MJ Simpson's Cult Movie News Blog

Hardcore: release news and interview

2012-03-05T15:44:00.003-08:00

I was beginning to think that Mark Withers' 2005 porn mockumentary Hardcore: A Poke into the Adult Film Orifice would never see the light of day but I am delighted to announce that Safecracker Pictures will release the film on 16 April. It has been retitled Hardcore: Bare Naked Talent and has a quote from my review on the sleeve!

And while we're in a Hardcore mood, here's a brand new interview with actor Mike Busson who plays the naked German cinematographer in that film, and also talks about his numerous contributions to Stag Night of the Dead.

New interview: Michael Riley

2012-03-05T15:35:00.002-08:00

The producer of Paul Hyett's The Seasoning House talks about the film in this brand new interview. One of these days I'll dig out the interview I did with Michael back in 2008 about Vampire Diary.

Evil Calls - world's longest film review (pt.4)

2012-01-31T13:44:00.000-08:00

See also Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

Here’s an idea which has occurred to me as I write this review. Perhaps Evil Calls is the collision of two separate Richard Driscoll projects. Remember that he announced The Raven before filming Alone in the Dark and then, quite some time later, said that they were the same thing (or rather, that Alone in the Dark was the first film in The Raven Trilogy). The synopsis of The Raven 2: The Devil’s Disciple which is on the House of Fear site suggests that it is actually a film about George Carney. Furthermore it involves him meeting Alister (sic) Crowley which could place the action no later than the 1940s. This is plainly before the George Carney in Evil Calls was even born. It would mean that the events of ‘two years ago’ referred to in this film actually happened more than sixty years ago, which would at least make the hotel décor appropriate but which could, once again, only be explained by placing the entire story in a dimension without the expected rules of time and space. So that sixty years in the woods was actually two years in New York. That would make the ‘George Carney’ and ‘Victoria Jordan’ seen at the end… nope, still doesn’t work. They would have to be the original George Carney’s grandchildren, in which case they wouldn’t have known (and hated) their (great) uncle Vincent.

Unless they are the ghosts of the two children. Ghosts who have aged about thirty years since they died sixty years ago. Would that work? Am I getting close?

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that Richard Driscoll shot a film about George Carney, then shot a film about the Internetters, then finally decided to combine the two by putting all the scenes from the former into a jumpy, scratchy, sepia-tinted form and calling them flashbacks and fantasy sequences. A few weeks’ filming in late 2007, early 2008 to get the extra shots needed for this to make sense (for some value of sense) and Bob’s your uncle. But then again, if the Carney stuff was originally going to be The Raven then why would Rik Mayall, who only appears in NSSF sequences with Driscoll, call the film Alone in the Dark in his interview segment?

I’m trying here, I really am, to find some way of making all the pieces fit. There must be some explanation, something I have missed which explains why the journey from the Winnebago to the cabin varies from two days to no more than an hour or so; why a man who bought a hotel was haunted by the hotel manager’s ghost (and his father!) while staying with his family in a log cabin in the middle of the woods; how images from throughout the woods (and within a tent) are broadcast over the web; why everyone gets killed at the end. There must be some rationale here which correlates the four things we are told about Harrow Woods at various points in the film: that it’s haunted, that it’s cursed, that it was the scene of many murders over the years and that George Carney’s family disappeared without trace. Is the story of the Carney family one of blood and gore (as we are told) or is it a complete mystery what happened (as we are also told)? It seems like Driscoll couldn’t decide whether to make the horror in this film psychological, supernatural or gory and decided to try for all three, sticking them in a blender but forgetting to put the lid on before pressing the big button.

I don’t know how else I can put it: this film Makes No Sense. None at all. It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma and then liberally coated with nonsense and served with a side order of what the fuck? And yet, and yet, presumably Richard Driscoll himself thinks it’s a good film. He put his own money into it (or at least, there are no executive producers credited - where Driscoll gets his money from is one of the great mysteries unless there’s some extraordinary profit to be had in llama farming that the rest of us haven’t cottoned onto yet). The film was advertised in national mags; I don’t know what deal was struck with GoreZone (who promoted the film heavily) but I do know that the inside back cover of SFX doesn’t come cheap. Quite what the financial arrangements were between House of Fear and the publicity company which co-ordinated this advertising is not something I can comment on although I am given to understand that there was a parting of the ways shortly afterwards. The point is that House of Fear doesn’t have any visible backers, investors or partnerships. While Driscoll undoubtedly saved a couple of grand by not bothering with the legal requirement of a BBFC certificate before making this DVD available for sale, nevertheless a lot of money has gone into the production, promotion and distribution of this film. Well, not a lot of money. Not as much money as a proper studio film but certainly more than a film of this sort would normally warrant.

But then the whole business side of things here is screwy. An indie film like this would normally acquire a sales agent, play a few small festivals and then be flogged off to various DVD labels and cable channels around the world at the AFM, Mifed and Cannes. That’s how the indie film business works. Driscoll failed to sell Alone in the Dark for six years and eventually released it himself on his own label, after a couple of screenings in London and Cornwall for cast, crew and competition winners (who were led to believe that the somewhat reclusive Rik Mayall would be in attendance but were ultimately rewarded only with a glimpse of Sylvester Stallone at the premiere of Rambo round the corner in Leicester Square). Did Driscoll ever try to get a sales agent interested? Was this film ever offered for sale? I know that Driscoll was at Mifed in 2001 because he had a bunch of full-page ads in the brochure (for Blade Hunter, Toy Monsters and the still-in-development Harry and the Wizard). Did he spend six years trying to sell Alone in the Dark (and The Devil’s Disciple which, let us not forget, has also been on the shelf for a couple of years now)? Was he unable to sell the films because they’re so rubbish or was he asking too high a price? I ask because, you know, some pretty rubbish films get traded at the three big film markets. Unbelievably poor crap gets bought and sold, just not for very much.

It is wonderfully appropriate that the business/financial side of Evil Calls makes just as little sense as the narrative/artistic side. How and why this film got made and - well, not so much released as allowed to escape - is, to put it bluntly, Fucking Incomprehensible.

One thing that intrigues me is precisely which bits of this were filmed in the December 2007, January 2008 shoot, which is credited as ‘2nd Unit’ on screen. The only definitive information I have comes from the MySpace page of Jaeson Finn who also worked on Doomsday and inferior CBeebies Balamory clone Me Too!. Finn is credited on Evil Calls as second unit art director/concept artist and he gets annoyed when I mention him on my site (a clue, dude: if you don’t want people to discuss your work, don’t write a public blog). He mentions shooting Vass Anderson’s inexplicable scene, the demon/mutant baby thing, Karl’s death scene with the hook and the Celtic cross, Rachel’s head blasted to pieces and the insert of steam escaping from a radiator during the initial ‘seance’. He solves another mystery by revealing that the thing removed from Steve’s mouth isn’t a small tile, it’s a tiny book. That still doesn’t make any sense of course. Few (possibly none) of the ‘actors’ in the death scenes are the original actors; they’re mostly production assistants but to be honest you can’t really tell because it’s all so dark and edited together so fast.

The thing is: none of the stuff mentioned in the preceding paragraph, apart from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em death scenes, has any bearing on the plot. What on Earth is the demon baby thing all about? What has it got to do with anything? What connection does Vass Anderson’s ‘Prof. Jackson’ have with anything else in the film? How does the insert shot of the radiator enhance the seance scene? This is all extraneous stuff which looks like padding, added merely to bump the running time up to 77 minutes.

Despite all the publicity which the BBC and others gave to House of Fear Studios in early 2008, which suggested that the film had been shot in Cornwall, the bulk of the movie was filmed just outside Brighton at ‘Albourne Film Studios’ when Driscoll’s company was still called Metropolis International. This was an early attempt at creating what eventually came to fruition just outside Redruth. Driscoll hired people to construct three film studios and some post-production facilities and allegedly even purchased an old airliner with a view to shooting a film set on an aeroplane. But despite all the time effort and money ploughed into Albourne Studios, all that was shot there was Alone in the Dark and part of SF thriller Blade Hunter which was subsequently abandoned, as apparently was the nascent studio complex. The question is: what prompted Driscoll’s move from Sussex to Cornwall?

Quite apart from the location, there are lots of mysteries and inconsistencies around the cast and crew of Evil Calls. For example, the Inaccurate Movie Database lists David Raedecker (sic) as cinematographer - he was DP on the hilariously awful Inspector’s Casebook short on the Kannibal DVD - but on screen the ‘director of photography’ credit goes to Dennis Mahoney who is also listed as camera operator and gets a third credit as DP/camera operator in the ‘USA unit’ (there wasn’t a separate USA unit - Driscoll simply used footage from an earlier, unmade project). Mahoney was also DP on the American footage used in Kannibal which was, as here, produced by David and Domanic Valentino and may in fact have been from the same unfinished project. Domanic Valentino also gets an ‘associate producer’ credit; his name is consistently misspelled ‘Dominic’ but hey, if it’s good enough for Edgar Allan Poe... Apart from that opening aerial shot of the car (which is being driven on the wrong side of the road, like they do over there) and possibly the witch burning, I don’t think there’s any other American footage in Evil Calls.

Nevertheless, my research indicates that David Raedeker (Brick Lane, Elvis Pelvis and videos for St Etienne and Stereo MCs) was DP on the whole of principal photography: basically, everything except that aerial shot, the witch burning and the inserts of steaming radiators. exploding heads and Vass Anderson’s computer. Raedeker also DPed Ben’s Night In, a short film by John Scotcher who was assistant director on Evil Calls. Raedeker's crew, none of whom receive a credit, included focus pullers Pier Hausemer (who worked on Stardust, Batman Begins and The New Adventures of Pinocchio) and Nicolas Schroeder and clapper loader Richard O'Brian.

There are two credited editors: Pablo Renaldo and Tom Ramsbottom (possibly the online film reviewer of the same name). Bill Alexander, an experienced production designer who worked on Kannibal and plenty of more respectable productions too, gets a ‘production design consultant’ credit here and John Howls was art director. Sound designer David Richmond is another one of the very few Kannibal returnees. Where I’m not telling you anything about these people, by the way, it’s because there’s no trace of them on-line. Although we must always bear in mind that the credits may spell their names wrong.

‘From the special effects creators of The Shining’ is the slogan across the top of the poster and in practice this means Alan Whibley who also worked on Rambo, meaning that he actually had two films premiering simultaneously in London only yards apart on 12th February 2008. Whibley’s other genre credits include Venom, Paperhouse, The Lair of the White Worm, Split Second and Simon Hunter’s Lighthouse. It’s a bit cheeky though, isn’t it, to claim a direct connection with the film you’re unashamedly ripping off? But so few of the Evil Calls crew have any notable credits, even six years on, that I suppose it was all that was available by way of ballyhoo. ‘From the director of Kannibal and The Comic’ wouldn’t really get the punters excited, would it?

Steve Bettles was make-up effects designer although he doesn’t mention Evil Calls or Alone in the Dark on his website, preferring to cite respectable credits like Sleepy Hollow, Farscape and Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. ‘Special effects’ are credited to ‘1st Effects, Richard Roberts, Nick Smith’ and on the House of Fear website we find the following: ‘House of Fear represent the special effects company 1st Effects. The company responsible for the special effects on:- The Shinning, Hellraiser II, Excalibur, Star Wars, Superman, Rambo 4.’

Hmmm, ‘the special effects’ on Star Wars and Superman (they even have the posters on the HoF page)? No, ‘some of the special effects’ is what they mean. ‘A few of the special effects’ or, really: ‘Helping out on a few of the many hundreds of special effects.’ And yes, it does actually say The Shinning! Michael Faherty gets the ‘visual effects’ credit - and also ‘title design’ - but like so many of the crew he has either done nothing of note before or since or he is using a pseudonym. Or his name’s spelled wrong. Editor Tom Ramsbottom gets ‘additional visual effects’ and there’s a ‘practical effects’ credit shared between Conal Palmer (The Mutant Chronicles, Cold and Dark) and Simon Attwood. Make-up supervisor Ameneh Mahloudji also worked on Son of Rambow and The Life and Death of Peter Sellers and is now an item with David Raedeker. Costume designer Fiona O’Conner is probably Fiona O’Connor who also did the rags for London Voodoo.

Rather brilliantly, Evil Calls may be the first film where the on-screen credits are less reliable than the IMDB listing. The ‘second unit’, which should really be called the ‘six years later unit’ (as opposed to the ‘USA unit’ which is the ‘several years earlier on a completely different film unit’) was overseen by Neil Jones - credited as both 1st AD and unit manager - who is not the same Neil Jones that directed Stag Night of the Dead. Neil Johnson DP-ed the extra footage which used make-up by Angela Sims. Fetish model Rebekka Raynor gets an ‘effects stand-in’ credit for being Doreen Carney in the shots of the demon baby being born. Most of the ‘second unit’ footage is effects shots and the ‘special effects make-up’ in this footage is credited to Robbie Drake who also worked on Beyond the Rave and now writes a column for Gorezone.

Meanwhile, among the cast not yet mentioned, Doreen is played by model Jules Wheeler who was also in Dirty Pretty Things. The Carney kids, who are apparently called Lisa and Steve, are played by Keren Hatcher and Jamie Roberts, both of whom must be in their early twenties by now. Leanna Knowles is the ballerina. The naked chicks in the weird washroom scene include porn actresses Amanda Pickering, Amanda Dawkins and Kelly Marie (the May 2001 Penthouse Pet).

One point which is worth making – and making emphatically – is that the general crappiness of a film does not necessarily mean that everyone who worked on it is an idiot or should be ashamed or must shoulder part of the blame. Film-making, at every level, is a collaborative effort and a lot of different people do their job on a film set to the best of their ability: camera crew, sound crew, chippies, sparks, gaffers etc. If specific work is shoddy then yes, there is somebody to blame and you can probably find them in the credits somewhere, but most people who work on a film like this are doing a job. You take what you can get when you’re a freelancer and even jobs on crappy films can be useful in establishing industry contacts with other crew members that can lead onto jobs on decent movies. And hey, it’s a pay-cheque. (That’s assuming everyone got paid, of course. They did get paid, didn’t they, Mr Driscoll? I’m sure there’s no truth in any of the various stories I have heard, is there…?)

The overall crappiness of a crappy film – and I’m sure you have realised by now that Evil Calls redefines the concept of a crappy film to the extent that all films previously deemed crappy must now be considered borderline competent by comparison – usually stems from one or more of three people: the writer, the director and the producer. In this case, that’s Richard Driscoll, R Driscoll Esq and Mrs Driscoll’s little boy Richie. Of course, sometimes a film is also let down by a miserable central performance and certainly Evil Calls suffers by having ‘Steven Craine’ in the role of George Carney. You can’t get away from it: Driscoll is an auteur, solely responsible for all the significant decisions made in the production (and indeed, the release) of this film. Everything about it that’s bad can be laid at his feet but so can, to be fair, the few things that are good, like the casting of Rik Mayall and Sir Norman.

A word on the acting is surely due here because it’s something I haven’t touched on, being too busy documenting the insanity and inanity of the story and the tupenny-ha’penny production values. It goes without saying that ‘Steven Craine’ is awful and that Rik and Sir Norman are marvellous. Rik’s last venture into low-budget indie fantasy was Paul Matthews’ Merlin: The Return which actually had a limited theatrical release in 1999 and of course he can be spotted, absurdly young, in the background of one scene in An American Werewolf in London. Sir Norman was in the 2004 version of Five Children and It and a few years earlier he filmed a cameo for Grant Littlechild’s star-studded indie spoof Cosmic Brainsuckers which has been in production on and off for a decade now. His last actual on-screen role was a non-speaking appearance as a vicar chasing a fly in Expresso, a coffee-themed short from Kevin Powis (The Killin’) filmed in January 2007 when he was 91. After that he was simply too ill to work, his dementia confining him to a care home, although at time of writing he is still alive. But he will never make another film again and I for one would rather people thought of Expresso as his final work, not this embarrassing rubbish, however much he may light up the screen.

Richard Waters is actually pretty good as Karl, especially in his withering put-downs of the more cynical team members: “I hope it’s better than last year. Devil cat my ass.” “Well, that’s one place we didn’t look, isn’t it, Lewis?” Robin Askwith is given nothing to do – I think he has about three lines of dialogue in the whole film – and Eileen is Eileen. Askwith spent the 1970s alternating between cheeky jack-the-lad sex comedies and horror classics such as The Flesh and Blood Show, Horror Hospital and Tower of Evil. He must be pleased that, with the release of Evil Calls, Queen Kong is no longer the worst film he has ever been in. Eileen was ubiquitous in British horror for a few years but this was one of the last mainstream things she did before shifting to more esoteric fare. In the space of three or four years she starred in Alex Chandon’s Pervirella, Elisar Cabrera’s Witchcraft X: Mistress of the Craft, Tony Luke’s Archangel Thunderbird, Jake West’s Razor Blade Smile, Nigel Wingrove’s Sacred Flesh, Kannibal for Mr Driscoll and Cradle of Fear for Alex again.

While I have seen all of those, Eileen’s subsequent horror career has somehow passed me by completely. I’m completely unfamiliar with Machines of Love and Hate, Sentinels of Darkness, Dave McKean’s short film N[eon] or a 2007 film called Messages with Jeff Fahey and Marysia Kay. Is it just that my professional circle of acquaintances and Eileen’s circle have drifted apart? Could it be connected with the British horror revival, given that all the above films – with the arguable exception of Cradle of Fear – either predated the BHR or were influenced by pre-BHR tropes more than the gritty social realism of the burgeoning revival itself? Perhaps these two possibilities are one and the same thing. Anyway, the upshot is that Eileen hasn’t stopped working but her films have stopped making it onto my To Be Watched pile. But Eileen is Eileen and we love her.

The rest of the cast, to be honest, are pretty stiff and in some cases positively awful and there isn't a single convincing or consistent accent anywhere in the film. Most of the actors never did anything before this and many of them seem to have done nothing since. How awful must it be if Evil Calls is your only professional credit? I don’t know which would be worse, telling people you made a film so bad that it still hasn’t been released after six years or telling people you were in a film which took six years to get released and which there is a danger they might then see. Perhaps some of the cast changed their stage names and went on to successful careers as jobbing actors, leaving Alone in the Dark to fester as a guilty secret mysteriously omitted from the bottom of their CV.

Ironically for such a shit film, one of the most disappointing things on this DVD is not the movie itself but the extras which are decidedly sparse. The sleeve promises the following: ‘Rik Mayall Blog, Jason Donovan Blog, Robin Askwith Blog, Norman Wisdom Blog, SFX behind the scenes, Evil Calls trailer, Evil Calls TV spot.’ I don’t know which is sillier: the idea that a short video interview is a ‘blog’ or the idea of Evil Calls being advertised on TV (unless it was some tiny cable channel).

There’s a three-minute interview with Rik Mayall and two-minute interviews with Robin Askwith, Jason Donovan and Norman Wisdom; a three-minute montage of behind-the-scenes footage (called 'set visit' on the menu'); Heads will Roll (called 'Make-up FX' on-screen) which is an interview with Steve Bettles about creating Lewis’ decapitated head and the slit throat seen briefly on Carney Jr in an SSF; plus trailers for Evil Calls, Kannibal and Killer’s Kiss (the retitling of the Driscoll-produced Dennis Nilsen biopic Cold Light of Day), Evil Calls 'TV spot' (a cut-down version of the trailer) and a few seconds of behind-the-scenes footage as an easy-to-find Easter egg. Yet there was so much more that could have been included. Kannibal had a director’s commentary (which was hilarious), a full Making Of documentary (which was fucking hilarious) and the Inspector’s Casebook short film (which was fucking unbelievable). Here we get less than ten minutes in total. Alix Wenmouth (who is credited here as Alex but hey, welcome to the Edgar Allen Poe Club!) handled the behind-the-scenes stuff and there must have been plenty of footage shot. There are certainly some more interviews because they’re on the House of Fear website. So why aren’t they on the DVD?

When the film was released, GoreZone magazine carried a cover-mounted DVD which included the Donovan, Mayall and Wisdom interviews (not called blogs on this disc), the behind-the-scenes montage and a four-minute interview with Driscoll himself. This is actually the short film The Silence of the Llamas directed by Tiffany Holmes for ‘Bump in the Night Productions’ which plays on the front page of the House of Fear website when you click the ‘Meet Richard’ button there. It’s the one where Driscoll says, “If I knew what made a good horror movie, I’d make good horror movies.” Ah, if only. This disc also include trailers for Evil Calls, Kannibal and Killer’s Kiss plus a Marilyn Manson video (‘Sam Son of Man’, which consists entirely of stock footage connected with the Son of Sam murders) and the public domain classic House on Haunted Hill.

But what makes the GoreZone disc interesting is a montage of clips from Evil Calls and Kannibal which plays when you slip the DVD into your player - as this contains two shots not in the film (possibly from the same scene). One shows George Carney and the body (Vincent?) that leans out of the wall at the end. Carney has a bloody mask of human skin - a peeled face, basically - held over his own face and dances around the room before hanging the face on the wall. The other clip shows a pair of feet - presumably Carney’s - dancing on the desk, coming perilously close to knocking the typewriter onto the floor (a fireplace is visible in the background so this seems to be the same room, hence possibly the same scene).

Speaking of GoreZone, that issue included an interview with Robbie Drake about effects on the 2007/08 ‘second unit’ pick-ups which includes a large, clear photo of the body at the end, the one that stacks through a hole in the wall. It’s wrapped in chains, coated in blood and definitely meant to be Vincent. Probably.

Checking the interview clips on the website (look, I’m not calling them blogs, okay, even ironically), the one by Kathryn Rooney - which misspells her name ‘Roony’ - includes the information that the group are all psychology students - which is not something evident from the film itself. Rooney has since gone on to carve herself a career in panto and probably thought that her one, misguided foray into film-making (including her full frontal nude scenes) was dead and buried. Sonya Vine also has an online interview but she gets her name spelled right at least.

Consistency never being a hallmark of House of Fear, whereas the first two clips are titled Alone in the Dark with Anna and Alone in the Dark with Rachel (with the actress’ name as a caption over the picture), the third is Alone in the Dark with Eileen Daly. Now this is interesting because Eileen explicitly states that her character is George and Vincent’s sister. So at least I don’t need to get my head round the whole kids and ghosts thing but what this means is that, let’s see: George Carney has been hiding for the past two years, presumably in the basement of the cabin, and he also has a sister who is never mentioned and who either helped him kill their brother or at least didn’t mind when Vincent and Doreen were killed.

