurs of Italian horror from this decade may enjoy it a lot more than I did.

5/10

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Mubi Monday: Wake In Fright (1971)

Although it depicts a man out of his depth in terrain that can feel very alien and inhospitable, Wake In Fright succeeds because of the balance it maintains between the unknown and the all-too-familiar. Many of you reading this will have had an experience when you woke up one morning, in some pain and with some regret, trying to piece together the events of the nighty before. Sometimes you have befriended strangers, people who keep the drink flowing and the rest of the world at bay for another day and night. Inhibitions are gone, self-respect can sometimes go with them, and the most important thing is maintaining your current level of alcohol-assisted happiness.  

Trust me, before I committed to the sober life, I had one or two mornings, at the very least, when I ended up feeling much like the main character here. I don’t recommend it.

Gary Bond plays John Grant, a schoolteacher who is heading to Sydney during the start of a holiday season. He ends up staying over in a small town, which leads to him drinking more than planned, gambling a lot of his money, and becoming closely bonded to a local drunk, Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence). Things start off well, but soon start to become more and more nightmarish.

Directed by Ted Kotcheff, a man with a filmography well worth exploring (including First Blood, a film easy to misremember due to the subsequent development of the character of John Rambo), and based on a novel by Kenneth Cook, Wake In Fright is a fine marriage of odd, hazy, visuals and telling dialogue. The screenplay, by Evan Jones, has an interesting collection of characters creating an atmosphere of tension and danger. You can also feel the heat beating down upon everyone, and smell the sweat and beer (both fresh and stale).

Bond is excellent in the lead role, believable even as his descent begins to gather speed so soon after his arrival in the small town, and Pleasence is on top form as an alcoholic accepting his main failing without thinking he can ever conquer it. Chips Rafferty is equally good, playing a friendly local policeman, and Sylvia Kay stands out as the one main female character trapped among so many rowdy males.

Animal lovers should be warned that some footage was shot during kangaroo hunting season, which also adds to the sense of palpable danger running through almost every scene. This is not a pleasant watch at times, the downs start to far outweigh the ups, but it is an astonishing and affecting work, as essential a film from this decade as almost any other I can think of. 

9/10

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Prime Time: The Devonsville Terror (1983)

Here's another one of those unmemorable horror movies that became more memorable to me because I saw it at the right age. And the right age is, of course, the wrong age. I would be 9 or 10, I had no idea of what constituted a good movie, and I was able to sit quietly to the side while my parents watched any number of VHS tapes that probably weren't supposed to be viewed by youngsters. It is how I was first traumatised by Creepshow, how I fell in love with both Jenny Agutter and the practical effects in An American Werewolf In London, and how I laughed awkwardly while also gawking at the naked female form in films like Porky's, the Lemon Popsicle movies, and Screwballs. Every one of those tapes seemed to have the same trailers on them, unless I am misremembering. One of them was advertising Necromancy (a film I have somehow not yet seen), and one was The Devonsville Terror.

Both of those films seemed dark and dangerous, arguably more interesting and strange than the modern horrors I had already seen because of their basis in what looked to be spooky lore from years gone by. They also had some fine work from "trailer voice guy". I knew I had to see them. I suspect that when I finally did see The Devonsville Terror I was, even at such a young age, relatively unimpressed. It's not a terrible film, and far from the worst to come from director Ulli Lommel, but it feels like something without enough going on to entertain viewers who had recently discovered the VHS pleasures of the titles just mentioned in the previous paragraph.

But let me get to the plot. Things start with some witches being executed in Devonsville. And then we move forward 300 years, to the here and now (as it was in the early '80s anyway). A new female teacher comes to town, by the name of Jenny Scanlon (Suzanna Love, who was also married to Lommel at the time), and quickly upsets the menfolk, who seem to have their attitudes set very much in line with their misogynisytic ancestors. If that wasn't enough, another young woman appears who is ALSO a scientist (Chris, played by Mary Walden). And then they also receive an outspoken DJ, who is also . . . a woman (Monica, played by Deanna Haas). Does anyone have any grounds to be perturbed by the ways of these modern women from the outside world? Can Dr. Warley (Donald Pleasence) be of any help, or will he be too busy trying to cure the family curse that leads to worms crawling out of his skin?

