Chuck Steel: Night Of The Trampires (2021)

If you have a fondness for the excess of ‘80s action movies, if you spent all your years since seeing Cobra dying to one day use a pair of scissors to cut up your pizza, if you think character development is best shown through varying degrees of stubble, then have I got a treat for you. Chuck Steel: Night Of The Trampires is a stop-motion animated feature that throws around bucketloads of gore, a lot of fun character designs, and pretty much every action movie cliché you could think of. And I loved it.

Unable to keep a partner alive for more than a day, or often just a few hours, Chuck Steel is your typical tough cop who gets results. It all comes at a price though. The nightmares, the lost loved one, the destroyed TV sets every time a news item has him reaching for his gun. But worse things than standard criminal scum are out on the streets now. There are vampires who feed on victims they first get as drunk as possible. Given information about these creatures from the elderly Van Rental, Chuck ends up on a mission to put an end to this race of sharp-toothed, bloodsucking denizens of the dark alleyways and dumpsters. After all, he is the chosen one. Isn’t he?

It takes a team of people to make a movie, I know and understand that, but the many hats worn here by writer-director-actor Mike Mort makes me feel very much at ease in giving him most of the credit for this film, an affectionate spoof of movies that will hit the sweet spot for movie fans of a certain generation (born in the ‘70s/early ‘80s and being able to enjoy the excessive testosterone of the big action movie stars of the big screen while also discovering the pleasures of much lower-budget fare that went straight to VHS). I was hoping to enjoy this, but was surprised by just how much I ended up loving it.

There are things to pick at, including a grand finale that feels bit overlong and overdone (and a bit too reminiscent of a classic Peter Jackson splatterfest, but maybe that it just me), as well as the constant barrage of lowbrow gags occasionally striking the wrong note, but what this gets right . . . it gets way more right than you would think possible. Think Brooklyn 99 mixed with every Dirty Harry movie, and then add a dash of Blade, and you’re close.

Part of me just wants to write down my favourite gags here - the partner who has shot himself, the way Chuck calls someone a lesbian after spending a minute having his advances rebuffed, the many wonderful visual gags - but I know that does not a proper review make. So I will start to praise the stellar voice cast instead.

Oh, the voice cast is headed up by Mike Mort, of course. There’s also a prime role for Jennifer Saunders, and Paul Whitehouse has a supporting role, and a few other people who help out, but the best work is done by Mort, voicing Chuck, Chuck’s boss, and Van Rental, as well as a few others. It is testament to the talent of Mort that I didn’t figure out just how many of the main characters he voiced, and I am as sickened by his talent as I am in awe of it.

The soundtrack works, the plotting is wonderfully on point, but with some great twists to main plot points, and I have to emphasise that the level of animation on display here is absolutely gorgeous, from the craftsmanship of every element to the visual gags scattered throughout every main scene. This is near-perfect, and I genuinely have no idea why I haven’t seen more people rave about it since it enjoyed a warm reception on the festival circuit a few years ago.

It should be available digitally to many people by now, and it certainly is here in the UK, although I have also just bought a special edition bluray to support Mort and co. Check here for a further taster of the film. And then go Chuck yourself.

9/10

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Ghost Stories (2017)

Ghost Stories is a live stage experience, written by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, that I am saddened to have never experienced. It was supposed to be quite terrifying, and I do enjoy being scared witless. Thankfully, although I have no idea how closely this adaptation sticks to the source material, I now have this film version to help contribute to my underwear laundry bill.

Having heard Nyman discuss the long road from stage to screen for this project, it seemed clear to me that the story was one full of classic horror movie genre tropes that everyone knew couldn't just be transferred back from the stage. What was intense and terrifying in a live production would just feel hokey and cliched when placed onscreen. Thankfully, that didn't stop them working hard until we ended up with this, a film that feels both very traditional and yet also, somehow, fresh and lively.

Nyman stars as Professor Goodman, a debunker of supernatural phenomena who is asked to investigate three cases that are believed to offer absolute proof of another world around us. Those three cases involve Paul Whitehouse as a night watchman encountering spookiness in an abandoned building, Alex Lawther as a teenager who regrets the choice of route on his late-night drive home, and Martin Freeman as a businessman who claims to have felt an evil presence in his own home while his pregnant partner was hospitalised.

Yes, essentially a portmanteau film (once the prime stomping ground of Amicus back in the heyday of British horror cinema), Ghost Stories manages to break the problems often associated with those films - a weak link here and there, pacing issues, building and sustaining tension - by weaving details, some subtle and some more obvious, throughout each tale, as well as the material bookending the film.