So if ‘Victoria Jordan’ is actually Victoria Carney, what happened to the real Victoria Jordan, the one that Prof. Jackson recommended? Did Prof. Jackson know that Victoria Carney would turn up in the woods? Did he send her? Is she actually a medium? How did she manage that whole swirly supernatural entrance thing? Why does she kill all the students? Reading between the lines of Eileen’s explanation of the plot, George and Victoria live in the woods along with the not-quite-dead Vincent who is kept behind a wall. When the Internetters come calling, George hides and Victoria pretends to be the medium that Karl is expecting but only so that she can have some fun with the townies before killing them. That comes perilously close to making sense, although it only accounts for a tiny fraction of the actual plot of the film of course.

It’s interesting to see Jules Wheeler’s video clip, not least because she seems to be under the impression that her character is named Vivienne when we all know she’s actually called Doreen. “She doesn’t fully understand what’s going on,” says the actress without a trace if irony. Richard Waters, in his clip, observantly compares George Carney to Jack Torrance in The Shining. Really, Richard? You think this is a bit like The Shining? (Or possibly The Shinning?)

Charlie Allen is called ‘Charlie Allan’ in his clip which I suppose makes up for the ‘Edgar Allen Poe’ cock-up in a sort of karmic way. I had wondered whether this was the former National Youth Theatre actor who died young of cancer but my research shows that the NYT Charlie Allen died in 2007 aged 20 which would have made him only 15 when Alone in the Dark was shot, so this clearly isn’t him. This Charlie Allen is still alive and reading this review in horror after somebody e-mailed him to say, “Hey, you know that shitty horror film you were in with Rik Mayall that you thought no-one would ever see?”

There is a second video clip with Rik Mayall, including a visual gag with Driscoll and Askwith and a quite lengthy discussion of his role in the first Harry Potter film as Peeves the poltergeist, which was cut from the finished version. There are also three ‘production blogs’: ‘FX’ (Alone in the Dark with Alan) is Mr Whibley discussing fake blood and how to make gallons of it come through the walls. ‘Production Cam’ is the behind-the-scenes montage and 'Make-up FX' is the Steve Bettles interview.

It seems to me that the biggest problem with this film - bigger than the days being in the wrong order, bigger than the producer's inability to spell people’s names correctly - is simply that there is too much in it. Even after padding out the running time with footage of demon babies and radiators, it’s still very short and yet it has at least three different time zones: the present, two years ago and the 1940s, with only a tangential connection between them all. Actually, it’s four time zones if we count the witch-burning.

In his interview in GoreZone, Robbie Drake says: “It’s a constant work in progress because that’s the way Richard Driscoll works. He’s always rewriting. You never know what’s coming up, he might have another idea or he might see something that he can put in the script.”

There was a script?

But you can see what he means. Evil Calls looks like a film which has been assembled piecemeal over many years (as indeed it was) with new ideas and new bits being added (or taken away) throughout the film. Order changed, context changed, new dialogue added and insert shots, ah, inserted. Frankly, without the whole 1940s hotel malarkey, there’s the germ of a usable story here. Students go into woods to investigate why bloke and his family disappeared two years ago, only to find that the now-insane bloke and his batty sister are still there and determined to let no-one escape their forest alive.

But Richard Driscoll had to add in the whole psychic thing, the whole internet thing, the stuff about the hotel (most of which, by the look of it, then got removed again) and the ghost of the barman which he later decided was both the hotel manager and the hotel manager’s father. Then on top of that he decided that there should be a mutant baby and an old guy looking at stuff on a computer. Good job he released the film when he did - if he’d left it much longer he might have added dancing girls and an Aztec pyramid. And vampires.

Thinking things through, this is the reality, isn’t it? This isn’t two films stapled together (except inasmuch as the ‘USA unit’ footage is obviously from something else). There’s certainly not a coherent rationale that I’ve missed because I’ve been paying more attention to what day it is and the many spellings of the actors’ names. This is just a mishmash created by a man with too much time and money on his hands who loves the process of making movies, however bad the result might be. Everyone has things they enjoy but are rubbish at. You should hear me singing in the shower. But I don’t release my off-key bathroom warblings on compact disc.

Richard Driscoll, I think, loves the process of making movies but doesn’t know how to make ‘a movie’. He doesn’t understand narrative structure. Or indeed narrative. Frankly, I don’t think he’s really sure what ‘structure’ means. He doesn’t understand how a movie is made, only the process of movie-making: he’s all beginning and middle and he doesn’t know how, or when, to end. It’s a bit like the difference between me and young TF Simpson when we get the Lego out. I make a helicopter or a car or a bridge or a fire station and though I may have only a loose plan I can tell when I’ve finished. But TF just keeps adding bricks, long past the point when his creation might have been a recognisable powerboat or crane or space rocket. I think Richard Driscoll makes his films just like that, just like a four-year-old building things out of Lego. I hope he gets just as much fun out of it.

The difference of course is that I don’t exhibit TF’s Lego creations to the paying public, nor do I take out adverts in magazine describing him as ‘critically acclaimed’. (That’s what it said in the ads in GoreZone: ‘A film by the critically acclaimed Richard Driscoll.’ But there's only one film critic who ever writes about him - and I’ve certainly not acclaimed him.)

In conclusion, Evil Calls is rubbish, of course it’s rubbish - but it’s fascinating rubbish. I can’t think of any other films that I could have written a 22,000 word review about. There is just so much here: so many disparate elements (many of them hilariously poorly crafted) with so few recognisable links and connections between them. The scope for speculation and argument, as you can see, is enormous. I urge you to buy this film, no really, I do. Go to www.internetgore.com and buy it now - £12.99, free shipping - then watch it and then come and find me, buy me a pint, and tell me what you think.

I was asked, recently, what constitutes a ‘cult movie’ (as in ‘and the people who make them’) and my definition is that a cult film (or book or TV show or whatever) is one which inspires interest beyond appreciation. ‘Cult’ is nothing to do with how good or bad a film is or how big or small it is or how popular or obscure it is or what it’s about or who made it. A cult film is one where, having seen it, you want to read about it, talk about it, write about it, argue about it, discuss it, dissect it, find out more about it.

In that respect, I believe that Evil Calls is the greatest cult film ever made.

MJS rating: A+/D-

Evil Calls - world's longest film review (pt.3)

2012-01-31T13:27:00.000-08:00

See also Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4

In the basement (which, I note, also has a typewriter), Karl and Anna explore the room or maybe she shows him the room or something. Yes, I’m calling it a basement for the sake of sanity because it’s underneath a building except of course log cabins don’t normally have basements. Unlike the room upstairs, this is fully furnished - if a trifle dusty - with numerous hunting trophies on the walls. Karl lights a candle (not sure why as Anna has a torch and the room seems considerably less dark than upstairs) and they find a ballerina music box.

Okay, time out. I have to say something here. I absolutely fucking hate ballerina music boxes. They are the biggest cliché in cinema, certainly in horror and fantasy cinema. When have you ever actually seen a ballerina music box in real life? Exactly! The only thing worse than a ballerina music box is a ballerina music box in a room which has been kept exactly as it was when a child died/disappeared. One of the reasons why I consider The Silence of the Lambs to be such an over-rated piece of crap (not least because of the sequence where Hannibal Lecter escapes by employing world-class lock-picking skills never mentioned before or since and also by taking advantage of the police suddenly deciding to completely ignore their own advice and treat him as a low-risk prisoner with minimal guard, where was I? Oh yes...) One of the reasons that I hate Silence of the Lambs is because it employs this hoary old cliché: the child who disappeared or was killed and the bedroom left untouched all these years, just as she left it, and when Jodie Foster looks around she picks up a fucking ballerina music box which is Still Wound Up. I hate hate hate this cliché and I remain completely unable to fathom why people think that awful film is some sort of masterpiece.

And if I hate Silence of the Lambs that much, you can imagine what I think about the cut-price Silence of the Lambs rip-off that is Kannibal.

Okay, breathe easy, rant over, waves on the shore, waves on the shore...

I am pleased to report that, although Evil Calls features a ballerina music box, it has not been kept by distraught parents. Well, actually, thinking about what I’m going to write here, maybe it has. Or maybe it hasn’t if he’s not their real father.

Anyway, while Karl and Anna look at the little doll twirling round we are treated to a brief SSF of the two Carney kids, dead but standing up and holding hands, then we jump back momentarily to the basement before another SSF, probably my favourite of all these flashbacks as it’s the most cinematic. As the Carney kids lie in bed, George Carney shows them the music box, the ballerina casting a dancing shadow onto the wall behind them, illuminated by the glow of a flame burning in the palm of Carney’s hand. It’s a lovely image. I don’t understand it, but at least it looks good.

This is followed by a shot of Anna, standing in a trance - there’s no sign of Karl - holding the music box which gradually fills with blood. This isn’t a lovely image, it’s just pretentious.

Another NSSF has Carney, wearing the check shirt that he wears in every scene except the ones in the hotel, walking through the hotel. In the washroom he meets a long-haired woman in a full-face mask and damn me if we don’t have that entire ‘mind the hot taps, aren’t you the manager?’ scene again. The lady in question wears the same as Norman and Rik did, only without a shirt (or bra). The other main difference here, apart from Carney’s own apparel, is that around the room are several naked or semi-naked young ladies, indulging in sexual antics either solo or in pairs.

By the by, do you know how you can tell the difference between pornography and erotica? Seriously. If a woman is completely naked it’s erotica. If she keeps her shoes on - that’s porn. These women, even the naked ones, all wear sexy heels. Oh, and they all have either masks or blindfolds. (Which is kind of curious, as masks and blindfolds are sort of the opposite of each other. A mask prevents people from recognising the wearer, whereas a blindfold prevents the wearer from recognising other people. I think it says something that by this point I’m more interested in pontificating on the social significance of blindfolds than concentrating on a washroom full of sexy, naked chicks.)

As the woman in the suit, bow-tie and white gloves goes through the now-familiar dialogue with a frightened-looking Carney, she pushes him to the floor then removes her jacket while the other women paw and grope both Carney and herself. Then she removes her mask and - it’s his wife! It’s... nope, we still don’t know her name. She’s still just ‘Mrs Carney’.

But the interesting thing here is the woman’s voice. Because according to the publicity, it’s Marianne Faithfull!

I say ‘according to the publicity’ but there is no mention of Faithful on the poster or the DVD sleeve or the House of Fear website, nor indeed is she credited on screen. But Rik Mayall, in his interview, says that the voice is Marianne Faithfull, the IMDB listing (which I wouldn’t normally trust but I’m fairly sure it has been updated by Driscoll or someone in his employ) says it’s Faithfull and the Wikipedia entry created after the film was released (which again I wouldn’t normally trust but I know for a fact this was written by Driscoll or someone in his employ) says it’s Faithfull.

When I first watched the film, when the cast list on the IMDB had no character names and before the Wikipedia entry was created, I doubted that this was Marianne Faithfull. It’s a plummy, posh English accent and I thought it might be Eileen - but it’s not, now that I listen a second time. Well well, Marianne Faithfull. An already strange cast list just progressed one notch further along the bizarre stick.

Now. Now things gets really weird. Now things start to make no sense at all. Oh, you might think that the previous 11,000 words (stick with me - nearly done!) described weird stuff that made no sense at all, but baby we’re just getting started and the night is young.

As George Carney lies on the floor of the men’s washroom in a posh hotel, groped by naked, blindfolded women while his semi-naked wife, also groped by naked, blindfolded women, tells him exactly the same thing that he was previously told by two blokes in the same room... a toilet cubicle door bursts open and gallons of crimson blood cascade out, flooding the room. This really is one of the most extraordinary images I have ever seen in a film. And what makes it even better is that the solitary bloke among all those hot, blindfolded, semi-naked, blood-splashed chicks wrote and directed this himself.

A Freudian would have a field day with this scene. Toilets, naked women, gushing blood: surely this is some sort of menstrual allegory, isn’t it? Well isn’t it?

As the blood flows, the scene switches to colour but only so that we can then, almost instantly, switch to another bloody SSF within this flashback. This is just some shots from Rik Mayall’s previous scene, with Chrissy Walken still doing his stuff on the soundtrack.

Now we watch Carney, wearing his check shirt (which he had taken off in the washroom), being roughly manhandled by masked/blindfolded waiters out in the main ballroom, with masked and blindfolded diners and dancers looking on (or not, I suppose). The waiters throw him into the washroom, which is now clean and empty, and he smashes a glass thing on the wall to get at a fire axe. With this he starts to smash down a cubicle door until he receives a tap on the shoulder, a polite cough and - there’s Rik asking: “Is there a problem with the handle, sir?”

Mayall then gets to spout some enigmatic tosh, once again showing himself to be the best thing in this film by a country mile, ending with the proclamation that, “If love is like a lightning bolt then betrayal - ahahaha! - betrayal is like a thunderclap!” At which point George Carney strangles him while fireworks burst from the urinals.

I really, really didn’t think I would ever type the phrase ‘fireworks burst from the urinals.’

All the above is sepia, leading straight into another bloody SSF of lightning hitting the ground near Vincent and Mrs Carney (the hell with it, I’m going to call her Doreen) as they walk through the forest towards the cabin. Not only are they unconcerned by this near-miss, I also think it’s curious that (a) it’s not raining and (b) the lightning hit the ground despite there being all these trees around. On account of, you know, it being a forest and everything.

Just when you thought that we had seen all the essential imagery we might need, we are presented with a colour shot of a teenage girl dressed as a ballerina and holding a crystal ball. (This may be Carney’s daughter, but as we have only previously seen her briefly in sepia with her hair done different, I couldn’t say for certain.) As we close in on the crystal ball we see, within it (and in sepia of course), Doreen tied to a chair with her mouth taped shut and George behind her. Before he slits her throat, he comes out with possibly the single worst line of dialogue I have heard this decade, expertly enunciated by Mr Driscoll in a display of acting wooden enough to suggest that his ideal role would be Pinocchio.

“You look beautiful tonight,” he tells Doreen (you see how much easier this has now become - I wonder what her real name is), “but like the four seasons, love changes, be it Summer, Autumn, Spring and of course Winter, the coldest time of the year. And like Winter - love grows cold!”

If I live to be one hundred I shall never be able to write dialogue as terrible as that. I mean, Christ, you would think he would at least get the seasons in the right order.

This is all intercut with an SSF of Vincent. Ah, now if you check right back at the start there was an SSF of somebody walking towards the cabin carrying a couple of fish and a net. This, it turns out, is Vincent and we see him finding Doreen, bleeding and dying, on the cabin floor. In a quick montage we get another shot of that female body impaled on horns (presumably it’s Doreen, there not being any other adult female characters in the flashbacks apart from the anonymous chicks in blindfolds), a recap of Carney sitting at his desk while blood pours through the walls and a brief shot of Anna still holding the blood-filled music box.

Then it’s daylight - finally. It’s the next morning and all the team are at the camp, including Victoria but excepting Steve. Rachel asks Anna to come with them because, “there’s nothing for you here,” but Anna says she can’t because, “I can’t explain.” Well, frankly neither can the audience, love. As Rachel, Lewis and James head off towards the Winnebago, carrying their flightcases but leaving their tents, Karl tells Anna that she made the right decision.

Ooh, ooh, here comes, your friend and mine, not seen him for ages, forgotten all about him but he’s back, it’s... the ravenringfirething!

At the Winnebago, Rachel, Lewis and James realise that Steve has the only set of keys. As the vehicle is clearly unlocked, presumably they are far enough away from civilisation to not have to worry about theft, so why weren’t the keys just left in the ignition? What was Steve planning to do with them in the middle of a forest, unlock some trees? More to the point, why has nobody said anything about Steve’s disappearance? And even more to the point, why is it now the middle of the night again? (Or still.) Is it because the journey between the vehicles and the cabin, which initially took two days and later took less than an hour has now averaged out at one day?

Back home, Gary (remember him?) looks at his monitor and sees a steadicam shot of the leaf-covered forest floor (apparently in daylight) so he tries unsuccessfully to contact Karl, then takes a look at another screen showing a map of the woods. Well, I say map but it’s actually just a green window with some evenly spaced tree graphics on it, plus some dots which presumably represent the team. But boy, wouldn’t that have been handy when Rachel was looking for Steve last night?

Gary calls Rachel but speaks with Lewis - the three friends are trekking back through the night-time woods - who angrily asks: “What can you see? ... What do you mean, you thought it was a set-up? People might be dying here and you’re worried about logging-on statistics!”

What is it that Gary thought was a set-up? Why might people be dying? Anyone got a clue? Anyone? Hello? As the camera whips around the trio at high speed for no reason, we cut briefly to a peaceful night-time shot of the camp, where the campfire still burns brightly, but only for a moment because here he comes again...

Ravenringfirething!

Rachel, Lewis and James find Steve’s dead body, although we still can’t see it’s Steve to be honest, but who else could it be? Lewis pulls from the corpse’s mouth a small... something. It might be a tile maybe. It looks ceramic, about an inch by inch and a half, with a black image of a raven and ‘The Raven’ written on it. No-one says anything and this is never referred to so let’s be honest here, this is an insert shot. It’s a pick-up which was filmed six years later in a desperate attempt to connect this film in some loose way to the Poe poem.

Because the truth is that, apart from this one briefly seen but unexplained and indecipherable thing, there are only three ways in which Richard Driscoll’s Evil Calls: The Raven is connected to Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’. One is Christopher Walken actually reading the poem at various points, one is the ravenringfirething and the third is the witch’s name, Lenore. There are no actual ravens of any sort in this film apart from that arbitrary interstitial corvid: ravens are neither seen nor referred to, not even allegorical ones. No-one ever says the word ‘raven’ (apart from Walken). There’s no bust of Pallas, no-one says ‘nevermore’. Because when the bulk of this was shot it was Alone in the Dark and The Raven was a different putative Driscoll project.

“What about Karl and Anna?” says someone. “We’ve got to help them!” says someone else. Yes, what about them? Help them in what way? Are they in some danger? Apart from Steve’s corpse, there’s no indication of any danger and nobody seemed particularly worried that he was missing. In fact, nobody seemed to even notice, not even Rachel.

In another part of the wood, Karl (who has apparently left the camp for some reason) is looking for Anna when he stumbles across a stone Celtic cross, lying on the ground. He hefts it upright and as he does so we get a brief SSF of that witch being burned (in, let’s remember, the mid-19th century). After a brief cutback to Rachel who now seems to be, ahem, alone in the dark, Karl pulls the cross right out of the ground and a cloud of white smoke emerges from the hole. But how could it be stuck in the ground when he has only just lifted it up from where it was lying down among the undergrowth?

The action comes thick and fast now, and some might say that this makes it resemble the film-makers but that would be terribly unkind. There’s a jumble of brief, violent shots. A shotgun is loaded and then blasts Rachel’s head apart (a pretty neat effect). Some sort of hook slashes into Karl’s face and he is dragged, screaming, into the smoky hole from where he pulled the stone cross, his feet kicking ineffectually as he disappears under the earth. James is hit in the stomach with an axe, yet another victim of the off-screen murderer who has suddenly appeared from nowhere.

Lewis passes the previously seen scarecrow and stops. Staring in amazement he says, “It’s you!” before a chainsaw not only lops his head off but in the same movement sends it spinning through the air to land atop the scarecrow, knocking the scarecrow’s own head off in the process.

A scarecrow? In the ... wait, have I already done that bit?

A brief shot of an LP on a record player brings us to George Carney, wearing his check shirt but looking unkempt and unshaven. He is inside but it’s not clear where he is as there is a large stone fireplace and lots of brutal looking tools and weapons on the walls. As the only two rooms we have seen are the cabin and the cabin basement, and as this room is furnished and the walls clearly aren’t made of wood, my guess is it’s the basement although it looks nothing like the basement we saw before with the typewriter and the bookshelves and the hunting trophies.

Anna is pointing a pistol and we have to assume she’s pointing it at Carney although they never appear in the same shot. He runs over to one of the walls and slams his fist into it, smashing a gaping hole in the plasterboard. At this point the image, which has been a sort of blue-ish twilight, both inside and out, ever since Rachel, Lewis and James left the Winnebago, goes briefly into full colour. Carney pauses to light a cigar from a large, iron candelabra that we haven’t noticed before. Then he waves a meat cleaver about and cuts, I think, the head off an upside down body which is now sticking through the hole in the wall (although it wasn’t there when he made the hole). Actually, there is a scream which suggests this body is still alive.

But who’s this coming down the ladder? It’s Victoria Jordan! “Ladies and gentlemen,” says Carney, possibly to Anna who pops up occasionally in non-matching cutaways so is maybe supposed to be in the same room, “let me introduce to you - my little sister!”

The ladder confirms my suspicion that this room is the cabin basement even though it looks completely different to the basement that Karl and Anna explored. “But of course, Vincent,” he continues as he gives Victoria a big screen kiss, “you already know her.” And we see an SSF of Vincent Carney, walking backwards, superimposed over the body in the wall which is now rightside up and has its head attached, the unruly blonde hair suggesting it’s meant to be Vincent.

George says: “We never did like you, but that was our little secret.” Victoria holds up the missing part of the photo that Anna found and says, just in case we were in any doubt about the identity of the fur jacket-wearing woman in the picture: “That’s right - it’s me!”

Grinning like a loon, meat cleaver in hand, George Carney advances on the camera, which is presumably supposed to be Anna’s POV although the lack of any matching between shots of her and shots of him makes this less than certain. As the cleaver comes down...

...Anna sits bolt upright in bed. Karl draws the curtains to reveal a sunny day in New York and says they have a busy weekend ahead. Oh my Lord, she has gone back to that first morning! Is she doomed to live it all over again, endlessly repeating the same rubbish film? Will it make more sense the second, third or fourth time?

I very much doubt it.

The end titles start over a scratched, red-tinted effects shot of a gothic hotel, the one and only exterior of the building that we ever see. Then they cut to, and play out over, a photoshopped group shot of the cast and crew in evening dress (Mayall and Driscoll are very visible at the front). At the end of the titles we are given the blood-red caption ‘The Raven 2: The Devil’s Disciple - coming soon’ and a momentary image of Carney and some sort of demon thing.

Seventy seven minutes after it started, Evil Calls is finally over.

All right: what just happened? What was the actual story here? Well, here’s what I can work out:

A century and a half ago a witch was burned at the stake in Harrow Woods, New England and cursed the place. A large hotel was subsequently built in Harrow Woods where the manager went insane and killed his family then later the hotel was purchased by horror writer George Carney. He took his family to a log cabin in the woods, presumably somewhere near the hotel that he had just bought but didn’t want to stay in. In this log cabin, which included a basement, Carney’s wife and brother Vincent killed his children (who were really Vincent’s children). Carney, driven to a jealous rage by the comments of the hotel manager’s ghost, murdered his wife and brother in return, then cleared up all the mess and disappeared. Two years later, on a date which is not only the anniversary of the Carney family’s disappearance but also the birthday of Anna (the only psychic in the group), five students and their tutor travel from New York to Harrow Woods. Their intention is to spend the weekend exploring the woods, trying to work out what happened to the Carneys, and this will all be broadcast live on the internet via a network of webcams positioned in the trees. Karl, the tutor (who is having an affair with Anna), has secretly invited along another psychic, Victoria, whom he has never met.

