The Grim Cellar

2002, US, Directed by Robert Harmon

Colour, Running Time: 86 minutes

DVD, Region 2, EIV, Video: Anamorphic 2.35:1, Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

This is one of those films that gets ‘Wes Craven’ slapped above the title in a desperate bid to sell something that would probably otherwise go unnoticed. It’s not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion because I do tend to feel he’s been somewhat overrated in the post-Scream years despite having directed a few minor classics in the couple of decades preceding that. Plus he tends to pretty much sell the use of his name to projects that have the most tenuous links to himself and it’s hardly a commendable commercial strategy - a quick perusal of the credits would suggest no creative input whatever from the veteran. Anyway, They would not appear to be a well liked movie and I think I can understand why. For starters the plot is very basic: after a prologue where a child whose scared of the dark really does get himself sucked under the bed by some unseen presence we jump forward a few years where three twenty somethings, the central character being psychology graduate Julia, come together in the wake of a friend’s suicide and realise that they, as children, all suffered from what’s known as night terrors (an acknowledged disorder often most common in children whereby those afflicted sustain extreme emotional reactions during REM). Julia’s personal problems snowball as she believes that the dark conceals inhuman beings that are waiting to pounce on her, a symptom of remarkable similarity to that recorded by her dead friend and something that the other two claim to be experiencing also. A visit to an old psychiatrist outlines the possibility that it’s the result of post-traumatic stress but the frightful attacks that increase with frequency become awfully difficult to refute.

The plot is basic as I say - shit in the dark out to get people. There is a little background that the many writers have attempted to establish in some of the dialogue iterated by characters but it may appear contrived in some sense, and derivative. Hence appreciation would be minimised simply as a result of this. Also it seems that some viewers have had a problem with the fact that there’s very little real or scientific explanation for what’s causing these creatures to crawl from their alternate dimension, if indeed that’s what’s actually happening. By the conclusion we know little of what they actually are, hence the title I suppose. This is fundamentally what I like about it - there is ambiguity here. Whilst it would seem that there are creatures in existence out to drag these people back to hell for unknown reasons, it’s possible that they’re just paranoid and completely delusional. This duality is corroborated in my opinion by the two endings shot for the film - I won’t reveal too much about them or which one is used but one suggests a fantastical conclusion where the creatures and their domain do actually exist, the other infers that they’re concoctions of Julia’s badly wired brain. Many viewers don’t like things to turn out unexplained and that’s one of the main problems for them with They. Another problem might be the generic nature of the film as a whole - it’s hardly groundbreaking and does have a tendency to adhere to well established rules of shock film-making of the modern era. Despite this I have a pretty good time with this movie - the primarily young cast generally keep things down to Earth and are obviously for the most part quite talented. Fresh from My Little Eye Laura Regan (Julia) is sort of like a cute cross between Brigitte Fonda and Mia Farrow, and carries most of the film herself. The director himself of course had one previous claim to fame in the cult madman flick The Hitcher (the original) and competently keeps things moving along at a good pace while jolting the audience at various points to make sure their nerves are suitably jangled by the end. Whether the film will stand up over the years I’m uncertain but I’ve seen it three times now and though it’s possible to become slightly cynical about certain aspects of the production I’ve still found myself gripped with unease - a job pretty well done.

With the movie not quite shaking the foundations of the planet They comes along on a basic DVD both here and in the US. Aside from an average scope transfer (which has a lot to deal with - the locations are consistently low-lit) and a powerful surround track (an near essential component of the tension) there is a trailer and the rather good alternate ending - no explanation for the choice eventually used is provided, however. An under-specified disc is not a major problem in a world where many extras are merely promotional tools and in this case it can be picked up at a nice price. It is therefore a low risk for a potentially thrilling time - if you don’t like it you can always put it in the charity bag and scare some old granny’s tits off.

2004, Belgium, Directed by Fabrice Du Welz

Colour, Running Time: 88 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Tartan, Video: Anamorphic 2.35:1, Audio: DTS

Having acquired something of a positive reputation following its rounds on the film festival circuit I thought it might be a good idea to belatedly check out The Ordeal (AKA Calvaire in its native land, actually a reference to the crucifixion). Whilst the plot on the surface may appear to be conventional, the end result couldn‘t be much further from it: singer/performer Marc Stevens finishes up a Christmas gig before leaving behind his legion of geriatric female fans to head off in his tour van to do another show miles away. He becomes hopelessly lost on the heavily fogged woodland roads and ends up breaking down in the middle of nowhere, rain pouring and darkness descending. A man appears at the van window, allegedly looking for his dog, but Marc persuades him to guide him to an inn that was advertised on one of the trees a few minutes previously. All seems amicable when Marc arrives at the inn, with a room prepared for the night, meals, and offers to help fix his truck. Things start becoming a little strange when the innkeeper, after towing back and investigating the van’s fault, says that it will take a couple of days to repair and begins asking Marc to sing for him at dinner. After Marc finds the rear doors to his van ripped open one morning and pornographic photographs of one of his fans missing (hidden in the innkeeper’s room) he realises something is wrong. After a confrontation the innkeeper begins smashing up the van with a sledgehammer before also hitting Marc unconscious, and thus on awakening begins a period of unimaginable torment for the singer that he may never escape from.

It’s not that often where I feel I’m the recipient of such a cinematic dropkick these days, especially with the abundance of torture stuff that masquerades as mainstream horror these days, but The Ordeal was precisely an ordeal, something which I became uncomfortable watching and actually couldn’t wait for the punishment to finish, plus it persists in remaining on the mind afterwards. Whilst it is slow and atmospherically built up early on, once we get to the point where we realise things are going to go horrifically wrong for Marc so begins our discontent also. Pretty much every character in this story is screwed up beyond belief (witness the moment Marc comes across a group of villagers ‘making love’ to some pigs), and to add to the force of delivery these people as realistically portrayed as one can imagine (presumably most viewers have never spent a week inside an asylum) - I don’t want to live in a world where this kind of human being is a possibility, but I probably do. Marc’s tribulations stem from the fact that everybody - everybody - in the cast wants him for one reason or another, whether the motive is innocent desire or homicidal madness. In this, and this is something that only really occurred to me retrospectively, there is an acknowledgeable element of black humour that threads certain aspects of this film, but it’s not something you’re likely to find yourself smiling about, unless you want to appear hip to your mates. As already suggested, there is the reminder of many of the torture films that have ‘graced’ our screens over recent years but bear in mind this was produced in 2004, the same year as Saw, so an accusation of jumping on bandwagons would be unfounded. Plus this film is far more disturbing than most of those in Saw’s wake, and without overt emphasis on gore either. The dinner table humiliation was, however, way too close to a similar sequence in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Laurent Lucas’s performance as Marc Stevens is too authentic, as with most of the insane cast that support him, and it was great to see Brigitte Lahaie still working (and not looking at all bad for her age) - of course she was the star of many a French porno film in her prime, including a number of Jean Rollin genre excursions (Fascination for example). The air of realism is also maintained by a couple of other factors: there is minimal use of film scoring, plus the image is very drab, colourless, and close to ugly. At first I thought it might just be the result of a mundane transfer but the film’s content ultimately makes one aware that the cinematography was almost certainly a creative decision. Whether this film can be recommended is down to viewer discretion really - it’s not something that is actually enjoyable, indeed I was bludgeoned somewhat by the experience and afterwards had to watch a couple of Looney Tunes cartoons so I didn’t go to bed having perverse nightmares. But it does a profound job of administering impact to its audience by use of superior film-making, downright nasty and remorseless intentions, plus a dose of imagination that would make it stand out from the crowd if it were not for the fact that it is foreign, and therefore having an inherently limited English-speaking audience.