With some acting of varying quality throughout, a decidedly murky visual palette, and a script (co-written by Lommel, Love, and George T. Lindsey) that sticks to everyone like a wet shower curtain, The Devonsville Terror is clearly not any great shakes, to use a technical term. It's so forgettable that I actually didn't realise I had revisited it a few years ago. It all came back to me as the movie started.

"Wait," I thought, "I HAVE seen this as an adult. I remember it not being that good, but I don't think it was that bad to make me rant. I wonder if my opinion will change this time around."

My opinion did change, but only slightly. The Devonsville Terror, although a weak horror movie for those seeking actual scares or bloodshed (one or two decent FX moments in the finale aside), has some interesting elements to make it more worth your time nowadays than when it was first released. This is a film bookended by men being incredibly horrible to women, intent on killing them, and every scene in between shows a male population angry at women who don't seem to "know their place", and angrier than they otherwise would be because they are also covering up their fear. After being used to keeping women in their place for centuries, they don't know what to do when faced with individuals they cannot get to fall in line as easily as those who have lived within their community for years. And the evil deeds that these women commit? Simply being intelligent, opinionated, and unwilling to give themselves over to any man who gives them a bit of attention.

There's a saying that even a stopped clock is right once a day (twice if you're not using a 24hr display format). A comparison could be made here. The current conversations, the sense of great, overdue change coming, the problems and abuses that are now harder for people to hide away or excuse, all of these things make The Devonsville Terror a strangely interesting piece of work to view nowadays. But that doesn't mean it will remain that way if viewed again in five or ten years. And I'm certainly not rushing to ever check it out for a third time, although I tentatively recommend others give it one watch.

6/10

You can buy the movie here.

Prime Time: The Monster Club (1981)

An Amicus anthology horror movie in almost every way, apart from the fact that it came along a few years after Amicus was no longer active, The Monster Club is a mixed experience for fans of these films, and fans of the stars involved.

John Carradine plays a horror writer who has some blood drawn from his system by a polite vampire (Vincent Price) before the grateful drinker invites him along to the titular club. There, in between a number of stage acts, he is told three spooky stories. The first is all about a creature known as a Shadmock (played by James Laurenson), the second is a comedic tale about a vampire (Richard Johnson), and the third is all about a village full of ghouls.

Carradine may be playing an onscreen version of R. Chetwynd Hayes (the author of the source material, even if the stories changed a fair bit from book to screenplay form, the latter written by Valerie and Edward Abraham), and there may be some obvious winks and gags for horror film fans (such as a character named Lintom Busotsky, a crude and simple play on the name of producer Milton Subotsky), but it's a great shame that the majority of the film avoids other opportunities for some meta humour. What we get, instead, are some moments that show director Roy Ward Baker doing his damnedest to prove that he could supply entertainment for modern horror audiences who had turned their backs on the comforting bloodshed supplied by the likes of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon, etc. I might find it amusing to watch a song performed by B. A. Robertson, and there's a great gag involving a stripper (although the film is a pretty tame affair with no nudity shown), but it's hard to imagine anyone viewing the film in 1981 leaving the cinema with anything other than a sense of disappointment. I have always had a soft spot for it, but that's because I first saw it as a pre-teen.