Something something something ravenringfirething.

The group split up and are brutally murdered one by one until only Anna is left - who discovers that George Carney is still alive and that Victoria is his sister. Then she wakes up and the whole thing starts again. (Room for one more on top…)

You can’t have failed to notice a big gap in the middle of that synopsis. A gap large enough to drive a Winnebago through. This is because everything from Victoria’s arrival to the quick montage of grizzly deaths at the end is Fucking Incomprehensible. Actually nearly everything up to and including Victoria’s arrival and nearly everything from the first grizzly death to the end of the credits is Fucking Incomprehensible too but at least there is some vague semblance of things happening, however nonsensical or contradictory they may be. It’s that middle act which just defies any ability to understand it. It seems to be a random jumble of images, not helped by a complete lack of consistency in terms of chronology and geography.

Did Richard Driscoll ever have a coherent script? It seems unlikely that the finished film is the one he started making back in 2002. There would be no reason for him to wait six years to film a handful of pick-ups and effects shots. So some of the picture’s incomprehensibility is almost certainly due to the enormous gap between principal photography and completion. I believe there was a finished version of Alone in the Dark (or at least a rough cut) all those years ago but I don’t know that for certain. What I do know is that Evil Calls more closely resembles a film derived from a garbled, confused, Fucking Incomprehensible script than a film derived from a coherent script which has been rendered Fucking Incomprehensible by post-production lasting the best part of a decade. What it resembles most closely however is a joint result: a Fucking Incomprehensible script which has, through extensive post-production, been rendered even less comprehensible. Fucking.

One thing that particularly intrigues me is the whole ‘hotel’ thing because, as I say, we only ever see this building under the end credits. There is no mention anywhere in the dialogue of a hotel yet a whole bunch of flashbacks are clearly set in an opulent establishment full of dinner tables and dancing couples. I surmised at the start of this review that the fake newspaper headlines under the opening titles might be the best clue to the movie’s plot and indeed they are. It almost seems as if the log cabin and the hotel are meant to be one and the same thing and that they are both, simultaneously and without contradiction, the building which exerts a powerful, supernatural influence on George Carney. It really looks like Driscoll wrote a story about a hotel then decided that the present day scenes would work better in a log cabin but never changed the flashbacks. I did wonder, as one does, whether the cabin had been built on the site of the hotel but it’s in the middle of the woods with lots of fairly large trees right next to it and no road anywhere near it. That’s just not a possibility (at least, in our dimension). In any case, the newspapers in the title sequence clearly state that a horror writer has bought a hotel. They don’t mention any cabin.

There is also no relevance whatsoever to George Carney being a horror writer (a dreamweaver, if you will - I’m sorry, I find it very difficult to write about the character without adopting a Garth Marenghi voice). It seems that he is a writer because Jack Nicholson in The Shining is a writer and he buys a hotel because Jack Nicholson in The Shining took his family to a hotel. There, I’ve said it. Evil Calls rips off The Shining even less subtly and more incompetently than Kannibal ripped off The Silence of the Lambs and its sequel. Very amusingly, the film’s Wikipedia entry (written by ‘InternetGore’ who must therefore be either Driscoll or someone working for Driscoll) claims that the film pays homage to The Shining (undoubtedly!), The Blair Witch Project (students filming themselves investigating spooky woods - fair enough) and Reservoir Dogs. I have watched this film twice, the second time taking notes that redefined for generations of film critics to come the concept of ‘excruciating detail,’ and I am completely unable to see any connection between this movie and Tarantino’s debut. There are no gangsters, no-one has colour-coded pseudonyms, no ear gets cut off, the soundtrack is completely devoid of Stealer’s Wheel songs. Seriously, help me out here folks. Has anyone seen this film and spotted a Reservoir Dogs influence? I will happily rewrite this paragraph if anyone can elucidate me.

But we don’t need to go to the Wikipedia entry for unanswered questions, there are plenty of those in the film. Actually, the end credits answer a few, most notably that she’s called Vivienne. Also, the ballerina is not Carney’s daughter and Vass Anderson plays ‘Prof. Jackson.’

Who? I mean… well, I just mean ‘Who?’

Thinking back through the plot (oh God, it’s like watching it all over again!) and eliminating all the other characters I can only surmise that this is the old guy with the PC, who never says anything and whose face we never see. Vass Anderson, who was in both The Comic and Kannibal, is an old, white guy and so that must be him - there are no other elderly people anywhere on screen apart from dear old Sir Norman (unless there’s a few extras at the back of the witch-burning mob). So that means the old guy is called Professor Jackson. If I recall correctly, when Gary and Karl were discussing how neither of them has actually seen Victoria before, Prof. Jackson was mentioned as the colleague who had recommended her. But that’s it - just one passing reference. As Victoria turned out to be trouble - possibly a supernatural entity, possibly a murderer, possibly not the real Victoria Jordan - are we to take this as evidence that Prof. Jackson set up the whole thing? Are they, indeed, related? Did he orchestrate this bewilderingly complex sequence of events as some means of disposing of his colleague Dr Mathers? If so, it’s the worst murder plan in cinematic history because even American cops should have no problem investigating the disappearance of six people during an event which was broadcast over the web.

And of course, Victoria doesn’t kill Karl, does she? Although she probably kills everyone else. That could be her blasting Rachel with a shotgun, that could be her lopping Lewis’ noggin off with a chainsaw (compare his “It’s you!” with her later “That’s right, it’s me!”), it could be her who gets James with an axe (poor old James, he had absolutely nothing to do; apart from criticising Lewis’ anachronistic taste in music in one short scene inside the Winnebago, he barely spoke). It is undoubtedly Victoria who kills Steve (in some unspecified way) and presumably she then leaves that little thing in his mouth. But Karl is dragged into the smoking pits of hell by a hook when he removes a stone cross that was blocking up the gateway to the netherworld. That couldn’t be Victoria’s doing. Could it?

Let’s face it, those final gore-shots - most of which were filmed during the Christmas 2007 shoot - make no sense. Why are the team killed? Why indeed do they split up? Why does not one single person mention Steve’s disappearance?

Then there’s the whole question of the relationship between George Carney and the woman calling herself Victoria Jordan. He says she’s his little sister. Look again at his dialogue in that final scene: “But of course, Vincent, you already know her. We never did like you, but that was our little secret.” Perhaps I’m missing something but unless Carney’s sister is a brand new character introduced two minutes from the end without explanation, the only other way to read that is that the person in the check shirt in the final scene, smoking a cigar and waving a meat cleaver around, is Carney’s son. Am I right? Is that how you read it? No-one else in this film has a sister (that we know of). There are no other siblings, certainly none who know Vincent Carney - and know him well enough to hate him. And if that was actually George Carney’s sister then it would be Vincent’s too.

But that can’t be Carney Jr all grown up because he was only a kid two years ago (as was his sister). Plus of course we saw them killed: the girl was drowned in the bath, the boy had his throat slit. But then again, we had an SSF of the two standing there, holding hands: she was dripping wet and his shirt was bloodstained. Are these their ghosts? After all, Victoria’s arrival was a supernatural affair. But even if they are ghosts they are still about thirty years too old! My brain is starting to itch.

Time and space. Time and space. Another dimension. It’s the only explanation. A dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Karl Mathers and his students just crossed over into… the Fucking Incomprehensible Zone.

Another thorny problem is working out in what decade the flashbacks take place. We are repeatedly told that the Carney family disappearance was two years ago (although we are also told that the Internetters have been doing this for both three and four years and that Saturday is the day after Monday). But when are the scenes in the hotel set? I’ve called them flashbacks - SSFs and NSSFs - but they’re really dream sequences or fantasy sequences I suppose, although they are still presented like old film. The palm-bedecked opulence of the place, the dinner suits and evening gowns, the obsequious staff in the washroom and especially the big band music suggest the 1940s, give or take a decade. But of course the nature of posh hotels is that they tend to look old-fashioned even today and there are still plenty of older couples who like to jive to a bit of big band boogie.

Is it significant that both the Carneys and the Internetters drive a car from around that era (possibly the same one)? Surely there must be some relevance in Lewis’ penchant for Glenn Miller and his ilk. But what? What does it all mean? Let’s face it, in a film which shows us people in 18th century clothes burning a witch and assures us that it happened in the mid 19th century, how can we use any on-screen clues to determine the era in which a scene takes place?

Continue to Part 4

Evil Calls - world's longest film review (pt.2)

2012-01-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

See also Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4

Suddenly - and I mean, suddenly, as in mid-sentence - we cut to Anna sitting up abruptly in bed as Karl opens the curtain to reveal a New York skyline. This is a proper flashback in that it has sound and colour and characters from the actual film but it is completely inexplicable why we have suddenly flashed back. It doesn’t seem to be sequential for Anna - she hasn’t jumped in time and space. Or has she?

This seems to be the morning of either Saturday 19th October or Sunday 20th October because Karl, who is married but having an affair with Anna, says that his wife is away for four days and will be back on Tuesday. Anna would prefer to spend more time alone with Karl but he says, “What about your surprise birthday trip?” I’m trying to work out some sort of timeline here. If they drive out to Harrow Woods on Monday, presumably the announcement and seance scenes were on Sunday. But as Karl says he has “spent a long time setting this one up”, the very first scene of Gary telling Karl, which seemed to be the same day as the announcement, must have been well before that, even though Gary and Karl wear the same clothes in both scenes.

So anyway, while Karl fixes breakfast, Anna gets out of bed, gives us all a bit of full-frontal nudity and goes into the shower - where she is strangled by George Carney (in his red check shirt) as the water from the shower rose turns to blood. Intercut with this is another silent sepia flashback (hereinafter shortened to as an ‘SSF’) of the previously seen mutant/demon baby puppet being delivered by caesarian section while Mr Walken recites on the soundtrack.

As we recoil in horror - Anna sits up abruptly, screaming. Only this time she is in a sleeping bag in a tent with Karl. So, let me get my head round this. She wakes up abruptly from a dream that it’s two days later and she’s in the woods, then when that reality turns into a nightmare, she wakes up abruptly again and it is two days later and she is in the woods. Now do you start to see why I believe this all takes place in another dimension where time and space hold no meaning? I mean, the bit with George Carney and the blood in the shower must be a dream, but that means she wakes up abruptly in a dream from being awake round the campfire, mid-sentence. Perhaps she’s narcoleptic.

And while we’re at it, won’t tomorrow morning be Tuesday, which means Karl’s wife will be back home and find he’s not there because he’s screwing some other woman in a tent in Harrow Woods?

So anyway, Karl and Anna go back to sleep and a long-shot shows the group’s tents - right next to the log cabin! So is this the next night, when they finally reach the cabin? Is it Tuesday night? Have we cut out a whole day of their foresty adventures? Who cares because here’s the ravenringfirething again!

All this becomes both clearer and more confused with the next scene of Rachel and Steve flirting in the woods which is captioned ‘Saturday October 22nd’. Just to saving you checking, let me remind you that the gang’s arrival in the woods was captioned ‘Monday October 21st’. Now I think I know what has happened here. I suspect that everything from Gary and Karl announcing the weekend’s venue through to Anna’s spooky ability to know something that wasn’t in her pack took place on Friday (which is, you know, the normal day to start a weekend) and that the flashback to waking up in the apartment was actually that morning. Friday morning; so Karl’s wife goes away Thursday evening, comes back Tuesday morning. She’s away for four whole days during which Karl and Anna can screw in the woods surrounded by their chums.

And I think all this would have made some sort of sense if Friday’s date had been 21st October. In the campfire scene, Karl specifically states that the Carney family came out to the cabin on 21st October (despite the pre-credit sequence showing them doing it on 23rd October) and the ever-alert Rachel pipes up “That’s today’s date.” I’m trying to get my head around this and how it might have been caused if some captions were written by somebody who realised that the same date in different years falls on different days of the week - and other captions were written by a moron. But my brain is starting to itch and it’s simply much, much easier to accept the ‘alternative dimension’ theory. In this world, it is perfectly possible for Saturday to follow immediately from Monday.

This temporal anomaly also has the advantage for Karl that, although Mrs Mathers is only out of town for four days, he apparently gets a full week to screw Anna.

So on this sunny morning in Harrow Woods, with none of the others around, Steve and Rachel come across a Blair Witch rip-off which has no apparent connection with anything. “What the hell is that?” gasps Steve, pointing at a life-size figure made from sticks and dressed in a shirt and hat. “Just a scarecrow, numbnuts,” retorts Rachel.

A scarecrow. In the middle of the woods. Right.

Meanwhile, Lewis is listening to 1940s big band music in the Winnebago, although presumably this is off CD rather than 78. Steve thinks it’s rubbish. (I’m very confused between Steve and James, to be honest. I thought this was Steve but Rachel called the other fellow Steve. It would help if either character had, well, a character.) They both set off into the woods with Anna and Karl who assures the others that they will bump into Rachel and Steve “on the way”. Which seems remarkably confident, given that they’re just walking through the woods, not following any paths or anything.

In fact, they don’t bump into Rachel and Steve because that couple reach the cabin first. That’s the cabin they were camped next to last night, which could not be easily reached from where the car was, although there are now no tents next to it and the other four will reach it in the next scene, having just set off from the Winnebago which is parked next to the car.

The cabin has a wheelbarrow and a pair of old training shoes outside and a child’s tricycle inside. It apparently has only one door and one small window. For no apparent reason, this and the previous Rachel/Steve scene are shot in that irritating speed-up-slow-down way that was popularised by Channel Four medical shitcom Green Wing. It is as pointless and annoying here as it was there, although Evil Calls is considerably funnier.

Ravenringfirething!

Now, remember that magic webcam that allowed Gary to see Anna on his computer during the non-seance? Well, there’s obviously a bunch of them around. We now get some shots of a mysterious old guy sitting at a desk. He wears glasses and a striped tie but we never clearly see his face. He switches on his PC, immediately bringing up the website of the incorrectly apostrophised ‘Internetter’s Birthday Club’ which has small portraits of all six people and a large window showing them walking through the woods. Not only is this an impossible image, unless there are magic webcams in the trees, but these scenes of the old guy and his computer - which presumably aren’t flashbacks on account of he is watching what is happening right now - are fucking sepia! What is it with this film? Nobody has used this much sepia-tinting in a film since 1902. The old guy never says anything, we never see his face, he never appears again after this scene and there is absolutely no indication of who he is or why he might be relevant.

When Karl and company reach the cabin, Anna opens the door and Rachel falls out, pretending to have an axe in her chest. The others think this is a hilarious gag but Anna is upset and the old guy observing on-line just watches in silence. It’s quite a clean-looking axe, not a rusty thing that has been sitting around for two years. There is no indication of where Rachel found it.

The old guy with the PC also watches Rachel and Steve talking in a tent - eh, where did that come from? A moment ago they were in the cabin and there were no tents. Perhaps this confusion has been caused by inserting a shot of the tents next to the cabin which should have gone in the film later on. Perhaps they should have shown the tents at some sort of stage one camp before they were packed and moved on to the cabin. But that wouldn’t fit with what we have just seen: four people walking easily from the vehicles to the cabin, establishing that the two locations are not too far apart, certainly not two days’ walk. Ah, but if time and space are warped in this reality, it could have taken two days to reach the cabin which is now only half a mile or so away.

Anyway, there must be two magic webcams inside Steve and Rachel’s tent because the conversation, as viewed on the old guy’s PC, is perfectly edited: shot/reverse shot. Steve is as sceptical as Lewis but Rachel is dealing Tarot cards and believes in all this spooky stuff. Except - and I think this is a very important point worth making - no-one has yet mentioned anything specifically spooky. All we have is the location of a disappearance (not even a confirmed murder). It’s all very well for Lewis to say, “These woods don’t look very haunted to me,” but no-one has suggested they are haunted. Apart from Karl’s little tale about a witch being burned and cursing the place, we have had no indication what the supernatural aspects of the location actually are. There has been lots of talk about who believes or who doesn’t, but nobody has discussed what it is they’re actually meant to be believing in.

I mean, there are lots of paranormal things happening, like the cabin being both next to and a long way away from the road at the same time, people waking up suddenly in dreams/flashbacks and of course the magic webcams. But I don’t think those are the things the characters are talking about. Although in the next scene James does indeed set off into the woods, clutching three or four webcams, announcing that he is going to “place the cameras around the woods.” Rachel asks Anna, who has just gone inside her tent, if she’s coming out but Anna says no she can’t or won’t or something.

Ravenringfirething (again).

That night, Karl spots something among the trees. As the others (apart from James, who may still be off somewhere gaffer-taping webcams to branches) join him, a swirling visual effect solidifies into everyone’s favourite British horror honey - Ms Eileen Daly! Wearing a short fur jacket and bright scarlet lippie, she greets ‘Dr Mathers’ (confirming a suspicion that he is an academic and the others are his students, although this is never specifically stated and they all appear to be about the same age). He is surprised to see her there although he has just been talking to someone on his mobile, asking where she has got to. Eileen is Victoria Jordan, a medium who promptly diagnoses Steve as having a headache and, when she shakes Anna’s hand, has an SSF of the grimoire baby-book and the demon-mutant-baby-thing being born.

This is followed by a brief, supposedly comic interlude in which Steve, clutching a microphone and talking to a handheld camera, repeatedly tries to introduce himself to the on-line viewers. Every time he stumbles over his words or loses his thread, the image goes snowy with static and wobbly for some reason. Why? Either the camera is still on or it gets switched off. What sort of video camera makes the image snowy and wobbly every time the person on screen pauses?

Meanwhile, Anna is accusing Karl of having an affair with Victoria although he claims he has never met her before and that she was recommended by a colleague at the university. “She’s a psychometrist,” he explains. “She picks up psychic vibrations by touch.”

Karl then tells Anna and Lewis (who has come to mock) that he doesn’t want anyone, “tipping Victoria off about the history of the wood.” Erm, perhaps that would have been worth mentioning before she turned up. In any case, he’s assuming that Victoria hasn’t bothered doing any research into Harrow Woods before heading out there for a weekend of ghost-hunting with a group of complete strangers. Either this place is famous for the ‘many murders’ committed there since 1843 (when witch-burning was still being practised in the USA, apparently) and there are accounts on-line of the Carney family’s disappearance two years ago - or this is just an ordinary bit of forest. Make your mind up!

Back home, Gary is watching Topless Babes with Big Guns again and either his PC monitor has a really weird shaped screen or this footage hasn’t been properly matted into the shot of the computer. He flips over to a live feed from a magic webcam, framed in another thing that looks like a home edit suite programme (the webcam image is black and white, which makes a pleasant change from sepia). He hears Karl tell Rachel: “There’s an energy field around the camp. Frankly I don’t know what it is.”

Next we have Anna talking to camera as Steve did earlier, except she is plainly holding a different microphone. “Hi! I’m Anna and this is my birthday weekend,” she says, grinning like a Spice Girl. “So - what will it entail? Well, we’re going to take you on the journey of a lifetime. So if you like to be scared - and I know you do! - then Stay Logged On!”

It’s not clear that Gary is watching this clip, which begins with the obligatory wobbly snow (boy, they need some better cameras!) until we cut back to him. But wait a minute, hasn’t Anna been increasingly withdrawn and miserable ever since they got there? She was looking forward to spending four days shagging her professor while his wife is out of town and instead she has had to travel into the wilds of New England with four other people, sleeping in a small tent, having weird flashback nightmares and most recently facing the possibility that the man who is cheating on his wife with her is having yet another affair behind both their backs. Why the hell is she suddenly so perky?

Gary’s next port of call is the front page of ‘The Internetter’s Birthday Club Website’. Still not grasped that whole apostrophe thing, have we? Mind you, we should probably start with something simpler like which day comes after Monday. Anyway, this front page is black except for the title, a drawing of Vincent Price and an audio clip of somebody doing a half-hearted Price impression: “Do ghosts exist? Can we talk to the dead? Join us tonight at midnight, the witching hour, for live psychic experiments from Harrow Wood.” (It’s definitely ‘Harrow Wood’ here, not ‘Woods’ as before.)

Then Gary flips back to the edit-suite webcam thing where he sees Victoria and asks Karl, via a microphone, who that is. I guess Karl must have a radio ear-piece on, waiting for Gary to ask, because he responds immediately, explaining that it’s the medium. So wait, neither of you two thought to actually find out what this woman looked like before inviting her to join the team? And Karl, let’s remember, is surprised that Victoria found them (she says, “I’m psychic, remember?”) so presumably he invited her without giving her a map of how to find the infamous cabin which is well-documented on the web and only a short walk from the road.

My brain is starting to hurt now. I’m not even going to try and guess what Karl means when he says that he has tried to keep Victoria’s involvement a secret as long as possible, “otherwise the experiment won’t be worth a candle.”

After a brief scene of Victoria flirting with a nervous Steve who is busy putting up more cameras, Anna announces that she’s not ready to do a seance but when Victoria offers to do it instead, Anna suddenly agrees. As before, this is not a seance by any accepted understanding of the term. What we get is an effects shot which is meant to show Anna’s head shaking about at incredible speed while the others walk around behind her. This is achieved by the actress shaking her head quite fast while everyone else moves i-n-c-r-e-d-i-b-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y then speeding up the footage. Unfortunately it doesn’t work because it’s not at quite the right speed and everyone still looks as if they’re walking a bit too slow.

Also, there seems to be some confusion among the actors over whether they are meant to be walking forward or backwards.

While this ‘seance’ happens, we see an SSF of Mrs Carney and her brother in law killing the two Carney Children, who are about twelve or thirteen years old I would say. “Come to Daddy,” says Richard Askwith. “Come to your real daddy.”

A quick ravenringfirething and then it’s Sunday 23rd October - but only just, as the caption says it’s 12.01am. Gary tells Karl, “We’ve got action. People are logging on in their thousands.” Rachel and Karl both do little to-camera pieces like we saw the others do but as Gary watches Karl on his edit-suite thing (it’s clearly not from one of the tree-webcams as it’s moving, handheld footage) suddenly the connection is terminated. We know this because the image of Karl disappears - instantly; none of your wobbly snow now - and is replaced by a red caption that says ‘connection terminated.’

Possibly my favourite moment in the film is a shot of Gary trying to restore the connection by banging the side of his monitor. You can’t blame young Mr Donovan. In his shots he’s looking at a blank screen and he has been asked by the director, Mr Driscoll, to react as if he is watching video footage of Karl which suddenly disappears. Donovan has obviously assumed that this video footage was full-screen, so when it vanishes there’s every possibility that it’s a problem with the monitor. Although it must be said that most people would check the leads rather than just bang the side of the thing. This isn’t a 1960s television set.

