…This film was released as ‘Dont look out the Window’ in the US…and im still not entirely sure why…The only reasoning I have is that it somehow got swept up into the ‘Dont’ craze that bought us ‘Dont answer the phone’, ‘Dont go in the house’, ‘Dont go into the woods (alone!)’ and Edgar Wrights parody ‘Dont!’

Anyway, confusing titling aside, I think the more universally known title of ‘The Living dead at the Manchester morgue’ is probably about as good a summary of the film as its going to get. I was recommended this film by Seth over on the ‘Hellbound Horror’ youtube channel last year. Synapse films had a sale, it was kind of meant to be. Had it not been for stuff going on in my personal life, i’d have probably caught this a LOT sooner. and now having seen this one, I kind of wish I had!

The plot follows George and Edna, George is an art dealer who’s about to have an extended weekend getaway. The plan is simple, he’s travelling up to Lake Windemere to sell an item to a client, then continuing on to a cottage where he’s going to meet with some friends who are simultaineously renovating the place, and getting some much needed R&R.

Things get a bit squiffy when George pulls in to top up the gas on his motorcycle and ends up being rear shunted by a lady named Edna, the bikes badly damaged and cant be repaired till Monday at the earliest, leaving George without transport for the weekend. Without flinching, he basically manhandles the keys to Ednas Mini cooper from her tells her she’ll be obliging him a trip to Windemere in exchange for damaging his bike, and that he’ll be driving. To which Edna, kind of baffled, relents and gets in with him.

The pair go careering off down winding country lanes getting into several near misses, before Edna realises that they cant go directly to Windemere because she needs to go to South end before sundown to meet with her sister, and if she misses the link up, it could be disasterous. George kicks off big time, but when he sees how important it is to Edna, he relents.

But problems plague the trip and the pair get lost, arriving at a farm in the middle of nowhere, George goes to get directions, and tells Edna to wait for him. and its here two things happen. George meets a farmer working with the agricultural department on a top secret experimental ‘radiation’ alternative to pesticides. and Edna is attacked by a man with blood red eyes, whos soaking wet. When Edna gets to George to tell him about the attack, the mans gone. and they shrug it off as ‘women…am I right lads’…Oh! I forgot to mention, George is a MASSIVE ass for about 2/3rds of this film…one of the only issues I have with this thing honestly.

and, I cant really go much further than that, as what follows is a tale of mystery, twists and turns and plot intreagues that’ll see George and Edna WAY in over there heads dealing with scientists, the police and the reanimated corpses of the long deceased!

And honestly, my advice to you is go into this one knowing as little as possible, the more you know, the less impact this film will have. Its good! REALLY good! like…given this is a zombie movie that predates Dawn and Day of the dead, and is only 6 years on from ‘Night of the living dead’ its actually kind of incredibly how fully formed this is as a zombie film. Not to mention that it clearly influenced a whole SHED load of productions ranging from ‘Halloween 3’ through to ‘Zombi’, ‘The Thing’ to the remake of ‘Invasion of the body Snatchers’

Its a damn near perfect slow burn suspense horror film, with my only gripes really being script driven, and thats that the first act is maybe just a *Tiny* bit too slow for its own good, it picks up pace quick and by the 2nd act its all systems go, but theres maybe just a little bit *too* much idling around in the back roads of Derbyshire in the opening…and the decision to make George one of the most unlikeable characters i’ve seen since Robin Askwyths turn in ‘Horror Hospital’. They do ultimately redeem him a bit in the back half of the film, but for the first 30 minutes or so, he’s arrogant, rude, blunt, unpleasent, domaneering, vaguely sexist, and aggressive. if they hadnt mellowed him out, the film would have been a wash for me honestly…

But! outside of that its aces across the board, the scripts suspensful, slow burn, the characters are all well written and multi-layered, the act structuring is pretty solid, the plot is engaging and interesting with twists I genuinely didnt see coming. and an ending thats satisfying and a bit unexpected.