Price is as much fun as he usually is, Carradine spends most of his time looking around in mild bemusement (no surprise, considering the strange assortment of masks being worn by the people pretending to be monsters in the club), and the best performance in the three tales comes from Laurenson, playing a sweet and tragic, but also dangerous, creature. Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward are also involved in his story, and both do well enough to make it the most consistently enjoyable one. The second tale, featuring Johnson, is a big step down, with Britt Ekland and Donald Pleasence wasted in their supporting roles, although it's at least fun to see Pleasence given much lighter material in the genre than he was usually given. Stuart Whitman, Lesley Dunlop, and Patrick Magee star in the third, and final, tale. They do well enough, but it's more about the atmosphere, with the main village feeling like a small British counterpart to the location features in The City Of The Dead.

The execution of the material is fairly clumsy, the humour is a lot more childish than viewers may expect (making this a surprisingly okay choice for a family viewing), and it's a far cry from the past glories of the British horror movie industry. Having said that, you get to spend time with some enjoyably familiar faces, the penny-pinching doesn't remove the sheer sense of fun, and there's actually a pretty good punchline to round it all off. It's not a good movie, but it has a charm to it that may lead to you occasionally thinking as fondly of it as I do.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Prince Of Darkness (1987)

A bunch of scientists come together in an abandoned church to investigate a mysterious object that seems to be defying the laws of physics. As the behaviour of the object gets stranger it becomes clear that there may be some higher power (or, more appropriately, lower power) at work.

Arguably the beginning of the end of writer-director John Carpenter's peak period (although he would follow it up with the fantastic They Live, and direct In The Mouth Of Madness before the REAL downward slide began), Prince Of Darkness is a messy film, yet it's also full of great individual moments that retain the power to scare the pants off viewers.

The script also has a number of brilliant ideas, including the clash of science and religion, methods of communication used by those with advanced knowledge, and the behaviour of tormented souls. It's just a shame that a lot of the actual dialogue stinks, with a number of uninteresting characters either trying to over-explain things or just forced to speak in a way that's supposedly reflecting their personality as they deal with the building horror.

But scripts are often the weakest part of a horror movie. It's not the worst crime. Prince Of Darkness could have overcome the poor script if the casting had been better. Sadly, it's the worst aspect of the film. Donald Pleasence and Victor Wong are the best of the bunch, although the former is sadly resigned to acting as nothing more than Doc Loomis in a dog collar. Jameson Parker and Lisa Blount are the central couple that viewers are invited to root for, I guess, and both pale in comparison to previous stars used by Carpenter. Parker, in particular, just feels like a second-rate Tom Atkins, which may make you wish that the real Tom Atkins had landed the role (I know I did). Dennis Dun is a fun presence, until his constant wise-cracking starts to grate during the more intense moments in the third act, and few others stand out, with the exception of Susan Blanchard, doing her best in every scene that she's in, and Jessie Lawrence Ferguson plays one of the creepiest characters to appear in any John Carpenter movie ever. And that's saying something. There's also a decent little role for Alice Cooper, as the mute leader of some strange homeless people who start to congregate around the church.

So we have a poor cast, overall, stuck with poor dialogue. Thankfully, that's not enough to spoil the film completely. Carpenter focuses on atmosphere and moments of real tension, all underlined by another fantastic score from the man, and he still manages to do enough good work to make this a small film that hints at a terrifying bigger picture.

It's not exactly top-tier Carpenter then, to sum it up, but it's also far from his worst.

7/10

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Escape From New York (1981)

This sleek, cool, sci-fi thriller from John Carpenter is the film that really seemed to cement the working relationship between the director and actor Kurt Russell. The two consistently brought out the best in one another throughout the 1980s and this is when it all kicked off (the Elvis biopic was good but also far removed from the rest of the work that they would do together).

Russell has a ball playing Snake Plissken, one of the coolest, grizzled anti-heroes ever to be put on film. He’s asked to rescue the President Of The United States after a flight is hijacked and he reluctantly agrees, not caring at all about the fate of the POTUS but won over by the thought of a full pardon. You see, Snake is a criminal and it will take a criminal to rescue the President because the President is being held in a prison by a bunch of degenerates who want out. The prison is New York itself, walled up many years ago and made inescapable – it’s the place where criminals go to rot.