But Jason Donovan has been made to look a fool by whoever designed the edit-suite screen with the video feed within a window. When the ‘connection terminated’ notice appears, in a reverse shot probably filmed months after Donovan had shot his scenes, the rest of the screen is fine. And yet we still see Gary, allegedly a computer whizz, attempting to restore a lost connection from a distant webcam by banging the side of his monitor.

Round the campfire, everyone is confused because Victoria has disappeared. For some reason Steve is the only one who goes to look for her and, when he finds her, she seduces him. Meanwhile, inside the cabin, Anna is wandering around with a torch (when and why did she go in the cabin?). She is sprinkling some sort of powder on the ground and then notices something under the dust that covers the floor.

When next we see her she is climbing down a ladder into a room full of dusty furniture and bookshelves. It took me some time to realise that this is meant to be a secret room underneath the cabin so presumably in the previous scene she found a trapdoor. That might have worked better if we had actually seen that she had found a trapdoor.

Exploring this room (which we can recognise from the last SSF), she picks up a George Carney novel, Murder at the Carlton. The blurb, underneath the previously mentioned Garth Marenghi author photo, begins: “Take three people, the husband, the wife and the lover and then mix them up with jealousy, murder and mystery.” So Carney’s publishers didn’t bother proof-reading his jackets or they gave the job to someone with no grasp of punctuation as the arrangement of commas in this sentence makes it read as if there’s six people involved.

Another SSF - actually, it’s not silent, it has big band music playing - shows us Carney plus wife and brother sitting around a table in a ballroom while smartly dressed couples dance. As the other two chat over-amiably, Carney broods and glowers, smoking a cheroot. This is the best bit of acting I have ever seen Richard Driscoll do, probably because he is not called on to speak.

Back in the room under the cabin - where the soundtrack has inexplicably changed from Christopher Walken to a 1940s female vocal - Anna finds a torn half-photo showing Carney and Vincent in the forest. Back in the sepia dance hall, the illusion is shattered when George Carney speaks. Even though we can barely make out what he says (the sound mixing is abominable), two things are rapidly evidently: George Carney is being nice to his two companions and Richard Driscoll still can’t act. They all drink a toast of champagne and then Mr and Mrs Carney get up to dance.

In the gentleman’s washroom of this establishment, as Richard Driscoll straightens his tie, who should come in but Sir Norman Wisdom - and instantly the film raises itself into something new, more interesting and more entertaining. Say what you like about Driscoll as actor, writer and director but he actually has some ability as a producer because casting Norman Wisdom was exactly what this film - or at least, the film he was making when he shot these scenes - needed. If only he would stick to producing instead of persisting in his tragically misguided belief that he can act, write or direct.

Now here are the basics of the Norman/Driscoll scene. They are alone in a large, wood-panelled gentleman’s washroom: basins at one end, a large mirror above them; toilet cubicles at the far end; marble urinals along one wall; door directly into dance hall opposite them. And a few potted palms in the corners. Both gentlemen wear evening dress. Sir Norman also wears white gloves and adopts his classic pose: slightly hunched, elbows bent, hands out front, pointing together but one slightly higher than the other. You know how he stands - the servant, ready to help in an instant if he is only told what to do. In fact, two things have just occurred to me. First, this is exactly the same pose that C-3PO tends to adopt - eager but subservient - and second, this may stem from Norman’s early success as an army boxer. He says in his brief interview on the disc that his comedy career started when he was shadow-boxing in an army gym, having attained some degree of success as a flyweight pugilist, and decided that he should let his imaginary opponent get a few blows in. Think of how he stands: all he would have to do is clench his fists and he’s ready for the ring.

Anyway anyway, Norman (I’ll call the unnamed character Norman) warns Carney about the hot taps but says he would know that anyway. When Carney points out that he has never been to this establishment before, Norman responds that he is certain that Carney is in fact the manager. Norman comments on Carney’s beautiful friend and, when told that she is his wife, again responds with incredulity, sure that the other gentleman at the table must be her husband. Carney assures Norman that the lady is his wife and the other man is his brother. Norman says they would make a lovely couple.

Now here’s the clever bit (or interesting bit or bizarre bit, depending on what mood you’re in). As Carney turns again to the hand basin, a white-gloved hand rests on his shoulder only this time it belongs to Rik Mayall (whose character I will call Rik). Carney and Rik then go through exactly the same dialogue as Carney and Norman did a moment ago. Well, not exactly the same. It’s clearly the same script but the interpretation is different and it’s actually a fascinating opportunity to directly compare two very different acting styles.

Mayall and Sir Norman play essentially the same character, in the same scene, speaking the same dialogue to the same actor playing the same character, shot by the same director and cameraman. Yet the two scenes are radically different. It’s fascinating. Even if you don’t want to sit through a Richard Driscoll film, you should buy the disc and just watch these two scenes (assuming nobody puts them on YouTube in the meantime). They start at 50 minutes in.

Rik looks dapper and handsome, his hair slicked back, like the sophisticate that Richie from Bottom always imagined he was. Where Norman was meek and humble, Rik is unctuous to the point of oleaginity (if there is such a word). Like Sir Norman, Mayall is able to do wonders for both the part and the film as a whole. Quite apart from the remarkable contrast between the two actors playing the same role in consecutive versions of the same scene, one can also compare and contrast Mayall with Driscoll. And it’s painful to behold.

Mayall is an actor who can evidently work without a decent director (as indeed is, or at least was, Sir Norman). Driscoll is a lousy actor who is directing himself. Watching these two extremes of talent and ability actually working together is just extraordinary. (I say ‘extremes’ but obviously there are better actors than Mayall and worse actors than Driscoll, although I only know that because I’ve seen Kannibal.)

Both scenes are shot in sepia (of course) with fake scratches and a juddery image, just like all the SSFs. It’s only with this longer scene, helped by the wooden panels in the background presenting more consistent tones than the forest, that we can see quite how bad the actual video image is here. I thought, at the start of the film, that some degree of pixilation had been employed in the sepia sequences (which would completely contradict the whole point of making them look old) but I think this is actually just video artefacting. If I didn’t know I had put a DVD in my machine, I would think I was watching a VCD because the quality is so poor. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was a VCD although I don’t think you can fit a whole film on one VCD so it’s probably just some technical cock-up in post-production. Whatever, it looks bloody awful.

Nevertheless, Sir Norman is great, Rik Mayall is great and their scenes - well, their scene - is the highlight of the film. It doesn’t make any more sense than the rest and in fact it makes less sense than some parts, but it’s genuinely entertaining and interesting. There is no indication of who Rik and Norman actually are, other than that they appear to be an employee of the hotel (I assume it’s a hotel from the newspaper headlines in the title sequence, though this is never stated). In his interview, Rik says that they play the same character and this is what I have also been told by people involved with the film. Yet when a synopsis of Evil Calls, written by Driscoll himself, appeared on Wikipedia a few weeks after the DVD was released, the two characters were described thus: “Rik Mayall plays Winston, a menacing spirit of a former hotel manager who tricks writer George Carney into killing his wife. Norman Wisdom plays Mayall's father, who also appears to guide Carney in amoral ways.”

Around the same time, character names appeared on the film’s IMDB listing: Sir Norman as Winston Llamat and Mayall as Winston Llamata Jr. The joke surname is obviously a reference to Richard Driscoll’s llama herd - no honestly, he owns a herd of llamas - although it’s amusing that whoever added this to the Inaccurate Movie Database couldn’t actually make the surnames consistent.

There is, it must be stressed, absolutely no indication that the characters are hotel managers (their claim that they think Carney is the manager suggests that they are anything but). And there is even less indication that they are father and son. If you check out the Rik Mayall interview on the DVD or the website, he not only specifically states that he and Sir Norman are playing the same character but also describes the character as “a barman named Winston.” So if Rik Mayall can’t tell that the character he is playing is meant to be the ghost of a hotel manager, how are the viewers supposed to determine this (probably fairly crucial) piece of information?

At the end of Rik’s scene, Carney turns back to the hand basins and Rik disappears, in the sense that he is not reflected in the mirror. This is deliberate and actually works really well. What Carney sees in the mirror instead is his wife and brother walk into the room and start groping each other, the wife topless as her strappy evening gown is pulled down to her waist. Of course, when Carney turns to look, he is alone in the room. And when he checks the main hall, his wife and brother are still sat at the table, fully clothed.

From here on in, things get even more confusing - which at least confirms the old adage that anything is possible.

After a very brief shot of Anna in the cellar, we have another non-silent sepia flashback (NSSF, I suppose) of Vincent and Mrs Carney in bed together which merely confirms two things we already knew: they are having an affair and he is the kids’ father. Although one thing we still don’t know is Mrs Carney’s first name! This leads into the aerial shot of the car from the pre-credits sequence (complete with young Mr Walken starting his poetic recital from the top again) and a scene inside the car where Vincent says he fancies a spot of hunting in the forest and taunts George for never being able to kill anything.

Another momentary shot of Anna leads into a brief scene of Rachel looking for Steve in the woods and finding Victoria instead. Meanwhile James is watching porn on a laptop (one scene looks like it might actually be footage from Kannibal) but he is interrupted by Karl who hasn’t seen Anna for two hours “since she went to the log cabin to prepare for the seance.” Hmm, I’m just wondering... have you tried looking... in the log cabin? Unless she pulled the trapdoor shut behind her and somehow swept the dust back over it from underneath, she shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

A steadicam shot through the woods shows us a dead body too briefly and obliquely to identify the person but I’m guessing it’s Steve as (a) Rachel was looking for him, (b) he was last seen with Victoria who is surely up to no good and now seems to be alone, and (c) he and Lewis are the only two characters we haven’t seen in the past ninety seconds or so.

In the cabin (good place to look!), Karl finds Anna in a trance, sitting on the floor, endlessly typing ‘DEATH’ on a manual typewriter. He shakes her awake and she assures him, “It’s here, Karl. The secret to what you’ve been looking for. It isn’t hokey-pokey like the past, it’s real.” No honestly, she says ‘hokey-pokey’. At that moment the trapdoor flings itself open with a bang which surprised me because, based on the earlier scene of Anna finding the trapdoor which conspicuously didn’t show us the trapdoor, I had assumed that they couldn’t afford, or simply didn’t bother to build, a trapdoor. But apparently they could, or did.

Continue to Part 3

Evil Calls - world's longest film review (pt.1)

2012-01-31T13:15:00.000-08:00

Originally posted on my main website in 2008 but removed, like the other reviews, to save my Webhost from receiving any more threatening e-mails from Richard Driscoll

Before you start reading this, be warned. The full review is 22,000 words long.

See also Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

Director: Richard Driscoll
Writer: Richard Driscoll
Producer: Richard Driscoll
Cast: Rik Mayall! Jason Donovan! Sir Norman Wisdom! Crikey!
Country: UK
Year of release: 2008
Reviewed from: UK DVD
Website: www.houseoffear.co.uk

Here it is at last. Seven years after Kannibal and six years after it was actually shot, Richard Driscoll’s fourth feature (or possibly fifth) finally makes it to DVD, self-distributed through Driscoll’s InternetGore website without the benefit of a BBFC rating (which is not strictly legal…). The bulk of this film was shot in 2002 as Alone in the Dark although Driscoll had announced the previous year that he was planning to adapt Poe’s ‘The Raven’ (which he seemed to think was a story rather than a poem).

In a move which is bound to frustrate title purists, the actual release title is unclear. ‘Evil Calls’ is superimposed over a silhouette of a raven, then the two words fade away and the bird shape morphs into ‘The Raven’. So is it The Raven: Evil Calls or Evil Calls: The Raven? Or just Evil Calls? Or, as per the sleeve design and assuming that the three phrases thereon are to be read in the same order as the similarly structured logo for Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, is this film actually called The Raven Episode One: Evil Calls?

Who knows? Who cares? I’m not bothered by these things the same way some other horror movie journos are and the actual title is the least of the film’s problems.

In terms of narrative theory and on the basis of the two Driscoll films which I have previously been able to see, the man is an auteur whose work falls into two camps: pictures like Kannibal which are blatantly unoriginal rip-offs and pictures like The Comic which are - please excuse me but I don’t know of any other way to phrase this with appropriate emphasis - Fucking Incomprehensible. Evil Calls definitely falls into the latter category, defying any attempt to establish a coherent narrative (although it does also rip off some better-known films, as we shall see). This picture makes absolutely no sense, both in terms of the overall story and at a more detailed level within individual scenes. Having watched it twice, my belief is that the only way to fit the film into any sort of narrative convention - the only way to effectively understand or ‘read’ the film - is to accept that it all takes place in an alternative dimension where the basic rules of time and space, cause and effect, reality and fantasy just break down completely and no longer apply. I am absolutely sure that this is not Richard Driscoll’s intention (at least, not throughout the whole film) but it’s a fun way of looking at this extraordinary motion picture.

I should stress here that, whatever else it may be, Evil Calls is enormously entertaining. The Comic was incomprehensible and boring but Evil Calls is a rare example of an oft-cited though rarely delivered cinematic genre. It really, really is So Bad It’s Good. Most films which are claimed to be SBIG, on inspection, aren’t. That’s one of the reasons why Mystery Science Theatre 3000 edited down the films it showed and added not just comments over the image but also interstitial scenes with the regular characters. In a sense it’s why horror hosts traditionally intrude into TV screenings to make comments. Yes, on a technical level they’re acting as bumpers to the commercial breaks but on an artistic level they are adding an additional level of entertainment to something which seems on the surface to be an absolute riot but which is likely to pall quickly if it goes on for more than ten to fifteen minutes without interruption. Essentially, the host is there to stop the viewers from channel-surfing by switching the action of the remote from the receiver to the broadcaster, pre-empting what-else-is-on boredom by jumping in to poke fun at the film, elevating mildly amusing concepts to (supposed) hilarity through pointed satire. Bad films simply aren’t So Bad It’s Good when you sit down to view them, they’re just bad. They need a regular infusion of good from somewhere else to be worth the time and effort invested in watching them.

Few indeed are the bad films which can stand on their own two feet, engaging a viewer’s attention for a full 70-80 minutes. As a jobbing film journo and devotee of cinematic exotica I’m probably easier to please in this respect than most people. But I genuinely do believe that Evil Calls is so awful, aiming so high and falling so low in so many respects, that it is actually far more fun to watch than many ‘good’ films which, in truth, are merely competent. By way of example, and before we get down to the review proper, allow me to place on record that this is a film ostensibly inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe which manages to misspell Poe’s name in the opening credits. It really is that gloriously inept and it rarely lets up. Truly, this is like an opera version of Tosca.

I almost used the adverb ‘relentlessly’ in the previous paragraph but Evil Calls is not relentlessly awful. One reason why it succeeds is because it has moments of genuine quality - not least the appearances by Rik Mayall and Norman Wisdom - which serve to break up the film in the way that an intrusive, satirical horror host might (or indeed a few decent TV ads). Ironically, Mayall’s and Wisdom’s scene are consecutive but as the film is fairly short anyway, they provide a suitable midway break. Mind, it’s the performances of the two actors which show quality, not the scenes themselves which are possibly even more Fucking Incomprehensible than the rest of the film.

So Evil Calls is, perhaps, the perfect bad film. It’s not too long, it’s packed with different ideas and themes and it’s sufficiently outré that the viewer can easily see that their incomprehension stems from the film-maker’s lack of talent rather than their own lack of understanding. Above all, it’s deliriously, decisively, deliciously weird. In an interview among the DVD extras, Mayall tries to argue that Alone in the Dark (as was) is not a horror film but belongs in its own subgenre which he calls “fucking weird”. He’s talking nonsense in claiming it’s not horror (though to be fair most of the really gruesome stuff was shot six years after his scenes and probably wasn’t in the script he saw) but he’s spot on with his ‘fucking weird’ subgenre. This is a trippy film, one that might actually start to make sense if viewed through a drug-induced distortion of reality, the unreality on screen effectively cancelled out by the unreality of the viewer’s narcotic-fuelled cognisance. That’s an experiment I’m not planning to try although that has more to do with my clean lifestyle than a reluctance to watch Evil Calls again. Still, who would ever have thought that Richard Driscoll would make a film that, in one sense, could stand comparison with masterpieces such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Koyaanisqatsi?

The other point which I want to stress upfront is that I did not approach Evil Calls with preconceptions. Until I actually watched the DVD it was - like everything else I review - a quantum movie, inbetween the phase states of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (though there are of course many gradations within and between those concepts in the real world) and only settling into the latter state once I had seen the whole thing. Although I must admit it started leaning that way the moment I saw how they had spelled Edgar ‘Allen’ Poe in the credits. Of course I came to the film with expectations. On the basis of Kannibal and The Comic I fully expected Evil Calls to be rubbish - and my expectations were met beyond my wildest, erm, expectations. Any artist who establishes a consistent style across two or more pieces of work creates expectations but a truly open-minded and honest critic (which I like to think I am) knows that however consistent the artist’s work to date might be, each new piece can surprise and/or disappoint. Just as I would expect a Tim Burton film to be gothic, a Roger Corman film to be cheap and a David DeCoteau film to feature a number of young men without shirts, so I expect a Richard Driscoll film to be, by any reasonable standard, rubbish.

But expectation is not prejudice. Had this turned out to be a masterpiece, or even vaguely competent, then I would be the first person to sing its praises. Let’s face it, I’m the only film critic who ever writes anything about Richard Driscoll’s work so if I don’t give credit where it’s due, who will? And credit is due to some aspects of Evil Calls, as indeed it was due to some aspects of Kannibal (check my review - there are moments of praise in there) although I don’t think there are any redeeming features to The Comic apart from its highly commendable obscurity. In a sense, it’s the flashes of potential which make this film and its predecessor so terrible, serving only to emphasise how crap the rest of it is by briefly reminding the viewer what a real movie looks like.

So I come not to bury Richard Driscoll nor to praise him, only to document, explore and analyse his unique contribution to cinema. If I have a bloody good laugh along the way, that’s just a bonus.

Because of its lack of coherent narrative structure, the best way I can analyse Evil Calls is to take you through it, scene by scene, as I was forced to do with some of the more eccentric Thai films that I have reviewed in the past. In those cases I was hampered by cultural differences and a lack of subtitles but here there is no such obvious get-out clause for the film. Evil Calls simply Does Not Make Any Sense, as I am about to demonstrate. So if you would prefer to enjoy the film without my critical influence, I urge you to stop reading now, go to www.internetgore.com, order yourself a copy and watch it. Then come back here and see if we agree. I’m sure we will. For those who have seen the film or plan to never see the film or don’t care about spoilers - eyes down for a full house.

We kick off with two caption screens: the first verse of Poe’s ‘The Raven’ - with the writer’s name spelled correctly - and then ‘Monday, October 23rd’. Our first actual image is a helicopter shot of two horses running along a beach (are they from Driscoll’s stud farm, I wonder) which then pans to show a car driving along the coast road, a great big, white, open-top thing with fins and all sorts. I don’t know cars so I don’t know what make this is - it’s not any of the ones listed on the House of Fear ‘props’ page - but it looks 1940s/1950s to me. The odd thing is that this footage is sepia-tinted, has fake scratches and is juddery (presumably to give the impression of having been filmed at one speed but projected at another) which I can only assume is intended to make us think that this is very old film. But by the 1940s sepia tinting was virtually unknown and 24fps was universal on account of sound films having been invented. So already we have a contradiction in terms of implied time period.

The soundtrack meanwhile has Christopher Walken reciting ‘The Raven', accompanied by ominous music and sound effects. Back in 2001, when The Raven and Alone in the Dark were still two separate projects, Richard Driscoll attended a Fangoria convention where he told the attendees, “I've already shot Walken's scenes for the movie. This Raven is the Poe story with a Lara Croft spin on the material."

Now, apart from ‘The Raven’ not actually being a story - and let me assure you that there is no ‘Lara Croft spin’ on anything in the finished film - this raises the intriguing question of Walken’s ‘scenes’ of which, er, there aren’t any. Just this reading of the poem, here and then intermittently throughout the film’s soundtrack. The curious thing is that Walken had already recorded ‘The Raven’ in 1997 for an all-star CD of Poe’s poems and stories entitled Closed on Account of Rabies. This was released on Island/Mercury and also featured such bizarre delights as Iggy Pop reading ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ and Diamanda Galas reading ‘The Black Cat’!

Walken’s track from the album (which you can listen to on Amazon and elsewhere) sounds remarkably like the reading in Evil Calls although the accompanying music is different. I suppose a pro like Walken would tend to always read the same poem the same way, especially if it’s one of his favourites. There’s no acknowledgement to Island/Mercury in the credits so we must assume that Driscoll did indeed record ‘scenes’ of Walken reading the poem a year or two before he shot Alone in the Dark and several years before he decided to retitle it and its two sequels as ‘The Raven Trilogy’. There’s no other explanation...

Now the car stuff becomes intercut with other footage of various sorts, some of which shows Richard Driscoll (or technically ‘Stephen Craine’, the acting name he uses as there is already a thespian called Richard Driscoll) wearing a check shirt, sitting at a desk in an otherwise bare log cabin. These images are quite heavily pixelated. There are also some exterior shots of the log cabin which sits in the middle of a wood and some extreme close-ups of a manual typewriter typing ‘D E A T H’.

Driscoll examines an ancient grimoire with a picture of a baby on one page and there is a close-up of a piece of paper with a series of handwritten names: WB Yeates, HP Lovecraft, MacGregor Mathers, William Wynn Wescott, Harry Price, Arthur Machen. I would expect most of you to be familiar with numbers one, two and six; Mathers and Wescott were both occultists involved with the Order of the Golden Dawn while Price was a psychic researcher. All except Wescott have Wikipedia entries and you can google him. All except WB Yeats are spelled correctly.

A hand, presumably that of Driscoll’s character, circles Lovecraft and Price. Who knows why?

As Chris Walken continues to recite, we have a shot of a semi-naked woman’s body impaled, through her breasts, on two curved, white horns from an antelope or somesuch; we can’t see her face. We also see that the typewriter has just typed ‘DEATH’ over and over again. And we finish this pre-title sequence with the most extraordinary shot, an image of Kubrickian symmetry as Driscoll’s character sits, immobile at his desk in the bare log cabin. First dark mould (or something) creeps across the floor in stop motion and then blood starts pouring through the walls. Lots of blood. I mean, gallons and gallons of the stuff, falling in scarlet torrents (well, they would be scarlet if all this stuff wasn’t still tinted sepia) and splashing and swirling on the floor.

If that really is Richard Driscoll sitting there without moving a muscle as this stuff cascades all around him, then hats off to the man, he’s a better actor than I have given him credit for. Of course, it may just be a cardboard cut-out of Driscoll or he may have been matted in in post-production.