I always tell people, if I am forced to choose, that my favourite type of horror movie is a zombie movie. Put a zombie in it and I will watch it. Which means I have watched a LOT of awful zombie movies. But the only type of horror movie to really affect me is a good ghost film, and Ghost Stories is certainly a good ghost film. After a fairly light start to the proceedings, the atmosphere starts to build, and the frights start happening, in a way that reminded me of that classic horror story all about the house where nobody had ever survived the night. You know the one? It's a creepy little tale that builds to something quite intense, and this is the cinematic equivalent of that, although there are a multitude of other influences and nods, from The Turn Of The Screw to The Signal-Man.

But for anyone wondering if this would be TOO literary or stagey, or sedate, fear not. There are plenty of jump scares, some very sudden and some coming along as the required pay off to sequences of sustained tension unlike any I can think of in modern horror cinema. There are also some images that will, to use the technical term, freak you the fuck out. And the dread, don't forget the dread. It's the atmosphere of dread that makes the film almost unbearable at times though, seeping through almost every frame once things get going and never letting viewers relax, despite the very occasional moments of humour that provide a fleeting respite.

The writing and direction from Dyson and Nyman is fantastic, which you would expect from the two men who would surely have been so close to this material for many years already, but the performers also deserve praise. Nyman has always been a great presence onscreen, and turns in yet another great performance, but Whitehouse gives the kind of everyman performance necessary to drag viewers swiftly into the first fully-fledged segment of terror, young Lawther adds another great turn to his impressive roster of credits, and Freeman manages to twist his usual perceived happy-go-lucky demeanour into something, well, rather different.

A brilliant, heady brew of the classic and the modern, Ghost Stories is to be applauded for the way it gives fans what they want, even if they didn't realise what they wanted. It's smart, it's steeped in the history of the genre, it's bloody audacious at times (in ways that some might balk at), it freely mixes stylistic touches in whatever way best serves the narrative, it keeps drawing together the main connective tissue on the way to "the grand finale", and it's one of the scariest films I have watched in years.

Highly recommended, and I'll be very impressed if we see a better horror movie this year.

9/10

Ghost Stories is probably a while away from shiny disc form, but keep your eyes peeled for it when it gets a wider release (in cinemas and then in stores).

April Fools: Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000)

The character of Kevin the stroppy teenager was very funny when he first appeared. One of many creations from famous UK TV comedian Harry Enfield, he was an amusing exaggeration of the worst aspects of those turbulent teenage years. Unfortunately, he wasn't as funny by the turn of the century, and this attempt to take the thin gag and stretch it further, into a full movie, stands up now as nothing more than a bit of an embarrassment.

Enfield is Kevin, of course, and Kathy Burke plays his mate, Perry. The two obsess over girls and getting a sex life, and they look to have the best chance ever to impress some lovely young ladies when they're allowed to go on holiday to Ibiza. Unfortunately, Kevin's parents (James Fleet and Louisa Rix) are also along for the holiday. Will Kevin and Perry get to make their dreams come true? Will they get to make out with some young ladies (mainly the two played by Tabitha Wady and Laura Fraser)? And will they somehow manage to convince people that they have the potential to be superstar DJs, just like Eyeball Paul (Rhys Ifans)?

Kevin & Perry Go Large has a pretty good soundtrack, so there's that. But there's really nothing else, with the exception of a brilliant turn from Ifans as the uncaring DJ who strings the lads along while promising to play their song at his club. Director Ed Bye has a career full of TV work (including Red Dwarf, which may hold up as the best thing that he's worked on) but he proves able to take this small-screen work and bulk it up enough for the cinema screen. It's just a shame that he can't do anything to detract from the sheer awfulness of the script.

Remember in Caddyshack when someone dropped a chocolate bar in the swimming pool and everyone thought that it was a floating piece of human waste? Well, this movie has a similiar scene, except there's no chocolate bar involved. It's just a piece of shit (which is a fitting summation of the entire film). Yes, that's the level of the script, written by Enfield and Dave Cummings.

Enfield is almost consistently annoying, Burke is a bit more fun, and I already mentioned how good Ifans is, but there just isn't anyone onscreen that viewers will enjoy spending time with. Fleet and Rix are the most pleasant, but maybe teenagers will disagree with me on that point. Paul Whitehouse has a fun cameo, and Steven O'Donnell gets a couple of good moments as Big Baz, but that's really all of the minor pleasures of the movie covered.

I'm sure there are people who still enjoy this. I am not one of them, however, and recommend avoiding it completely.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kevin-Perry-Go-Large-DVD/dp/B001AMMAHS/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1394127421&sr=1-1&keywords=kevin+and+perry+go+large