As mentioned above the video is drab and not especially nice to look at, something I deeply suspect is part of the natural style of this movie. Detail in darker areas is subdued by grain, colours are muted, brightness diminished. This is accompanied by very able Dolby Digital and DTS French language soundtracks - little use of music to speak of but excellent standards of audio with sound effects and dialogue. On of the disc also is the 1999 short by the director called Quand On Est Amoureux C’est Merveilleux, the film that got him noticed. Despite the fact that I couldn’t wait for The Ordeal to be over I have to acknowledge that that’s because the director did a very good job, and I therefore await his next project, Vinyan, with a certain level of trepidation.

1980, Italy, Directed by Dario Argento

Colour, Running Time: 106 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Anchor Bay, Video: Anamorphic 1.85:1, Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

Not many people liked Inferno when it first appeared, or for a few years after that if I recall, and that seemed to be the first signs of a trend’s beginning for the director, something that would become an integral part of audience reaction to each work throughout the later 80s and 90s onwards. It took years for this film to become appreciated, not just on a larger scale but for myself personally also. Inferno’s inherently nonsensical nature can put many people off and understandably so given the cinematic conventions which people have generally become comfortably accustomed to. Of course there was always the possibility that the film was just a complete turd and its artistic pretensions were exactly that: pretensions. As the story opens there seems to be something sinister going on simultaneously in Rome and New York where the discovery of an ambiguous text authored by a medieval alchemist links in with a number of increasingly inexplicable supernatural occurrences, usually resulting in the death of someone who has become involuntarily involved in the awakening of forces beyond understanding.

To delve into the specifics of the ‘plot’ for the purpose of establishing a synopsis designed to entice viewers seems to be a futile exercise and therefore shall remain as brief as what I’ve outlined above. The delineated plot to the uninitiated might ramble and seemingly lead nowhere, ultimately failing to arouse people to what’s really going on in this film. The main characters are introduced into the story with no real background on their lives and wayward motives preventing us understanding them or the world that they inhabit. An example of the dysfunctional logic appears here: a man takes a bag of cats out to the lake to drown them (don’t ask why), at which point there is an eclipse occurring. He’s attacked by hundreds of rats and amidst the screams the cook of a nearby hotdog stand comes running over, to his aid you might believe. But then the anonymous cook brings up his meat cleaver and butchers the man to death before walking calmly away. There are lots of nice touches that construct the supernatural domain around us, as when a girl discovers an indistinct cloaked alchemist working away beneath the library - as he notices that she’s carrying a book of great significance (The Three Mothers) we catch a very brief glimpse of his hand, something that’s not human, possibly demonic. This subtlety is lost at the film’s conclusion to an extent, however. My favourite sequence falls very early in the film when Rose, after having read that a key lies in an old cellar, is enticed enough to go investigating underground. She comes across a subterranean pool but has to jump in after dropping something valuable in the water, only to find a flooded room with corpses floating within. The whole showpiece is incredibly atmospheric and spooky, and is the first real event that draws you into Inferno’s uncanny dimension. The film is technically a sequel to Suspiria but follows none of the characters (although Alida Valli - Ms Tanner in the 1977 film - makes a reappearance albeit as a different character). It is related only through the core concept of these three mothers we hear so much about, though there are some similarities in visual style with heavy cinematographic emphasis on artificially sourced primary colours such as red and blue. Whereas Goblin provided the infamous score for Suspiria fans of ELP may be surprised to know that Keith Emerson provided the score for Inferno and, whilst it’s not as emphatically insane as the former movie, it does underscore the dark world that Argento has developed here. There are occasions where the music is merely average, but sometimes it rises way beyond that - the film’s final act is driven by one stunning choral-rock track that remains one of my personal favourite musical arrangements among movies. Suspiria was notably easier to follow as far as the narrative was concerned so fan disappointment may originally have emanated from that fact, but Inferno supplies its own mysterious vision of a rising Hell that’s quite unique in cinema and this is where repeat viewings really help - I’ve seen it around seven times personally and find that it still presents a puzzle that I like to attempt deconstruction of whilst simultaneously revelling in the dripping atmosphere of the unknown. Inferno is a nightmare incarnate, a seemingly illogical meandering into an apocalyptic universe. Argento did here what few others might have been equipped for: he brought to audiences a nonsensical film that is inexplicably enjoyable.

It’s worth pointing out that there is a small amount of animal cruelty in Inferno, and this gave the BBFC cause for concern here in the UK during its original 20th Century Fox (distributors at the time) cinema and video releases - notably a cat devouring a mouse that’s clearly still alive. It’s certainly nothing on the scale of what we find in Italian cannibal films but some sensitive viewers may find it a little disconcerting. Cats are also thrown at one of the actors at one point too (reminding me of Tippi Hedren’s assault in The Birds) though I’m not sure if it’s the cats or the human that received the nastier treatment here. The easiest uncut version to go for currently is the disc from Blue Underground, though this is simply a port of the old Anchor Bay disc (the latter providing the source for this review) and features a widescreen transfer that looked amazing when it originally came out but now only passes as reasonable, being very soft and perhaps overly chromatic. It could do with a complete remaster but along with a limited but satisfying 5.1 track (with standard matrixed surround option available) this is still a great way to see Inferno. However Fox themselves also released a disc in Italy a while ago that is sharper (therefore grainier) and less saturated giving a very different appearance to the movie itself - it’s amazing how different a film can look between DVDs. The Fox disc also contains an inferior Italian track in mono (English is there too though only as a matrixed surround option) and these factors make it quite collectable. Either way, for the cinematic equivalent of a vivid and sadistic but ultimately pleasurable nightmare check out Argento’s Inferno.

Universal were almost responsible for initiating the first real horror boom at the beginning of the thirties with the infamous movies already elsewhere discussed at Grim Cellar. Perhaps the arrival of sound had a direct impact on the effectiveness of films to embellish a disturbing emotional manipulation of audience responses, and new possibilities were perceived. In their search for new ideas they turned to Egyptian history/mythology and to assist brought in their established master of terror at the time, Boris Karloff. The Mummy (1932) briefly recounted an age more than three millennia prior to the discovery of an ancient scroll, where priest Im-Ho-Tep is consumed by love and mourning to a point where he commits sacrilege by exercising a hex to raise his woman from the dead. For his sins he is forced to suffer one of the most tortuous deaths imaginable - burial alive. In the early part of the twentieth century his tomb is opened and the bandaged corpse discovered, but a foolishly optimistic young archaeologist reads aloud the ancient scroll, releasing a curse that revives the mummified priest. The young explorer goes insane and the priest departs into the night. Later on a strangely benevolent Egyptian - the priest without his bandages - appears on the scene and helps the explorers locate another tomb, something which leads to his realisation that one of the women, Helen, is actually the reincarnation of the lover that he died for centuries ago. His objective is to reunite their souls but the girl whose body is inhabited by the princess’s soul must die to allow this.