Anyway, the point is that, apart from the obscurity and anachronism of the scratchy sepia-tinting, this is quite an effective pre-credits sequence although the woman impaled on horns seems a somewhat gratuitous and out of place mix of bare tits and gore. Freudians would have a field day at the use of animal horns to impale a provocatively displayed female torso, wide-lapelled coat held open, out-of-frame face anonymising her sexuality - but to be honest I can’t take this shot seriously since it occurred to me that she looks like she’s been impaled on an impala. However, the ‘gushing torrents of blood’ bit is marvellous. It really is. Who says I never say anything good about Mr Driscoll?

Mind, it’s one image. Images are for music videos, films need stories and characters.

Speaking of music videos, we then launch into the title sequence itself for which the music changes to a modern beat with snatches of Walken’s reading sampled over the top, like a rap version of ‘The Raven’. The title (just Evil Calls, Kim) passes across the screen over what I assumed, on first watching, to just be heavily pixelated footage of naked women. It was only on my second viewing that I recognised one of the women through the digital distortion and thought: damn me, it’s Bettie Page!

I have no idea whether Richard Driscoll knows the significance of the public domain images he’s using or whether he thinks it’s just generic old-time bondage stock, but how’s that for the final addition to officially the Most Eclectic Cast in Cinema History? Let’s just recount them (in alphabetical order): Robin Askwith, Jason Donovan, Rik Mayall, Bettie Page, Christopher Walken and Norman Wisdom - together at last!

Mixing in with the Bettie clips (and with the actual opening credits in red type over the top) are a series of apparently genuine, ‘true crime’-style magazine headlines about notorious wackos and serial killers: Albert Fish, the Boston Strangler, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy. These, which have absolutely no connection with anything we will see in the next seventy-odd minutes, are followed by fake newspaper headlines as follows:

‘Lenore Murder Mystery’
‘The Woodlands Hotel’
‘Hotel to be Built on Witch Burning Site’
‘Hotel Manager Murders Family’
‘Death Hotel is Site of Witch Burning’
‘Horror Hotel in Murder Mystery Again’
‘Hotel Manager in Axe Death Spree’
‘Writer Buys Horror Hotel’
‘Horror Writer Kills Wife and Family’

So basically, a hotel was built in a place where a witch was once burned to death. The manager killed his family and it was subsequently bought by a horror writer who then also killed his family. This is worth documenting in such pedantic detail because it could well turn out to be the clearest indication of this film’s plot.

Oh, and three words appear during this title sequence, ‘typed’ on screen in boxes: ‘perversion’, ‘snuff’ and ‘victims’. Finally, in another box appears the typed message ‘Karl, I think I have found what you are looking for.’ Then we get 'Evil Calls' over a raven silhouette as previously described.

We are six and a quarter minutes into the film, we have reached the end of the title sequence - and this review already runs to more than 3,000 words. It’s going to be a long night.

Suddenly we’re blasted into a very short montage. Topless women! Women with guns! Topless women with big guns shooting cops! Explosions! I don’t know what film this is from but it doesn’t look like it was shot for this one. Anyway, the hot girl/gun action pauses because it’s being watched on a computer monitor by Gary (Jason Donovan), who wears a T-shirt over his jumper and gives us the first of what will be many variable and frankly unidentifiable accents. It’s not really American, not quite his native Aussie, but he uses it to inform Karl Mathers (Richard Waters: The Killer Tongue): “I think I’ve found what you’re looking for.”

Gary is a computer geek, you see. He indicates this by wearing his baseball cap backwards and there is a large one-sheet for the 1958 Dracula on his wall among various cut-out pictures of sexy women. Speaking of which, how can he just have found what Karl was looking for - a gory, bloody website which will “make her little panties hot for you” - and have been watching that sexy action montage at the same time?

“The place is called Harrow Woods, New England,” explains Gary which doesn’t really make sense because a moment ago he was talking about a website, not a place. But just to emphasise that this film will all take place in a location called Harrow Woods, we get a brief sepia flashback showing a wooden sign that reads ‘Welcome to Harrow Woods’. You know, just in case we weren’t paying attention.

Two years ago in October (we are told) a horror writer named George Carney took his family on holiday to their log cabin. A flurry of silent monochrome flashbacks includes some Carney books, the only discernible title of which is To Teach Her a Lesson. And there is a photo on the back of one volume which is pure Garth Marenghi! There is also a shot of someone approaching the log cabin (the one from the pre-credits sequence) with a couple of large fish and a landing net and some more footage of that white car, in which we see not only Mr and Mrs Carney and their two kids but also George’s brother Vincent (the legend that is Robin Askwith).

“Vincent?” queries Karl. “Vincent,” Gary assures him, as if this is significant or impressive in some way. Gary tells Karl that the family were not murdered but simply vanished, never to be seen again. A selection of surprisingly clearly scanned on-line newspaper clippings includes one with a photo of the Carneys (without Vincent) sitting in a doorway above a really bad faked-up headline: ‘The second week missing and still no traces of their whereabouts.’ This is great, absolutely great, partly because the spacing is all wrong and whoever knocked it together only underlined half the words, but mainly because it’s ungrammatical rubbish. How can you have a trace of a whereabouts? A ‘whereabouts’ is a location but locations either are or aren’t; they’re a binary concept. You can’t have traces of places.

There could be no trace (singular) of the family or their whereabouts could be unknown. But ‘no traces of their whereabouts’ is simply illiterate. Good grief, if you’re going to ask somebody to fake up a newspaper headline you should at least give the job to someone who knows how to write English.

I’m also trying to work out how this squares with the headlines about a horror writer (presumably Carney) buying a hotel and murdering his family there. (You know, I can’t help thinking that I’ve read something somewhere about another film where a writer attacks his family in an isolated hotel that has already seen a previous family slaughtered. Where would I have come across something like that? It may even have had a typewriter in it...)

Oh, and in what way does a collection of newspaper cuttings about a family who mysteriously disappeared tie in with Gary’s claim that he has found a website full of blood and gore?

To link us to the next scene we have a brief shot of an expanding circle of flame with a raven briefly seen behind/within it. It’s a bit like the inter-scene doodads an America sitcom: the exterior shots of Jerry’s apartment building in Seinfeld or the bouncing planets in Third Rock from the Sun. This will crop up several more times and to save having to describe it again, I’ll just say ‘ravenringfirething’. Okay?

Our next scene introduces the rest of ‘the Internetters’, a group of friends who apparently celebrate birthdays by going on creepy expeditions and broadcasting them over the web. This is, says Karl to people who already know, the third year they’ve done it and today is Anna’s birthday. So presumably they do it for a different person’s birthday each year. Anna is interested in the paranormal so they’re off to Harrow Woods. (Later in the film a character says that this is the fourth year that they have all gone away like this, but who’s counting?)

“Where?” says a voice. “Harrow Woods!” chorus the assembled friends. Just in case that wooden sign flashback in the previous scene had escaped your attention.

Karl and Gary are explaining the set-up to blonde Rachel (Sonya Vine, an actress/painter who sometimes uses the name ‘Sonya Craine’ and is apparently the sister of Newsnight presenter Jeremy Vine and comedian Tim Vine!), brunette Anna (Kathryn Rooney) and cynical Lewis (Charlie Allen). There is another male character at the back of the room, in the shadows, who never says anything but there is also a very obviously looped voice from a character who is never seen, ie. he only speaks on shots of other people. The voice - he’s the one who asks “Where?” - is identified as Steve and there’s also someone called James who will be in charge of the webcams and visual mixer at the investigation site while Gary actually manages the website back at home.

Because of the hamfisted editing and camerawork in this scene it’s impossible to tell whether the figure at the back of the room is Steve or whether that’s James and Steve is not on screen at all. And I mean ‘hamfisted’. This finishes with a shot of Gary and half of Karl. Literally, as Karl is speaking off-screen he moves half into shot, then steps back as the camera moves with him, staying half in-shot. Oh, and the whole scene starts with someone putting a 78 of ‘In the Mood’ onto a gramophone, which seems to have nothing to do with anything.

The following exchange between Gary and Lewis is, I believe, worth quoting in full: “So we’ve become guinea pigs for your experiment in the ‘creepy world’ of Gary and Karl?” “I told you before, Lewis. The paranormal is not only the key to the future but a way of understanding our past. I mean, man, come on: a form of religion you can grasp in both your hands.”

If anyone can explain to me what that means, I’d love to know. All credit to Jason Donovan for saying this with a straight face. If anyone ever doubted the thespian skills of this former soap star and pop singer, doubt no more. Mind you, if you look deep into his eyes as he says this, you can spot the exact moment at which he starts considering a change of agent,

In response to Lewis’ scepticism, Gary proposes “a test, here and now - a seance.” You might think that this would involve a ouija board or at least everyone sitting round a table holding hands. In fact, what they do is hook Anna up to Gary’s laptop. So, not a seance at all then. Gary spouts a load of bland technobabble, Jason Donovan having presumably resigned himself to the idea that he’ll at least get paid (I assume he did get paid...) and no-one’s likely to ever see this rubbish.

Oh, go on then. I’ll quote you a bit: “Full contacts maintained and registering, temperature steady at 73.1 degrees, dynamometer reading decreasing to 1822 ... Temperature lowering, pulse rate 93.4.” This is particularly great as, a few moments later, he announces that the temperature is “continuing to rise.”

Shots of Anna, showing her either concentrating or in a trance, are filmed from a point a couple of feet above Gary’s head. I mention this because reverse shots of Gary’s Toshiba laptop (I’m sure those aren’t Jason Donovan’s hands) show a number of fluctuating graphs/levels - a desktop edit suite is what it looks like and probably is - plus a large, grainy, monochrome image of Anna which is the one we just saw. In other words, he could only have this image - of the woman who is sitting directly in front of him - if there was a webcam directly above his head. Which the establishing shots show, unsurprisingly, there isn’t. Obviously the shots of the laptop screen were done much later and nobody has bothered to check whether they make any sense in this context.

But then, as I mentioned earlier, this film only works if it is set in a world where time and space have little meaning.

There is also an odd close-up of an analogue CO2 meter with a wildly flickering needle and another close-up of a hand moving a glass of red wine slightly, which I assume is Rachel’s hand as it is followed by a shot of that character. Steve, Lewis, Karl and James are also around the table although none of them say anything apart from a couple of lines at the start. (James is played by Ben Tolkien, Steve by Paul Battin.)

As Anna starts to shake we get a shot of the needle slipping off that Glenn Miller 78 (which has not been playing in this scene) and some sepia, silent, shaky flashback footage of a door with ‘150’ on it and a man in a fetish mask walking down a corridor. And a mutant baby or demon baby or something.

“Loads of electronic ectoplasm coming through,” whispers Gary as the lights flicker, steam billows from a nearby radiator and Jason Donovan struggles manfully to not giggle. Eventually Anna screams and Rachel knocks her wine to the floor in slow motion. Curiously, all the character shots are bathed in red light but all the close-ups of the laptop, the wine glass etc are in normal light. We finish with an image of a clock showing 11.22. Who knows what all this means?

And then we have the ravenringfirething again.

A few quick shots of the log cabin, just to remind us that it exists apparently, are followed by Karl, Anna, Rachel, Lewis and James (who really seems to be just making up the numbers) arriving in the woods. They’re in what seems to be the same car that George Carney had in the prologue, which they simply leave among the trees. There is no indication of why they stop there rather than anywhere further into the woods. I suppose this is the closest point that the track gets to the cabin. I suppose.

A caption tells us that it is Monday 21st October which I at first thought was a goof - but then I realised that if the pre-credits stuff with George Carney was two years ago then 23rd October would fall on a Wednesday this year (assuming no leap year inbetween) so this is actually correct.

Now, apparently they’re not camping here by the track but they’re not going to reach the cabin tonight either so James has to look for somewhere warm to set up camp. (Somewhere warm? In a wood?) Food, we are told, will be served later when ‘Steve turns up with the Winnebago’ but if we assume the Winnebago will park next to the car - which indeed it later does - that means they can’t actually camp more than a very short walk away.

Karl gives each of the others at this point a folder with a map, directions and information about the legend of Harrow Woods and they traipse off through the trees, lugging metal flight cases which presumably contain their tents but frankly look more like they are normally used for transporting film equipment.

That night, gathered around a campfire, Karl tells them the legend of Harrow Woods (which is in their pack, isn’t it?). It seems that ‘the maiden Lenore’ (ooh, shoehorn in that 'Raven' reference) was burned as a witch in that location in October 1843 and as she died she screamed a curse on the folk responsible and the place too. Doesn’t seem terribly sensible, burning a witch at the stake in the middle of the woods. Town square, that’s the place for a witch burning. But as we can see in yet another bloody silent sepia flashback, the 1843 inhabitants of Harrow Woods wore clothes at least one hundred years out of fashion so clearly they weren’t terribly on the ball. (The DVD blurb and other publicity says that ‘Lenore Selwyn’ was burned in the 17th century but on the screen it’s definitely 1843.) The witch, under all that make-up and sepia tinting, might be played by Eileen Daly. Quite what this mini-remake of Black Sunday, obviously extracted from a completely different film, has to do with anything is not clear although Karl claims that since that date there have been ‘many murders’ on that spot. Really? Many?

Then he tells them about the family who disappeared two years earlier. Rachel asks if the bodies were ever found and Karl assures her they were but Anna contradicts him and says they weren’t. He checks his pack - she’s right. But, but… how could she possibly know? That information was only in Karl’s pack and not anyone else’s.

Well gee, I don’t know. Maybe Gary mentioned it to her, maybe she googled ‘Harrow Woods’ before setting off. It’s clearly a well-documented case. What is spookier is how Karl could have not known that fact when Gary had clearly told him and shown him and when he had not only written it down in his own info pack but made a specific point of omitting it from everybody else’s.

Continue to Part 2

Worldwide zombie shorts collection

2012-01-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

Left Films’ Ultimate Zombie Feast is now up for pre-order on Amazon at a bargaintastic £8.99. This double disc is packed with short zombie films from around the world including:

Paul Cranefield, Scott Kragelund and Erik Van Sant’s The Book of Zombie (USA, 61 mins)
William Bridges’ Dead Hungry (UK, 10 mins)
Jay Reiter’s Arise (USA, 17 mins)
Gregory Morin’s Paris by Night of the Living Dead (France, 12 mins)
Tor Fruergaard’s It Came from the West (Denmark, 17 mins)
Rafael Martinez and Inaki San Roman’s Zombies and Cigarettes (Spain, 17 mins)

...and loads more.

More than five hours of top-quality zombie goodness for nine quid. The package is set for release on 18th June. How can this not be utterly brilliant?

The Comic - review

2012-01-27T13:28:00.000-08:00

Originally posted on my main site in about 2005 or so, I think. As with Kannibal, this was removed not because it contains anything untrue or libelous but simply to prevent Richard Driscoll sending threatening e-mails to the young man who hosts my main website for me. The four-part, epic Evil Calls review will follow. - MJS

The Comic
Director: Richard Driscoll
Writer: Richard Driscoll
Producer: Richard Driscoll
Cast: Steve Munroe, Berdia Timimi, Vass Anderson
Country: UK
Year of release: 1985
Reviewed from: UK DVD (23rd Century)

I am about to damn this movie with fainter praise than has ever existed in the history of film criticism: The Comic is not as bad as Kannibal.

That is not to say it’s any good, or even adequate. It is, in point of fact, shite. It is boring, pretentious, completely incomprehensible, poorly acted and packed with godawful 1980s haircuts. In short, it’s like watching an amateur remake of a Spandau Ballet video.

But this debut feature from the man who might reasonably described as the British Ed Wood scores over his later picture in a few important ways. It is at least an original idea rather than a shameless rip-off of two successful Hollywood movies. The music isn’t bad (but, as they say, you don’t come out of the cinema whistling the - oh, hang on, that doesn’t work here, does it?). Most impressively, Driscoll himself stays behind the camera in this one and there is no sign of Lucien Morgan, the officially recognised Worst Actor in the World.

Nevertheless, this is a bad film.

Steve Munroe, a wooden actor saddled with a ginger mullet so unappealing that it suggests he was really bad in a previous life, stars as Sam Coex, a wannabe comedian (Munroe followed this with bit parts in Robin of Sherwood, Casualty and The Bill and a role in the Driscoll-produced serial killer biopic Cold Light of Day). But the local club already has a regular comedian on its books, Joey Myers (Jeff Pirie, who had recently spent two years as Eddie/Dr Scott in The Rocky Horror Show; he is credited as Jeff Perrier in the closing credits and Jeff Pine on the sleeve of the DVD). Frustrated, Coex kills Myers late one night and buries his body. Then, when the comedian fails to show the next night, Coex goes on instead and is a hit.

He becomes involved with a prostitute, Anne (the surely anagrammatical Berdia Timimi), who has some sort of secret agenda although it’s never made clear what that is. He also gets picked up by Joey Myers’ old agent Stan (Bernard Plant), who charges a staggering 80% fee for booking him into various dives. As his career progresses, Coex is haunted by visions, often involving the zombified return of Joey Myers.

Now here’s the odd thing: this all happens in a dystopian near-future even though this has no relevance to the plot whatsoever. Our only clue is an opening narration by a blonde woman, to camera, which seems to be based on the opening of Dune. This actress (who is presumably the Kim/Kym Stone credited in the opening titles but not at the end) tells us that in this world “people don’t live, they merely ... exist.” We then have a shot of a soup kitchen where a small squad of goose-stepping, jackbooted soldiers/cops march in and beat up a man - apparently for daring to crouch under a table.

The DVD sleeve tells us: “In a fascist near future Britain has become an oppressive police state, the drugged population is entertained by ‘the Comics’ who keep a smile on their faces while everything gets worse.” Precisely none of this comes across in the movie, even if you have read the sleeve and are actively looking for this stuff.

Instead, we get Sam’s rise to fame and a highly speeded up social life. When Anne tells him she is pregnant he asks her to marry him, on condition that she gives up the drink and drugs, although there has been no suggestion up to that point that she indulges in either. They have a little girl - there is a hilarious silhouette shot of a nurse holding an obvious doll up by its leg and smacking it - and before you know it his daughter is three and his wife is looking for work.

“But how can I help?” asks Stan when Sam asks him for a favour in this regard. “I’m an agent - I just find jobs for people.” Actually, Bernard Plant has several unintentionally great lines, my other favourite being “This is a hell of a place to meet,” as he settles down next to Sam in what appears to be a relatively quaint English pub.

The nightclubs themselves are mostly just collections of tables with people sitting at them; there is no attempt to integrate audience shots with shots of Sam, Joey or anyone else on stage which were very obviously filmed separately. Even the very limited laughter and applause (the paucity of which matches the material on offer, though I don’t think that’s intentional) doesn’t connect in any way with the ‘performance’ footage.

Despite what it says on the sleeve, the people in the audiences appear relatively affluent, rather than being a subjugated lower class kept in their place by cheap entertainment. There is no suggestion that the people in the soup kitchen ever get to visit a club. I get the impression that the combination of cabaret and stark class division is meant as an allegory for Weimar Germany but I could be wrong. Had The Comic been any good it could actually have served as a strangely prophetic look at Britain 20 years later, with a populace kept distracted by mindless entertainment while a right-wing regime dismantles democracy around them. But it’s shit so it doesn’t.

There is also some sort of subplot about a local bigshot named George Ellington (Vass Anderson, who was also in Kannibal) who waltzes off with Anne, who is some sort of gold-digger. Also, for some reason, everyone travels around in vintage cars (or in one instance, a horse-drawn carriage). ‘For some reason’ is a phrase that seems appropriate to most aspects of this film, although not as appropriate as ‘for no reason whatsoever’.

Sam’s nightmares are some of the worst-written, worst-directed, just plain worst parts of the film, although towards the end it’s difficult to tell one thing from another (though not in a good, enigmatic way; more in a bad, incompetent way). He even says to someone at one point, “It was all a really bad dream.” Ah, but if only it was... There is a particularly funny sequence not too far into the film where Sam appears as a sort of demon, body-painted green and with enormous furry eyebrows matching his carrot-coloured thatch.

It is absolutely impossible to follow what is meant to be going on in The Comic. Better minds than mine have tried and failed. Perhaps Richard Driscoll knew what he was trying to do but he completely failed to communicate that to the viewer. Which is in contrast to Kannibal, where we could all see precisely not only what he was trying to do but also how incredibly badly he was doing it

So, apart from Driscoll, who else has this film on their CV as a guilty secret? The cast includes Bob Flag, who was Denis Nilsen in Cold Light of Day and was also in Calendar Girls, 1984 and Eat the Rich; Gary Twomey, who was in Robin of Sherwood and Taggart; Joy Lale, who subsequently became script editor on All Creatures Great and Small, producer on Between the Lines and Ballykissangel and then died in a car crash aged 30; and Eddie Blackstone, who is now half a cabaret act called Tjay and the Bear. Simon Davies (surely not the Blue Peter presenter?) is quite dreadful as the club compere.

Cinematographer Alan Trow started as a stills photographer and went on to a busy career as DP on such movies as Xtro II, Project Shadowchaser I and II, Monolith, Cyberjack, Grim and Dragonworld. Special effects are credited to Chris Tucker who previously worked on Star Wars,The Boys from Brazil, The Elephant Man, Dune, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and the unjustly under-rated vampire picture Barry McKenzie Holds His Own.

The Comic was famously booed off-screen at its one British theatrical outing and subsequently surfaced very briefly on video. Twenty years later it surfaced on DVD courtesy of 23rd Century, a ‘company’ whose extensive range of bootleg films was on sale from pound shops across the land. Normally I deplore the purchase of bootlegs but in this instance my feelings are different. Given that out of my quid has to come a profit for the retailer plus distribution and manufacture costs, the people behind 23rd Century must make about tuppence ha’penny from my purchase. More to the point, I think that Richard Driscoll films are ones which can be bought on bootleg with a clean conscience because if any money went to the film-maker it might encourage him to make more of his rotten films.

MJS rating: D

Kannibal - review

2012-01-27T13:13:00.000-08:00

This was my original review of Kannibal, written in about 2001. The reason it's on my newsblog and not with all my other reviews is that, when it was originally posted on my main site Richard Driscoll sent threatening e-mails to my web host. Despite repeated requests to explain which part of this (or my other reviews or news items) were untrue or libelous, he has never been specific. So now it has a home on Blogger. My reviews of The Comic and Evil Calls will follow. - MJS

Kannibal

Director: Richard Driscoll
Writer: Richard Driscoll
Producer: Richard Driscoll
Cast: Steven Craine (ie. Richard Driscoll), Linnea Quigley, Eileen Daly
Year of escape: 2001
Country: UK
Reviewed from: UK DVD (Film 2000)

Kannibal is very possibly the worst British horror film ever made. Ever. At all. Bar none.

Ever.

And remember that I’m the person who found nice things to say about Virgin Witch...