The direction and cine are both amazing with gorgeous location work of the peak district, married up to some solid set work from Rome. its a rich and sumptuous looking film that really comes into its own in HD. its not afraid to experiment, theres hearty amounts of gore and some VERY interesting and boundary pushing kills for 1974. the whole film feels about 5 years ahead of its time honestly. only beaten by the edit for the film which is clearly carefully considered and arranged. Its about as good as a film from the early 70s can look on a production level honeslty, it puts a fair few studio grade pictures to shame

The performances are solid too with great turns from the main cast, and a solid bedrock in the supporting cast too, I dont think theres a bad turn here honestly…and the soundtrack is SO eerie and otherworldly. its unique honestly, punctuates the film perfectly and isnt overbearing against the other elements of the production.

Honestly? My only regret is I was making some notes on this film while watching it for the first time, which meant I had to keep pausing and playing and replaying scenes to get the information I needed. It made what was probably one of the best films i’ve seen this year feel a bit juddery. Which is on me of course. All I can say is, if you havent seen this one, go watch it as soon as you can, and I really cant wait to give this one a respin sometime soon!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-living-dead-at-manchester-morgue/

After being captivated by the works of Writer, Director and dreamweaver ‘Scott Hillman’ in ‘Baby Cat’ and ‘Blue Belt’ I figured it was probably a good way to round off my current exploration of his filmography by checking out one final film written and directed by him, and starring the ever wonderful Socks Whitmore. And to my absolute delight, they made a christmas movie back in 2021. So I hunkered down with a tall hot chocolate and decided that August really wasnt too early to watch Christmas films…and as the credits rolled. I kind found myself a bit lost as to my feelings on this one.

The plot sees Socks playing our lead once again here as ‘Pace’ a non binary accountant with a masters working as a bean counter for a film production company, its December 23rd and they’re getting ready for a ‘muted’ holiday season, as their parents have disowned them for their life choices, and their cool aunt is the only person to give them a christmas present…and its wrapped in Amazon packaging.

Pace leads a pretty pedestrian life, they have a one bed apartment, all their friends are ‘online only’ and the office is really the only place they go to, other than home. That is until Christmas eve, when their boss (who in the opening titles is portrayed as a cruel and heartless man who wants to kick orphans out of their orphanage during the holiday season) bursts into the office full of life, wearing PJ’s and a night cap announcing that, during the night he was visited by 3 spirits who have convinced him to change his wicked ways and renounce his cold heart in favour of giving.

This manifests itself as him turning the office into essentially a christmas explosion, where all the employees are tasked with a holiday errand, while he desperately tries to recreate scenes from ‘A Christmas Carol’.

Pace, is given the job of getting a Christmas tree, but not just ANY Christmas tree, the boss wants a real, from the forests christmas tree thats perfect in every way and ‘magical’…whatever that means.

So, Pace grabs an axe, loads up on snacks and heads up to a nature reserve, where a park ranger almost immediately stops them, tells them that the trees in this reserve are oak for about 100 miles, and that the furs that lay beyond that are protected…BUT! chopping down trees in national forests is kinda sorta legal, and he slyly guides pace to a nature trail where they’ll be able to find fur trees.

Unfortunately for Pace, their plans go awry, when they’re stopped by a person claiming to be a wood elf by the name of Buddy who’s the guardian of the forest and refuses to let Pace desicrate this pleasent land by removing one of their protectees.

And from there…what follows is essentially a half hour montage of Pace trying to locate fur trees while Buddy mocks and misleads them, all the while the pair begin to grow closer as its revealed Buddy is also non binary, and their parents have disowned them too, leading to them setting up in the woods for 5 months.

While back at the office we get mild and gentle comedy courtesy of the office workers being split into pairs to do errands including:

*A recently divorced woman who’s gone ‘all in’ on christmas, and a muslim woman who doesnt celebrate being forced to work together to prepare a MASSIVE christmas goose, in the office, with only office supplies and the company microwave to work with.

*A laid back guy who’s shirking all the jobs and trying to get another job as quickly as possible

*The VP of the company, who is trying desperately to get the festive boss removed, committed or both.

*and another two guys who…seemingly are only there to add exposition and context to upcoming sequences.