For younger viewers more familiar with the Stephen Sommers/Brendan Fraser action adventure yarns the original Universal film may be considered something of a whopping great bandaged borefest. It is quite slow and very old fashioned in terms of cinema, while gore didn’t really exist in this era and scares were of the atmospheric variety (i.e. there wasn’t a 100 decibel soundtrack jab designed to make you leap involuntarily every time something frightening was supposed to happen). It crafts a story that mixes the tragedy of impractical love with mythology and history, and the highlighting of cultural issues preventing two people from being together is just as relevant today. After establishing himself as a classic cinematographer on many German silents Karl Freund was rushed into directing, ultimately proving himself here to be methodical and considered, sometimes imaginative at the helm. There are inspired moments, such as Karloff’s foreboding narrative recollection of his former life, and the glowing eyes of course, though these do become a tad overused by the conclusion. There’s also the inclusion of a beautiful clip of a wolf in medium shot howling against the moon - probably stock footage but a phenomenon to witness nonetheless. Zita Johann is an alluringly naïve Helen, wearing amazingly low-cut dresses but not quite having the upper body physique for raincoat viewers (like me) to salivate over. The Motion Picture Production Code became a serious entity in 1934, something established in the USA to essentially force film-makers to abide by a series of rules that precluded sexual references, imagery, etc. Therefore films made prior to this often contained elements that were slightly more risqué than their post-1934 counterparts, and the wardrobe of Johann I believe was a product of this. The undisputed star of Universal’s early make-up era, Jack Pierce, provided groundbreaking processes for the mummy itself/himself. Both bandaged and ‘unclothed’, Karloff’s make-up is stupendous even to this day. One final surprise for those who only have vague recollections of these films is the mummy itself - in his stereotype form he is barely used here: we see he awaken at the film’s beginning, we see his feet stagger from the room, and that’s it. Afterwards Karloff returns only as the Egyptian Ardath Bey, an old but very human-looking man. The Mummy achieves its goal well enough and, while not quite a classic film, it possesses its fair share of eeriness combined with good storytelling.

It took the studio some time to follow up this moderately successful outing but it was inevitable at some point. The Mummy’s Hand (1940) recreated the history set up in the earlier movie. Taking elements of the filmed flashback featuring Boris Karloff (who’s not participating in this one or any of the subsequent sequels in the conventional sense) we learn that Kharis was condemned to the same mummification and death for similar reasons. Some time around the thirties or forties a couple of losers have their final chance at making a buck in Cairo before having to head back to the USA bankrupt. They learn of a hidden tomb which is sure to be filled with concealed treasure and persuade an erratic magician to lend them $2000 to fund an expedition. Along with some workers and the magician’s feisty young daughter they head out to uncover the tomb, but get more than they expected when the desecration of the Kharis resting place brings about his resurrection, something that’s welcomed by a local priest who enslaves Kharis to perform homicidal bidding.

It’s immediately obvious in the first sequel that the tone is lightened somewhat, mostly through the implementation of two wannabe comedians in the principal roles. Whilst their tomfoolery is generally incompetent, their comic timing being inadequate to some extent, the story and dialogue manage to keep your attention while you’re perfectly aware of what the film is building up to. It takes some time to get there too, with about half the film passing before some action appears on the horizon, however I think this contributes towards the formulation of a reasonable helping of atmosphere. This is where we see the mummy in all his traditional horror glory for the first time - a staggering, bandaged corpse intent on avenging the curse that has brought about his reanimated misery. His eyes appear to be blacked out by a possible manipulation of the negative (an effect not completed for the trailer itself) and his presence, courtesy of highly prolific actor Tom Tyler, is ominous - Pierce once again graced the creature with his skills. The flashback is quite a strange phenomenon: clearly they’ve used footage from the first film as they retell the story and Karloff is right there in many shots, but for close-ups it switches to new footage of Tyler, creating an oddly jarring effect. It could be said, consequently, that Karloff is actually present in this film, though his participation is nonexistent. While the budget for …Hand was approximately half that of its predecessor some of the production design may seem pretty outstanding, though that’s simply a result of economical set regurgitation - some of them were actually built for James Whale’s adventure story Green Hell. Finally, the sole female of note this time is Peggy Moran and whilst not quite as revealingly dressed as Zita Johann she is visually appealing and her initially dominating approach is unwittingly sexy. The Mummy’s Hand, directed by quickie specialist Christy Cabanne, is no doubt inferior in many respects to the original film, but it is entertaining and the pace is perceptively executed.

The story of …Hand is recounted at the beginning of The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) where the two guys responsible for the expedition that kicked everything off have returned to the USA and grown older. Still holding a grudge, however, the wizard who knows when it comes to mummified corpses (George Zucco) sends his servant across to the land of the free with the body of Kharis to reap vengeance on those who’ve caused all the trouble. The servant sets up as a graveyard caretaker while sending the mummy out to kill off the two clowns and anyone genetically associated with them, one by one.

This one really is a quickie: not only does it only run for an hour but the first ten minutes of that are taken up with a recap of the previous story, via flashbacks and the narration of Dick Foran’s returning character Steve Banning. Universal also managed to bring in Lon Chaney Junior (no doubt a consequence of his success in The Wolf Man) this time to play the monster, something he would do in the following two films also. They also managed to annoy the star in the process by dropping the ‘Jr.’ from the actor’s screen credit, something which favourably distinguished him from his famous father in his eyes. Chaney does a good job but there’s little real challenge with this creature, while the make-up, though not as proficient as the first movie, is suitably putrescent. Some of the stunt work is quite rough on the actors, particularly when it comes to fire. Several people are dangerously close to the flames at the end and one actor (who visibly falls against his torch) was reportedly burnt during filming. Neil Varnick’s story is quite feeble and lacking a certain amount of imagination, resorting to Universal’s obligatory mob of angry villagers for the film’s climax - quite strange because they’re carrying burning torches and clubs despite the time period somewhere around the middle of the twentieth century by my calculations based on the men’s ages, etc. The early sightings of the creature bring about a number of amusing situations when he manages to avoid being seen in almost every instance with the exception of his shadow, consequently this giving rise to several reports of ‘a shadow’ in the area! Imagine West Midlands police responding to reports like that… The entertainment factor here is diminished compared to the preceding chapters but the flick does retain a certain charm in its madness.

Some time after the events of …Tomb a group of hip students are learning history in The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) when the teacher decides to tell them about the mysterious mummy attacks that once allegedly took place in their very town. Whilst it all seems a little difficult to digest they don’t realise that the mummy inexplicably survived (indeed, it just wanders out of the forest near the beginning) and is soon on the move when the college professor experiments with the leaves that grant it strength and life - he is drawn to the leaves instinctively but kills the professor in the process. The servant (John Carradine) of Andoheb (George Zucco again) has been sent on a mission to track down the body of Kharis’s ancient lover, which has been shipped to a museum in the USA, but realises when the body crumbles that her spirit has reawakened in the shell of one of the young student girls. The servant decides that she must be ‘reacquired’ by Kharis. I’m sure they were making this stuff up as they went along at this point!