When the same person writes, directs and produces a film and stars in it too, albeit under a different name, then you know you’re dealing with a vanity project, and that’s never a good sign. Is Kannibal as bad as The Jekyll and Hyde Rock’n’Roll Musical? Not quite, but only because it hasn’t got any awful songs in it.

Richard Driscoll is a legend among fans of British horror movies. Well, I say legend; I mean joke. Here’s a succinct summary of the man’s career, courtesy of Pass the Marmalade webmaster Darrell Buxton, from a discussion on the British Horror Films forum:

“Driscoll produced and directed a terrible mid-’80s movie called The Comic, all about a stand-up comedian who murders a rival and buries him in the garden - for some reason the film is set in a near-future fascist Britain but it doesn't really make any more sense than the rest of the movie or add anything to it. Richard also produced the Fhiona Louise movie Cold Light of Day [One of the final releases by Screen Edge - MJS], which purports to tell the story of Dennis Nielsen but does so in an extremely slow and uninteresting way. Driscoll took prints of both films to the legendary 'Splatterfest' event, held at the Scala Cinema in King's Cross in February 1990 - but since we'd all sat spellbound through the amazing Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and laughed our heads off at Rabid Grannies by the time The Comic was unspooled, Driscoll's film got a disastrous reaction from the audience and was almost booed off screen! He was last seen disappearing into the King's Cross night, clutching both movies (we never got to see Cold Light of Day and I eventually caught it years later).”

In 2001 Driscoll re-emerged with Kannibal, the most shameless rip-off of Hannibal imaginable. The sleeve is designed to look like the Hannibal sleeve, with ‘Steven Craine’ pictured a la Hannibal Lecter. (The stage name is because there’s already an actor named Richard Driscoll; he played a vicar in EastEnders.) Even the tag-line ‘Break the silence’ has been shamelessly - and meaninglessly - aped as ‘Keep the silence from breaking’. Without exactly following the plot of Silence of the Lambs or its sequel, Driscoll’s film lifts scenes, shots, ideas, images and dialogue wholesale.

Let’s say something good about the film. The production values are mostly top-notch. Sets are lavish, locations are impressive, props and set-dressings are luxurious, and there are large numbers of extras in scenes which require them. This is not half a dozen people trapped in one location. With second-unit work in the USA and Italy, the cost of this film must have been considerably more than many recent British horror flicks.

But... the direction is lame, the script (quite apart from its unoriginality) is banal, and the acting is almost uniformly dreadful. No, dreadful is too mild a word. The actors who are merely dreadful are among the better ones here. Let’s put it this way: if a six-year-old acted this badly in a nativity play, they would be recast as one of the sheep.

The overly complicated plot has Linnea Quigley, looking about a hundred (she was actually 42 when this was shot) and never removing her sunglasses, even when naked, as Georgina Thereshkova, heiress to a US-based Russian organised crime ring dealing in prostitution, pornography and drugs. She inherits this from her mother, who is found murdered in a grisly prologue; presumably she also inherited the extraordinary accent she uses. It’s meant to be Russian but sounds uncannily like Steve Martin doing his impression of a Frenchman.

We pick up two years on from Thereshkova Snr’s death, when Georgina has transplanted to London, hiding her activities behind a company called NewTech. It wouldn’t be a British horror film without Eileen Daly (Razor Blade Smile, Witchcraft X, Pervirella, Demonsoul, etc) and here she plays Tanya Sloveig, Georgina’s PA. Within five minutes, bisexual Georgina has her PA pressed up against a corridor wall, has ripped open her PA’s jacket - no bra, quelle surprise - and is asking her, “Do you want to fuck?” Before you know it, she is mechanically manhandling her PA’s breasts while Eileen does her best not to look bored. Ten years ago this might have been erotic, or even interesting, but neither actress is an ingenue and frankly it’s enough to turn the stomach of the devoutest heterosexual.

Now, I like Eileen Daly. I’ve met her a few times. I’ve had breakfast with her. She’s lovely. But she’s not the world’s greatest actress. However, compared to Richard Driscoll himself - ‘Steven Craine’ - she is like a RADA graduate. Craine/Driscoll cannot act. At all. He’s not a bad actor, he’s a non-actor. Is he trying to mimic Anthony Hopkins? Quite possibly. Is he reading off idiot boards? Probably not, which is a shame as it might have improved his performance.

Of course, there’s no director to tell him what he’s doing wrong. And nobody else on set is going to say anything because he’s also the producer so he’s paying their wages. He ‘stars’ as a police pathologist called Kavanagh, who is actually the mysterious Quinn responsible for Valentina Thereshkova’s death. Honestly, that’s not a spoiler. Because you’re never going to watch this film. Not if you have any self respect whatsoever.

Watching Driscoll act is a painful experience. And there are lots of close-ups of him mixed into various other scenes and montages. The man’s barely off-screen, yet he has the presence and charisma of a house brick. There are a few people in the cast who can act. Steve Evans as Police Sergeant Webber is not bad, and Vass Anderson (Life Story, series two of Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and a small role as one of the elders of Krypton in Superman) brings some characterisation to his under-written role as an old guy who has taken over the US branch of the Thereshkova operation. Probably the best actor in the whole film is Tim Reynolds who has a tiny role as director of a porn movie about an SS Officer raping a nun.

Anyway, various people are being killed. “That’s five dead in the past six months, all young women,” says Webber as he watches Kavanagh remove cocaine-filled condoms from a prosthetic body so badly made and plastic-looking that it actually has a visible seam down the side. Next to go is Georgina’s cousin, drug baron Salvatore Sabine (fine old Russian name).

Then we meet the Inspector.

I have no hesitation in saying that Lucien Morgan is The Worst Actor In The World and I challenge you to find me a worse one. This man would be thrown off the set of a Santo movie. He’s worse than the American GIs roped in to play themselves in Junk. He’s shit beyond belief. He’s even worse than ‘Steven Craine’. Morgan’s previous greatest hit was as one of the ‘actors’ in the fake porno flick seen in An American Werewolf in London. In an extraordinarily over-the-top performance as monocled Inspector Lewis Reed, he mis-emphasises everything, pronounces words oddly, and his every stance, his every expression betrays the hideous truth that Somebody Told This Man He Could Act. No. No, Lucien, you can’t act to save your life. Become an accountant, a dustbin-man, an MP, anything. Just stop trying to act. You know why I’m not an airline pilot? Because I don’t know the first bloody damn thing about how to fly a plane! Do you see the analogy here?

Anyway, back to the overly complex plot... no, sod it, forget the plot. I already have and I only finished watching this crap thirty minutes ago. Imagine if you took all the memorable bits of Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, made them not as good, cast them with shit actors, jumbled them up a bit and filmed them expensively. That’s what you’ve got here. Parts of it make no sense at all (the sequence in Florence seems to have fallen in from a different film) and those that do make sense are boring, the only spark of interest being the gall with which the two better-known (and it goes without saying, better) films are ripped of. Even details like the chianti and the fava beans are included. (When I say ‘better’, this should not be construed as any suggestion that I thought Hannibal was anything other than a pile of crap. I also seem to be the only person in the world who can see the gaping plot holes in Silence of the Lambs. We now return you to your review.)

I’ve got nothing against B-movie makers producing cut-price cash-ins of A-movies. That’s been going on since Rocketship X-M beat Destination Moon into cinemas half a century ago. But normally it involves some degree of wit, some chutzpah, some alternative take on the basic concept. The Terminator a hit? Okay, let’s make Nemesis. Let’s just take the concept of a cyborg built like a brick shit-house travelling back in time and do our own spin on it. Not: let’s reshoot a bunch of scenes from The Terminator in a different order with shit actors and call it The Derminator.

And throughout this whole dreadful film you have the incredible non-acting ability of Driscoll and Morgan, frequently both together. It’s unwatchable, it really is. But they’re not alone. The very first voice we hear is a US newsreader describing the police discovery of Valentina Thereshkova’s death and the actress (let’s name the guilty: Mandy Adams) is more wooden than a stripped pine wardrobe. It doesn’t get any better after that.

All of which is a shame because, as I say, the film looks gorgeous (crappy prosthetics aside) thanks to cinematographer Peter Thornton (Out of Bounds/Dead in the Water, the Welsh western Guns of Honour, also camera operator on The Curse of King Tutankhamen’s Tomb) and production designer Bill Alexander (David Wickes’ versions of Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde, also art director on The Sweeney, Minder and Van Der Valk). The most extraordinary name in the credits is script supervisor Renee Glynne whose career in continuity extends from late 1940s Hammers such as The Man in Black and The Adventures of PC 49 to recent British horrors like Simon Hunter’s excellent Lighthouse, John Stewart’s The Asylum and, well, this. Along the way she has worked on such notable titles as Spaceways, Stolen Face, The Quatermass Xperiment, Fanatic, The Nanny, Curse of the Fly, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, A Room with a View, Beyond Bedlam, The Krays, Catweazle and, um, Delta Force II. What a career!

Kannibal is bad enough, but on the DVD you also get a commentary track by egomaniac Driscoll, singing the praises of his creation, and a featurette, The Making of Kannibal (as if anybody cared). As with the commentary, in The Making of Driscoll explains how good his film is - but this time you can marvel at how he is saying it with a straight face. He must genuinely believe the crap he spouts, because we’ve already established that he’s no actor. The film will appeal to people who enjoyed movies like Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs, according to Driscoll. No, they’re the last people it will appeal to. Though it might appeal to people who have never seen - or even heard of - either film, perhaps, if anybody in the cast could act.

Oh, by the way, at the end Kavanagh/Quinn confronts the still-alive Valentina (Claudia Boulton in amazingly pisspoor make-up) in the same way that Hannibal Lecter confronted the Gary Oldman character. Turns out that Quinn has been bumping off her entire operation one by one in revenge for the accidental death of his wife during a bank raid by Thereshkova’s goons. Also, he frames Georgina for the murders and we finish with that same wooden US reporter being shown down an underground corridor, told, “Do not approach the prisoner,” etc - and it turns out to be Linnea in the cell doing a bad Anthony Hopkins impression, not Driscoll. Well, duh.

Anyway, back on the DVD there’s a trailer and a short film which is, if anything, even worse than Kannibal. Surely you lie, MJ! No sir, because Inspector’s Diaries is a solo turn by Lucien Morgan in ‘character’ as Inspector Reed. In this staggeringly amateurish nine-minute quickie (which seems to last for a good half-hour), Morgan/Reed talks straight to camera, taking us through the history of movies based on real-life serial killers: Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, etc. “We begin with this man,” he says. “Jack the Ripper. ... Who was he? ... Who knows ... who he was? ... Do you?”

I wish I could say that every single thing about Kannibal is shit, but it is very nicely photographed and the sets are good. However, as they say, you don’t come out of the theatre humming the sets. It’s such a tragedy that, while many British indie horror flicks are scraping funds together, Driscoll has somehow got his hands on the cash to make something this lavish. But the other tragedy is that no amount of production value can disguise the facts: the script stinks, the direction stinks, and the acting stinks.

Driscoll had hopes in 2001, as indeed he had ten years earlier, of setting up his own Hammer-style studio. Thankfully this has never appeared and his only subsequent film has been a thriller called Alone in the Dark which stars Driscoll/Craine again with Robin Askwith (proving that you can go downhill after Queen Kong), the ubiquitous Ms Daly and 1980s teen heart-throb Jason Donovan! (Still unreleased, this movie will need to change its title in order to avoid being confused with the video game adaptation directed by Uwe Boll. Or, being a Richard Driscoll production, it probably won’t.) Among his announced plans were such unsubtle homages as Blade Hunter, Harry and the Wizard and Legend of the Rings - ‘based on the best-selling book’: erm, which book would that be? - which were all promoted with full-page ads in the 2001 MIFED brochure, plus an all-CGI animated feature to be called ... Toy Monsters. In 2001 Driscoll attended a Fangoria convention in New York where he mentioned a film called The Raven starring Christopher Walken, saying he had already shot Walken’s scenes and that the film was “the Poe story with a Lara Croft spin on the material”...! (Apart from anything else: Poe’s 'The Raven' is not a story, it’s a bloody poem, you numbskull!)

The single scariest thing in this pitiful excuse for a horror movie is the final, post-credits caption: ‘The Kannibal will return’ - please God, no. And in the whole sorry, frankly tedious mess there is one moment of genuine entertainment, in The Making of Kannibal, when Richard Driscoll says of his masterpiece, “It’s like an opera version of Tosca.”

MJS rating: D-
No. E
No, that’s still too generous. F
Well, the photography was very good. Okay then. F+

New interview: Paul Hyett

2012-01-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

Simply the top make-up effects artist in the UK, Paul Hyett has been doing this stuff for nearly 20 years. He has worked on most of the great British horror films of recent years (and a few of the less great ones too). This is a general interview that I did with him for Fangoria in 2008, published now to coincide with the start of production on The Seasoning House, his first film as director (see my other blog for details).

'Hardcore' porn mockumentary to be released!

2012-01-20T10:08:00.000-08:00

It's at least seven years since I reviewed Mark Withers' very funny mockumentary Hardcore: A Poke into the Adult Film Orifice. And it's finally - finally! - coming (ahem) to DVD. Retitled Hardcore: Bare Naked Talent, it's due for release in the UK by Safecracker Pictures on 26 March. There's even a quote from me on the Amazon page!

Safecracker previously released Bane and, this very week, Bordello Death Tales so they are clearly a label worth keeping an eye on.

First trailer for Wrath of the Crows

2012-01-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

All I can say is... holy crap, this looks like Ivan's best one yet!

Driscoll reviews removed

2012-01-04T13:16:00.000-08:00

Richard Driscoll is up to his old tricks again, sending empty threats to my webhost and ISP in an attempt to make me remove my reviews of The Comic, Kannibal and Evil Calls.

I don't give in to bullies - especially ones with no sense of humour - but for the sake of those guys, I have removed the reviews from MJSimpson.co.uk. But they still exist. Where will they pop up next? Watch this space.

Driscoll's latest slice of nonsense, Eldorado, is due out on 30th January if it doesn't get hit with a cease-and-desist order first (a real one, not the ranting e-mail sort that RD likes to send out).

Kenneth Barker is On the Shoulders of Giants

2012-01-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

Kenneth Barker, proudly individualistic director of such films as Kingdom and Catalina: A New Kind of Superhero, reports that he has just locked his latest feature. On the Shoulders of Giants is a deliberately retro, 1950s-style space picture which pays 'subtle homage' to Forbidden Planet.

Ken expects to have the film completed by February with a preview screening shortly thereafter. The marketing for the movie will kick off next March when Ken is a guest speaker at the Platform Expos event in Hull.

You can watch a teaser trailer for OTSOG on Ken's website. The film stars Sarah Wood, Warwick St.John (Catalina, Kenneth, Driftwood), Adam Lee and Wayne Ewart with Carl Isherwood (The Deaths of Ian Stone, unfinished vampire feature Christian), Alex Skerratt, Simon Kirk, Alison George and Bob Mallow (Catalina). Special visual effects by Effectsland. Creature effects by Gazmask. Check out the groovy robot!

New reviews: Jenny Ringo and The Stone

2011-12-11T05:17:00.001-08:00

Jeff Regan was kind enough to send me a screener of his ambitious 25-minute comedy Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw, complete with musical number and animated sequences.

I also received a disc from Chemical Burn Entertainment of The Stone: No Soul Unturned, the debut feature from paranormal documentarian Philip Gardiner.

A review of each has been added to the main site.

Watch Masterpiece online for free

2011-11-30T23:53:00.001-08:00

Andrew C Tanner has decided that, in the spirit of the season, he will give everyone a gift: his second feature film, Masterpiece. It's an extremely well made, brilliantly acted, wrist-slashingly bleak psychodrama. But it's still better than having the relatives over for Christmas, isn't it?

You can watch the fill 103 minutes of grim Welsh obsessive self-destruction on Vimeo.

My other blog is a blog

2011-11-20T09:10:00.001-08:00

Not content with managing this blog, I have created a second one over at british-horror-revival.blogspot.com where I can report on doings among current/recent/forthcoming British horror pictures and also document progress on my book.

There is even one of those Twitter things @BritHorrorRev.

New review: Alien Undead

2011-11-20T08:54:00.001-08:00

Australian sci-fi actioner Alien Undead aka The Dark Lurking was released on UK DVD earlier this month by Left Films and my review of the movie is now online.

New Devil's Porridge: Finding Bela

2011-11-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

My latest Devil's Porridge blog over at Hemlock Books is a look at how film historians, biographers and researchers have explored the life and work of Bela Lugosi over the years - and how I added one more small, previously unknown snippet to the pool of information on Lugosi's filmography.

Memory Lane - supernatural thriller available for free download this weekend

2011-11-09T13:15:00.000-08:00

This press release from an enterprising young film-maker turned up in my inbox this week. Good luck to him!

First-Time Filmmaker Shoots Film for Under $300, Gives it Away Online Free for One Weekend Only Beginning 11/11/11

First-time filmmaker Shawn Holmes joins the ranks of such forward-thinking filmmakers as Kevin Smith and The Polish Brothers. His debut film 'Memory Lane' is a rare truly independent film shot for only $300 and given away online free.

'Memory Lane' is a rare, truly independent thriller shot for only $300 about a war-veteran who travels between our world and the afterlife in search of his fiance's killer... by stopping and starting his own heart. At midnight on 11/11/11 at 553AM.com, Shawn Holmes, the youngest nominee in the history of the West Virginia Filmmaker of the Year Award, will release 'Memory Lane' online for free for one weekend only.

Writer, director, and producer Shawn Holmes stated, "Innovation is paramount to our success. I'm giving it away because you just don't do that."

As film festival entries cost as much as his entire movie, he chose to skip the festival route early in the film's release and give it away for one weekend on his website 553AM.com. "We may have a festival run, we may not. We're living in this crazy time where traditional gatekeepers can be circumvented altogether. The VCR, DVD players, in-home 3D and internet; history has proven that movies aren't limited to thriving on the silver screen and that with advances in technology come advances in how we watch them. Alfred Hitchcock said that television was like the invention of indoor plumbing. That it didn't change people's habits, it just kept them inside. Had the internet existed in his lifetime as it does in ours, he could have easily made the same realization that we have," claims Shawn.

In less than a week, the trailer received over 17,000 views on YouTube. He has an active Facebook presence with over 4,400 fans at www.facebook.com/MemoryLaneMovie. 'Memory Lane' will be released in its entirety at www.553AM.com on Friday, 11/11/11 at midnight and will stay up until Sunday, 11/13/11. A limited number of autographed DVDs are available for purchase at 553AM.com

New interview: Richard Gordon

2011-11-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not one for obituaries, except when I knew someone personally. Richard Gordon was a friend of mine who I saw every year when he came over to Manchester. And when Mrs S and I visited New York he insisted on taking us out for dinner. Richard passed away on Monday, aged 85. So I've dug out an interview that I did with him in 2001 about his memories of working with Bela Lugosi. RIP Richard.

New review: Black Pond

2011-11-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

Black Pond is a little different to most of the films I review in that it's a quirky black comedy. Features the return of Chris Langham.

Porcelain Man released?

2011-10-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

Unlikely as it seems, The Porcelain Man - the cheapo-cheapo British film which was made in 2002, sent to me in 2004 and finally reviewed on this site in August 2011, is going to be released. A US label called Chemical Burn Entertainment, who also have Bane in their catalogue, list the film and it looks like it's scheduled for February 2012.

Harold wins award in Austin

2011-10-31T15:09:00.000-07:00

Harold’s Going Stiff has won the 2011 Narrative Feature Competition at the prestigious Austin Film Festival (AFF), in Texas. You can catch it at Day of the Undead in Leicester on 19th November.

A couple of treats for Halloween

2011-10-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

TF Simpson and I carved a pumpkin tonight, decorated the living room with lobby cards from crappy Jess Franco monster movies then settled down to watch a 50-minute cartoon of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde followed by Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

Anyway, here's a couple of links I've been sent to Halloween-themed shorts on Vimeo. Emiliano (Langliena) Ranzani pointed me to Treated, a slick two-minute gag on which he was camera operator. And Frank Sabatella, the man who brought us Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, sent me a link to his hilarious 20-minute killer vegetable movie Night of the Pumpkin.

New interview: Mike Matthews and Mark Harriott

2011-10-18T14:40:00.000-07:00

The two chaps behind the rather impressive Unhappy Birthday have kindly answered a few e-mail questions for me.

Exclusive new review: Kill Keith

2011-10-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I had the pleasure of watching a preview of Kill Keith at the British Horror Film Festival in London. And it is the funniest damn movie I have seen for ages. Heartily recommended. Opening in some venues on 11th November.

British Horror Film Festival 2011 Awards

2011-10-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Billy Murray - 'Stalker'

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Barbara Nedeljakova - 'The Hike'

BEST MUSIC

John Zealey - 'Kill Keith'

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Nic Lawson - 'The Holding'

BEST ACTOR

Vincent Regan - 'The Holding'

BEST ACTRESS

Kierston Wareing - 'The Holding'

BEST FEATURE FILM

Stalker

BEST SHORT FILM

Tell Him Next Year

BEST NEW SCREENPLAY

Dan Clifton - 'The Unseen'

BEST DIRECTOR

Martin Kemp - 'Stalker'

THE BRITISH HORROR AWARD

(Given for achieving excellence with a low budget)

Rise of the Appliances

All of the winners received beautiful crystal engraved awards and pictures will be up on the website soon!

The winner of Best Short Film also received a lighting package for their next short film shoot, courtesy of Panalux.

Tris Versluis takes Berlin!

2011-10-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

Great news - my mate Tristan Versluis is starting work on a new feature! (And with Melanie Light on board as prod.des.) Here's the full announcement:

UK Special Effects man, Tristan Versluis, (WWZ, Sweeney Todd, Hot Fuzz, Clive Barker's Book of Blood, Dead Man's Shoes, Fred Claus) is about to start shooting his second feature film in Berlin next month. Tristan is known for his dark, delicious flair with beautifully bloody prosthetics and painstaking CGI work in his shorts. 'Pixel', a short featuring 30 vfx shots of carefully detailed animated bugs, and 'I Love you' with some deeply horrific acts of passion. Tristan's first feature film 'Not Alone' features a 1950's American aesthetic and is currently in post-production.

Now comes Omni. The story of an abducted woman; Abbi - recently freed from a Berlin prison after being convicted of a crime despite pleading innocence. Seeing her daughter for the first time in 7 years she celebrates. That evening she is taken by an unidentified object within a bright light and subject to extreme experiments and surgical probing.

Abbi wakes to find herself in unknown and uncomfortable surroundings and roams by day

searching for answers, learning why she had been a chosen one. Each night she is haunted and taken, only to wake again in a new location. Abbi has to fight to her freedom whilst uncovering a menace which threatens the planet's existence.