The film cuts back and forth between Pace and Buddies storyline, and the office storyline right up to the start of the third act, when the ranger reappears and tells Pace to be careful because theres a crazy homeless person wandering around the woods claiming to be an elf…causing Pace to have to decide whether Buddy really is crazy, or if she’s just in need of a tender heart (awww…)

And given Scotts other films, this one really is a game of two halves. The scripts a bit patchy if im being honest. The plot itself is fine. and I really quite enjoyed the LGBTQIA+ themes, it was refreshing to see a film tackle issues like abandonment without mincing their words. However, I found the blossoming relationship between Buddy and Pace to feel a bit forced and simultaineously rushed…while also totally padded to the gills.

the romance elements really dont even begin to fully play in till about 15 minutes off the end of this film, and before that, there are very light suggestions…but the vast majority of their relationship is them just sharing information about themselves while wandering aimlessly around a national park and Buddy building lore around the elves and what they do. Its frienemies to lovers essentially, but that transition is so quick that it feels a bit hollow. Without going into heavy spoilers I cant really fully explain, but essentially their entire relationship comes out of a series of ‘You do this?! *I* do this too!!!’ moments that are all compressed together, and outside of that, its just the pair making slightly dry or sarcastic comments to one another.

Adding to this that the office sequences are literally all filler, non of whats happening there really ultimately matters, its a pointless B-plot that *feels* like a pointless B-plot (to me at least) just as a way to cut away from Pace and Buddy to just…ANYTHING else that isnt folks wandering around in the woods…

Comedy, as I always say, is subjective. What may leave me stoney faced, may make others uncontrollably weep with laughter. this film? to me? was gentle. theres a LOT of eye rolling gags here, groanworthy honestly…i’d say theres maybe 3-4 gags in the whole thing that raised a stifled titter from myself. Which, given this is tonally aiming to be a quirky and somewhat surreal rom-com…does not bode well…if the rom feels a bit unevenly paced and out of nowhere, and the comedy is almost non stop, but only really landed gags a single didget number of times. then i’d say tonally? its failed.

The characters are all fairly one note, Pace and Buddy are the only ones to really get any kind of complexity. and even then I feel there characters are underwritten, Pace plays a quirky but lonely employee who slowly blossoms into a…befriended and quirky employee, and Buddy gets to go from person claiming to be an elf with a troubled past whos lonely…to befriended person who claims to be an elf with a troubled past. (Also, can I just take a minute to acknowledge the GAUL of the production to name their second main lead after LITERALLY one of the most famouse ‘Elves’ of the 21st century…I know they were probably being cute…but even so.)

But the entire remaining cast get one charictaristic (I.E: Your a woman going through a divorce who TOTALLY isnt over the divorce, your a muslim woman who doesnt celebrate christmas, being forced to do christmas, your a wicked boss who’s just gone through a scrooge style visitation) and then are basically told to run that trope into the ground with a very blunt script that requires them to lean as heavily into that trope as its possible to get.

Throw in the fact that the act structuring is a bit wonky as well, with there being no real clean transition between the 2nd and 3rd acts…alongside some really ropey dialogue in places thats aiming for mid 2000’s ‘Office’ style awkward comedy…but just ends up being awkward and stilted. and while I legally CANT say this is scotts worst written work (because ‘Baby Cat’ exists) I can say that its not his best.

Mercifully, from here things to pick up a bit. On a direction level I have no notes really, As with all of Scotts films, the credit lists are a bit misleading. It may have been that he had a full crew for 1 day and then shot the remaining 2-3 days by himself, it could be that he had a handful of people around for the full 3 days, it could be a skeleton crew. As such it makes it kind of hard to really judge Scotts ability as a director here, but what I will say is, this is probably his most consistent and coherent work i’ve seen to date.

There are a couple of wobbly bits on trying to do ‘day for night’, but on the whole Scotts worked well with his crew and solo here to produce something that has a clean coherent vision and flows pretty well, is it the most incredible and astounding work I’ve ever seen? No. But its sturdy, sound and gets the job done. given the fact this is a low/no budget film, I kind of have to give him some kudos on a ship well steered here.

Same goes with direction of the cast, given a lot of this is first (and only) takes, its clear Scott makes certain his cast know exactly what he wants from them, but also that they are allowed to breath in the scene a bit and bring their own personalities to the role. while the quality of the performances themselves vary (more on that shortly) I could believe that what im seeing here is as close to what Scott envisioned in his head as possible. and again, while its nothing particularly astounding, it is definitey a solid attempt.