By about half way through …Ghost I’d pretty much resigned it to being a worthless pile of camel waste. Carradine’s acting is serious to the point of being about as active as a plank of wood, the mummy make-up seems to have been substantially cheapened (though Pierce was still involved, perhaps rushed), the story pedestrian and generally uninspiring. There are even clumsy errors such as Chaney’s useless arm suddenly becoming functional when he needs to carry an unconscious woman. However the damn film almost won me over by its conclusion: why? Because of that bloody dog! This thing outshines Lassie when it comes to intelligence. It’s only one of those small Jack Russell type of canines but, boy, is it smarter than the humans in this film. It actually responds to their statements and even goes to fetch the mob of angry villagers when the two heroes are in trouble - I couldn’t help by laugh. Also, the denouement of the story is quite grim compared to virtually all other Universal monster bashes, and the outcome surprised me. It’s not a good film by any stretch but the dog provided a few smiles (though whether those were intentional is another matter) and the climax is the most effective of the whole series.

Shot around the same time The Mummy’s Curse (1944) took Universal’s tendency towards temporal distortion one step further, with some pub-dwelling gypsy-types retelling some of the last movie’s events as being about twenty five years prior. Adding that up with the bodily aging of some of the previous characters, etc., this should place the time around the 1980s by my calculations, however it seems more like the turn of the twentieth century at the beginning before strangely shifting to 1940s America. I don’t suppose chronological logic was at the front of the minds of Universal’s writers… Anyway, there are plans to completely renovate the marsh near Mapleton, where the events of previous films took place, but a couple of museum archaeological buffs turn up wanting to dig out the mummy and his bride Princess Ananka (after having been left there at the end of …Ghost) to return them to the museum. Some of the locals are concerned that this interfering with the mummy’s current resting place will arouse the curse again, fears which aren’t without good cause it seems. After dredging half the swamp they soon find an empty space in the mud where ‘a large man’ would have lay, and of course a dead villager nearby. Oh yes, and the giveaway, there’s a bit of bandage left on the murdered person (I shit you not). While Kharis is roped in by one of the Egyptian servants to kill more people, this time Ananka also reawakens to wander around in a state of perpetual confusion regarding her origins or purpose.

The problem primarily by this point was the fact that the stories really had nowhere to go and very much continually rehashed ideas from earlier films. Quite literally too, as we were very often treated to flashbacks of footage from the other movies despite meagre running times. The mummy, again played by Lon Chaney Jr., was a creature of limited potential and was lucky to have his lifespan stretched out over this number of movies. The Mummy’s Curse begins more in the vein of many of Universal’s other films of the period, almost a timeless entity in a dimension undiscovered. The murders themselves are quite feeble - one guy stumbles in on a ritual during the awakening of the mummy and sort of asks what they’re up to, like one would, before the mummy, which would have been plainly in his sight, staggers right up to him without him noticing until he‘s actually being strangled. There is one standout sequence in this film, and indeed one of the best of the whole series; the revival of Ananka: she squirms awkwardly out of her grave, her eyes covered in mud and barely able to open, then staggers off in a manner that the TV girl in Ring would have been proud of. It’s possibly the creepiest scene in the whole mummy series and director Leslie Goodwins must have realised he was on to something because he gets his mileage out of it. Other than that it’s a derivative and uninspired finale to the series.

There was of course one more appearance for the monster to come: Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955), but this would offer little other than the two comedians making fools of themselves as the creature proves ineffective as a killing machine, though at least it would return the series to its Egyptian beginnings. The mummy films provide some fun overall, but were clearly not greatly respected by its studio - this is apparent by the haphazard manner in which the stories were rushed together and the running times as meagre as the films’ respective budgets. The mummy (actually Im-Ho-Tep in the first one, Kharis in the following four, and Klaris in the A&B entry) had minimal development as a character beyond the first film though at least there was some narrative progression and continuation from film to film, but within each context there was little to do for the monster other than stagger around and kill. In that sense he is almost a precursor to Michael Myers of Halloween or the homicidal lunatic of almost any other long-running slasher series - this is possibly the slasher movie in its embryonic infancy here, formulating many of the staples that would much later on become clichés in slasher cinema. Compared to Universal’s other series of the time the creature is less charismatic and quite a lonely entity. The fact that his arm and leg are virtually unusable (unless he needed to carry a helpless woman) did irritate me a little throughout - he’s rendered practically impotent and the explanation for this was briefly iterated early on in the series but afterwards employed simply as a tool for having him walk in a (then) tension-building fashion. The aforementioned temporal distortion is something that stands out if the viewer is to watch them in sequence, but there is some inadvertent bewilderment to be had with this. In fact the series as a whole works at its best if you simply switch off the logical side of your brain and accept the crazy rules on their own terms but, though idiosyncratic in the extreme, it can never quite match up to the studio’s Dracula, Frankenstein, and Wolf Man cycles. It’s a pity that the gradually diminishing quality of the series detracts from its achievements but it is nevertheless something that will provide a reasonable degree of entertainment, and that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.

(P.S. Extra special thanks to Colin at Riding The High Country for making this article possible)

1977, US, Directed by Robert Voskanian

Colour, Running Time: 83 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Something Weird, Video: 1.33:1, Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

Rummaging through the monolithic back catalogue of horror movie history you come across many films by directors who were never heard of before or after, plus a number of gold nuggets that have slipped to the bottom of the lake along the way. Sometimes alternatively known as Zombie Child or Kill and Go Hide, The Child falls into both categories in my opinion, though it’s not a favourite among the majority who’ve seen it, either because my tastes are very exclusive or perhaps because it never found its target audience. Having said that though its target audience was never going to be large numbers of people. Exploitation specialist Harry Novak executive produced this (one of his last movies, but who the hell was Rob Voskanian?), and some may have come to this one having seen his preceding notorious work. Alicianne is on her way to move in with the Nordens as a housekeeper and babysitter. On her way the (vintage?) car malfunctions and she’s forced to make the rest of the route through the woods on foot, during which she runs into an old woman who delivers a few warnings about the locale. Once at the Norden place she meets the old man, his strapping son, and the young Rosalie. Immediately on arrival there’s something decidedly morbid about Rosalie - she seems to be humoured by stories of people suffering and apparently visits her mother’s grave in the cemetery next to the house in the middle of the night. There seem to be some eerie inhabitants in that cemetery too but it’s a long time until we get a clear look at them, though gradually it becomes apparent that they’re putrescent corpses - the walking variety - and Rosalie possesses some sort of psychic connection with these creatures. As it’s revealed that she’s using these monsters to kill off anybody that causes her any kind of irritability Alicianne and the Norden son are forced to make a run for it but the corpses rapidly close in on them, trapping them in an old industrial plant.

It’s apparent from the beginning that the atmosphere of The Child is a little bit different to that of your average film. I mean, there are relatively conventional plot points in there that could have been considered unoriginal - it’s obviously the product of a post-Night of the Living Dead era, with elements of The Bad Seed in there as the rear of Something Weird’s cover rightly acknowledges - but the feel is offbeat and appropriately supernatural. There are two factors that I believe contributes most significantly to this. One is the overall look of the image. Possibly it has been shot on 16mm given the appearance of the film used (though the IMDB lists it as 35mm, so I can’t be sure), and the cinematography is quite stark. Secondly, there’s the amazing sound design - the score and sound effects are extremely imaginative and unique. I know it also utilises looped dialogue and that can be considered amateurish itself if not conceived under highly professional conditions but I think here it possibly adds to the idiosyncratic feel of the world being created. It is also, however, undeniably cause for some amusement as Rosalie in particular blurbs her lines in such a strange and emphatic fashion. Creature design is quite excellent too: Voskanian makes the smart move of only partly revealing them in earlier scenes rather than adopting the show-all ethic of many such films, but later when we get full sight of them they’re strikingly eerie things. The assault on the old building with the two protagonists trapped inside mounts progressively in tension, almost resulting in a worthy successor to Romero’s Night…. Perhaps if it had been made ten years earlier though The Child might have been recognised in the same light. As it is, few people have seen it and many of those few have simply disregarded it as an amateurish rip-off, which is a shame because I think it has much more to offer than that and has stood up well over a number of viewings too.