Escape From New York is just as enjoyable to watch today as it was when it was released back in 1981. It doesn’t matter that the wild future depicted onscreen is now some years behind us (1997), it only matters that this is Carpenter at the top of his game with his favourite actor in the lead role and a supporting cast of top notch character actors: Tom Atkins, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, George ‘Buck’ Flower, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau and Donald Pleasence.

The script, written by Carpenter and Nick Castle, is lean and cool throughout, with Plissken being more a man of action than words. The direction and cinematography is as great as you'd expect from Carpenter during this period in his career, with typically gorgeous work from Dean Cundey, and there's yet another of those classic synth scores accompanying the action - created by the director and Alan Howarth.

It may have been Carpenter's biggest budget at the time but the movie remains a great one to study for those wantting to learn about wringing the most from every dollar. Superb matte paintings, "wire-frame" images of a city created by white tape on a black model, a production design department making numerous trips to garbage landfill sites to scavenge junk they could use for props, every trick in the book was used to ensure that the money is onscreen and that the movie matches the vision of its director.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escape-New-York-DVD/dp/B0002JK73Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1352469724&sr=8-3

Phenomena (1985)

When I first saw Phenomena many years ago I didn't realise that I was watching my first Dario Argento movie. I didn't even realise that it was called Phenomena. You see, when I was about 16-17 years old, Phenomena was available here in the UK in an edited form entitled Creepers. When I picked up the videotape for £3 and took it home to give it a watch all I knew was that a) it had the lovely Jennifer Connelly in it, b) the soundtrack was a mental mix of random metal from someone I didn't know - Goblin - and bits of Iron Maiden and c) it was quite ridiculous but entertaining.

The years have passed and I am older, though not always wiser, and can view the film in a different way now. First of all, I can't really admire Jennifer Connelly as I used to because she's about 14 or 15 in this movie and I'm now far too old for her (though in real life I'll always have a tiny little dream that won't die about me being in with a chance to woo her if only she'd coincidentally bump into me here in Edinburgh). Second, the soundtrack is still a mental mix but I am now very familiar with the great work of Goblin. Third, the film is still ridiculous but just as entertaining in a slightly different way from when I first saw it.

The plot sees Jennifer Connelly as young Jennifer, starting her time in a remote school for girls. There have been a number of murders in the area so Jennifer may want to try and curb her pesky sleepwalking habit. The other girls in the school aren't very nice to her at all but Jennifer soon befriends an entomologist, Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence), who lives nearby and when the professor notices that Jennifer seems to have a way of somehow communicating with insects he starts to think that she could be the one to find out who is behind the murders.

Phenomena, like many of the later films from Argento, is not a wholly satisfying movie but it has moments of style and nastiness to make it well worth a viewing for horror fans. It also has a moment in which Jennifer Connelly calms down a bee and a moment in which she follows an insect to try and track down a killer.

The acting is a real mix. Connelly is quite good in her role, Pleasence is the best of the lot and Daria Nicolodi gets to act a bit over the top, as does Dalila Di Lazzaro. Patrick Bauchau is quite good and there's a smart chimpanzee (though not that smart as, apparently, it took a dislike to the lovely Miss Connelly and, apparently, tried to bite her finger off).

There are also, as you would expect, one or two excellent set-pieces to enjoy as the mystery killer goes about their business. A climax that is as sanity-shattering as it is truly horrific ensures that things at least end on a high note.

I'll always have a soft spot for this movie and it has its fans but it's not a film that I would unwaveringly recommend to any and every horror fan. If you ever have the time and opportunity then do give it a one-time watch and see what you think of it. Just don't blame me if you absolutely hate it.

6/10

Phenomena is available in this excellent Bluray which, be warned, changes to Italian audio every now and again to make use of the most complete print - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Phenomena-Blu-ray-Region-Jennifer-Connelly/dp/B003OCFJ7U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349463645&sr=8-1