On the cine front, again we’re pretty much fine. Shots are well composed, sequences are well structured, the edit is sound. colour use of Dark greens, blues and browns get distinctive works. It looks professional for the most part and I really honestly have no notes, it just works as a solid piece for me…Barring 3 criticisms.

1 – There is a MASSIVE overeliance on stock footage here, basically every 5 minutes or so we get an extended montage of stock shots of L.A or of woodland animals…which is massively distracting.

2 – For some reason, Scott CGI’s a bear into this film a couple of times…it isnt integral to the plot and it only really gets referenced once…its a really bad effect and reminded me heavily of Neil Breens CGI inserted tigers.

and 3 – The Lighting, which is a bit all over the place, the office sequences look washed out and greenish, with no real attempt at creating any kind of distinctive lighting arrangements. Its all just flat profile and slightly desaturated. And the woodland scenes almost all rely on natural light, which is very hit and miss, and again, for a holly jolly christmas film, the fact they went for a pea soup green, washed out colour grade really works against the type and tone of this production. It left it feeling about as christmassy as a grindhouse feature.

Performance wise, its not the best, Socks Whitmore and Ky Mullen as Pace and Buddy are about as good as it gets, both get a decent range to work with, both have slightly awkward deliveries here and there, but both at least vaguely feel believable and naturalistic, I had a soft spot for their portrayals here, and I think they just about saved the film from collapse in my opinion.

The rest of the cast though, no…not for me im afraid, it runs the gauntlet from really dry quiet and uninteresting character performances that made me wonder why they were even there, to overtly hammy and border stereotypical performances that felt awkard and irritating to sit through. Noone here, even Socks and Ky have any kind of significant physical presence on screen, everyone feels like they’ve been given specific marks to hit and told not to move unless they have a damn good idea to get out there. its, not the best cast i’ve ever seen.

And the soundtrack? almost entirely stock and audio library christmas tracks or classical music. Im not shocked or surprised, its used about as well as it can be used, but its a bit flat and uninspired in my opinion…I dont think it suited the film well at all.

All in all? ‘Meh.’ I didnt hate this, if it was on in the background I wouldnt turn it over, for low/no budget its kind of impressive honestly…But the scripts so minimalist and plodding, uninteresting at times, full of holes and unfunny to me, combined with everything else just being kind of ‘sturdy’ or ‘solid’, that I cant in good faith recommend it, I could see myself revisiting this one at some point…but giving it my full attention again? I dont think so.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-magical-christmas-tree/

On a rewatch, I found myself enjoying this one a little bit more than last time. Its a very easy watch in its own way…a very simple premise, some basic, but vaguely developed characters, the soundtracks a bit generic, but isnt offensive…

The first two acts are pretty smooth, though they do have a vague heir of ‘Made for TV’ about them, not helped by the fact the gore is so minimal and the zombies doing much of ANYTHING really is kind of a rare treat. But I think where this film really fell down for me is the 3rd act…the moment Joseph and Jeff agree to go into the woods to track down the escaped zombies, the film essentially goes WELL into padding terratory for most of the remaining 35 minutes…and it never really comes back from it.

Everything slows to a glacial pace, we end up in a series of runarounds, and while there are a couple of fun ideas here put into practice, it isnt enough to ultimately win me back over and while the ACTUAL ending is just about fine enough, the total waste of 30 minutes to get it really hurts this film in my opionion.

I had remembered this film looking and feeling a LOT more low/no budget than it actually is, it still doesnt look GREAT, but it does on the whole look pretty good! theres some really nice lighting and blue gel colour use. I think setting a third of the film in the woods with ultra basic camera setups and little to no props right up to about 5-10 minutes off the end is what left me with that long lasting feeling.

On the whole? on a rewatch, I actually enjoyed this one more. But if anything it really did reinforce some of the problems that I had with it previously. Definitely an easy watch if you just want something to half pay attention to rumbling away in the background while your doing something else…I dont personally think i’d instinctively reach for this one in that specific circumstance…but your milage may vary.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-video-dead/1/