After discovering The Child in the early nineties on a horrific looking video cassette whose image alternated randomly between colour and B&W (that’s not a feature of the film itself, rest assured) it was fantastic to find the Something Weird DVD with a comparatively incredible transfer. It appears to be a slightly cropped version of the full negative but essentially looks balanced. There is excess print damage at reel changes but this settles down after each intermittent bout, although at one point during a fade-to-black the screen is an absolute mass of speckles and scratches but I really don’t mind being reminded that I’m watching the product of ‘film’ in this digital day and age and the fact that it’s only of periodic concern should make it quite bearable for all but the most anal of fans. As was the tradition with SW there is quite an entertaining arrangement of extras, though few of them actually relate specifically to the feature film itself. There are some funny short documentary films made around the fifties about ‘creepy kids’, lots of insane trailers for movies you never knew existed, some great radio spots for flicks like Invasion of the Blood Farmers (played over an amazing collection of exploitation movie posters) and an entire feature film as added bonus. I Eat Your Skin is pretty bad all round - I used to own the SW video cassette of this one and here the disc transfer is actually more than acceptable in comparison, though somewhat lacking in definition by modern standards. SW have managed to fit all of this on one side of a DVD too - you get your money’s worth there’s no doubt but it’s a cool disc to buy just for The Child for fans of the more obscure zombie film.

1979, France, Directed by Jean Rollin

Colour, Running Time: 78 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Redemption, Video: Letterbox 1.66:1, Audio: MPEG Mono

Among those that have seen and dislike Jean Rollin’s work his skills behind the camera are undoubtedly in question. His movies may sometimes come across as clumsy or amateurish with his performers usually only vaguely aware of what constitutes good acting. But he made films over a three decade period with regularity, and aside from stopping off at one or two other genres along the way he generally drifted between porn and fantasy horror often amalgamating the staples of his two specialist areas with wanton disregard for established trends. Could there have been something more to this man and his material than tits and cheapo vampire teeth? By 1979 he had established himself as a prolific director in both porn and erotic vampire cinema, and Fascination would seem like a collision of the two at times with less overt emphasis on the latter than his earlier works. In the middle of rural France there’s a castle where two attractive females waste away their days, apparently waiting for some initially unspecified event. Elsewhere a group of bandits have robbed some poor sod carrying a fortune in gold and are about to make off with it when an argument splits their group and Marc makes off with the bag having betrayed his fellow criminals. After a struggle with his hostage he is located in the woodland by the other thieves and is forced to take refuge in the aforementioned castle, where he meets the two girls. Threatening them with his, er, gun the women appear to be distinctly unperturbed by his aggressive attitude towards them. Meanwhile the other bandits are keeping a safe distance from the castle effectively preventing Marc from leaving while waiting for their chance. It becomes apparent that Eva and Elisabeth are awaiting the arrival of a posse of bourgeois females in the middle of the night for some sort of ritualistic meeting. Unable to leave due to the gun-toting bandits outside and now unwilling to leave anyway due to a notable degree of sexual enticement from Eva, Marc is destined to be swept up in the strange activities that are about to take place in the castle.

While Rollin’s commonly used theme of vampirism is evident in this film it’s not visible to the point of fanged, blood-sucking people being present as it was in movies such as Le Frisson Des Vampires. This serves to provide both an interesting new slant to his favourite subject as well as removing one of the things that newcomers may have previously found hard to digest: very odd looking vampires. It takes a subtle backseat as Rollin crafts a surreal world which Marc becomes enslaved in, notably signified by the meteorological shift that takes place as he gets closer to the castle - the area is surrounded by mist. Eva and Elisabeth are gorgeous young women and obviously reflective of his regular theme of two female companions as protagonists that invades almost every Rollin movie. That Marc is trapped in a house with these two indicates that Rollin is purely recreating his own sexual fantasies on film and I think it’s this exhuming of the creator’s own omnipresent dreams that helps lend the work its share of artistic authenticity - beneath the surface there’s a tangible beauty here that’s difficult to fake. Eva is of course played by Brigitte Lahaie, star of a large number of porn flicks during the seventies including a few of Rollin’s, and her range of ‘skills’ is utilised in Fascination wherever possible without descending the story into outright hardcore. Her relationship with Elisabeth is slightly more complex than what we see on screen, this being hinted at when the latter displays a certain amount of suicidal jealousy upon Eva’s demonstration of sexual affection for Marc, though who she’s actually jealous of is quite ambiguous - perhaps it’s anybody when attention is not being directed at her. Marc himself is essentially a fool, a man who’s devoted himself to crime even to the point of stealing from other criminals and he wades into the girls’ world with a sense of arrogance that will eventually be stripped, and as such there is also an air of morality about the story that is flimsy but lurking nonetheless. Possibly more important than individual characters though is the surreal ambience that surrounds the situation that they find themselves in - it’s an odd world that has the boundaries between itself and reality blurred. Rollin’s landscape photography and exceptional use of locations here is, as ever, exemplary. Whether that’s a happy accident is for the viewer to decide I suppose. It’s also worth noting also that the music used in this film is among the best used for any Rollin venture and aids the visual material in several significant scenes. The most suitable approach to Rollin’s work is to forget about cinematic convention, remove expectation of complete verisimilitude, and sit back to witness the strange events of a place that surely can’t exist. Fascination is actually a better starting point than many of his other films and one of his best all round.

Releasing Fascination on video cassette during the nineties was something that helped Redemption become a respected distributor of lesser seen genre material. Many of the flicks they unleashed on their niche audience were almost impossible to see at the time and they quickly became a favourite of those who could appreciate cinematic obscurities. Unfortunately they failed to grasp the possibilities of the digital era when DVD arrived and their disc releases were consequently difficult to admire with companies like Blue Underground and Synapse appearing on the horizon. Fascination was their very first UK DVD some time near the format’s infancy so most issues can be forgiven considering DVD took a few years from conception to be perfected. The problem is that even years later their discs had hardly evolved and thus the only thing going for them was their obscure content - hardly an accolade in a new era. Things may be looking up for them, however, with what looks like a sparkling new anamorphic transfer of Lèvres de Sang materialising soon in the US. Anyway, Fascination in particular is correctly letterboxed though without enhancement. It looks reasonably detailed with copious print damage and some washing out of colours. Audio comes in MPEG format, something that was adopted to a small extent at the birth of DVD but quickly became overshadowed and eventually snuffed out all but completely by the much more marketable Dolby Digital. It serves its purpose but is at least in native French with functional subtitles for those of us whose grasp of continental tongue extends only to bon jour. Dark Side magazine later joined forces with Redemption to release the film on a double pack (limited to availability through the magazine) with another of Rollin’s greats, Requiem Pour un Vampire, though the claimed anamorphic enhancement provided no benefit due to the fact that it was from the same master. All in all there is a much better disc of Fascination to be sold to us at some point and I’m sure I’ll be one of those shelling out for it when it finally appears.