Omni will be made by UK company Screaming Pictures and shot on-location in the UK, Europe and hopefully other parts of the World. Made in partnership with Ascension Productions, known for the production of The Gallows ' Grey Britain ' film and for music promos for such horror-esque bands as The Defiled.

Abbi is to be played by British actress Charlotte Hunter (Dungeons and Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness . Sci-Fi Short 'Shifter'). An up-and-coming actress with a strong feminine charm and a tough broad interior - perfect for this role.

Crew members that have already embraced Omni are:

Jonathan Edward Klahr, a trained Special Effects man from the days of Star Wars ep1, The Mummy and Harry Potter. He now has a strong focus on VFX compositing for companies such as Disney, Sony and Electronic Arts. He was also the man behind the millions of bugs in Versluis short 'Pixel'.
Director of Photography: Stuart Nicholas White. Having shot the majority of Versluis' shorts and his last feature 'Not Alone'. They share a great partnership in filmmaking. White uses his talent and enthusiasm for beautiful photography and composition to bring Versluis' visions to life.
Rachel Freire, Costume Designer , is hugely popular in the fashion world and has work featured on the front page of Italian Vogue magazine. Her work has an imaginative twist to the dark side and fetish with a futuristic natural form, perfect for Omni.
Production Designer, Melanie Light (Inbred, SKET, Kirill, Scar Crow) has a huge passion for Sci-Fi and Horror and thrives in the genre. Having worked with Versluis on many occasions, she understands his qualities and runs with it.

Omni will be fresh and exciting for the Sci-Fi / Horror genre - delving into new ways of exploring the experimentation by extraterrestrial beings. Oozing high class VFX and creativity in UK talent.

So follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and support new UK talent!

Omni website and blog.

Harold's Going Stiff in Sheffield

2011-10-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

Yorkshire zombie comedy Harold's Going Stiff will screen in Sheffield at Celluloid Screams, a horror film festival which has so far escaped my attention. Lead actors Sarah Spencer and Stan Rowe will be in attendance at the screening this Sunday, 23rd October, at 4pm at the Showroom Workstation.

A US premiere in Austin is also lined up.

Also screening this weekend in Sheffield is Alex Chandon's Inbred, Dust Devil, Vampyres, The Theatre Bizarre, Helldriver, Some Guy Who Kills People, Re-Animator and Halloween.

Poster and synopsis for Pat Higgins' Witchpit

2011-10-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

Pat Higgins sent me an update on The Devil's Music and his next feature The House on the Witchpit, shooting next year. Before then we should see the Pat-scripted Strippers vs Werewolves and hopefully a release for Bordello Death Tales. Here's Pat, talking about himself in the third person, much like MJ Simpson often does:

Pat Higgins, the original creator and writer of the eagerly anticipated 'Strippers vs Werewolves' has announced his next feature 'The House on the Witchpit'. Higgins' company, Jinx Media, has released a teaser poster for the film and a few details of what to expect.

Pat Higgins describes 'The House on the Witchpit', as "a 3am panic attack" and adds "It's dark, strange and doesn't treat the audience like idiots. It's a trawl through the dark corners of my subconscious in an attempt to pull whatever shrieking, shaking things live there out into the light and pin them bleeding to the screen as best as we are able."

'The House on the Witchpit' tells the story of Rachel Morely, a beautiful young widow struggling to get over the sudden death of her husband. When an old college friend invites her to a notorious old building for the recording a very unusual horror TV show, she hopes that it might prove just the distraction she needs. By midnight, however, untold horrors have reawakened and not all of the blood spilling in the old house is reassuringly fake.

The film will be shooting in 2012, and the teaser artwork (designed by Paul Cousins) can be seen attached.

Higgins has also announced the release of his award-winning 2008 cult hit 'The Devil's Music' on groundbreaking new platform Distrify, which allows viewers to stream or download the film instantly and also allows fans to profit from the process by embedding the player on their websites.

Higgins says "As the physical formats die away, it's interesting to see the new forms of distribution breaking through. The Devil's Music has already had a successful release on both sides of the pond (if you're quick you can still pick up the US special edition DVD from Amazon, although it is now out of print) and now we've seized upon Distrify as a way of bringing it to a whole new audience. Distrify are tying independent film into social media in a way that I think is extremely exciting"

The film, which won the Best Independent Feature category at the UK's Festival of Fantastic Film, tells the tale of shock-rocker Erika Spawn and her obsession with a boy-band singer whom she becomes convinced is the Antichrist. It examines the way the media deals with violent entertainment and generated terrific word-of-mouth upon its original release.

A new version of the trailer, featuring Higgins talking about the film, can be seen at:

http://distrify.com/films/424-the-devil-s-music

Reverend, Kill Keith and more at British Horror Fest

2011-10-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

The British Horror Film Festival 2011 runs at two venues simultaneously over 14th-15th October. You can either see the films at The Dance Pavilion in Bournemouth or the Empire, Leicester Square in That London.

Festival organiser Stuart Brennan has the world premiere of his eagerly awaited The Reverend lines up for the Friday night, which seems perfectly reasonable. Then on Saturday we have the brilliant (I hope!) Kill Keith, The Holding, Stalker and the UK premiere of The Hike. Plus a couple of hours of short films as follows:
Tell Him Next Year (13 mins) Directed by David MargolisSolving Problems (16 mins) Directed by Filipe Maciel Merry Little Christmas (21 mins) Produced by Lolita PicturesRise of the Appliances (9mins) Directed by Rob Sprackling Le Miroir (15 mins) Directed by FervexEnvy The Dead (10 mins) Directed by Isa SwainFacing Rupert (11 mins) Directed by Gregory Erdstein

Two new reviews: Kill List and Unhappy Birthday

2011-10-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

I don't often review theatrically released films but Kill List annoyed me so much - and has been so overpraised by people blind to its flaws - that I had to get my thoughts into words.

If you want a much better film that owes a debt to The Wicker Man, check out Unhappy Birthday from Peccadillo Pictures. In fact you can catch the film on the big screen at the Greenwich Picturehouse on 31st October.

Harold and more at Day of the Undead

2011-10-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

Phoenix Square and Terror4Fun have announced the line-up for this year's Day of the Undead, Leicester's annual celebration of all things zombie. There are two British features on the menu: Keith Wright's wrily comical Harold's Going Stiff (which I've seen) and the Ford Brothers' African-set The Dead (which I'm looking forward to seeing).

There are two UK premieres: Reese Eveneshan's Dead Genesis from Canada and, from the States, Thomas Newman's stoner comedy Bong of the Dead. If slacker comedies are more your thing, there's the Pierce Brothers' comedy Deadheads. All this and Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead too! Plus the usual make-up and authors and dealers and video games.

Day of the Undead is on Saturday 19th November, from midday to midnight. Day tickets are £25, individual films are £7/£5.40

Kill Keith - not in most cinemas from 11th November

2011-09-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

One film I'm desperate to see is Kill Keith, the latest feature from director Andy Thompson (The Scar Crow), in which a serial killer murders minor league British TV names including Russell Grant, Joe Pasquale, Tony Blackburn and the eponymous Mr Chegwin.

The concept is so loopy that this can't fail to be either the best film ever made or the worst, possibly both. There's a great teaser trailer at www.killkeith.co.uk and the film is set for a limited theatrical release on 11th November.

The cast also include Dominic Burns (director of Cut), the ubiquitous Simon Phillips (Jack Says trilogy, Jesus vs the Messiah etc), Susannah Fielding (4.3.2.1) and the great Frank Scantori (Warrior Sisters, Room 36).

Black Pond - new British film

2011-09-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

Black Pond is a new British film from Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley, tw young men who previously collaborated on the half-hour, Japanese-shot short film Cockroach (which you can watch on YouTube). The feature is notable as the return to the screen of the comedy legend that is Chris Langham: Muppet Show writer; Ken Campbell's first Arthur Dent; original Not the Nine O'Clock News cast member; People Like Us; The Thick of It...

Langham is the head of a family accused of being cold-blooded killers in this slightly surreal dark comedy-thriller which debuted at Raindance. Slightly bizarrely, the cast also includes Simon Amstell off Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Black Pond opens at the Prince Charles Cinema in London on 11th November and goes on limited release around the country the following week. More at www.blackpondfilm.com

More guests added to Manchester

2011-09-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

The Festival of Fantastic Films has expanded its guest lists till further with the addition of Italian horror actor Bobby Rhodes (from Demons and Demons 2) and veteran Hammer assistant director Hugh Harlow. Other guests include actors Robin Askwith, Derek Fowlds, Johnny Legend and Derren Nesbitt, director Norman J Warren, producer Richard Gordon, veteran script supervisor Renee Glynne, scriptwriter David McGillivray and film lecturer CP Lee who used to be in punk band Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias!

Another win for Gorgo!

2011-09-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Gorgo has picked up its second award, this one at the Cantoo Film Festival in West Virgina where it won 'Best Short Film'.
The judges' comments are very flattering:

"Finally she has come! Waiting for Gorgo is a short film about what is real and what is fiction. Benjamin Craig takes the viewer deep into the Ministry of Defence in search of the elusive D.M.O.A. In the film you will meet the small but extremely likable cast. The two heads of the department, characterised by Geoffrey Davies and Nicholas Amer, play off each other wonderfully. Kelly Eastwood skilfully expresses the journey to find them. You feel the pity which the auditor has as she reveals to them the truth of their situation. The well-built set rivals a Hollywood production with its detail. M.J. Simpson's script is brilliantly witty and nearly every line is quotable. A well directed, well produced film that is fun and thought-provoking. A winner of a film! The film shows why the British are the best in this craft."

New review: Umbrage: The First Vampire

2011-09-17T09:42:00.000-07:00

Umbrage: The First Vampire is almost certainly the first ever British vampire western. It stars Doug Bradley and Rita Ramnani and is out on DVD from Left Films on 17th October. But is it any good?

Blood Runs Cold coming soon on DVD

2011-09-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, the trailer for new Swedish horror film Blood Runs Cold looks terrific.

"The debut feature from director Sonny Laguna, the low-budget Swedish horror flick Blood Runs Cold takes the classic slasher template set down by John Carpenter with “Halloween” and gives it a Scandinavian make-over that chills to the bone." says the publicity blurb.

Chelsea Films release the movie on UK DVD on 3rd October.

New review: Stalker

2011-09-10T01:36:00.000-07:00

Martin Kemp's debut feature Stalker (originally announced as a remake of Exposé) is out on DVD next month and I've been able to watch and review a screener. You can also catch the film on the big screen at Grimm Up North in Manchester on 7th October when Kemp, producer Jonathan Sothcott and actress Jane March will be in attendance.

Unhappy Birthday due next month

2011-09-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

Unhappy Birthday, the 'gay Wicker Man' that I previewed back in July is now set for a DVD release in the UK (from Peccadillo Pictures, who else) on 24th October.

Find out more at www.unhappybirthdaythemovie.com

Deadly tattoo from Canada: Comforting Skin

2011-09-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Producer Justin James very kindly dropped me a line to alert me to Comforting Skin, an atmospheric and original new Canadian horror feature from director Derek Franson. (Credit annotations by me...)

"Comforting Skin is a supernatural thriller that follows Koffie, a lonely young woman’s who's desperate need for emotional and sexual companionship draws her into a surreal and ultimately destructive relationship with a shifting and whispering tattoo she has willed to life on her skin.

"Comforting Skin was shot last spring on a budget of roughly $250,000. Additionally much of our equipment, crew and locations were donated as well. The slithering, shifting tattoo character was brought to life through the use of digital animation and compositing techniques, requiring custom code developed by our VFX Supervisor Ollie Rankin (motion capture on Watchmen and Harry Potter). We are now in the final days of completing the film with just a few effects shots left to fine-tune and finish.

The film stars Victoria Bidewell (AVP: Requiem) in her first starring role, along with Tygh Runyan (Stargate Universe, Canadian Zombie), Jane Sowerby (The Pink Chiquitas!) and Phil Granger (Sasquatch, To Die For). Victoria not only performed the lead part of Koffie, but voiced the tattoo character as well. Derek, myself and Andrew Webster produced the film. Our cinematography was handled by Adam Sliwinski (Deadly Visions, Beyond Sherwood Forest), who did an amazing job for us, as did our editor Lenka Svab (Karate Dog; no honestly: Karate. Dog.) and Production Designer Elena Dubova (costume assistant on Stonehenge Apocalypse!). The film`s haunting music was composed and conducted by Alain Mayrand, who despite our miniscule budget was able to assemble an impressive group of orchestral musicians to record the score."

There's a website at www.comfortingskin.com, the trailer's on Vimeo and there's a Facebook thing.

New British horror: The Tapes

2011-08-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

The Tapes is a new British horror film that I hadn't previously heard about, set for release next month. Here's the publicity. (In case you're wondering, Demons Never Die is the new title of the forthcoming British horror picture previously known as Suicide Kids).

Three teenagers... two cameras ... one terrifying night ...

Written by Scott Bates and co-directed by Bates and Lee Alliston, The Tapes is a brand new independent British horror film starring Jason Maza (Demons Never Die; Anuvahood; Fish Tank),Arnold Oceng (Demons Never Die; 4.3.2.1.; Adulthood; Grange Hill), Natasha Sparkes (Burlesque Fairytales) and Nick Nevern (Terry; Adulthood).

A gritty, urban teen horror that takes its “found footage” cue from the likes of “The Blair Witch Project”, “REC” and “The Zombie Diaries”, The Tapes adds a rare and chilling sense of realism to the proceedings thanks to utterly convincing performances from its excellent young cast and fine location work that suggests the horror really could happen here.

In the winter of 2008, three teenage friends, Nathan (Oceng), Gemma (Sparkes) and her boyfriend Dan (Maza), visited Whitstable, Kent to shoot location footage for Gemma’s showreel and her Big Brother TV show audition video. While filming in one of the area’s many pubs, they briefly encountered a local farmer and were later informed by the barmaid that the man was a harmless ‘swinger’ who regularly hosted sex parties at his nearby farm.

Seeing an opportunity to make some easy money by breaking into the farm to secretly film one of the parties and then selling the bootleg DVDs for cash, Nathan and Dan convinced Gemma to accompany them by promising to finish her showreel at the same time. But things soon began to turn extremely sinister when the farmer and his guests began arriving at the farmhouse and the three friends found themselves trapped in a dingy barn as darkness fell.

These events and the horrific details of what happened next only came to light when the police discovered the videotapes recorded by Nathan, Dan and Gemma. Now, the families of the victims have allowed The Tapes to be shown to the public for the first time. What you will see documents the shocking and terrifying final hours of three teenagers who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Tapes (cert. tbc) is released by Exile Media Group and will open at selected UK cinemas on23rd September 2011. It will be available to buy on DVD (£9.99) from 26th September 2011.

New reviews: The Porcelain Man and Ninjas vs Vampires

2011-08-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

The Porcelain Man is a never-released ultra-low budget British feature from 2004. Ninjas vs Vampires is a fun American action-horror romp which is released in the UK this week by Left Films.

New British horror: In the Dark Half

2011-08-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

And still they come. In the Dark Half is a 'psychological ghost story; from Bard Entertainment (who previously brought us the excellent Vampire Diary)/Matador Pictures/SouthWest Screen. Directed by Alastair Siddons, whose previus work has been documentaries and music videos, from a script by Lucy Catherine who wrote an epsode of Being Human and adapted Roald Dahl's The Witches for Radio 4. It stars Tony Curran (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Underworld: Evolution, Midnight Meat Train), Lindsey Marshal (Snuff-Movie, Being Human) and Jessica Barden.

Synopsis
It's autumn and Marie is fifteen. She lives on the edge of the city with her mum Kathy. Filthy lives next door. He is a single father with a six year old son called Sean. He takes his boy out hunting with him for rabbits on the hill behind their houses. They are very close and spend all their time together. Marie also likes the hill. She goes running on it every day. In a secluded spot near the top she has a secret den. It is her refuge from a world she is finding increasingly difficult to cope with. She appears to be losing her only friend and she doesn’t seem to be able to communicate with her mother.
One night Marie babysits for Filthy. Whilst in her care, Sean mysteriously dies. Nobody knows why and Filthy is devastated. Marie becomes convinced the death has something to do with the hill and becomes aware that she is being haunted by a frightening presence. What is this presence? Is it the spirit of Sean? Or something much more terrifying...

Driscoll reviews back online

2011-08-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

I still get a lot of questions about them and damn it, if he's back, so am I! So my reviews of Kannibal (now aka Head Hunter), The Comic and Evil Calls (aka The Raven aka Alone in the Dark and now aka The Legend of Harrow Woods) are back up on my site - with more, better pictures too.

Don't try to read Evil Calls in one sitting unless you have a lot of free time!

Richard Driscoll has risen from the grave!

2011-08-14T01:52:00.000-07:00

Until a couple of years ago I used to document the amusing boasts and claims (and spelling mistakes) of Richard Driscoll 'the British Ed Wood'. I took down 'The Richard Driscoll Experience' and my reviews of Kannibal, The Comic and Evil Calls (all 22,000 words of it!) after Driscoll started bombarding me with illiterate, threatening e-mails and it turned from a fun sideline into something tedious.

Since then, I have received constant e-mails about Driscoll, many from people who had the 'joy' of working with him. House of Fear went bust a few months ago (the site is now dead) and although I have reliable reports of receiverships and arrests and all sorts of malarkey, it would be impolitic for me to report what is technically hearsay (however amusing/likely it is).

Before he disappeared, when he was shooting Eldorado, Driscoll threatened to re-release his films in 3D - and now he has! A 3D version of Evil Calls, retitled The Legend of Harrow Woods, is now on sale in HMV, Sainsburys and anywhere else that stocks dodgy DVDs. Here's the Amazon page and here's another Amazon page for Head Hunter, a 3D retitling of Kannibal, which is set for release at the end of August.

There's even a couple of reviews of The Legend of Harrow Woods online now. AndyErupts says: "The Legend of Harrow Woods, also known as Evil Calls: The Raven Part 1, is utter garbage. I don’t just say that to be nasty. I don’t do that. It’s genuinely awful. It’s a low-grade Shining clone, with smatterings of The Blair Witch Project thrown in for good measure."

And Nameless Horror says: "I cannot recommend this film to anyone I know since I think they will all hate it . I didn’t hate it but I don’t imagine seeking it out to watch again"

Unlike the previous DVD of Evil Calls, this one is legal as it has a BBFC certificate (it was submitted by a company called Lace Digital Media Sales which seems to be purely a service company that Driscoll has hired).

The actual 'company' releasing the discs is called Moviola 3D. They have a website (registered in Queensland, although I'm sure that's a red herring), a Facebook page and a Youtube channel. They plan to release Eldorado (I literally cannot wait) in 3D and also Cold Light of Day. I can certainly wait for this last one, which is a dull biopic of Denis Nilsen, produced by Driscoll in the 1990s (though he falesly claimed to have directed it too when he listed it as Killer's Kiss on his previous website). There are five other titles listed for 2012 release but we all know how fluid Driscoll's concept of the future is.

I am reliably informed that Driscoll doesn't actually have the rights to Kannibal or Evil Calls (though I suppose he may have copyrighted the 3D versions separately). He almost certainly doesn't have the rights to release Eldorado and there are a bunch of people involved in that film who have never seen a copy and will be very interested if it turns up in HMV. So my advice is to snap these discs up as soon as possible in case they suddenly get pulled from the shelves.

In the meantime, I am resurrecting my three Driscoll reviews and an archive of the old RD Experience, and I'll record here any further news on the man and his work.

Two new British horrors: Rising Tide and The Hounds

2011-08-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of new indue UK horror features which have crossed my radar and have their debut screenings this week.

Rising Tide
screening: Tyneside Cinema, Newscastle, 17 August 2011, 6.00pm (with cast Q&A)
www.risingtidethemovie.com

"A sinister story about a group of college leavers embarking on their last adventure together, the film is a coming-of-age ghost story about friendship, loss and revenge.

Exams finished and the holidays in full swing, it should have been a memorable last adventure with close friends before going separate ways. It was, but for all the wrong reasons.

As the friends raise a toast ‘to friendship’, Izzy, the newest member of the close-knit group, is hiding a devastating past which follows them to the fateful camping trip to the tidal island of Holy Island, or Lindisfarne.

Internationally renowned Northumbrian musician Kathryn Tickell and several North East bands add a foreboding, atmospheric soundtrack to the film as the storm clouds gather over the Northumberland coast.

A film directed and produced by Dawn Furness & Philip Shotton"

The Hounds

You've just missed this one, I'm afraid as it screened at The Little Cinema in Bath on Friday 12 August. Seems to be an Anglo-Italian co-production, directed by Maurizio and Robert Del Piccolo with a British cast and British/Italian crew. Filmed in and around Bath.

www.thehounds-themovie.com/start.htm

"A group of old friends, Sarah, Jake, Dave and Martin, decide to relive their college days by going on a hiking weekend, camping out overnight. At the same time, Mike, a police detective, is investigating a criminal gang who are in some macabre way linked to the group of friends. How are these parallel stories connected? And what terrible discovery will Sarah make? Nothing is quite as it appears.

WFGorgo wins at Italian festival!

2011-08-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

The little film which I wrote, Waiting for Gorgo, has screened at a bunch of festivals and has now won a prize. It was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Filmcaravan Festival in Italy "For good technique and the coordination on the set of three protagonists who support a dialectic rhythm with great harmony, without lessening the tension."

Hooray!

My next book: The British Horror Revival

2011-08-07T15:42:00.000-07:00

With the ink dry on the contracts (and about a quarter of the text written) I can announce my next book. No, it's not the interminably-delayed Elsa Lanchester biography (though I will finish that one day, I promise). My current project is a book simply called The British Horror Revival (we may add a funky subtitle to that at some point) which will be published by Hemlock Books in 2012, in which I document, review and contextualise about a hundred British horror films released between 1998 and 2008.

I've written about the BHR before, for example, in a piece I did for the sadly missed DeathRay magazine, and I've referenced it plenty of times on my website and in my Devil's Porridge blog for Hemlock. Now I've got the opportunity to go into the subject in some real depth. I'm addressing the topic on two fronts: in terms of the sheer volume of films being produced and commercially released (an average of one every 11 days last year); and in thematic terms. I'll show how the best of these films combine horror with social realism to address the realities of life in 21st century Britain.

Like any subgenre, BHR films range from the great to the terrible but many of them are simply unknown, with little if any press coverage. Hopefully my book can draw attention to some overlooked gems.

The reason I'm only going up to 2008 is not because the BHR stopped three years ago but because I've got a limited word count. Continuing up to 2012 would almost double the number of movies covered, almost halving what I can say about each one. Also, the last film in the book should now conveniently be Mum and Dad, which broke new ground in its distribution model - and distribution models will be a key element of the book.