1946, US, Directed by Jean Yarbrough

Black & White, Running Time: 59 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Universal, Video: 1.33:1, Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

Despite the similarity of title this has nothing to do with Universal’s earlier and infinitely better film Werewolf of London, aside from perhaps the setting. It opens with a pair of detectives discussing a recent spate of alleged werewolf attacks on innocent strollers when they’re called out to another killing in the park. Meanwhile a love-smitten couple are riding horses around the same location discussing their marital future when the detectives arrive and are overheard discussing the deaths and possible nature of the perpetrator. Phyllis seems suspiciously perturbed by the discussion and her fiancée Barry promptly whisks her off back home. There is the hint of some sort of curse at the beginning of the story that appears to have afflicted Phyllis: after each night of mutilations in the park she wakes up with dirt and blood on her hands - is she transforming into a wolf and providing the papers with their sensationalist stories? She gradually becomes convinced she is and deteriorates mentally as the stability of her world collapses around her.

A glance at the running time will reveal that this was a quickie for Universal, something that dragged few ideas of worth out of its writers. In the cinemas (released on a double bill with The Cat Creeps back in 1946) this only just about qualified as a feature film, being barely an hour long, and with PAL speed-up (i.e. 25 frames per second) it doesn’t even reach that. The actors approach their scarce material with what may be a reasonable attitude but they can’t turn dung to gold and their efforts are ultimately wasted on what eventually reveals itself to be an almost entirely pointless exercise. What’s worse, without wishing to give anything away, is the fact that it cheats its intended audience and disrespects the genre that its masquerading under - the trailer and title suggests that it will be something that it’s not, probably grasping at the only attempt possible to sell this to an unsuspecting public. Pretending you have a product of a certain nature on your hands simply to get people through the doors is hardly commendable. However, it’s relatively easy to spot early on that this isn’t really a horror movie, but that just turns the film into a rather boring way to spend an hour. In its favour there are one or two nice shots of the mist-enshrouded woodland, with the visually unthreatening cloaked female wondering through. The conclusive explanation of what’s going on and why it’s going on lacks solid logic and once again insults its audience, therefore I cannot recommend this.

A sharp and detailed image is joined by clear audio on the DVD release, though there is an odd anomaly that occurs: at the beginning of many shots there is a very brief soft focus effect that only occurs for two or three frames but is noticeable nonetheless, and somewhat distracting. This is no great loss, however, because the viewer will invariably become cataleptically bored to molecular solidification by the experience of watching She-Wolf of London. Find something else that will have some sort of effect on you other than hypnotically induced slumber.

1935, US, Directed by Stuart Walker

Black & White, Running Time: 72 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Universal, Video: 1.33:1, Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

After the success of Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris Universal missed the opportunity to hire the author as a screenwriter (MGM beat them to it - he went on to work on Mark of the Vampire, Mad Love, and Devil Doll for them), so they set about putting together their own wolf-man story. Appearing several years before the more commercially viable The Wolf Man the first real lycanthrope outing for the studio brought in Cornish actor Henry Hull as botanist Wilfred Glendon in search of a rare moonlight driven plant in Tibet. The scientist is mauled in an attack that occurs during an excursion through a valley that’s populated, as locally hypothesised, by demons - actually people that turn into wolves under moonlight. Having brought the plant back to England and now recovered from the vicious attack with only scars apparently remaining everything seems back to normal as he goes about studying the nature of his unusual find. Soon London is in the grip of terror as a series of murders and monster sightings threaten the safety of its inhabitants - Wilfred himself is afflicted with the Tibetan curse, transforming into a homicidal wolf-like man under full moon.

This is quite a different beast (excuse the pun) compared to Universal’s Larry Talbot series. It didn’t have any major stars, though reportedly there was to be a werewolf film around this time starring Karloff - something that was ultimately abandoned. Hull had the opportunity to wear make-up similar to what Chaney would later adopt in The Wolf Man, but found the process arduous and too uncomfortable to endure so a modified version was developed by make-up artist Jack Pierce. The creature as a result is quite unusual, sort of a less monstrous cousin of Oliver Reed’s titular monster in Curse of the Werewolf. One thing that’s quite unique to this film is the fact that the transformed beast actually resembles its human alias to a point where it can be recognised by those who know him, such is the similarity of facial features. Also, the werewolf here is less animal-like than is often the case: this creature doesn’t so much as shed clothing as he does actually getting dressed up to go out - leaving home after one transformation the werewolf grabs his hat and coat on the way out! At a glance the roaming monster could be mistaken for Mr Hyde and even utters some words later on during the film’s closing sequence. One nifty little idea comes when Wilfred begins realising there’s a problem: experimenting with simulated moonlight in attempts to stimulate the Tibetan plant into growth his hand gets caught under the lamp and promptly begins growing hair. It’s difficult to say whether Hull’s monster would have been more effective with Pierce’s full blown make-up as I never thought Chaney’s equivalent looked exactly threatening, but Hull is not the most frightening werewolf to be put on screen. He is, however, quite an eccentric creation and very eloquent along the way. A nice plus is the presence of the beautiful Valerie Hobson as his wife. She played alongside Colin Clive as the baron’s wife in Bride of Frankenstein and a notably different character too - while in Whale’s film she was of a slightly melancholic disposition here she is bubbly and perpetually effervescent. She brings some unwanted complexity to Wilfred’s life when she begins flirting and going out with an old flame, a situation that possibly evokes some of the darker feelings that reside within Wilfred. The werewolf myth has always seemed like an expression of the cathartic manifestation of man’s less desirable emotions and thoughts - the literal revelation of the primordial animal that’s buried beneath evolutionary layers to the point of almost complete suppression, at least in those of us that generally abide by the law. Thus there is much going on underneath Wilfred’s uptight exterior that can be contributing towards the creation of a beast.

This DVD presents a sharp image and mostly solid greyscales, along with quite a degree of grain in darker sequences. Generally it’s very agreeable. The audio track has plenty of hiss that does not detract from any enjoyment along the way - on the contrary, I actually prefer to hear some of this on particularly old films so I have little problem with it as long as it’s not excessive or obscuring dialogue, etc. Extras are non-existent also my DVD shares its nine gigabytes with the decidedly inferior She-Wolf of London, an unrelated borefest and possibly the nadir of Universal’s monster series (if it even qualifies as such). Werewolf of London is well written, competently acted, and features some unique ideas that elevate its value as a movie, despite the fact that it’s not especially frightening or challenging.

2002, US, Directed by Mark Romanek

Colour, Running Time: 92 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Fox, Video: Anamorphic 1.85:1, Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1

People who process film in photography shops are probably the most harmless you can imagine - I should know because I worked in one myself about twenty years ago. We were all pretty geeky and quite feeble for the most part and that’s almost exactly how Sy Parrish could be described in the early stages of One Hour Photo. He’s obsessively meticulous about his responsibility for customer’s photographs, ensuring their quality is maintained to (largely unnoticeable) high standards and the machines kept up to required specification. The only trouble is that he also takes extra sets of prints for himself to place on the wall at home, mostly of a family he has become enamoured with to a point way beyond mere fascination. He envies the beauty of their togetherness while his isolation is almost suffocating, therefore he develops a coping strategy imagining that he’s actually part of their family. Then his grip on things begins to slip: his boss finds out that the figures aren’t matching the number of photos that have apparently been produced and, in attempt to protect him and his own family, he lets Sy go telling him to finish off the week. To add to Sy’s turmoil he finds that Nina, the mother of the family he’s become fixated with, is being cheated on by her husband Will - a young woman brings some photos into Sy’s store that give the game away. Making efforts to get the secret out, perhaps so Nina might take more than a platonic glance at him, Sy swaps the prints brought in by Nina with those of the young whore who Will is mating with. When things don’t quite go as he expected them to his conscious torment is externalised and some sort of personal revenge on Will is executed.

The film is almost exclusively a character study; an analysis of Sy’s interaction with a world he’s internally at odds with, a glimpse of the immediate world around him and how it affects his life whilst simultaneously outlining the effect that he attempts to have on the world. In most respects he simply wants what’s considered to be normality, to be part of a family and actually be loved in a conventional manner, but the whole idealistic dream is evasive in the extreme and destined to be unattainable. Sometimes perhaps the faults hardwired into a brain cannot be repaired, such is the delicacy of our upbringings. He has also possibly allowed himself to fall in love with Nina, this fuelling the anger he feels when he finds out her husband is having an affair - something he’d never do. Plus Nina and Will have a young boy who he imagines himself being an uncle to and an unfulfilled attempt to give the boy a gift only adds to the anguish that builds towards his eventual loss of control. By the film’s conclusion we come to understand a little about Sy’s history and why he is psychologically unstable and desperate to the extreme, this delineation of character putting the viewer in a situation where they face empathising with a person who would have caused abhorrence had they been merely read about him and his crime in the newspaper or the like. The fact that such sympathy is elicited (at least in those capable of such a response) should send an appropriately sensible message about the nature of human evils: monsters are less likely to be born than made, usually by other monsters. Undoubtedly it will still be difficult for some to accept something which prevents them from expressing narrow-minded hatred for that which they don’t have the time, patience, or capability to understand but director Romanek makes a very potent point and this social commentary is in no small terms aided by Robin Williams’ riveting performance against expected type as Sy.

The Fox DVD presents an image with strong colours that’s consistently attractive to view. Alongside that is a 5.1 track that is subtle for the most part but making extremely effective use of the pulsing score. A sentient movie that makes a powerful statement while weaving fascinating character observation and evolution along the way.

1970, US, Directed by Ted Post

Colour, Running Time: 91 minutes

DVD, Region 2, Fox, Video: Anamorphic 2.35:1, Audio: Dolby Surround

After Taylor and Nova set off towards the Forbidden Zone at the end of Planet of the Apes they encounter a series of strange phenomenon in the desert that results in Taylor’s unexplained disappearance. Navigating the same interstellar trajectory as Taylor another astronaut called Brent crash lands on the planet and comes across the aimlessly wandering Nova. Realising that she knows Taylor (she keeps his NASA necklace) they set off in search of the lost man, instead finding Ape City where the militant gorilla Ursus is plotting an invasion of the Forbidden Zone due to several recent missing ape reports. Brent makes contact with Cornelius and Zira and they try to help him avoid capture so he can find Taylor and figure out a way of escaping from the hostile world. After being temporarily captured he and Nova get away into the Forbidden Zone where they find a subterranean domain, Brent here learning the truth about the planet’s history and precisely why the area is referred to in such a deterring fashion. But there’s exposure to even greater danger in the underground tunnels though this time not from the apes, who have themselves already organised a huge army that marches into the area. The smell of a battle is in the air…

There is the feel of classic science fiction that pervades the original movie, something that’s partly lost here due to several avoidable flaws. James Franciscus makes a good lead as Brent - a reasonable replacement for Charlton Heston who only appears for a few minutes - and Linda Harrison’s Nova is quite stunning to look at (she’s not really heard, though does get to utter her first and only word in this film). Development of the Zaius character loses its way with an inconsistent continuation of his onscreen presence between the first two chapters - whereas he was despotic, overwhelmingly fearful that humanity would once again threaten ape, and willing to sacrifice anything for the good of the species, he is now reduced to merely supporting the destructive drive of Ursus in an almost passive manner. It seems that Ted Post knows how to compose an attractive image, making valuable use of the 2.39:1 ratio throughout, but he fails to grasp simian behaviour in the context of cinema, with some of the onscreen ape acting being quite amateurish in comparison to Franklin Schaffner’s original. It doesn’t help that Roddy McDowall couldn’t make it for Beneath… (his only absence in the whole film and TV series), his role being temporarily adopted by a poor David Watson (who?), though admittedly this man looks awkwardly cast throughout. McDowall studied chimp movement prior to the filming of the original movie and out of all the ape actors he is the most consistently convincing, plus physically distinctive and socially likeable. Watson by contrast is clumsy and skips across the room as if taking part in some sort of psychedelic pantomime. I love the Ursus character, a powerful warmonger who aptly leads a huge army into the Forbidden Zone with the sole intention of destruction - he predates Urko, the principal antagonist from the TV series, and is clothed similarly. Leonard Rosenman replaced Jerry Goldsmith as the composer and his contribution is not quite in the same class, though remains functional - Goldsmith would return to work on Escape… whilst Rosenman would return for the final film, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Something that really becomes problematic also is the excessive use of masks for background apes - while the principal simian actors wore prosthetics that hold up exceptionally well considering the era, many of the lesser characters were reduced to wearing masks that were often very badly designed; god-awful in some cases. What this film does do is add to the Apes mythos in a number of ways and it’s worth noting that despite being the second outing, Beneath… is really the last in the series from a chronological point of view, each subsequent movie taking place in a time before. The race of mutant survivors that live below the surface provide a threat not just to the human visitors, but to the apes and every living thing on the planet, worshipping as they do a relic that happens to be an operational atomic bomb. It seems there is an underlying commentary on religion here: the apes claim that God made them in his own image while the mutants believe that the bomb is some sort of divine being, or representative of such. Looking at the contradictory comparisons that occur when dissecting religions that exist globally today the film’s ideas seem to be a reflection of the misinterpretations that can be made when attempting to understand our creation/formation/origins, and how people will devote themselves to such misinterpretations with no accurate and well-founded idea who, if anybody, is right. Of course I’m not claiming that there is no god (nobody has such a right given the limitations of our own understanding and perception), but the variations evident between religions indicate that somebody has to be wrong at the very least (i.e. everybody can‘t be right), and those very people are adamant that they’re right just like most of the population strangely, atheists included. Providing a few moments of tension, some interesting philosophical ideas amongst the muddle, and one of the greatest endings in cinema, Beneath the Planet of the Apes is alas not the upgrade it could have been and limitations are apparent that let it down periodically.

Having seen this for years on television and 4:3 VHS the DVD was a visual revelation, boasting a colourful and moderately detailed widescreen image that lends an epic ambience to the proceedings. Of course the transfer is a little soft, perhaps a side effect of the film’s production date but it will be intriguing to see what Blu-ray can offer a movie like this (aside from emphasising just how much of a train wreck those background masks are). Stereo audio is serviceable and extras are restricted to a few trailers and stills, though the boxed set does contain a two hour documentary as an excellent supplement.