So that's what I'm busy working on (plus a zombie script that I'll talk about some other time). I've watched a lot of the films I'll be covering and have a stack of DVDs waiting to be seen, and I've been fortunate enough to interview many of the cast and crew over the years. But new material is always welcome, so if you were involved with a British horror film released during that period and can supply interesting memories/opinions (or might be able to bung a screener of an obscure title my way) then please get in touch.

Richard Gordon and The Ask return to Manchester

2011-07-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

This year's Festival of Fantastic Films looks set to be one of the best because there are some wonderful guests lined up. Dear old Richard Gordon (whom I interviewed for Video Watchdog many years ago) was a regular attendee but had had to miss the last few Festivals. This year, he's flying over from New York and will be signing copies of Tom Weaver's new book about his work.

And - The Ask is back! Robin Askwith (who worked with Richard on Tower of Evil and Horror Hospital) was the life of the party when he attended a few years ago and should be just as much fun this time.

Plus - Norman J Warren! David McGillivray! Darren Nesbitt! Derek Fowlds! Renee Glynne! CP Lee! Johnny Legend!

The festival runs 21st-23rd October in Manchester. See you there!

Langliena online

2011-07-28T01:05:00.000-07:00

Emiliano Ranzani writes: "After several requests (and having discovered that the thing had also ended up in the pirate circuit!), I have decided to upload my multi-award winning short LANGLIENA - UNA STORIA MACABRA on both youtube and vimeo. Described by cult horror master Stuart Gordon as 'an impressive debut', it is an humble yet nasty piece of fiction that has given me some joy through the years."

HGL and JDW join forces - uh-oh!

2011-07-28T01:01:00.000-07:00

The Uh-Oh Show is the new film from Herschell Gordon Lewis (who I interviewed for Video Watchdog a few years back), featuring Joel D Wynkoop and with a cameo by Lloyd Kaufman. It's about a violent, gory game show and is available for pre-order on Amazon. There's a Facebook thing apparently.

Theatre Bizarre link with Langliena

2011-07-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing good things about The Theatre Bizarre, a new multi-director anthology created by David Gregory and starring Udo Kier. What I didn't realise was that the Richard Stanley segment 'The Mother of Toads' was co-written by Emiliano Ranzani, director of the great short film Langliena.

Emiliano also directed second unit on this segment, which apparently mostly involved shooting footage of toads!

Here's the trailer on Vimeo.

The Rig

2011-07-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

The Rig comes to UK DVD on 8th August:

"As a hurricane rages outside, the small but experienced crew of a deep-sea oil drilling rig settles in to ride out the storm. Isolated on the rig and a hundred miles from shore, their calm is short lived when a crew member goes missing and an extensive search proves futile.

"Slowly, they discover that a deadly creature is stalking the skeleton crew, eliminating them one by one. Surrounded by nothing but raging ocean, their communication severed and no way off the rig, the roughnecks try to survive the stormy night with an unrelenting force of death hunting them down."

Directed by Peter Atencio and starring William Forsythe.

The Witches of Oz

2011-07-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is a project that Leigh Scott mentioned a while back on the old Retromedia board, and it sounds great:

"A star-studded cast including Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings), Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future), Sean Astin(Lord of the Rings) and Mia Sara (Legend) bring the much-loved magic of Oz into a modern day setting and the results are positively spellbinding.

"Dorothy Gale is a small-time author from Kansas who writes children's stories about Oz, a fantasy land that lies somewhere over the rainbow. When a New York agency offers to represent her books, Dorothy heads to the Big Apple and finds things are not what they seem... Although Dorothy has always believed that Oz was a fictional place created by her eccentric grandfather, strange happenings in New York soon prove that it's very real indeed! The inhabitants of Oz have come to our world to seek Dorothy's help in defeating the Wicked Witch of the West and her plans for global domination."

Scott previously directed a bunch of Asylum pictures including Transmorphers, Dragon and Pirates of Treasure Island. The Witches of Oz also features Jeffrey Combs and Lance Henriksen. The UK DVD is out on 8th August and runs a whopping four hours!

New trailers for Bane and Kill List

2011-07-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

Bane is out on UK DVD this week and there's a new trailer on YouTube.

The DVD from Safecracker pictures includes an intro and a commentary by James Eaves, plus out-takes, deleted footage, a trailer and a Making Of.

There's also a trailer for new British horror Kill List available on YouTube. That's set for UK theatrical release on 2 September.

Unhappy Birthday

2011-07-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

Oh sweet Lord Jesus! Oh Christ in Heaven! Oh Jesus Christ! Yes, it's a gay variant of The Wicker Man: Unhappy Birthday. Brilliant!

"UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY is the fictional story of three outsiders’ battles against the twisted morals of an antiquated community. Inspired by British cult classics such as THE WICKER MAN (1970) and HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR, UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY romps through themes of isolation and nature versus nurture with a knowing eye. Filmed entirely on location in Northumberland in the North East of England and on the stunning tidal island of Lindisfarne, UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY is led by a young British cast, including David Paisley (Holby City, Casualty) Jill Riddiford (Our Friends in the North), Christina De Vallee and Jonathan Keane, with a cameo by trash horror legend David McGillivray (House of Whipcord, Schizo)."

Could it get any better than that? How about that one of the two film-makers is a TV whose credits include Nigella's Kitchen and How Clean is Your House? How about that the preview screening (which I'll have to miss, alas) features a cast and crew Q&A hosted by Gok Wan?

You know, there are some films that you just have to see, and this looks like one of them. Here's the website. Here's the trailer on YouTube. Now cut some capers, man!

New review: Pickman's Muse

2011-07-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

I've just posted a review of a new HP Lovecraft feature, Pickman's Muse which, despite the title, isn't based on 'Pickman's Model'.

Cowboys and ninjas and zombies and vampires

2011-07-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

Left Films is releasing two great-looking movies next month in the UK. First up is Cowboys and Zombies which was originally called The Dead and the Damned but has been retitled to cash in on Cowboys and Aliens. Directed by Rene Perez, it stars David A Lockhart, Camille Montgomery and Rick Mora.

That's out on 1st August and three weeks later Left Films brings us Ninjas vs Vampires, Justin Timpane's sequel to his 2008 film - good grief - Ninjas vs Zombies. Later in the year Left Films (who previously handled sales on Colin) bring us eagerly awaited Doug Bradley-starring British horror Umbrage: The First Vampire, plus Aussie sci-fi/horror flick Alien Undead and - crikey - Blood Car.

Time Again - new US sci-fi indie

2011-06-26T01:17:00.000-07:00

Time Again is a new American sci-fi/action picture which director Ray Karwell describes as a cross between Die Hard and TimeCop.

Short synopsis:

After a young waitress receives strange coins for a tip, she inadvertently becomes embroiled in an underworld battle with a notorious criminal that leads to her death. With the help of a mysterious old lady, the waitress's younger sister goes back in time to save her from being murdered.

The movie stars Scott F Evans (Alien Abduction), John T Woods (Mega Snake), Angela Rachelle (The Kiss), Tara Smoker, and veteran actress Gigi Perreau (Journey to the Center of Time,). It co-stars Robert Pike Daniel (Battle of Los Angeles), Douglas Jantzen Jr. (The Last Lovecraft), Jonathan Kowalsky (Beyond the Mat), Heather Tocquigny (Insidious).

You can watch the trailer on the IMDB and there's a Facebook thing.

New review: Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit

2011-06-26T01:05:00.000-07:00

I have added a review of Whatever Happened to Pete Blaggit, a new low-budget British sci-fi picture directed by Mark Jeavons.

Callback - new Irish short

2011-06-26T00:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a new short film which won the Audience Award at Dublin's Horrorthon festival last year.

You can watch Patrick Thompson's Callback on YouTube (it's four minutes long) and there's a Faceboook thing as well.

Airborne trailer - British horror in an aeroplane

2011-06-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the trailer for expensive-looking new British horror film Airborne, starring the legend that is Mark Hamill!

Directed by Dominic Burns (Cut), produced by Burns, Simon Phillips (Jack Says), the ubiquitous Jonathan Sothcott and others, written by Paul Chronnel (a former Russ Abbot gag-writer, like me!). Due out next year - looks great.

Bane comes to UK DVD + screening

2011-06-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

James Eaves' great sci-fi/horror movie Bane is finally out on UK DVD next month through Safecracker Pictures. You can pre-order it on DVD from Amazon (£11.99) or Play (£10.99), and apparently there's a quote from me on the back of the sleeve.

NB. Play is using the old promo artwork - this is what the DVD actually looks like.

Jim has revamped the Amber Pictures website (you can turn off the music!) and announced his next production, Spectre from the Void.

If you want to see Bane on the big screen (well, projected onto a screen in a room above a pub in Southampton) there's a showing on Tuesday 26th July (which has one of those Facebook things, apparently).

New MJS book on the way

2011-06-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

I don't want to jinx things before contracts are signed but I'm currently powering through a new book which should be out next year. This odesn't mean the Elsa biog is history; in fact I'm hoping that this new project will kick-start my book-writing muscles and let me finish off Elsa straight after.

More news as and when. I'm also working on a unique zombie script, inbetween chapters.

Harold wins in Scotland

2011-05-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Keith Wright and the team behind zombie comedy Harold's Going Stiff which has picked up the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Dead by Dawn Festival in Edinburgh.

Fantastic Films Weekend in Bradford

2011-05-29T08:01:00.000-07:00

The 10th Fantastic Films Weekend in Bradford over 10-12 June has an incredible line-up which includes:

Bloodbath at the House of Death, The Stuff, The Stone Tape, Horror Express, When a Stranger Calls, a 1986 Everyman documentary on Frankenstein, a 1965 Horizon documentary on sci-fi, Nothing But the Night, Hands of the Ripper, new Anglo-South African feature The Dead, Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Clash of the Titans, CHUD, Let's Scare Jessica to Death etc etc etc.

Wish I could be there. Looks fab. All the best to Tony Earnshaw and co. for a successful event.

Diseaster - weird Dutch short

2011-05-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

I received this press release about a half-hour Dutch short called Diseaster (sic) which is now available online with English subtitles. I've only had time to watch the trailer. It looks somewhat Tromatic. And very Dutch. I'd show you some images or the poster but they've only got massive high-res file which I can't be arsed to convert. Note to indie film-makers: if most of your publicity is going to be online make your publicity images easily available in web-friendly form!

PRESS RELEASE

DISEASTER RELEASED ONLINE: AN EASTER IN THE COUNTRYSIDE DESTINED TO DOOM

GRONINGEN, the NETHERLANDS - In the aftermath of Easter, a group of indie filmmakers has just released their subtitled, tragicomical, fantastic Easter film DISEASTER (a.k.a. PAASHAAT). It's a thorough re-interpretation of all kinds of Easter and Bunny myths. The story is centred around the uprooting of a dysfunctional family living in the country. The handicapped son’s streams of consciousness in local dialect introduce the viewers to a massively absurd revenge story.

A unique concept, conceived by writer/director Boki Mekel. He calls his new film "a Northern Eastern with Western influences", but one could as easily describe it as a fantasy horror full of black humour. According to director of photography and editor, Arno Cupédo, "Easter traditions have been utterly transgressed in this film".

The featurette was realised with the lowest budget imaginable by a group of filmmakers and enthousiasts of the Videocollectief, a film collective in the city of Groningen. Various special effects were created for the film, in particular a thirty centimetre high intimidating animatronic Easter Bunny. Special attention was also given to the eclectic original soundtrack that ranges from happy children's tunes to dark metal and digital hardcore.

Now, with a subtitled version on the website paashaat.nl, global Anglophone audiences can try to experience and understand the tragic events that took place last Easter to that family out there in the North-Western European countryside..

New British horror: Siren

2011-05-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

PR: “Dead Calm” meets “The Hunger” in the “genuinely sexy supernatural” (The Aisle Seat) independent British horror flick, Siren, the debut directorial feature of former Art Director, the late Andrew Hull(P2; Queer As Folk; Get Over It; Resurrection).

Described as “lean, dirty and surprising” by DVD Verdict, the film features a cast of “exciting up-and-coming talent” (Maxim) that includes Eoin Macken (Merlin; Centurion), Anna Skellern (The Descent Part 2), Tereza Srbova (Inkheart; St. Trinian’s; Eichmann; Eastern Promises) andAnthony Jabre (debut), and boasts a hypnotic musical theme based around hotly-tipped, LA-based all-girl group Warpaint’s song, “Elephants”.

Hoping to escape their busy city lives for a weekend of sailing off Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast, Ken (Macken), his girlfriend Rachel (Skellern) and her old college friend Marco (Jabre) see their plans hit a snag when they go to the aid of a castaway. Raving incoherently and bleeding from his ears, the man dies on board the boat prompting the three friends, fearing reprisals from the local foreign authorities, to take his body to a nearby deserted island for a surreptitious burial.

On the island they discover another castaway, a beautiful but clearly traumatized young woman named Silka (Srbova). Rachel becomes immediately entranced by the girl, while Ken and Marco’s obvious interests in her lead to a deep sexual frustration that begins to manifest itself in the form of feverish hallucinations, violence and extreme paranoia. As the tensions between the three friends rise towards a deadly boiling point, they make a chilling discovery that suggests they may not make it off the island alive.

Siren (cert. 15, tbc) will be released on DVD (£12.99) by Matchbox Films on 27th June 2011

New reviews: The Frankenstein Syndrome and Camp Casserole

2011-05-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

Two new reviews on the site. The Frankenstein Syndrome, which I have reviewed under its UK title The Frankenstein Experiment, is a superb indie horror starring (and produced by) Tiffany Shepis.

Camp Casserole is Anthony Pedone's Making Of feature for Steve Balderson's The Casserole Club.

Seattle reviewer really, really digs Gorgo!

2011-05-18T13:57:00.000-07:00

There's a really nice write-up of Waiting for Gorgo on Seattle pop culture site Three Imaginary Girls.

Film reviewer 'Imaginary Rich' saw WFG at a preview of shorts screening at this month's Seattle Film Festival. He says, "I really, really dug the film Waiting for Gorgo" and calls it "super-fun". Cheers, matey!

You can read his review on the TIG site or on his own blog.

Waiting for Gorgo in Camden

2011-05-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Gorgo is screening at the Short Cutz evening in Camden. Unfortunately I can't be there.

Date and Time: Sunday 5 June 2011, 7.30pm

Location: Proud Camden, The Horse Hospital, Stables Market, Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 8AH

And it's free to get in.

Guillotine Guys

2011-05-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

James Ricardo sent me a link to his new short Guillotine Guys on YouTube. It's a fun little film, well-produced. Personally I would have preferred it to end after the putting-stuff-in-pocket bit, in other words the dialogue-free first half. But it's still a neat little movie worth seven minutes of your time. Plus it's got Russ Kingston from Mega-Shark vs Giant Octopus in it!

New review: Masterpiece

2011-05-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

I have added a review of Masterpiece, a dark, intense psychodrama about an obsessive wannabe writer. Director Andrew C Tanner previously made Psychosomatic.

Ken Barker is on giants' shoulders

2011-05-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Barker is back! The director of Kingdom and Catalina: A New Kind of Superhero is working on a retro-style sci-fi adventure called On the Shoulders of Giants.

It stars Sarah Wood, Warwick St.John (who was in Catalina), Carl Isherwood (who is in a new Dracula film called Christian), Wayne Ewart (who was in Stuart St.Paul's Freight) and Alex Skerratt (who writes The Sooty Show!). Cinematography by Alex Veitch (Vampires of Bloody Island).

You can watch a teaser trailer on YouTube and find out more at Ken's site, Water on the Rock.

Sam Voutas introduces his Chinese comedy in London

2011-05-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

Sam Voutas, who wrote, produced and starred in Aussie horror-thriller Watch Me, is in London this weekend for the European premiere of Red Light Revolution as part of the Terracotta Far East Festival.

Sam, who lives in China, directed this Mandarin comedy about a family man who decides to open a sex shop in Beijing. The festival takes place in the Prince Charles Cinema and Red Light Revolution screens at 12.15pm on Sunday 8th May with Sam in attendance for a Q&A. He is also presenting a masterclass at 11.00am on Saturday, which is free to attend if you have a ticket for a Terracotta screening or wear a Terracotta T-shirt.

Waiting for Gorgo US premiere - 30 May

2011-05-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Gorgo finally has a confirmed date for its North American premiere. If you're anywhere near Seattle at the end of this month you can catch WFG on the big screen at the Seattle Film Festival.

It's part of a package of six shorts from the UK, USA and France collected under the title 'Twists and Turns', screening at the SIFF Cinema (321 Mercer Street) at 1.30pm on Monday 30th May.

Ivan Zuccon's next film: Wrath of the Crows

2011-05-03T10:19:00.000-07:00

Ivan Zuccon is working on his next film, Wrath of the Crows, which will bring together two of the best actresses in US horror cinema, both of whom have worked with Ivan before: Tiffany Shepis (Nympha) and Debbie Rochon (Colour from the Dark).

The cast also includes Michael Segal (Nympha, Colour from the Dark), Matteo Tosi (Unknown Beyond, Bad Brains), Emanuele Cerman (The Darkness Beyond, The Shunned House), Emmett Scanlan (Colour from the Dark) and Gerry Shanahan (Colour from the Dark). Plus US actress Tara Carnial (Fable: Teeth of Beasts, Beverly Hills Chihuahua). Screenplay by Ivan and author Gerardo Di Filippo. Effects by CreaFX (Nympha).

Synopsis:

In a filthy, cramped jail, prisoners Larry, Deborah, Hugo, Hernest and Liza are obliged to suffer injustices from the guards and their chief, The Officer. Controlling them all is The Judge, a man no one has ever seen. Yet he is the one who sets the rules and is feared by inmates and guards alike.

The prisoners know how to behave and what rules are to be respected, but none of them remember life outside the walls of the fortress where they now reside. Their only memory, which slowly emerges during the story, is of a great evil that led them to the fortress and the seemingly endless length of time they have been imprisoned there.

Suddenly, a new prisoner appears out of nowhere; The Princess. She is beautiful, dressed in a coat of crow feathers, shining, sweet-smelling, sensual. Her appearance creates curiosity in the other inmates, but also envy, suspicion and a deep sexual agitation.

The Princess quickly reveals her dark, supernatural nature, as she can move objects with her mind and is extremely powerful.

The prisoner's dream of escape, even though they have no idea what awaits them outside the fortress walls, nor are they interested; the only thing that matters is to escape from the doomed prison. But you can't escape from yourself or your past.

In the end, the prisoners realize that the entire prison, inside and out, is a terrifying mirror game, where reality and illusion collide, and nightmares become real, throwing them into an endless vortex of terror and madness.

WFG reviewed by Dark Side

2011-05-02T14:50:00.000-07:00

Allan Bryce, editor of the recently revived Dark Side magazine, came along to a preview screening of Waiting for Gorgo last year and has written a very complimentary piece about it on his blog.

Allan calls WFG "a fantastic little short movie which happily belongs to a bygone age when good scripting and acting took precedence over gore and headache-inducing editing."

New review: Ink

2011-04-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

A couple of thousand words on the independent fantasy film Ink. Sorry to report that I really didn't like it.

"Watching Ink is like looking at a really terrible website full of different fonts and colours with endless flash animations and rows of dancing hamsters. This is chuck-it-all-in-because-we-can film-making which completely obscures the simple story at its heart."

Mark Hamill narrates Conor Timmis' new documentary

2011-04-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

Conor Timmis has been working for some time now on a very personal documentary about the Korean War, entitled Finnigan's War. And he just dropped me a line to say that the narration has been recorded by the voice-legend that is Mark Hamill. You can watch a three-minute behind-the-scenes bit about the recording on YouTube.

How to Stop Being a Loser

2011-04-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

How to Stop Being a Loser is a new comedy from the folks behind Dead Cert, Devil's Playground, Jack Says/Said/Falls, The Last Seven, Cut, The Scar Crow - quite the all-star collaboration.

Jonathan Sothcott, Billy Murray, Simon Phillips, Patricia Rybarczyk and director Dominic Burns are the producers, and the cast includes Billy Murray, Simon Phillips, Colin Salmon, Richard E Grant, Gemma Atkinson, Adele Silva, Craig Conway, Martin Kemp etc etc.

There's a trailer now on YouTube.

New interview: Frankie Krainz

2011-04-28T04:08:00.000-07:00

New on my site is an interview with screenwriter Frankie Krainz, about the two films he wrote for Steve Balderson - Stuck! and The Casserole Club - plus their forthcoming third collaboration, Culture Shock.

Dark and Stormy Frankenstein

2011-04-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

4Digital Media has two very different horror films lined up for May

Dark and Stormy Night is a spot-on pastiche of 1930s 'old dark house' movies, directed by Larry Blamire (The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra) and with a cast that includes Mark Redfield. That's out on 9th May. Here's the trailer.

One week later comes The Frankenstein Experiment (US title: The Frankenstein Syndrome), a powerful and effective modern take on the Mary Shelley classic, starring and produced by the marvellous Tiffany Shepis. There's a trailer for that too.

Watch out for reviews of both of these soon.

Jack and Zomblies triumph at LIFF

2011-04-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

Jack Falls, the concluding part of the Jack Says trilogy, has won Best Action Feature at the London Independent Film Festival. Writer/director Paul Tanter picked up the award.

And Zomblies took home two LIFF awards: for Best Sci-Fi/Horror Feature and Best Editing (a thoroughly deserved award to Eve Hazelton).

Full list of LIFF winners

Review: Harold's Going Stiff

2011-04-17T15:55:00.001-07:00

I've just posted a 2,000 word review of Harold's Going Stiff, the brand new zombie comedy from Keith Wright, the director of Take Me to Your Leader.

Fantasy action epic Journey to Promethea

2011-04-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Journey to Promethea is released in the UK on 2nd May by 4Digital Media. Here's the synopsis:

"Action and fantasy collide in this epic tale of a corrupt and all-powerful King who reigns over his kingdom with an iron fist, but there is hope. A prophecy foretold long ago states that a boy will rise up against the oppressive regime and lead his people to the promised land of Promethea. This is the action-packed journey of one boy that sparks a rebellion that ignites a vicious clash of wills between King and commoner, where only one group can emerge alive and victorious."

Written and directed by Dan Garcia (Speed Demons, Flesh Wounds), the film stars Billy Zane (I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, Surviving Evil).

Waiting for Gorgo: four festival dates

2011-04-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Gorgo has four more festivals lined up, including its North American premiere. It will screen at:

Curtocircuito International Short Film Festival, Spain, 6th-15th May 2011
Seattle International Film Festival, USA, 19th May - 12th June 2011
Concorto Film Festival, Italy - 20th-27th August 2011
Filmets Badalona Film Festival, Spain - 4th-12th November 2011