2008, US, Directed by Louis Leterrier

Colour, Running Time: 114 minutes

Cinema screening, Image: 2.39:1 Anamorphic Panavision, Audio: English language

Pretty much everybody on the planet was disappointed with Ang Lee’s interpretation of Hulk, including me, so with some trepidation I approached my local Cineworld to see if the inexperienced Parisian Louis Leterrier could repair the damage done to Marvel’s famous green monster. While this movie does pretty much ignore Lee’s film it refrains from a full blown recreation of the character’s origin, opting for a brief summary during the opening credits and getting things moving pretty quickly as a result. An experiment with gamma radiation goes hopelessly wrong leaving Bruce Banner to experience periodic physical mutation into a monster, after which the gifted scientist is forced to take refuge from the military in a hopelessly overcrowded Brazilian town. Avoiding detection by having abandoned anything that can be traced to him Banner uses an online alter ego to retain contact with another (anonymous) scientist who may be able to help cure him. After months without incident his position is discovered by General Ross, a man who in reality wants Banner under military detention due to his altered genetic structure holding the key to breeding a race of super-soldiers. During the chase Banner is transformed into Hulk, a phenomenon witnessed by Blonsky, one of the men Ross has hired to help capture the beast. Blonsky develops some sort of perverse bloodlust and in attempts to equal or exceed Hulk’s astronomical physical power he has himself injected with serum created from Banner’s modified blood cells, mutating him into some sort of… abomination.

The Incredible Hulk seems to have taken a couple of leafs out of the Batman Begins book, taking time to establish a credible lead character in the form of Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) as he isolates himself in a foreign land while seeking some sort of profound personal improvement, in this case a cure. Banner is aware that Ross has purely military interests in mind with the reacquisition of what he feels is his ‘property’, and this intensifies the drama of the chase: Ross almost comes across as a person evil to the bone and easily dislikeable, this being a nice narrative tool for involving the audience . Of course the matter is complicated further by the fact that Banner and Ross’s daughter are in love with each other. It’s really Norton himself who manages to elicit the largest portion of emotional response in the audience, creating a human being at odds with his own destiny who experiences almost constant inner turmoil due to his sicknesses - the genetic transmogrification that leads to the arrival of the monster, and the love for Betty Ross that can’t be satisfied.

What I find a little surprising with this film is that it pays homage not just to the comic books, but to an extent to the television series also. From a Marvel fan’s perspective the Incredible Hulk TV show was hardly a faithful adaptation - it changed the name of the character to David (because Bruce at the time sounded a little too gay), altered the catalyst from an atomic explosion to genetic laboratory experiments gone wrong (the latter being particularly sensible and realistic considering the period), omitted super villains almost entirely, etc. In fact it took one or two core elements of the comic book and that was about it, but in the process it created something quite unique, adult-like, and sombre in many ways despite having accrued the unwanted attentions of various critical comedians and other self-proclaimed funny people in recent years. During the opening of Leterrier’s film Banner’s experiments resemble what happened in the TV show’s pilot episode surprisingly closely. Elsewhere Lou Ferrigno (looking amazing for his age) has another cameo as a security man, and there’s one or two in-jokes such as a budding journalist called Jack McGee, a brilliant twist on the “you won‘t like me when I‘m angry” phrase originally uttered by Bill Bixby (R.I.P.), and even a snippet of the show‘s closing credit music! The screenwriters were obviously familiar with the TV show and possibly fans of it, so the fact that they have incorporated a small number of aspects into this movie is quite heart warming to older fans such as myself. There are a number of very exciting set-pieces along the way, particularly the battle between Hulk and Tim Roth’s Abomination - explosive, utterly destructive, and cinematically thrilling (aptly supported by a strong score courtesy of Craig Armstrong, a departure from his usual outings). Aside from one sickly love scene in a cave the drama and action are balanced especially well establishing excellent pacing and I rarely felt an ounce of boredom. Despite Leterrier’s lack of directorial experience this is a way better film than Ang Lee’s, and justice is done to one of Marvel’s better known and immortal characters. The small epilogue also announces in a rather cool and enticing fashion that the amalgamation between Marvel and cinema has arrived well and truly.

2001, US, Directed by John Dahl

Colour, Running Time: 95 minutes

BBC3 Broadcast, 1.78:1, English Dolby Stereo soundtrack

Better known as Joy Ride in the US (renamed here due to the British connotations of that name with crime) this appears to be a fairly conventional modern slasher type of story. Lewis is about to fly back home when he decides to buy a car and road-trip it instead, mainly to impress the girl he likes who probably places more value on a guy’s vehicular habits than she does on his integrity as a human being. On the way back he picks up his irritating brother Fuller who’s just been released from gaol, sorry - jail, after which they proceed to play a prank on a trucker via CB after Fuller is offended by one of the arguing inhabitants at a hotel they stop by. Pretending to be a nubile young chick Lewis arranges to for his fictitious female persona to meet the trucker at the room the angry inhabitant is staying, hoping to get their own back on the guy whilst simultaneously acquiring a bit of fun. What they don’t anticipate is the trucker turning up at this guy’s room (which is next to theirs), some sort of trouble occurring (an especially well orchestrated sequence where we see almost nothing but hear enough to know something‘s very wrong) and the guy ending up in a coma with his jaw ripped clean off. After being questioned by the police the brothers are hurried out of town with seemingly nothing more than a guilty conscience. But then the persistent and relentlessly psychotic trucker seems to be in pursuit of them, thus initiating a chase that becomes increasingly threatening and potentially homicidal.

Obviously bearing similarities to films like The Hitcher and Duel, there is something inherently limited about a plot such as this - psychotic trucker becomes offended by the prank of a couple of teenagers, psychotic trucker relentlessly pursues them at the expense of everything, presumably with the intention of wiping them off the face of the Earth. And deservedly so in the case of Fuller, one of those grating American teens that you find in all slasher films nowadays, though this is not strictly a slasher of course. Lewis (Paul Walker) is reasonably likeable and assists in holding attention by having dual characteristics, someone who is out for a laugh while encouraged by his wayward brother, but possessing nagging moral instincts that repeatedly suggest to him that what they’re doing isn’t entirely right. Of course they soon realise the error of their ways but that comes a little too late as they’re illogically unable to shake their pursuer. Along the trip they pick up Fuller’s girl (Leelee Sobieski, now a little more grown up from her role in Deep Impact, and all the hotter for it) and she’s dragged into the equation involuntarily, attempting in vain to bring some sanity to the proceedings. It’s a very well shot film, and especially well edited leading to a thrilling climax, but the holes are plentiful and impossibilities are difficult to ignore (the trucker must have some sort of tracking device on these people as well as records of their personal lives to maintain his ‘game’ to this level). But I suppose this is a film where it’s better to disengage the cranium contents and the first half in particular creates tangible atmosphere. In that respect there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

BBC3’s broadcast looked fantastic though they presented a visually modified version of the film at 1.78:1. I’ve previously seen the DVD and this is a small shame because the images are perfected to a point where this is a very good looking piece of work in its original 2.35:1 ratio. For fans the one to go for is the special edition DVD released on region 1 in 2005. Providing some moments of tension but refusing to step into areas of significant originality, Road Kill/Joy Ride may offer a moderate supply of entertainment for the evening but is highly unlikely to be remembered as a genre landmark.